“Truth is not fixed. It is emergent.”

It was a wonderful conversation between a spiritual student and me, though I hesitate to call myself a teacher. It seems more accurate to say that I am a full-time, all-time student of life. And sometimes it overflows me, which is what happened this day.

Kerry and I were deep in a dialogue about letting go, in this case because of some devastating life challenges. The key point was how life and the circumstances it produces are the change agent; that things can just keep pummeling us until we relinquish control. And that the only question is how long we will endure and persist before we finally throw up our hands in frustration, capitulation or despair. In that moment, when we have abandoned all hope of fruition, to quote the Buddhists, suddenly and inexplicably resolution emerges.

This was the case with Kerry. For the longest time, endless efforts to find safety in relationships produced problem after problem after problem. On this day, Kerry ceased fighting and suddenly it clicked. Clarity came. Looking for love in all the wrong places, and in all the wrong ways.

The silence that followed was profound. The truth for that moment had fallen from Kerry’s mouth. Then more words came from nowhere. “Alan Watts is right, there is nothing but flux, only rising and falling, and me trying to hold onto something … someone … and it doesn’t work. It’s never worked. I’m done looking for someone to make me feel okay. I’ve known it, but just now finally really know it.”

Still more silence before words fell from my mouth. “Truth is emergent, not fixed. As humans we just have to keep grasping to hold on, as spiritual beings we have no choice but to keep letting go.”

Kerry stopped me with a stunned look. “What?”

I repeated myself, then promptly pulled out my journal to write it down lest I lose the idea as well as the words.

That launched us into yet one more layer of dialogue. I don’t know how long we talked, and I could never recount exactly what took place. We were in the flux - ideas and time flew, and then, we were done.

Kerry called me later, opening the telephone conversation with, “What the flux?”

We laughed. The conversation resumed, and yet, it took a new emergent direction.

Seeing True™ 

“I am committed to truth, not consistency.” Gandhi

Seeing True™ in Action 

Brene Brown says in her book Dare to Lead, “As much time as I spend trying to understand the way, I spend ten times as much researching what gets in the way.” She then quotes Marcus Aurelius, “What stands in the way becomes the way.”

When we finally see the impediment to Seeing True, the blockage falls away and seeing emerges. It always arises in the moment and specific to the moment. Truth is emergent, not fixed.

So, we arrive once again to taking personal stock, or personal inventory:

• Where am I stuck in my life?

• What are the conditions associated with the difficulty, the people, the setting or circumstances?

• What am I bringing to this, i.e. how am I contributing to the difficulty?

If we persist in this line of inquiry, at some point our blindness will fall away. We won’t find the solution, the solution will find us.