The River of Truth: Georgi Y. Johnson

Where does Truth conflict in your life? Is it caring to open the sense of truth? Can freedom and truth co-exist? Is there a dimension where love and truth are one?
Georgi explores the Nondual Quality of Truth. The sense of truth is at the core of Nondual Awakening through the practise of self-inquiry across traditions. It's a quality that often helps release other qualities from their conditions in the unleashing of unconditional true nature.
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"Experience itself is like a river. The depth of feeling is like a river.  Is the river helpless? Is it controlling where it's flowing? Is it strategizing not to hit a rock? A river is flowing and it's changing all the time. It's moving, it's a river of loss, impermanence. It's not the same in any moment. And if we try and grab hold of it from another dimension, grasp it, our hand just goes through it, doesn't it? 
The river is still flowing. The river starts to evaporate. We can't stand the humidity in the air, so we try and make it not evaporate. We have aversion to the river. It's tough. We're made of the river. So we end up with a kind of self-hatred.
These areas of experience where experience starts to kind of turn in on itself, like I hate myself, I hate the hatred in myself, I'm so repulsed at myself because I can't stand the feeling of repulsion. I'm so disgusted at myself because I can't stand the feeling of disgust. I'm so very, very uncomfortable under my own skin because I can't stand the feeling of discomfort in this world. "

Transcript

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The real movement of truth is one of inquiry. What could this mean? How is this? It's almost like the mind is like going through a jungle and it's saying not this, not this, this, this, maybe this, picking things up, putting them down. It's an inquiry. It's a journey. An investigation. And there's something very alive, which is in a way truth in action, isn't it? When we start to inquire, investigate, the sense of truth is coming to life. At the same time, what came forward with this introduction of the possibility of helplessness being a kind of state of grace, equality. There was a lot of fear responses. Meaning areas where we close down the inquiry because we need something to be true as it is. So the truth is that helplessness is bad, undesirable. And often it's a family truth, ancestral truth, collective truth. Any truth which is on the outside coming towards you like a demand or an obligation is suspicious. And suspicion itself is quite a beautiful movement of truth. To say this is suspicious. This cannot be what it seems. I smell something about this. Also in that cynicism, another unwelcome emotion, that we're not supposed to be cynical, to be suspicious, to be cynical, to be untrusting. All of this is like not a happy fellow, it's not a nice person who is suspicious or cynical or untrusting. But these are all motors of truth, the sense of truth also. To be cynical is to say I don't just believe things randomly, I don't just take things on board like that, I want to investigate. Of course there's a toxic kind of cynicism which says, er, it's not, that's a sadistic kind of cynicism, but cynicism if it's free, if we go all the way, is a netty-netty movement, not this, not this, not this. I don't have to believe anything. It's like taking a sword and cutting out the bullshit to see what's left. If you go all the way with that aspect of the mind, cynicism is questioning what everybody else is giving you as a truth. The norms, the statements about reality. And often it's punished, and then it becomes sadistic or it becomes aggressive or it just becomes a cancellation. But in its purity it's a movement of investigation. All of these areas are parts of the shadow of truth in a way, because it's been demonized. And it blocks us often from our own authority. You know, you go to school and they tell you one plus one equals two. And everybody knows it and this is a fact. And then it's that one kid and says, no, it equals three. And so the kid is completely wrong. It's just obstinate, stubborn. Get it in your head. One plus one equals two. Idiot. But the kid was sitting there contemplating one plus one equals two. And she's seeing with matchsticks that there's one and there's another one and there's the two together, and that's three. You follow? There is a way of thinking from a different part of the mind where one plus one equals three. There is me, there is Bart, there is the two of us together. Three. There is you, there is your partner, there is the two of you, there is the togetherness, which nobody can control, it's a whole living being. Three. There's three. One plus one equals three. So this one plus one equals two is not at all experiential. Not when you actually bring it down to how life moves. You put one and one together, a third one is born. But that child has been like a, you know, stubborn bad girl, idiot, making trouble, not going to succeed. All of the fail, loser, you know, all of this is dumped there energetically in the name of