As people, we have a VERY complicated relationship with the truth. Very few of us actually want it, no matter what we might say to the contrary. Very few of us truly see the actual value of truth. And the fact that truth/reality in and of itself is a hotly debated topic in philosophy circles just serves as fuel for the fire. But it is still important to understand what it is that makes us not want the truth, not value the truth and resist the truth.
Let’s begin by looking at the resistance that we, as people have to truth. Those of us who don’t want the truth, are really only resistant to truths that feel bad. We would call these ‘negative truths’. Our own life experience has shown us that negative truths always lead to something bad, like a negative consequence. A negative consequence that we feel like we can’t face, deal with or do anything to change. In general, people who are brave enough to see the truth (what is) are usually people who believe that they can do something about the truth (what is). And because those of us who don’t value the truth experience higher degrees of powerlessness, we feel powerless to do anything to prevent or resolve those bad things. Therefore, we tend to experience truth as leading to only bad things, never solutions. Of course, those consequences that we imagine will come as a result of truth may or may not actually exist. None the less, the more powerless you feel, the less ok with painful truth you will be.
To give you an example, we may have experienced our father being honest that he wasn’t in love with our mother anymore. As a result of that negative truth, he left the family and we suffered for the rest of our childhood because of it, so did everyone else in the family. And we felt powerless to it, like we couldn’t do anything about it. Or for example, we may have experienced being truthful about our jealousy towards our sister and as a result, got punished. Our other family members lost respect for us and it only created a more adversarial relationship with our sister. And so, we feel like the only way to have avoided all of that, was to never be honest about that in the first place.
Many of us simply do not understand why you would do anything (such as admit to any truth or take any action) if it leads to a consequence. And many of us hold very little to no understanding that the truth, even painful or negative truths, lead to something good. Because the proof we are looking at in our own life, points to just the opposite.
Those of us who are resistant to truth also usually come from a background of truth being used against us. Of course, this has nothing to do with truth, it has to do with being in unhealthy environments. But truth was negatively capitalized on. Truth often became a weakness to exploit. For example, if mom or dad knew the truth was that we loved a certain toy, that was the toy taken away when we didn’t comply. Or if we were honest with our teacher about having not done our homework, instead of saying the dog ate it, we were automatically labeled a problem kid and flunked. We don’t want truth to be something for others to use against our best interests.
Often, those of us who are resistant to the truth also have a very hard time discerning what is real and what is true. Confusion is common amongst us. If we are honest, in childhood, we could never really tell what the reality was. Or, we were sold the idea that something was 100% true, only to find out later (after years of believing in it) that it wasn’t. This causes us to distrust and doubt even the idea of truth. As well as doubt our own ability to perceive it, much less any one else’s.
Something very important to know about yourself, if you are someone who is resistant to the truth is that you value stability more so than other people. Chances are, you don’t even realize this about yourself. You revere stability to a degree that invites the shadow of that value into the room. We tend to be averse to complexity and want simplicity. And we experience negative truths as being de-stabilizing and destructive. Therefore, as an oppositional force to success.
The reality is the opposite. The reality is that when a negative truth destabilizes and destroys something, the structure it destroys, was not real in the first place. It was an illusion. But illusions often feel real. And that feeling of something false being real, still offers the feeling of stability. For example, a woman might have a husband who is cheating on her for her whole marriage. But the illusion that she has a good marriage, still makes her feel stable and like she has a foundation to build her life on. As opposed to seeing the truth that he is cheating and as a result, feeling her entire life is destabilized and her marriage is destroyed.
Often, those of us who are resistant to the truth do not value truth or what is real over other things… Things like stability. Things like feeling good. Things like control. And our reality is flipped. Our wires are crossed. We see truth as an oppositional force to these things, when in reality, truth is our only way of actually achieving these things. We are conditional with truth. We only want truth if it makes us feel more stable. We only want truth if it makes us feel more in control. We only want truth if it makes us feel good. This means that those of us who are resistant to truth, have a very conditional relationship with truth. And this conditional relationship that we have with truth eventually forces us to justify our conditional attitude towards truth with ideologies that oppose the idea of truth.
Ready for the first truth bomb in this video? The spiritual field is really a giant coping mechanism. A coping mechanism is an adaptation we make that enables us to deal with a difficult environmental stress that we feel we cannot change or eliminate. Most of the spiritual tools you have learned, are in fact nothing more than coping mechanisms. And even ones that could be much more than that, can still be used as coping mechanisms. To understand more about this, I want you to watch three of my videos. The first is: Spirituality, The Great Coping Mechanism. The second is: Are You into Spirituality for Comfort or Awareness? And the third is: Novocain Spirituality.
The reality is that the gurus and spiritual teachers and the people that we revere the most are the ones who can cope with the world the best. We want to get out of stress and pain. So, we glorify and worship and idolize and hold ourselves up against the standard of these people who, unlike us, seem to not be in distress within the world at all. But be careful, he who copes with the world the best is often the one who will do the very least to change it. Instead, he will often do the very most to teach everyone else how to cope with it.
