Growing Truth from Seed
cracking the shell of untruth and finding freedom
Only the right name gives beings and things their reality.
A wrong name makes everything unreal.
That's what lies do.
〰 Michael Ende 〰
Truth & Facts
It was not the truth they wanted but an illusion they could live with
〰 Anaïs Nin 〰
Upon entering the faculty of physics at the University of Munich in 1874, Max Planck sought advice from his teacher, the highly respected physicist and mathematician Philipp von Jolly.
“In this field, almost everything is already discovered,” von Jolly told him “all that remains is to fill a few unimportant holes.”
Science had been officially declared as ‘the study of the phenomena of the material universe and its laws’ by mid 19 c. Physics, originally the science of natural things, had been redefined to ‘science treating of properties of matter and energy’ in 1715.
Physics was the primary branch of science, which was thought to be able to prove truth through factual evidence.
“He portrayed to me physics as a highly developed, almost fully matured science,” Max Planck remembers from his conversation with von Jolly.
“Possibly in one or another nook there would perhaps be a dust particle or a small bubble to be examined and classified, but the system as a whole stood there fairly secured, and theoretical physics approached visibly that degree of perfection which, for example, geometry has had already for centuries.”
Reassuring his teacher that he “didn't wish to discover new things, only to understand the known fundamentals of the field,” Planck took up his studies in theoretical physics. He ended up taking the entire field of physical science to a whole new level!
Max Planck made major contributions to the origination of quantum physics, and the ground-breaking discovery that everything in our physical universe is energy, and matter ultimately doesn’t exist. In 1918 he won the Nobel Prize in Physics.
The Meaning of Truth
Our knowledge of the truth of a conclusion depends upon
a prior knowledge of the truth of its premisses.
We can only think about what we already know.
〰 John MacMurray 〰
The word truth comes from the old English triewð, a close relative of the West Saxon treowð, which carried a wide range of meanings. Perhaps they didn’t have so many words in those days (before the 12th century)?
Who knows. Anyway the same word triewð / treowð could be used in the sense of:
Truth = veracity, trustworthiness, honesty, truthfulness, authenticity, genuineness; faithfulness, fidelity, loyalty; pledge, promise, covenant
Troth = an old form of truth related to faithfulness in marriage, still used in the verb betroth; covenant, agreement, contract
Trust = reliance on veracity, integrity, honesty, loyalty, integrity, fidelity, faithfulness, and promises
Truce = assurance of faith, fidelity; treaty, covenant; a pledge, promise; mutually agreed intermission of hostilities
Tree = a woody perennial plantSeeds and Shells of Truth
Seeds and Shells of Truth
Be authentic with yourself.
But if you must cheat,
cheat yourself out of the lies the world created.
Robert M. Drake
The opposite of truth is untruth. There are two forms of untruth:
error ~ the unintended mistake, failure or deviation from truth
lie ~ intentional cheating, deceit, fraud, falsehood, trickery
Unsurprisingly, any untruth must contain a kernel of truth to qualify as an untruth. At the very least, a lie or error must be related to the truth in such a way that it can give the appearance or impression of being true.
The English word lie [from Old Slavic lŭgati = to cloak, enshroud, hide] is now known in the sense of deceive, betray. In its older meaning, the verb lŭgati was used to convey the sense to cover up, conceal, envelop, mask.
This is fascinating when we examine the concept of the so-called kernel of truth within a deception. If the truth is the seed, then the untruth (lie, deceit, falsehood, etc.) must be the capsule, or shell, of the same truth.
We had the opportunity to experience this firsthand recently, while involved in a transaction which included a professional agency. Communications between us (the sellers) and the other party (the buyers) didn’t go as smoothly as planned, despite the fact that both parties were in principle in agreement. Unfortunately the agency refused to let us communicate with each other directly, citing all sorts of made up excuses.
Instead of facilitating communication, these ‘agents’ were playing some game akin to Chinese Whispers, and passed on information, which turned out to be untruths. Both parties could feel that ‘something was off’, but in the early stages we trusted the agents and went along with their ‘version of the truth’.
What is interesting in this experience is that we were able to feel the truth without being able to articulate it, or to uncover and correct the untruth. The seed of the truth was there all along, but it was hidden in a capsule of lies, shrouded in artificial mystery.
Unshelling Untruth
“... the problem with being honest, he said,
is that you're slow to realize that other people can lie.”
〰 Rachel Cusk 〰
A famous Bible verse promises that the truth will set you free.
The American journalist and leading second-wave feminist Gloria Steinem modified this promise saying that “the truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.”
I wanted to find out what really happens in the moment when the veil gets pulled off an untruth to reveal the truth. The answer is, it depends…
When we finally uncovered the game the agents were playing with us and our buyers, discovering the truth felt like a bubble was bursting, and we were in the centre of it. After a couple of tedious months, being drawn into a web of lies, which caused significant emotional distress, the truth triggered such a release that Josh and I spontaneously burst into tears.
What we felt had been ‘the truth’ all along. We were so relieved! Our truth and our buyers’ truth turned out to be a perfect match. Sure, there was some anger and pissed offness about having been deceived by the agents, but in a crack of time, the joy of breaking the shell of untruth was all that mattered.
Truth felt mainly like freedom. Like breaking out of the intensely uncomfortable and restrictive shell of untruth.
When you stick to your own truth,
the truth will eventually reveal itself,
setting itself free.
Discovering the truth told us that when you stick to your own truth, when you don’t buy into someone else’s untruth, which is most likely driven by fear, the truth will eventually reveal itself, setting itself free.
When you follow your truth, there will be forces trying to pull you off track. The unveiling of truth can be stressful and intense, as we have experienced. Our truth was challenged by blatant lies and coercive demands. Fear of ‘losing an opportunity’ (the manmade ‘kairos’ mentioned in the previous wordcast) was thrown into the mix.
We didn’t buy into any of those. Instead, we simply stuck to our motto let the right thing do itself ~ and it did.
Let the right thing do itself.
〰 Frederick Matthias Alexander 〰
Great post, born of current experience. The biggest lies are closest to the truth. They can sound so convincing. And perhaps when uncovered they offer an opportunity to comprehend the truth at a much deeper level. Intuition and Instinct tell a more truthful story than the culturally-driven expectation of giving people the benefit of the doubt.
The quote by Rachel Cusk “... the problem with being honest, he said, is that you're slow to realize that other people can lie” is well noted. Biblical advice and analysis that we track through the world 'as sheep among wolves' seems a bit condescending to sheep, and judgemental about wolves but the point is taken. Perhaps 'being wise as serpents and gentle as doves' is more helpful. 'Trust God and tether your camel" is also apt. But at some point one has to let go and watch 'the right thing do itself'. I'm intrigued as to what will be the final climax, and resulting dénouement.
Amen. “Truth felt mainly like freedom. Like breaking out of the intensely uncomfortable and restrictive shell of untruth.” As you read in my memoir, the unraveling of family secrets not only set the truth free, but also freed my own life story and identity from an undifferentiated shroud into a much more grounded sense of self and purpose.