Story: The Art of Conveying Truth ... With a Little Deception
One of the beautiful things about the people showing up in my life since I began embracing everything I love and speaking the truth of my heart, is that they are all walking in this world embodying the wholeness and truth of themselves.
They are creating a living - and a life - out of all the various facets of who they are and what they value.
They not only do the things they do, but they spend the time to discover what’s truly at the heart of what they do, what it is they love and value about it, and how they can speak that to the world.
In doing so, they open up the world and grant permission for others to be who they uniquely are, without fitting into boxes or trying to be what the world wants them to be.
I watched a performance last night of the fantastic Harris III.
We've not met (yet), but from what I can tell from what’s out in the world, he is an illusionist/corporate speaker/church speaker/conference host and curator ... An awesome cocktail of things, all of which boil down to simply being a storyteller.
First and foremost, he's a dad who filled my heart with joy when I heard him speak of his kids' sense of wonder ... And the fact that he's aware that that sense thrives because they are growing up in a healthy home.
Oh my goodness.
His life as an illusionist has rendered him a master of the art of deception, and therefore a wise and deep seer and knower of truth.
I sat transfixed for the entire hour of his performance, fascinated at his mastery of weaving a story before our eyes ... Entwining indistinguishable threads of truth and untruth for his purpose of leading us to his deepest truth.
Since I saw his performance last night I’ve been contemplating the very nature of truth, because one of the most powerful moments he recounts is actually one I recognize from another friend’s story.
I have no idea if that moment actually happened to him as he recounts it and coincidentally also happened to the other friend whose story I’m fairly sure is in his orbit, but I think the real question is whether that matters.
That moment itself spoke a powerful truth that goes beyond the details.
His recounting of it - the story, that creation of those indistinguishable threads of truth and untruth - was simply a way to impart that deeper truth.
His telling was a work of art created to reflect something deeper than itself ... Not a photograph created to show what was actually visible to the eye.
I think this is the heart of my trouble with what I’ve experienced of much of the Christian world, particularly the brand of it we have in the south.
I will tell you that parts of his talk are problematic for me, just because that language of Christianity feels hurtful as I have seen so much shattering damage done by the Christian world.
It has ripped people I love to shreds from the inside out, and I have just experienced it to be doing so very much more harm than good.
I think the central truth of all of our faith traditions is that they are based on stories.
Stories created by humans at a particular moment in time - with their particular worldview and understanding and culture and fears and passions and agendas - trying to speak to the unknowable.
They were then passed down to us through the hands of countless other humans, with THEIR particular worldview and understanding and culture and fears and agendas.
This little detail, that the Bible and all of our sacred texts were written by humans - that they are STORIES ... Works of art and poetry created to reflect THAT PARTICULAR HUMAN’S experience and deeper truth - is monumentally important.
I think many tend to worship the stories themselves, rather than putting them in the proper context of being works of art ... With their value, as is the value of all art, being that they are simply a lens - or rather, a mirror - through which we can experience a deeper truth.
A lens that was created at one moment in time - colored and informed by the worldview and culture and understanding of the human that created it - and subsequently translated and colored in a million different ways by a million different humans with a million different agendas.
They are valuable and enduring BECAUSE they are stories.
BECAUSE they are works of art created by humans.
When we miss this fact and instead believe that they were written by “God” - ascribing to these human words what we understand to be the infallible nature of the creator of the universe - not only do we infinitely magnify our completely human fears and prejudices, use it to justify all manner of horrific abuses because “God is on our side,” and drive ourselves insane performing mental gymnastics because the book doesn’t even agree with itself, we also lose the truth and value those texts have as stories.
My favorite thing Harris says in his talk is that the art of deception rests on your letting other people do your thinking for you.
When you simply accept what you hear - from ANYONE - without stopping to ask your heart (or even a 30-second Google search!) if it’s really true, you can be led to believe anything.
REALLY EASILY.
As I watched his performance last night, it happened to be the second video in which I'd seen him do a particular trick.
I was stunned to see the trick clearly on my second viewing ... A simple move that was made plain as day before my eyes. He didn't even hide it ... It was a gesture he made while he was speaking, he just happened to be calling our attention elsewhere.
It made me giggle as I remembered my dad telling me years ago about someone asking how to make an elephant disappear.
"It's simple ... You just distract the audience and lead it off the stage."
Indeed.
We cannot believe something just because a person we love and respect said it’s true. Sleight of hand aside, that person is a human, with their own unique experiences and understanding and passions and fears and agendas.
We all have agendas, friends.
Whether it’s malicious or simply a desire to look our best - in other words, to control how others see and respond to us - we all engage in the art of deception.
Deep truth lives in our hearts.
We cannot find it anywhere outside ourselves.
Every word we encounter is coming through the lens of another human’s experience and culture and worldview and wounds and fears and passions and agendas.