The spiritual field is now littered with people, teachers even, who will only tell you truths that feel good. It is littered with teachers who will teach you that truth is not important. That truth and reality is an illusion. That you create your own reality. That all that matters, and even worse than that, the way to know whether something is true and right… is if it feels good. And those of us who are resistant to truth take those ideologies and distort them and resist what is and then use those ideologies to justify our conditional relationship with truth. We use them to justify entering into a narcissistic bubble reality built for one. A place where we can control literally everything and therefore make everything stable and make everything feel good.
Truth involves other people. Pretend and illusion, only involves one. Using our previous example, the truth involves not only the reality of a wife who is dedicated to a good marriage, but also the reality of a husband who is also dedicated to a good marriage. Illusion involves only the woman who is dedicated to a good marriage. She can mentally decide to look only at what she wants to see and thus create a false reality where her marriage is a great one and if she is completely committed to that perspective, nothing the husband does or doesn’t do can burst that false reality construct for her. It will feel real to her. She has total control over it, no matter what he does or doesn’t do. The fact that truth involves other people, because this time space reality is a consensus reality, makes those of us who are resistant to truth feel out of control, because we know we can’t control other people. But I cannot stress to you how dangerous this is. How out of reality it is. How mentally ill it is. And how much damage this can do.
Those of us who are resistant to the truth can also avoid shame by avoiding truth. We tend to deliberately not take things personally and have hard time understanding that any negative truth or anything negative we are experiencing is about us. Being trapped in a bubble reality, we tend to preserve our self-concept by thinking that any negative truths or negative experiences are about others. For this reason, a great many truth resistant people watch my videos and feel like these videos are validating them. They finally understand the truth about what everyone else is doing bad/wrong. What I’m saying isn’t about them, it’s about the other people in their life. And so, they love me. They love me because they are using my content to fortify the walls of their own narcissistic bubble reality. What I’m saying isn’t personal. But wait until the day or situation where what I say makes it personal. Wait for the day I show them a negative truth about themselves. And it contradicts that stable, feel good reality they’ve built. Suddenly, overnight, they hate me… And they suddenly see that Teal Swan is destructive.
Those of us who are resistant to the truth have often forgotten the torture of having already suffered at the hands of someone, or many people, that were in their own narcissistic bubble. We have forgotten the pain of not being able to appeal to them or influence them in any way, even when our wellbeing depended on it. We have forgotten the pain of not being accommodated by them. The pain of the helplessness, powerlessness and isolation of being at their mercy. Ironically, we have never experienced this reality as a consensus reality, even though it is one. Have you ever heard the expression hurt people, hurt people? Just like someone who was once abused has the choice to feel powerful and safe by becoming the perpetrator, those of who suffer at the hands of someone who is stuck in their own narcissistic bubble reality, have the choice to become powerful and safe and in control and no longer at the mercy of anyone, by creating our own narcissistic bubble reality. But by doing so, we are unaware that we are becoming the very person who hurt us. It’s a subconscious “Because you can’t beat ‘em, the only way to feel good is to join ‘em” mentality.
When we are resistant to the truth, we only see the truth when the pain or consequences of not seeing the truth is higher than the pain and consequences of seeing the truth. And this, is a recipe for disaster. Not just for us, but for the whole world. Ironically, it means that the stability and simplicity we love, is a pipe dream. Because escalation is inevitable. If we won’t accept a negative truth, and so we do nothing about it, we will end up in a crisis. When the crisis hits, we will either realize something way after it’s too late to avoid serious consequences and suffer because of them. Or, we will simply re-frame the consequences so we don’t suffer when they occur. For example, let’s imagine that a negative truth is that human beings are on the way to making the surface of the earth uninhabitable for themselves and millions of other species. Do you know how bad it has to get for a person to swallow that truth if they are only willing and able to see the truth when the pain or consequences of not seeing the truth are higher than the pain and consequences of doing so? Far beyond the point of no return. We may suffer when this happens, or tell ourselves a story that positively re-frames the consequences so we don’t feel the true impact of them. This mentality of needing the pain and consequence of not seeing a truth to outweigh the pain and consequence of seeing it, sets us up to never be able to face and deal with negative truths when they are very small. Truths have to turn into unmanageable tsunamis first. Thereby re-enforcing our belief that truth is a destabilizing, destructive force.
Those of us who are resistant to the truth, want there to be no consequences for truth. The reality is that no one wants negative consequences. But we live in a reality where one of the governing laws is the law of cause and effect. This means literally everything has a consequence. And the best we can do, is to choose those consequences consciously. If you don’t choose them, they will simply happen to you. If you want to learn more about this, watch my video titled: Why You Should Consciously Choose Consequences. Those of us who are resistant to the truth see that the truth can lead to and cause painful consequences. But we are not often aware of (and are not playing out) how illusion can lead to and cause pain. In fact, even more so.
We have a hard time with truth because we want something different than what is. We want to create something new and different from what is. This isn’t a problem. This is actually a beautiful thing. The problem is when we are in denial of what is and when we are in resistance to what is.
We need to question if feeling good, even if it means being out of reality and living in illusion, matters more than being conscious of the truth and being in reality. It is that existential question posed by The Matrix. And I suggest that you find out where you stand relative to that question. Blue pill or red?
