Category Archives: Three Truths and One Wish

Three Truths and One Wish

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1. Truth: Fear doesn’t cause suffering, my resistance of it does. When I resist fear, I panic and run away, or stay and struggle with it, or grab something to help me numb out, deny and avoid it. When I can relax with it, stay with the feeling, experience all the ways it manifests in my body–the tension in my chest, the pain in my stomach, the tightness of all my muscles, and the shallowness of my breath–and notice all the ways it lies and distorts the truth, I can feel it arise, be aware of it, but also notice as it naturally dissolves.

2. Truth: Impermanence doesn’t cause suffering, my rejection of it does. When I reject it, it keeps coming anyway, continues to happen without my permission–things change and are lost, uncertainty continues, beings die. My rejection causes me to suffer, telling me lies about how I have control (or none) and choices (or none) and responsibility. When I accept impermanence, I show up for whatever happens, vulnerable and raw and brokenhearted, but also brave, with a naturally occurring wisdom and confidence. In this tender place, I can be gentle with myself. I can mourn the losses, experience the grief, but without losing sight of how amazing life is, how much courage and beauty there is amidst the brutality.

3. Truth: Love doesn’t cause suffering, my attachment to a specific idea of it, my denial of its true nature does. Love can’t be faked, forced, controlled, or contained. Love requires great courage because it invites loss and grief–things decay, change, and even die, and you will one day be separated from everything you love. Love requires both bravery and vulnerability because to experience it, you must open your heart.

One wish: That we let go of our resistance, stop rejecting our experience–what we feel and how things really are and even who we are–that we can surrender to our life exactly as it is, exactly as we are. That we can open ourselves to love, in all the ways it shows up for us, as well as in all the ways it leaves us.

Don’t move the way fear makes you move.
Move the way love makes you move.
Move the way joy makes you move.
~Osho

Three Truths and One Wish

7 Replies

1. Truth: “Fear is the cage, and love is the key.” I can’t find the origin of this quote to be able to credit it to anyone, but maybe that’s appropriate–it’s so universally true that every wise and kind being (i.e. all of us, eventually), every being that’s ever lived long enough to know pain and loss, to be confused and generate our own suffering has known this to be true. Fear is like metal bars, chains, a dark room with thick walls and a locked door, the razor teeth of a crazed wild animal, something sharp and strong that traps you in its grip, no matter how hard you struggle against it. And love? Love is the softening, unlocking, relaxing, gentle release, tender wash of gratitude and ease, letting go–freedom.

2. Truth: Suffering turns me to practice, to the dharma (i.e. truth). If my life were easy, no problem, infinite, there would be no reason to practice. If I had everything I wanted, felt no pain, didn’t suffer or need anything, I would be content as is, there would be no motivation to deepen my spiritual life. Practice doesn’t make the bad stuff go away or stop it from coming, but it enables me to cope, to stay, to show up as I am and stick with reality as it is.

3. Truth: Hope and fear are equally problematic, both cause me to suffer in the way that they turn my mind from this moment. Confidence and courage, however, are about showing up, here and now, and sticking around, no matter what happens. Being who I am–shaky, raw, afraid, flawed, messy, and completely brilliant. Being where I am, with what is, not running away or rejecting or numbing out, staying with my experience in the present moment, standing where I am, standing in the truth, where life is.

One wish: That we wake up to our lives exactly as they are, see truth and reality as it is and stay with it, just as we are right now. That we have the confidence, the courage, and the compassion to continue showing up and sticking around, and that through our presence, we can be a comfort to others as they attempt the same.