Truth is the unveiling of the deep nature of reality – of life, of beings and of things – in the consciousness. It is an experience of openness without limits that one can call wisdom: not an external, intellectual knowledge, but the savouring of the fullness of life in all its manifestations.

The Greeks called it “aletheia” – non-forgetting, unveiling, unpacking – and the Indians call it “satya”, which comes from “sat”, be, what it is, the real. The truth is not forgetting the real, everything that is manifested here and now, at every moment, exchanging it for worries of the past and with the future and for words, concepts and images that only translate our perceptions, interpretations and limited judgments. The Indo-European etymology of the real evokes wealth, abundance. The nature of things is abundant, full of all possibilities: truth and wisdom is the consciousness and experience of this in the present, for it is only in it that things exist and life offers itself.

Truth can never be reduced to a definition, doctrine or symbol. It invites us to transcend concepts, images and words in a contemplative and silent experience that pacifies and frees us from the mental and emotional turmoil that obscures our consciousness. Truth manifests the bottomless background of everything, opens the mind and heart and manifests itself in the authenticity of silence, thought, word and action. Truth makes us authentic, confident and generous, showing our constant connection to something larger than our little selves, which covers everything that exists. That is why some traditions identify it with God or Life, Infinity, Nature, Being, Void or Way, among other names to suggest what one cannot say, but only to experience in the fullest moments of our lives, those that take us from wonder, gratitude and love.

The truth reveals itself in the sense that, how much difficult circumstances may be, there is something profoundly sound, perfect, and good in all that exists. A presence that crosses all beings and things. At every moment. Right now. Trying it sets us free.

Author: Paulo Borges. Copyrights iLIDH 2015-