Be Silent ~ Be True ~ Just Be
Long forgotten,
Writes words
Better left
Unsaid.
Some truths are better left untold,
Or risk obscuring the true
That cannot be told.
True is an act of being
Not telling.
So I remind the vestigial self,
“Be silent.”
Be silent
Be true
Just be.
Beautiful, Staci. Beautiful. So true. Words seldom do truth justice. Also true after a time of deep opening, when a time for closing comes. For balance. For integration. For renewal.
Have you noticed how Self Flows, even when self is better off silent? 😉
Thank you, Antoinette & Peter.
I wonder how much of me you sense, Antoinette. [smile]
Though, for me, ‘truth‘ and ‘true‘ are not synonymous. Truth is what we create when we try to put what is true into words. More than a little of Lao Tse’s touch flows through this poem, and so, the truth that can be told is not the eternally true. I am most wary whenever someone uses the word truth, or claims to speak for it.
And, no, Peter. This poem is mine. There was a flow, as Antoinette perceives, but these words I wrenched free from the silence imposed upon it.
That’s beautiful, Staci — compelling and inspiring.
There’s a song that’s been in my head all day… a response of sorts to this poem …and a blog post percolating from that.
Another poem that came to you, nearly whole?
By ‘truth’ do I understand you to mean relative truth…..as we see and perceive it at any given time or stage of insight? And ‘true’ to be absolute truth…..usually beyond our perception, as a totality, capturing only glimpses?
Wish I could admit to sensing you, but alas, my eyes view life and others through lightly autistic tinted glasses….but therefore understand very well silence, withdrawal, vestiges of self, just being, as opposed to speaking. And understand the laws of Tao, of balance, of opposites taking turns to play in our experience. What is full, must empy. What is empty must refill…..
” but these words I wrenched free from the silence imposed upon it.” …..Oh I just LOVE the way you put that! I can feel it ….and feeling something leads to understanding it.
Thank you for yielding to the Flow….it brings light….each time anew.
True… truth… it’s all relative to perspective. One man’s truth is another’s lie. And it is only the human mind that looks for and attempts to discern that which is ‘true’. Therefore all things are tainted by the bias of the mind… no matter how great the mind.
What is true… rather the question I think is what is pure? These things are given up by the earth itself. The kaleidoscope of light that bursts across the sky or the heavy smell of the earth underfoot or the heartwrenching silence of a winter blizzard. Anything that is true is found in these things. Never in the mind of a fallible creature like man.
Silence. Funny thing about silence. Only when we find ourselves surrounded by it, immersed in it, can we hear. There are times when the silence allows us to hear ourselves, our own voice (which is so often foreign to us). And then when the silence descends even over our inner voice, it allows us to hear… the earth and all her seductive and wise whisperings… all things true and pure.
Sonny, my saviour… thank you for posting that comment. Your thoughts resemble my own, so my own mind could leave this all well enough alone for a bit.
This may be an anonymous forum for me, and yet revealing myself proves difficult. Even typing this… is difficult. There seems no rational reason for the resistance, and yet I resist. Much more than questions of truth and true and The Way bubbles up. I write it and scratch it out. So for the moment, I remain with the question of true and truth…
Antoinette, to answer your question: mine is primarily a semantic argument, and relative primarily to the way we use words. “The truth is written in stone.” Well, very few truths have ever stood that test for me.
Sonny differentiates these words, true and truth, very well, and poetically. Far more poetically than I. Though, we diverge slightly one one thing, but I wonder if Sonny won’t agree, afterall, on this point?
True — pure, perfect — these all do exist within the human mind. That vibrant indigo of the neon light, or the sharp, rounded arc cut through the ice by a figure skater’s blade, or the waft of rosemary in the air. There is a true beauty to all of these … and the purity, the perfection, the ‘truth’ in them is one of perception. When I think of a perfect line drawn on a piece of paper, I imagine a very lazy double curve.
But how do I describe that? How do I put that lazy curve into words? I cannot. There may be a mathematical formula for a specific line that has been drawn, but would that describe all beautiful lines? No, it would not.
Without a deft, practiced hand, I cannot even recreate that kind of purity. But describe it? Or teach someone else how to create it in a textbook?
How do I describe the indigo I have in my mind, the perfect, true image of that vivid colour? I can only call into your mind, invoke in you, a common experience of the perfect. But what if my perfect indigo is, in your mind, a little more toward the violet? What if the neon sign I have in my mind is far less saturated than the one you conjure into yours?
For me, the realm of ideas, of concepts, of words and meanings, is not so different from a true line drawn on a piece of paper. For all the important ideas we might have, words remain an imperfect form of communication.
When someone picks up a piece of paper, and points to a collection of words written upon it, or posts a link to a page of such words on the internet, and says, “This is the truth!” … well, I become very wary. I don’t believe for a second that the words even fully capture the image of true the author conceived for herself. How can I expect those words to convey that perfect true to me?
You can’t possibly describe to me what your truth is, let alone what the Truth might be.
I prefer Lao Tse’s method. He doesn’t try to tell me what the Dao is, what the truth is, he only observes the way in which all the world operates truly, what is in accordance with the Dao, and what is not.
[smile] Sonny, my mind doesn’t often visit that place of silence you find. Always turning reality over, looking under the stones of possibility, seeking all things true and pure.