No Love, No Truth. No Truth, No Love
There are only two things that ultimately matter in life: Love and Truth. Where there is no Truth, love is lost. Where there is no Love, Truth does not exist. It appears to be a rare thing in our day to find either real Love or real Truth. Why is this?
On the subject of Love I offer this: Love, real Love, is expressed solely in deeds of selflessness. Deeds of selflessness receive back no reward, and do not seek such. This is a very slippery incline, for one may “think” they do not expect anything in return for deeds of self sacrifice, but if one were honest to even think such a thought is an indication – a very strong indication – that one is acting in actual selfishness.
On the subject of Truth which, I admit, is my greater focus in this post, I cannot offer anything more compelling and revealing about the “human condition” than the words of one of whom I have great respect. Before I get to that, I’d like to “rabbit-trail” your thoughts for just a moment.
What did Pilate ask Jesus as He stood before the ruler? He asked Jesus, “What is Truth?” Now, the interpretation of this scene, these words, are centuries old and deep and, quite frankly, off the mark. And, no, I do not profess to have the “correct” interpretation. But had the Christ said earlier about Himself? He said, “I AM the Way, the TRUTH, and the Life.” Again, there are countless ways people over the millennia have understood this statement. To make things simple – hopefully – I offer the following from my own heart and path:
If you set the Jesus the Christ up in front of your entire life – your outer life, but more importantly your inner life, where no one else can go – if you set Him in front of you as a mirror, how – EXACTLY – would you appear? You see, it is easy to hide the Truth of who, and what, we are within the shadows, but we forget that it is Light that creates the shadows. You cannot escape the Truth of who you are. I like to use the expression: Lipstick on a pig is still a pig.
So, this is where the subject of Truth really begins and ends – within each one of us. However, as a humanity of individuals, the “untruths” we tell ourselves about ourselves radiate out into the whole of mankind, creating a sort of vortex whereby the Truth – the all-encompassing Truth of life and its circumstances at any given moment – gets sucked away into the void. The sad thing is? We fail to even recognize it because we fail to be honest with ourselves about ourselves.
My intention has been to stress the importance of the principle of truth in the world, to stress the karma which has fulfilled itself in mankind has often come about because of attention paid to facts, the attention paid to historical and other connections of life in our materialistic age, is not permeated with the truth. When the truth is not at work, when that extraordinary opposite of truth, namely, the lack of inclination to seek the truth, is at work, when there is little yearning for truth – all this is connected with the karma of our time.
When we see what is being said during these years in which mankind is living, through what is today called war, we cannot object that such things are said only by the newspapers. What matters is the effect. These things have powerful effects. When we pay attention to these things that are said and how these things are said, we find that it is just in this ‘how’ that something works that truly does not run concurrently with the truth. Do not believe that thoughts and statements are not objective forces in their own right! They are objective, actual forces! It is inevitable that they are followed by consequences, even if these are not translated into external deeds. What people think is far more important for the future than what they do. Thoughts become deeds in the course of time. We live today on the thoughts of past times; these are fulfilled in the deeds committed today. And our thoughts which flood through the world today will flow into the deeds of the future.
Rudolf Steiner, 30 December 1916
When Truth speaks, it speaks out of the bounds of time. Those words apply as much today as they did over 100 years ago during the second year of the First World War. No matter how far we think we can outrun the Truth, no matter how much lipstick we apply to the pig, the Truth is always with us, inside us. We cannot escape Truth. Isn’t it time, people, isn’t it time we stop running, hold up the mirror and – at a minimum – “begin” to face the Truth about ourselves? Isn’t it time to roust the courage within to effect real change – first within ourselves, then within the world at large?
We can get there if we try earnestly to understand ourselves instead of piling on more and more materialistic distractions and get to the Truth of the matter. Then maybe, just maybe, we can begin to Love one another – as the Christ Loves us.
Where there is no Love, there cannot be Truth. Where there is no Truth, Love is lost.