Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Number Ten

The sound of truth, like some harmony only the wise can hear, rings out in the spiritual salons and in the clerics' quarters; it is heard from the high pulpits and after eating peyote.

But the sound of truth -- the words and rhythms -- are just seduction.  The emotion of certainty is just an emotion -- no more true or false than any other.  The mind says "yes" because the mind seeks confirmation and agreement with what has already been learned.  The mind seeks the exquisit relief of order and linearity.  Of the great one who can finally explain our pain, our waiting in this dark.  The mind is always ready to say "yes."  Because yes is wired into us, into our hunger to make sense of this place.

The sound of truth deceives us because it is just a sign, a feeling that we are looking in the direction of the light.  The light holds a million versions of the truth -- no one of them complete or whole.  Each is the partial wisdom of one moment, looking across one vista.  Each is a moment of great vision and a lie.  Because certainty seduces; and in that certainty every other vantage place is lost.

The sound of truth is always partial, an invitation to a million other places to stand and watch, and find the words for what is seen.

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