How to Find Your Own Truth
By Deepak Chopra, MD, FACP, FRCP
All around us, we hear comments about the threat to truth, pointing to widespread disinformation, lies told at high levels, and a prevailing distrust of the news media. Although this has created a climate of distrust and anxiety, there is a positive outcome if you can find your own truth.
Speaking your truth is the most you can do to bring truth back. It is far more effective than fighting against lies and disinformation, which is ultimately futile — there is no closing Pandora’s box on them. The spiritual axiom that holds true is that the darkness is dispelled by shining a light.
Human psychology is complex, and many people think — and loudly proclaim — that they are speaking the truth when they actually aren’t. I’m not referring to deliberate lying. Far more subtle are expressions that pass for the truth in our own minds. You aren’t speaking your own truth when you engage in the following:
Sharing gossip and innuendo
Repeating a story you saw on the news
Agreeing with popular opinion
Being guided by someone else
Automatically reacting in a predictable way
These are very common ways of expressing yourself, and my purpose isn’t to condemn them. Truth isn’t about moralizing. The shadows of the psyche contain impulses of hate, prejudice, intolerance, and the rest — everyone is familiar with them. You can’t speak your truth if you mix dark impulses into your everyday expression.
By the same token, we are all familiar with the light. The psyche brings impulses of love and compassion, along with every virtue humankind has cherished in spiritual traditions. Therefore, it isn’t difficult to know the truth and to avoid our darker impulses. Parents guide their children to know the difference between right and wrong. For most people, the lessons stick.
We have to look deeper to find the truth the New Testament points to with the words, “And you will know the truth, and that truth will set you free.” The immediate context was Jesus making a promise to those who would follow him, but over time the idea that the truth can set us free has expanded beyond religion. If you think of what it means to be set free, several possibilities come to mind.
Truth sets you free from falsehood — that’s the most basic kind of liberation. Truth frees you from deception and illusion, too. This opens a floodgate of possibilities. In the teachings of Vedanta, the physical world that greets the senses is Maya or illusion. Being liberated from the bondage of the five senses is a lifelong project. In the same vein, being freed from pain and suffering, the core teaching of Buddhism, is lifelong.
The enormousness of the task is almost as great as the inspiration behind it. You don’t have to agree with Jesus, Buddha, or any other spiritual guide to know that life brings false hopes, pain and suffering, and frustrated ideals, including the victory of good over bad.
When “the truth will set you free” is expanded to such a vast vision, it stymies the average person. A lifelong project can’t be sustained, because motivation weakens over time. It isn’t true that the road to Hell is paved with good Intentions. The road to faded dreams is more like it.
The secret is to speak your truth as it strikes you here and now. No long-range project is needed. You don’t need to be stoked or fueled by unbending faith, discipline, moral virtue, or outside guidance. Your own awareness is enough, once you know how to consult it. This begins by recognizing when you are indulging in the habits listed at the beginning of this article: spreading gossip, adopting someone else’s belief secondhand, and so on.
You don’t have to spy on yourself or keep constant vigil. It works simply to catch yourself not speaking your truth. There is no predicting when this might happen, but built into all of us is the faint feeling of “This isn’t right.” It prompts us to pause in our habitual reactions. This pause is crucial. It quietly opens a different way. Then you can wait without expectations to see if something better comes to mind. Sometimes it is enough simply to stop doing the wrong thing.
Yet there is something else. At moments of inner quiet, in an attitude of openness, light can penetrate. “Light” is a metaphor for more than one thing. It denotes inspiration, insight, our better angels, a deeper self, and creativity. Without the light, these impulses wouldn’t exist. We didn’t have to invent them. They are the legacy of human awareness when it is allowed to be free.
Consciousness doesn’t only give you the capacity to speak your truth but to think it, feel it, and live it. Freedom is an open field of limitless possibilities. One of the reasons that untruth flourishes so easily is that it is so cut and dried. The templates for lying, prejudice, hatred, and intolerance are firmly set in place, ready for anyone to pick them up. Despising “the other,” to give just one example, is a fixed, repetitive theme throughout history.
The light isn’t like that. Although you can consult spiritual traditions and be inspired by them, they too come second-hand. Your truth is dynamic. The light is designed to accommodate every new situation as well as every unique person. Truth isn’t vast and daunting. It is intimate and personal, once you have the experience. “I love you” doesn’t have to be “I love all of humanity.”
Direct experience is everything. As so often when it comes to being more conscious, the two main players are attention and intention. You pay attention to the difference between truth and untruth as you experience it. Your intention is to favor the light. Armed with these two motivations, the experience of speaking your truth will come naturally and increase day by day to something you cannot imagine now.
DEEPAK CHOPRA MD, FACP, FRCP, founder of The Chopra Foundation, a non-profit entity for research on well-being and humanitarianism, and Chopra Global, a whole health company at the intersection of science and spirituality, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation. Chopra is a Clinical Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health at the University of California, San Diego, and serves as a senior scientist with Gallup Organization. He is the author of over 90 books translated into over forty-three languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. Chopra has been at the forefront of the meditation revolution for the last thirty years. He is the author of the forthcoming book, Digital Dharma: How to Use AI to Raise Your Spiritual Intelligence and Personal Well-Being. TIME magazine has described Dr. Chopra as “one of the top 100 heroes and icons of the century.” www.deepakchopra.com