truth. Crazy. She's crazy. He's crazy. And that's a very, very simple example of how another part of mind is being frustrated or cancelled out. There's an energy of cancellation of a part of the way of thinking which is more integrated with experience, inquiry. One plus one is not always true. And when we receive that energy of cancellation, rejection, negation, because we say one plus one is three, we all have our own examples. This means that when we begin to question, because deep down something's frustrated, deep down inside of ourselves, we've understood something for ourselves. Something's frustrated and it came, and now there's this energy of cancellation and negation, so this produced the cynicism with the slightly nasty energy to it. Because it's a response. You come back with the same energy that was put towards you. One plus one is two. The teacher's an idiot. The connection is lost. The child splits and part of him or her begins to learn in isolation, in their own private school of life. And then there is the school of the collective, the social school. Different languages. Or sometimes the child forgets that part of her sense of truth. Because she so much wants to be a good girl. Or boy. You see how very, very difficult it is, this area, because it's like undermining the authority of the experience of the child all the way into the way of perceiving reality. If it's done with a lot of force, then the sense of pushed aside to a dependence on what the authority says. Now learning isn't happening out of direct experience, learning is happening from another part of the mind. Like A, B, C, D, A, B, C, D, a little bit pigeon-fashioned, just repeating. Dissociated a bit from direct experience. So something of the genius of the child gets lost, often. Not lost, but forgotten. It's always there, but forgotten. When we work with truth, it takes us very deeply, deeply, deeply into the psyche, into the places where we're wounded, but also into the places where we can really come to life in our own authority and in our own direct experience. It can create space for what we're actually feeling. Directly sense what you sense without it needing to be legitimized, without it needing to be checked, that it stands in its own right as the truthfulness of an experience. It's beautiful to become aware of it. The experience of it is, of course, very truthful. The sense of truth has this way of burrowing down to the essence. In any direction of inquiry, it has a way of tunneling. When we speak our own direct experience, it can feel very destructive. We can come into conflict with the schoolteacher, or our environment, or our family. To feel things differently from another family member, to have your own experience can feel very destructive. To be courageous enough to take on your own name is a destructive element, and people can respond like, you know, Troublemaker, or Silly Little Girl. It's rocking the boat. But at the same time, what's at stake here is the authenticity of your own experience, your own authority, your own responsibility for your own life. Aliveness for your own aliveness. It's a big deal. And what we can get a glimpse of is where we lost connection, a feeling connection with being alive, where we've lost connection with our essence. And it's unique for all of us, and it's unique for every little moment of inquiry. We find similar, like, gold nuggets being thrown up by the river, where we were confused. And it's very, very beautiful, this quality of truth, because all of this is a very truthful information. It's all enriching, how we are evolving, how things work, how the psyche works, how we work, what makes us think. There's an enormous freedom in it, restoring what's really valuable to us. It's very, very rewarding, but there is these little leaps that we have to make behind resistances, like the resistance to helplessness. Or sometimes what can come forward is the golden truth, and this is the absolute truth. A lot of lesser desires fall away when we plug into the truth which is connected to the passion and the power source of our own essence. It's got incredible vitality, but it's another kind of vitality it gives. It's not the vitality of stress or fight or flight or survival which at a certain stage burns out. It gives a kind of spiritual vitality, a fearlessness, a sense of value which gives value to life, which means it moves beyond the fear of death, the It has that much yumminess to it. And then just the expression of it, or the allowance of it, there's an immediate fulfillment. It's not like you have to get somewhere later. And a lot of lesser desires, desires where we get confused, wantings, cravings, addictions, this hungry ghost realm is coming about in the shadow of not having that, in the split from who we really are, or our deeper sense of truth. So let's give an example. Many many clients that you meet will be in a position where they're sitting on the floor of their solar plexus. This is their floor, this is where they stand, because they should always be in the heart, so they stand here, with their feet here. And beneath that is the forbidden