“Not Afraid of What is True.”

Z,

We cannot be afraid of what is true. Of course, the truth can be scary
or terrible or joyful or life affirming, but it has to be faced. It is the thing
that really is. There is no substitute for it and on this path, you know you are
dealing at worst with issues that must be addressed. Everything else, every
coping mechanism and failsafe and distraction, will bow to what is true at the
end.

The other side of this is we do not know, right now, what is absolutely true.
We do not even know what is moderately true, or sort of true or with a modicum
of truth. Our vantage point lies heavily in the shadow trees. It will take a
whole lifetime of search and troubles to unravel ourselves from the web of deceit
we have spun. Some of this spinning is for good reason: people face seemingly
impossible odds by pretending the challenge itself is not insurmountable. There
is something even useful there. We do not know the height and depth of all reality,
and science and religion are the best guesses of our head and then our heart. I
mean this in a general sense, not to disparage either approach. Sometimes we
pretend to cope but we cannot live in that illusion or like that illusion.

On our journey, we must start with this humility. We must remember we
are following the things we truly believe in. It is open to doubt because we
cannot be afraid to be wrong and to change. It is open to correction, we are
students of the universe and we will learn our lessons slowly relative to that
magnificence of existence. It is open to disaster, because hitting a rock is
preferable to falling over a cliff, perhaps. The truth is not the thing to
fear. Hiding and hoping and blowing up that space in your heart that speaks to
fantasy over what is really going on is the real bother. I keep going back to Yeats:
“we have fed fat on fantasies/the heart’s grown brutal from the fare.”