LIVING YOUR TRUTH AS FOLLOWING YOUR JOY
For me there is an intimate relationship between the catchphrase, “live your truth,” and the catchphrase, “follow your joy.” The two are inextricably linked.
What does it mean to follow your joy? It means to, in every moment, ask yourself, “what thing will bring me the greatest joy right now?” And not just to ask, to do that exact thing (providing it doesn't cause any harm, but true joy is NEVER derived from the pain of another).
To follow your joy means that you liberate yourself of all notions of your egoic self. You let go of any societal habits or traditions that you have previous done out of obligation and fear and replace them with the things that bring you energy and aliveness. It means saying, “no” to everything you genuinely do not want to do; it means being bold enough to do the work that brings you joy and not necessarily the work that brings you prestige or money; it means risking judgement and critique from others, for the sake of a richer life (more on this later).
It is the most illogical thing, but most people I know (myself included for a very long time) are genuinely fearful of following their joy. They think, “if I do what makes me happy, everything will fall apart.” This fear, like all fears, is nonsense. “Fear is a liar,” I can’t repeat this enough times!
When you follow your joy it is almost impossible that everything will fall apart, this is true because of the law of attraction. When you are in a state of joy and happiness what do you attract? That’s right, joy and happiness! Therefore, when you “follow your joy,” you don’t create destruction you create MORE JOY AND MORE HAPPINESS (and probably some abundance too). It is honestly like magic.
How do you know you’re following your joy? You feel alive, you feel like a child again, your heart is filled with love, your interactions with others improve, your interactions with self are radically transformed, and you may notice mental/physical/spiritual healing.
Following your joy is, in some sense, a fast track to connecting with your higher self because the things that fill you with joy are soul-level callings. In listening in for signals of what brings you this sense of aliveness, you are innately learning to trust your intuition and feel your higher self!
This is amazing!! And it’s all in the sake of happiness.
LIVING YOUR TRUTH AS OWNING YOUR DARKNESS
I think on some level, most of us see the link between living our truth and following our joy. However, there are other elements to living one’s truth besides “following joy.” I have found these other elements to be EVEN MORE TRANSFORMATIVE than living one’s joy, if you can imagine that possibility.
I will admit to a current obsession with integrating and mediating dichotomies of self… with that said, there is darkness and light within each and every one of us. Most people have an easier time owning their light than their darkness. Holistic transformation, however, asks us to love our darkness… “say what?!”
I will admit to a current obsession with integrating and mediating dichotomies of self… with that said, there is darkness and light within each and every one of us. Most people have an easier time owning their light than their darkness. Holistic transformation, however, asks us to love our darkness… “say what?!”
Yes, love your darkness, your ugliness, your anger, your guilt, your hatred, your mistakes, your faults, your...everything…. love your everything… “but how?”
Around age 18 I discovered a very helpful psychology-inspired conflict-management tool called, “disarming the critic.” The basic premise of this is that when someone tries to activate your ego-based anger by criticizing you, saying, for example, “you are ugly,” you completely disarm them by saying, “you are correct, I am ugly.”
Most people will stop at this point, but someone truly determined to hurt you (aka someone who is hurting inside because… they are not living their own truth) may continue, saying something like, “you see, you are so dumb, you agreed to what I said, “ to which you would reply, “you are correct, I am dumb.”
Most people will stop at this point, but someone truly determined to hurt you (aka someone who is hurting inside because… they are not living their own truth) may continue, saying something like, “you see, you are so dumb, you agreed to what I said, “ to which you would reply, “you are correct, I am dumb.”
...I think you get the idea.
Now, I am not claiming any deep spiritual truth in this tool of disarming the critic, what I am claiming is that there is a relationship between the transformational power of “disarming the critic” and the transformational power of “living your truth” ESPECIALLY when the critic you are disarming is your self, by which I mean “your ego,” (because your higher self does not criticize)!
There are truths about every single one of us which we genuinely believe are heinous...too heinous to be accepted by other people. In response to our self-judgment of these truths, we expend ENORMOUS energy trying to hide them from the world. These truths may be about our sexuality, our bodies, our family, our eating habits, our financial reality, our health, our professional life, or any other number of topics. The actual topic is not important because there is absolutely nothing that cannot be accepted from a place of love and standpoint of truth.