area. And quite quickly, because it's unsupported, they're standing in a conditional space of the solar plexus. The best they can get from the solar plexus is a sense of incredible, beautiful friendliness. There is an incredible friendliness in the solar plexus. But still, it's all very dependent in a way on the conditions of being a good person and not a bad person. And being loving and not hating, and having positive feelings and not negative feelings, and being caring and not uncaring. And gradually there's a kind of starvation of the heart begin to be like a little bit fake Because they're contrived because they're forced We must be loving like we have to be loving and if you have to be loving you're not left anymore with an easy Unconditional love or an atmosphere of love you have a an atmosphere of forcing pressure this gets confused with a obligation and guilt and loneliness. Because if you have to force love, then where is your love? If you have to make love up, you have to create love, then what does it say about your essence? Where is the connection? And so when people are caught in the heart, in this trap, not able to deepen the heart, not really able to be cynical, because that's bad, to use the mind correctly as an inquiry, and just having to be loving, but getting more and more depressed and all, then this sense of truth can be amazingly liberating. And the sense of truth is a, moves us beyond this thing of have to be loving, have to be good, have to be kind. What's true is true. It moves us to a place of actually sensing again what is here. In a kind of and, and, and situation. Yes, there's love here, but there's also a sense of shame, there's also a sense of heaviness. It's an incredible sadness. It lets them deepen the field of experience into a whole landscape, whereas before there was just one color allowed. And when there is a connection and a permission to open up the sense of truth as a deeper, often ignored, aspect of their basic integrity, their basic existence, their basic reality, then the love becomes more truthful. It becomes more authentic, it becomes more nuanced, it's able to perceive it, it's able to perceive suffering, it's able to move to places of darkness. Because if love has to stay loving, how can it meet hatred, for example? How can it move into a place where there's an argument? How can it do its role, which is its whole drive, which is healing, you know, reuniting. It's a big deal, you know, you meet young people who are looking for a partner and the moment they find somebody that there's an attraction to, they already go to war, because the love is already so controlled and first they want to know that this one loves them before they will open up their heart to him. So it's like there can be no love here until there's love here. And it becomes like this solar plexus battlefield full of strategies, like PTSD of the heart, all about survival. We're talking about love. All of us have moments of absolutely being free in the heart for sure, otherwise we wouldn't be here. But we all have areas of the heart, all of us, where we go into a contraction or a blockage or a place where everything polarizes and it becomes, as a reflex of the body, the whole nerve system is bringing forward conditions. It's literally holding back or bargaining, bargaining with life, with the field, with the togetherness. If it's like this, then not this. First I want to know this, then this, like a transactional. And this whole movement is coming because we feel so very helpless, so very vulnerable in the heart. So, truth is not a thing. Like everything, nothing is a thing, everything is a feeling. It's an experience. And where there's an experience, there's a sense of it. There's a felt sense. So we have a sense of love. And when we have a sense of love, it's the love in us which is sensing the love. sense love or move towards it if we didn't have an incredible love inside of us, available from the back door. And when we, the sense of the love inside of us, we all have this incredible love inside of us, opens up the sense of love, for example. And sensory impressions to do with love begin to appear. Effects of love begin to appear. The same with the sense of peace, the same with the sense of freedom. The freedom of us inside of our essence awakens. The sense of freedom awakens. And often the sense of freedom awakens when we most feel limited and stuck. And it awakens and it begins to sense the freedom in the environment, and then sensory impressions of freedom come forth. It's all coming from this place of helplessness, actually this place of mystery. And part of what comes forward is where it has been obstructed, where there has been a wounding, what's been in the pathway of the river flowing of feeling. In order for us to feel anything at all, we have to be able to give up any agenda of what it is that we're going to be feeling. So if we have an idea of what is true and what is not true, and what is the truth, then the fundamental layer, then it's very, very hard to sense the truth, because we've already decided. And when we let ourselves be helpless and have a