Speaking THE truth

We are often asked to speak the truth.

What is the truth? By using “the”, we imply that there is only one truth. However, we find that as we try to express “the” truth, we bring our own experiences and perception into play, so that “the” truth becomes MY truth. When that happens, then we have many truths – we have the truth from MY perspective, as I have spoken it, and we have the truth as the listener has heard it. The truth from MY point of view is my interpretation of a particular situation and is loaded with all the learning, baggage, experiences, knowledge that I have accumulated over my lifetime. When I speak what I believe to be THE truth, the listener also brings his or her learning, baggage, experiences and knowledge to make “sense” of THE truth – as I have spoken it, and he/she has heard it.

I sometimes do an exercise in my workshops on meanings of commonly used words. I ask participants to put a number between 0% to 100% that represents what a particular word means. For example, the word ALWAYS. To me, coming from my truth, ALWAYS is 100%. I am always (!?!) amazed at the amount of people who interpret ALWAYS as 90%, 80%, 60% and so on. So, when I speak my truth and say I will ALWAYS do something, I mean 100% of the time. However, someone who hears me and has ALWAYS as 80% will believe that there is 20% of the time when I will not do what I say. For me, the truth is that ALWAYS is always 100%. For the other person, the truth is 80%. In this case, what IS “the” truth? Is it 100%? 80%? Or let’s just compromise and call it 90%? Or is it none of those?

As we choose words, which is basically what we do when we speak, we want to be very careful. Words have numerous meanings and are very powerful. Perhaps in trying to speak the truth, the less said the better – for the more words we use, the more we get into our own world, and bring confusion and lack of clarity as we speak and others hear. It further occurs to me that speaking THE truth is almost impossible, for once we put it into words, by our choice of words we have begun a process of selection and bias based on our own individual perspective.

Perhaps the only way to speak the truth is to not speak at all, but simply to be the truth. It is to get in tune with our higher selves and “speak” from that place of oneness. This does not involve words, it means being the truth. When we are in such a place, then we do not have to choose to say words or do deeds. We will simply know that we are being THE truth.