For myself and many of my friends, our spiritual calling was one of these truths that we hid from the world out of fear others could not accept it, that we would be judged as “witches” or dark-energy workers, or that we would simply be considered “crazy” and become outcast from society. It begs mentioning once again that… FEAR IS A LIAR!!!!!!!!
Now, I am not claiming any deep spiritual truth in this tool of disarming the critic, what I am claiming is that there is a relationship between the transformational power of “disarming the critic” and the transformational power of “living your truth” ESPECIALLY when the critic you are disarming is your self, by which I mean “your ego,” (because your higher self does not criticize)!
There are truths about every single one of us which we genuinely believe are heinous...too heinous to be accepted by other people. In response to our self-judgment of these truths, we expend ENORMOUS energy trying to hide them from the world. These truths may be about our sexuality, our bodies, our family, our eating habits, our financial reality, our health, our professional life, or any other number of topics. The actual topic is not important because there is absolutely nothing that cannot be accepted from a place of love and standpoint of truth.
For myself and many of my friends, our spiritual calling was one of these truths that we hid from the world out of fear others could not accept it, that we would be judged as “witches” or dark-energy workers, or that we would simply be considered “crazy” and become outcast from society. It begs mentioning once again that… FEAR IS A LIAR!!!!!!!!
There are a shocking number of light-workers who practice daily...light-workers who radically transform the experience of others... and who hide their work from their friends and family. “My parents will never understand,” they say. It’s true, people may not understand your truth, but they will understand your authenticity. And, your authenticity will set them free. It isn't the content of your truth that is important, it is the spirit of it.
Say what you think you cannot say. Do what you think you cannot do. In doing so you will free up all that energy you have been using to hide your truth from the world. This energy will feed you in ways you probably cannot yet comprehend.
I live part-time in the academic world now, which is a very 3D world indeed. I was a bit uncomfortable returning to this world, having changed my trajectory so dramatically since I was last here. I was afraid (yes, fear strikes again) of the questions, “What are your professional goals? What do you hope to do after graduation?”
I was afraid of these questions because I was actively working to hide the truth of them. Then I reminded myself that “fear is a liar,” and I looked into the face of the first faculty member who asked me this question and said, “I want to be a light-worker.” Yes, for a moment, he was uncomfortable. I saw it. I felt it.
Then the moment passed, and he adjusted and integrated the new reality into his experience and we went on to have one of the most profound conversations about the human experience that I’ve ever had in an academic setting. And, it is very likely this conversation will become my thesis, and possibly book. What is more important, though, is that by facing my fear, I took all power away from it. Where there once was anxiety, fear, and self-judgment, there now resides power, love, and an out-of-this world energy around being on my path and yes, “owning my truth.”
It is, in one word, freedom.
LIVING YOUR TRUTH AS RECOGNIZING THE TRUTH OF OTHERS
Something amazing happens when you live your truth consistently… you begin to be able to recognize the truth of other people. This isn't a subtle gift; this is a gift that will transform your experience.
When you stop deceiving yourself you can no longer be deceived by others. You will begin to see the darkness and light of other people for exactly what they are, darkness and light. As you hone your personal truth-know-er you begin to be able to apply this to others. Suddenly, you can see when they are out of alignment with themselves. I find this of particularly transformative nature when applied to “the critic.”
I have some deeply held beliefs about critique.
One comes from my academic artistic and creative background in which I was taught to ignore the pain of critique and face my critics head-on, knowing that they held a sort of “secret power” to improve my creative work... if only I could overcome ego enough to embrace their critiques. Overtime I became overly good at this “important academic skill” to the point of denying my own creative truth (more on this below).
Another deeply held belief I internalized about critique was a belief popularized by the late Randy Pausch, “your critics are the ones telling you they still love you and care.”
There is a felt truth in both of these beliefs about critique. That felt-truth could be summed up by saying something like, “your critics love you enough to want to make you better.” We feel this. My deep place of knowing says, “yes...this is true,” with a special-qualifier, “sometimes.”