helpless mind, like beginner's mind, like a baby, then the sense of truth can actually open up to what is here within the flow of information, and then the information begins to flow. Because we're not filtering with an agenda that has to be like this. So in the heart, it's the same principle. In order to really deepen, to allow feelings to flow through the heart, we need to soften and allow a certain vulnerability. And if we can find that place where there is no interference, then much more feeling can flow in all directions. And the nervous system then, from the body level begins to learn that it's actually much, much safer to have more information. The problem is that we've energetically associated helplessness with pain, with trauma, with abuse, with being overpowered. Actually trauma always involves being put in the most horrific, shocking way in a place of helplessness. And then we think that's the helplessness. When there is a trauma, and this is for all of us, we find ourselves suddenly and with a horrible energy, and in a shocking way which is hard to process, put in a position of helplessness. And then we decide that helplessness is the horror and the shock and all the difficult feelings which are around this arrival in helplessness. And we lose the connection with the pure helplessness. When we can allow the sense of hopelessness, there's a kind of humility. We don't know what's going on. We don't have the solutions. We don't know the future. We don't even know what we feel. We don't know who we are. We know nothing. And there's a kind of humility in putting down all the defenses, and this admission between ourselves and ourselves. There's something very true about it. A sense of truth is there. None of us know what's going on here. There is no golden solution of how to deal and how to be successful. We don't even know what success would look like. We don't know where we go. We don't know where we came from, we don't know where we're going, we know nothing. And when we can allow the helplessness and connect it to the helplessness of the whole universe, you know, the flowers are helplessly open, the sun is helplessly rising, the earth is helplessly turning, we're all helplessly born. Every moment of experience, everything we feel is helplessly experienced. Smack my hand, my hand helplessly experiences a slap. Afterwards I can say, well I'm going to resist that happening ever again, but it's too late. I have a feeling, a jealousy. It's too late. I'm helpless. And what we think is helplessness leads to having no power. And we're going to get totally fucked over. We will not survive like this. And it's worth inquiring into because helplessness is the key to power. To true power. Because when we really can look soberly at the helplessness which is there at the beginning of our lives, in the first experiences, at the end of our lives, in the death process, which is inevitable, and underneath everything we experience during our life, in fact, whether it's that which allows us to experience anything at all, then we begin to anchor into a layer of truthful experience, openness to the truth of experience, which maybe before was obstructed by trauma, where we couldn't reach before. And what happens? Let's say we've got a difficulty, a problem, a feeling, a difficult feeling, a depression, and it's very, very helpless. We don't know what to do with it, and it's always there. So we say, rather than like, ignoring it, or denying it, or whatever. So I'm here with this feeling. And I can totally admit to helplessness with this block and recognize the helplessness within the block. Really, really allow the helplessness to be there. I'm totally helpless with this feeling of being blocked. And partly what happens is there's a relaxation. The mind doesn't have what to do anymore. We don't need the extra protection of resistance and all the secondary effects. There's just this block as a feeling. The body isn't now trying to process it through the liver and produce all kinds of enzymes to expel it. So first of all there's a relaxation. And as there's a relaxation, there's no pressure on it anymore to heal already, there's a relaxation. So something begins to open up. And this can be really also deep into the unconscious layers. Something begins to open up and that's a vibration, the opening. So what was concealed within a density is now beginning to make a music. The music of the pain which created the block and the first pulse. So what comes forward now is like a, where are you, where are you, where are you, where are you reverberating through the universe. And we're not saying, okay, where is she? No, we're helpless. So it's heard. Help from beyond our small, limited agenda comes from unexpected places. Because the vibration of need, which is there, is actually released and an answer comes back. And what that can often feel like is a little bit of a few actions which can guide us in navigating through the next steps. Meaning a place of what we can actually do, how we can actually move, how we can actually support or be supported. You follow? So experience itself is like a river. The