Freedom T
Where is truth to be found; is there freedom in truth?
And the Truth shall set you free. John 8: 32… it’s a taxing question in that do we want the truth? Is too painful to come to truths about ourselves and our loved ones and the societies in which we live? Isn’t it better sometimes to live in blissful ignorance, knowing that what we don’t know or don’t want to know can’t hurt us? Isn’t it easier to avoid those little hints at truth –
“Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness… but only when you pay your taxes? That means your freedom is rented, leased, & not unalienable.”
Thomas Jefferson: “To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”
Martin Luther King: “Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.”
Linda H: This morning, Linda H’s definition of freedom is definitely Statutory, Financial and Fiduciary Statements and taxes up to date and filed, leaving a clean desk to play on.
Thank you for reading. I so appreciate your comments
46 Comments on AtoZ Freedom T
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Another interesting collection of quotes you have curated, Susan. I don’t know how you source them all, but they always provide much to think about. Thank you. Truth and freedom – great bedfellows, one might say.
This week, over here, is National Reconciliation Week. The theme is ‘Grounded in Truth. Walk together with Courage.’ I think the ultimate healing and freedom comes with recognition of the wrongs of the past.
I like that Norah – ie that healing comes with recognition of things past. May your week in Australia go well. Thank you for coming by and gave a great week!
Thanks, Susan. I hope we’ll be moving forward this week. Have a great week!
Sometimes the truth can get you arrested!
Mmmmm this is true! Maybe have the lawyer friend’s call no’s on hand -?
😂🤣😂🤣
I’m with Camus on this one. If I truly face what my country is doing to minorities, children who need medical care and to be with their family, LGBT people of all ages, the hungry…. The list goes on endlessly. I can’t define Truth in a universal sense, but I know so much happening now creates suffering for others. So much truth is hidden in dark belly of my government and every government I know of. Am I willing to look squarely at the truth of my own privilege? I live modestly and donate to noble causes, but I have the freedom of feeling safe in my home in a peaceful environment. I thank Fortune for this every day.
We do know some of the skullduggery that goes on and I feel pretty hopeless in the face of it. What is the truth of one’s own privilege and is it a ‘privilege’? I’m still coming to terms with my white privilege in my own country but it’s being turned into a racist issue. I too feel safe in my home though I know that danger on the streets and elsewhere is all around. I could be murdered regardless of my colour for my cell phone .. Thanks Elaine for giving your thoughts on this..
Some interesting and wise words, Susan.
Thanks Robbie 🙂
Hello Susan,
A truth is better than 100 lies as to hide one lie you have to make up hundred other lies.
I prefer truth – no matter how hard or bitter it is.
(First time on your blog)
Thanks Kislaya for coming by. I agree having to keep up with one’s lies must be exhausting and one is bound to be tripped up. Little white lies? I wonder – also a danger in that 🙂
White lies – i guess to do a good deed or save someone’s life – it might be okay!
yes, then fine – 🙂
Hahahaha! Linda H has got her life priorities all sorted out! 😀
When the taxes are done, you can definitely breathe freely!
I would prefer truth over ignorance any day, even though ignorance is actually a bliss, at least for a short while.
Find my U post @ How Often Should You Update Your Blog
I too wish I could be like an ostrich sometimes and bury my head in the sand – yes taxes done is the time to breath freely again!
What I find interesting is that I now think that Truth is not absolute. My truth is not always the same as yours. They can both be valid. Which is why it’s so important to listen to each other, and hear our views. Not easy…
Hi Beth ~ I wonder if you realize how in stating “Truth is not absolute” you’re making a statement of absolute truth. It’s a brain twister, I know. Maybe you meant to say something a little different related to objective facts and reality versus subjective opinions based on our unique emotional responses and feelings?
I think it’s more about perceptions of the same event/interaction when there is no video/ability to know what actually did happen (=the truth?)
Our perception of truth or, conversely, our inability to perceive, acknowledge or discern it, doesn’t make it any less the truth. If that’s what you’re saying, then I agree.
The caveat to this is that our perceptions (of a physical or psychic reality we haven’t personally experienced) can be flawed, unconsciously influenced by our conditioning. Sometimes our thoughts are not our own.
Thanks Beth – you make an important point. Although some things may be absolute as in eg gravity if we include (some) scientific facts containing truths.