Critique has provided a magical place of self-exploration and truth-making for me in the past several weeks. At my current state-of-awareness, almost no critique feels good... let me be clear about that. However, the fact that all critique feels bad is actually a gift. The fact that all critique feels bad means that I must look inside each time I am presented with a critique of my “self” and ask, “is this truth?”
When someone presents you with a critique that hurts, but is nevertheless truth, and you go inside and ask yourself, “is this true” and the answer that comes back, through the pain, is “yes,” you are presented with an amazing opportunity to own your truth! Take this opportunity to set yourself free.
If someone says, for example, that you hurt them, or misguided them, and you did...don’t run from your darkness, embrace it!
IT IS OKAY TO MAKE MISTAKES. IT IS OKAY TO HAVE DARKNESS
We are human. This is part of the human experience. The best thing you can do for yourself, and everyone you know, is to love yourself enough not to run away from your darkness… to love yourself enough to show vulnerability, and to own your darkness as a beautiful part of what makes you who you are.
This is all well and good, but I've spent the past several weeks grappling with a different question, the question of what to do when we consult our truth meter and discover our critics are not coming from a place of love.
As humans, I feel we are often taught to respect the opinions of others at the expense of our own knowing and truth. This is what I was getting at when I discussed the example of creative and artistic critique above.
For me, my greatest source of present critics can be found on YouTube; it is amazing how much freer people are with critique when they are not accountable to their words.
As humans, I feel we are often taught to respect the opinions of others at the expense of our own knowing and truth. This is what I was getting at when I discussed the example of creative and artistic critique above.
For me, my greatest source of present critics can be found on YouTube; it is amazing how much freer people are with critique when they are not accountable to their words.
Since the beginning, the approval rating for my channel with Christopher has been about 99/1, 99 loving supporters for every one outspoken critic. You would think I would be overjoyed about this. I wish I could say I was. The truth is, this 1% has been the source of my deepest pain as of late. Their abrasive words have caused tears, self-doubt, and brief periods of hopelessness. This is one of the truths I hid from the world for months, until I finally shared this deep pain with Chris last week.
When I looked into this 1%, I found a small minority of critics acting from a place of love. These light-workers, whose words were nevertheless painful to the ego, did have best-intentions in mind. They were trying to help, most of them focusing on the distinction between, “relationship" and "union,” a distinction we did not first recognize in the early days of our production, but one that has since radically transformed our connection and experience in the world… that’s how you know truth, it transforms you!
This, ultimately, led me to ask these big questions about the nature of “living one’s truth.” What I realized, in this quest, is that not all critics are telling you, “they still love you and care,” some critics are simply telling you they still, “hate themselves and don’t want you to be happy.” Only by exercising your own inner knowing and self-truth can you distinguish those coming from a place of love and those coming from a place of fear; this distinction is critical.
The others, whose hatred I initially tried to respond as a mechanism for “improving my work” (as I was taught in my creative studies) are those who I allowed to cause my enormous pain. Had I initially asked myself, “is this truth,” and allowed my place of knowing to respond, as opposed to my head (my place of fear) I would have realized these critiques came from a place of hatred before trying to respect them by matching my vibration to them, which hurt because hatred is not aligned with my truth… hatred is not aligned with anyone’s truth!
When you go inside, consult your truth, and it tells you something is not right. Trust it.
After much contemplation about the nature of truth, I’ve learned to remove these people who “fake truth” from my experience.
There is no one who operates from a place of hatred and also deserves a place in your experience, regardless of their relationship to you. It is not wrong to delete/block/report someone who expresses hatred by attacking your truth. Failing to do just that is a subjugation of yourself and your truth.
After much contemplation about the nature of truth, I’ve learned to remove these people who “fake truth” from my experience.
To "release all that no longer serves you,” is an IMMENSELY POWERFUL practice.
There is no one who operates from a place of hatred and also deserves a place in your experience, regardless of their relationship to you. It is not wrong to delete/block/report someone who expresses hatred by attacking your truth. Failing to do just that is a subjugation of yourself and your truth.
Live Your Truth
Follow Your Joy
Own Your Darkness
Embrace Your Loving Critics
& Release All Those Who Hatefully Attack Your Experience
This is the way to love, to aliveness, to enlightenment.
This is the way to you.
