Truths That Blow Your Mind
I’ve been making a list of the statements I have heard over the years that rang true and woke me up to reality. These are truths that seem obvious upon hearing, but also feel familiar because they are easily verifiable by direct investigation or experience. It leaves you wondering, “how could I have forgotten this?” or amazed that you’ve never thought of it in that way before. The truths that blow your mind.
One favorite example from many years ago is when I was at Kripalu and shared with someone that my emotional life was a mystery to me. In those days I had difficulty knowing how I felt and yet I seemed to be moody a lot of the time. This yogi pointed out that emotions are physical sensations, and if I wanted to know how I was feeling to simply notice my body. “That’s why we call them feelings,” they explained.
Instant demystification. This was such a true, verifiable fact that I felt my whole body relax and expand. With this dawning realization, I understood that feelings are a kind of embodied energy. I began to experiment with this in daily life, as a way to minimize mental confusion and the urge to go numb around emotions. It provided a reliable way to reconnect to the emotional life I had been tamping down and trying to control since childhood, by directing me to my body, which I’d also been (unsuccessfully) trying to ignore. Years later, when I began giving Alexander lessons, I offered this teaching as “E-motion is energy in motion.”
That one true statement, given in response to my own vulnerable sharing, stays with me to this day and has never proven false. Once I heard it, I could not go back to acting like I was somehow victimized by my emotions, or a stranger to them.
Truths are like that. I’m using the plural because I’m not claiming one absolute Truth with a capital T, but rather those amazing moments when the facts wake you up, when a perspective suddenly shifts into clarity. Sometimes you can get this from something you read, but usually it’s directly from the mouth of another human, whether one-to-one or through a recorded or live address or podcast.
It's not quite the same as “things that make you say hmmm” or a koan that sparks deep contemplation. These might also be vital encounters with reality and can serve to awaken. The mind-blowing truths, however, have a “I coulda had a V8” aspect to them, like the time my dharma teacher casually said, almost as a throwaway, Everything happens in the mind. Is there anything you can know that does not appear in the mind?
You don’t have to think about that, you immediately see the truth of it, yes?
Sometimes remembering true facts can jolt you back from wandering in the Land of Assumptions. Such as recalling that the sun neither rises nor sets. And there is no such thing as moonlight (that’s reflected sunlight). It’s fine that we refer to things in these ways, but now and then it’s skillful to know that they are just leftovers from an outdated perspective based on incomplete information.
Since much of what we believe or think we know falls under that description, encountering Truths That Blow Your Mind tend to stand out. I am lucky to have a fairly long list of such encounters (but then I’ve been here quite a while now).
What is a true statement you once heard that changed you or your perspective in some way?
[Please share in the comments below.]