What is Truth?
An Inquiry
Lately, I’ve been hearing the word truth so often.
It’s been spoken in spiritual circles, in inquiry groups, and in everyday conversations. Sometimes it is used like a badge of honour, and other times like a weapon.
After hearing this word being used, and maybe misused, so often and so easily, I’ve started to wonder: What do we really mean when we say truth?
Maybe it’s time to pause and look into it, I thought.
It’s not my ambition to define or resolve what truth is. Many philosophers and sages have devoted lifetimes to that question already. I am for sure not going to solve this universal question in a couple of pages!
My intention is to explore the experience of truth within myself.
So I decided to sit with the koan, “What is truth?” and see what would arise.
Starting From Direct Experience
During the first module of this course, I began to observe my reactions more closely during inquiry sessions.
When someone spoke about their present experience, I noticed how my system responded.
In the past, I used to recognize truth by how it felt in my body. If someone spoke from a deep place, I could feel energy moving, vibrating inside me. I would become fully present, alive, listening not just with my ears, but with my whole body.
I trusted that as my compass for truth.
But this time, something shifted.
I realized that what I had called “truth” might have been tied not only to depth, but also to comfort, agreement, and even judgment.
For example, if I felt bored or sleepy, I immediately assumed the speaker was disconnected.
“This is all mind,” I would think. “He’s not in his heart.”
I then noticed that it was my own mind judging, categorizing, and rejecting.
And so I asked: Is truth dependent on my perception, my resonance, my openness? Or is it maybe something that exists independently, whether I recognize it or not?
Truth and Vulnerability
The question deepened with the inquiries.
Was I sensing truth, or simply my preferences?
I eventually saw how closely my idea of truth was tied to vulnerability: if I spoke from a raw, tender place, I would feel warmth in my chest. That felt like truth.
Likewise, when someone else opened themselves vulnerably, I felt resonance, a strong vibration in my body.
But was that resonance really truth? And if there is no resonance, does that mean the speaker isn’t being truthful?
What happens when someone shares, and I don’t feel anything? Does that invalidate their experience? Or does it rather reveal something about me, as the listener?
I noticed that when there was no resonance—or rather, when the experience of the speaker did not resonate with mine—I was also not really interested in listening.
Perhaps that reveals that I was not interested in the truth of the speaker, but in the resonance only; i.e., I was primarily interested in myself..
Discriminating by Truth
I noticed something else.
Many of us, including myself, kept saying, “I’m interested in truth.”
At first, it felt sincere. But after hearing it repeated so often, I began to question it.
It began to sound more like aspiration rather than realization.
I started to suspect that what we were really looking for wasn’t truth, but truthful people, i.e. people we resonated with, trusted, felt safe around.
It felt like a subtle kind of discrimination.
Not everyone who doesn’t feel “true” to me is being false.
Maybe they’re just not mirroring my values, pace, or language.
So why label them as “not truthful”?
Maybe what we call “truthful” is just what feels familiar..
And if that’s the case, how fair is it to put the burden of “truth” entirely on the speaker?
A Challenging Encounter
One particular experience brought these reflections into sharper focus.
After a disagreement with another participant at the end of the module, we both felt disconnected for a few days.
Although we continued to communicate, trying in our own ways to repair the rupture, neither of us was open. We were both guarded, defensive, hesitant to engage more deeply and to make ourselves vulnerable. The space between us no longer felt safe.
The retreat was over, but the communication continued from a distance.
At one point, the other person sent me a voice message, shouting that she wanted truth and accusing me of not offering it.
It made me reflect.
What truth was she asking for? Was it something specific she wanted me to say? A confession, an admission, a performance of transparency? Or was she trying to express a deeper longing to feel connected?
In that moment, the only truth I could access was this:
“I want to connect, but I don’t know how.”
Perhaps not a grand truth. My answer was certainly not enough for the other person. Or rather, my “truth” did not seem truthful enough to her. She wanted to hear another truth.
I saw myself asking the same questions to others in the past, demanding a truth that seemed hidden. A truth that I apparently knew about and wanted the other person to admit!
For what purpose?
For my own desire to be right, to feel accomplished, to be recognised as the one who knows it all, especially what is hidden to others about themselves.
This behaviour used to give me a rewarding feeling. However the rewards never lasted long, and eventually ended up in emptiness, with the realization that maybe I had received the “hidden truth,” but at the same time, I had lost the connection with the other person.
Was my behaviour a real interest in truth, or in myself only?
Can a listener decide what is true and what is not? Is truth something that can be demanded? Or does it arise in certain conditions? Is it legitimate to decide what truth is for someone else, or in a dialogue?
Truth as Co-Creation
During a few moments of clarity, I realised that when I am not looking for truth, everything seems true. Everything seems interesting. My body is receptive all the time, not only sometimes.
Maybe what is labelled as not true actually reveals my incapacity to see truth in the present moment.
The philosopher Heraclitus once said, “Conflict is the father of all things.”
Maybe truth, too, arises from this kind of creative friction, between what is spoken and what is “heard.”
Maybe truth is not a product we deliver or receive, but a process we engage in together, especially when we accept that we don’t really know what truth is.
In this light, truth seems related to not-knowing, hence to creativity.
It appears to be something co-created in the moment with another being.
Is There Anything That Is Not True?
Still, there are moments when I feel it.
When I hear someone speak, and I sense they’re not saying everything. Maybe they’re hiding, protecting something. Maybe they’re lying.
If I see myself in that role, I often find fear, confusion, or simply not being ready to tell the “truth.” Many times, a deeper truth is not available to me.
Often, a way to move on is to communicate the fear or the obstacle that I am perceiving. But sometimes, even that is not accessible.
Can I accept that? Can I sit with the discomfort of knowing there’s more, but that it’s not yet ready to be revealed?
I’ve felt others demanding truth from me when I wasn’t ready to give it, and vice versa.
Do I really know what my or their deeper truth is? Or am I just projecting my discomfort and frustration?
I don’t know.
For sure, I don’t know what truth is.
But I keep inquiring, and that, for now, feels true.