depth of feeling is like a river. And so is the river helpless? Or is it controlling where it's flowing? Is it strategizing not to hit a rock? A river is flowing and it's changing all the time. It's moving, it's a river of loss, impermanence. It's not the same in any moment. And if we try and grab hold of it from another dimension, grasp it, our hand just goes through it, doesn't it? The river still flowing. The river starts to evaporate. We can't stand the humidity in the air, so we try and make it not evaporate. We have aversion to the river. It's tough. We're made of the river. So we end up with a kind of self-hatred, self... These areas of experience where experience starts to kind of turn in on itself, like I hate myself, I hate the hatred in myself, I'm so repulsed at myself because I can't stand the feeling of repulsion. I'm so disgusted at myself because I can't stand the feeling of disgust. I'm so very, very uncomfortable under my own skin because I can't stand the feeling of discomfort in this world. The suffering turns in on it. And the healing effect here of the sense of truth is it can lead us to this area where we move beyond grasping and pushing away this whole area of like desire and aversion, agenda, this river to move, which is a river of life. So a river of grief, a river of love, a river of feeling, a river of experience. So from one point of view it can seem very, very unstable, because we're very much programmed with our normative truth, our normative reality, to be going somewhere, to get somewhere later. It's like our head is on its way somewhere, we're on a road to somewhere, and then there's this huge burnout moment like we're on a road to nowhere. What are we even trying to achieve? It's all senseless. But what we're doing with our soul or the essence of our experience is like telling Where are you going? As if the river's got legs. Where is the river going? Yeah, we can say the river's going to the sea, or the river's going to the cloud, or the river's becoming rain again. The river's going to the ice, but none of it is the final destination. It's not going anywhere. If you look at the river from above, it's totally still. There's a river, there's a delta, ocean, ice caps, clouds. But it's moving all the time. This is so much like the sense of truth and the deeper layers of Osseo. And then you can take like, okay, what's really, really true about the river then? What's really the essence of the river? It's a river of feeling. So what's its essence? You can take just water, water, just take a droplet of water there is a stillness. You don't need to freeze it to get there, you can freeze it to get to the stillness, but actually within the droplet of water there is a stillness. And inside that droplet of water, this stillness gives you the whole movement of the whole river. Because there is stillness in every drop of water. When you connect to the stillness, the river can flow freely, freely, freely. And it can become an ocean, and it can become a cloud, and it can become rain, and it can become ice, and it never gets lost. Even though it's always moving. You're following? So it's the same with any feeling. It's the same with the sense of truth. When we're able to move to a place of stillness, within the experience, the stillness of anger, the stillness of pain. Not in a way that it's like, I don't want this pain, I want stillness instead, but actually to go into the sense of pain all the way and to feel the stillness which is there within the moment of experience. Then we move beyond this grasping and aversion, trying to kind of do something to make it good, this effort, this trying very hard to be able to exist. This trying to become somebody as if we're not already here. This trying to get somewhere as if there's somewhere else to go. Trying to be somebody else, to work on ourselves to be better. As if to be ourselves we have to be somebody else. All of this can relax because of this sliding off into the essence of the river, the essence of the experience. And then something very truthful can show up in the flow, partly because, and it's very helpless as well, but very powerful. It's not how we're trained to organize our energy, it's a new training in a way. Once we start doing it, practicing it, and we feel the relief of it. And the programs begin to change a little bit, and we get a reward, a sense of reward, because it is very pleasurable to feel the river moving through you and to realize how very healing it is. To realize it can be trusted. That it's absolutely okay as it is. It's a beauty, it's a miracle as it is. Not like passive, not at all, because then there's an excitement and there is a telling and there is a describing of what's been experienced. Not as an absolute truth, but like a sharing of impressions, sharing of points of view, sharing of feeling. There's a freedom in time and space to savour, to taste, to experience. To pick things up and to really experience them and get to the essence of it and then To pick things up and to really experience them and get to the essence of it and then to put it down again, back into the room.