We have to spend the time with our own hearts, in the quiet, to discover the truth.
The truth is to be found in the spaces between words ... Not necessarily in the words themselves.
I have long said that regardless of the language people use - God, the universe, mystery, heart - those who are a healing presence for me are those who understand that divinity or truth to be inside and a part of themselves.
Or at the very least, understand that it’s accessed by going inside themselves.
Those who are a wounding presence are those who understand the divine to be outside themselves ... Something separate from them that’s required to redeem their fundamentally bad nature. These people are constantly looking for guidance and wisdom from the outside - and directing others to do the same - because they believe what's inside is fundamentally wrong and unworthy.
The former is deeply empowering, and leads us to a peaceful place from which we can create beautiful lives for ourselves and those around us.
Where we know WE are creating our lives and experience, because we're aware that everything outside is a reflection of what's inside.
That latter, where we constantly look to others because we don't trust what lives inside us, creates wars in our hearts and renders us powerless victims of life and circumstance.
It’s also really handy for controlling the masses, by the way.
As Harris shows us, our senses can absolutely deceive us.
Our wounds are masters at deceiving us.
But our hearts always tell us the truth.
After four years of doing the work of healing my heart, it is powerfully clear when what I’m feeling comes from the deception of my wounds, versus when it comes from the truth.
I have found that if it hurts, it’s a lie.
Truly.
In moments my heart is shattering in the space of loving a man I’m not with, for example, it is never, ever not being with him that hurts.
My life is completely miraculous exactly the way it is. It is filled with peace and joy and love the likes of which I never even knew existed before this healing work of writing my story.
All of which has come from INSIDE me, by the way.
Unknown wonders continue to unfold before me.
I know to my core that every moment after this one is a mystery, and therefore it is alive with infinite possibility.
What shatters me in those moments my heart is breaking is not the fact that my beloved is not here.
It’s the belief that his not being here means that I am worthless and nothing.
THAT is what hurts.
Not the love I have for him.
Not the truth that he's not here.
But the lies my wounds scream at me.
We cannot come to know these things without spending time with our own hearts.
Without knowing our own story, our own pain, and understanding where it is truly coming from.
We can also never know another the way we can know ourselves.
Our own truth is the only one we can ever know ... And it’s the only truth we can ever tell.
So, contrary to what so many of us believe, when we spend our time focused on others rather than focusing on ourselves, we are keeping ourselves from the only truth we can know.
We are keeping ourselves from God/the universe/mystery/our hearts, because that deep truth simply cannot be found anywhere but inside ourselves.
We also become a wounding presence, because in “putting others first,“ we teach others that they are supposed to ignore and dismiss and forsake their own deep truth and beauty, in the interest of valuing others more than themselves.
Trust me: Those others you’re endeavoring to value don’t feel valued, because while you think you’re “selflessly” valuing them more than yourself, what you’re truly doing is teaching the most powerful voice in their lives to dismiss their value from the inside out.
Please hear me on that.
The words you say about me are infinitely less powerful than those you model for me to say about myself.
You’re also making others responsible for your life, when you walk in the world endeavoring to care for them as the means by which you find your fulfillment.
When your fulfillment depends on the needs of others, it is lethally disempowering for everyone involved.
Who are you going to be when everyone's needs are met?
What looks like compassion is actually using others in order to feel like you’re enough.
As Harris also says in his talk, you are already enough.
That is a truth that settles deeply into me.
So grateful for all the souls around me who honor and speak their own stories and hearts, helping to illuminate the deep truths inside my own.
Those souls who first and foremost know their own hearts, are healing so many wounds inflicted by those who spend their time focused on others, and telling us what our story “should” be.
As with every truth that’s ever been written in human history, these words are simply my truth ... In this moment, on this day, and through the lens and filter of my unique experience.
You get to read them, feel what resonates and carry that with you if you like, and simply leave the rest behind.
When we know our own hearts, it becomes easy to distinguish the truth from the story.
To recognize language as a means to convey truth ... Not necessarily to see the words themselves as the truth.
Knowing my own heart is also how I am able to so clearly see pain and fear in the words others dismiss as hate, because they haven’t spent sufficient time with their own pain to come to know what it looks like and what rises from it.
They haven't spent sufficient time with themselves to know that ANY expression of pain they see out in the world is a place they could EASILY find themselves ... So they continue to assume that they'd NEVER do such a thing, and therefore continue to see the world through the lens of "us and them."
How wrong they are.
When we know our own hearts, we shift from embracing and honoring words because they came from a certain place or person, to embracing and honoring truth because it resonates to our very core.
We know that everything coming from every human is a tapestry woven of truth and untruth, and we look for the deeper truth rather than the literal one.
So grateful to Harris for the inspiration!
Y'all go check out this stunning performance.