As I’ve commented later Beth, I think you’re confusing two things – a) the truth of a matter, and b) one’s view of it. Any matter is what it is, and only what it is at any point in time. And what it is is – well, just that – it’s what it is. If it’s raining outside – it’s raining; if your pet dog’s just died – it’s dead. You may view those events rather differently from how your neighbour views them. You may love the sound of the rain falling, but your neighbour’s got her washing hanging out on the line. And though you’re grieving for your dead pet, the man next door is delighted to see the end of the animal who was forever digging holes under his fence. Your truth and the neighbour’s truth? Not really – they’re just different views of exactly the same truths.
Agree with this. How does difference in perception/recollection of an event or interaction fit in? We don’t have videos of the event, so it’s two memories — in that case, there is no truth because we don’t know the reality of what actually happened?
Again I think you’re misreading it. You really can’t say, in reference to some specific occurrence, that because nobody knows for certain the details of what happened, there is therefore no truth concerning it. If something happens, there is inevitably a truth which reflects that event – though it may be that no-one knows what that truth is. Until relatively recently it was not known what had wiped out the dinosaurs. Yet it was nevertheless obvious that something had – i.e. there was some undiscovered truth which would reflect that event. I think if you inserted the word ‘known’ before the word ‘truth’ in your last sentence, you would be closer to the truth – as it were!
Great opening question, Susan. I believe that there is freedom in truth….but it often comes with consequences.
Thanks Donna, always consequences and at a price, sometimes almost too much to bear.
Thank you for another great collection of quotes today Susan! I love them all, most especially Albert Camus’s and the Dalai Lama’s wise and true words. For without truth I couldn’t work as a therapist … and yet fully understand the suffering that truth will often bring, alongside much release and freedom. Talk about the tension of the opposites! I wish I had discovered this wisdom twenty years ago …then I would’ve not waited so long for my own freedom! “And the Truth shall set you free.” Perfect! Love and light, Deborah.
Thanks Deborah for coming by. I like that the word ‘truth’ contains the letters for the word ‘hurt’ as well, for truth can be hurtful when it can’t be denied any longer. Likewise it can be a huge release to see, accept and embrace things as they are … and to find freedom. So, maybe hurtful but ultimately good –
Camus has an interesting way with words. And the Dalai Lama – always so spot on. Can you believe that ‘my’ country has twice refused him a visa to visit? We were under pressure from the Chinese who did not approve. The one time was an invitation by Desmond Tutu to celebrate his 80th birthday some years ago ..
Love & Light to you too 🙂
That tax thing–there is so much I disagree about how they’re spending my tax money! I had no idea Jefferson had that opinion. But, for me, I accept that deal when I ask to live in this community, this society, knowing in the end, balance is reached.
I hope that the quote is a correct attribution Jacqui – but I do know that many have expressed similar thoughts about where and how our taxes are used – thank you for coming by.
Henrik Ibsen’s quote definitely stands true these days, as the fight for freedom seems to be getting dirtier and more violent. As a youth, I didn’t pay much attention to politics. Now I’m both sorry I didn’t learn more then and I’m sorry that I didn’t keep my head in the sand, as I sure don’t like what I’m seeing. I don’t know that my voice and vote is sufficient, but maybe becoming more aware is a benefit so that I can be more positive. It IS a SAD WORLD!
Sorry for not knowing earlier and sorry for knowing now 🙂 An existential dilemma Gwynn … well we’ve got to hope that good will prevail. Sometimes I’m an optimist, sometimes a pessimist. Maybe best that I call myself a pessimistic optimist.
I also like Ibsen’s quote. Fighting for freedom is bound to get dirty .. Thanks for coming by.
I do love the Camus quote. I think how much truth we want and how much we can hold is always a shifting horizon, and perhaps that’s what it needs to be if we aren’t to slip into constant despair at the state of our world. And one thing I know for certain is that when we’re incapacitated by despair, there is no hope.
I’ve been pondering something Rumi said: “Humankind is being led along an evolving course, through this migration of intelligences, and though we seem to be sleeping, there is an inner wakefulness that directs the dream, and that will eventually startle us back to the truth.” I hold that with great hope.
‘…a shifting horizon…’ it shifts all the time, thank you Deborah. What we need, want and can hold is forever changing. It can hardly stay static. The apt Rumi quote is hopeful indeed and thank you for that too..
Deborah ~ The dark nights of the soul can be some of the toughest experiences of our lives. That said, if we’re able to sit for a time with our despair, without running from it (something not everyone is capable of or willing to do), it can reveal and clarify, rip away the layers of lies upon which our false hopes were built.
Despair has a way of emptying us out in order to make space for something new, something grounded in the real. I think that’s what Rumi was alluding to when he spoke of being startled from sleep. That’s how it’s been for me.
I totally agree with this LB. I also believe that having faced true despair and journeyed with and through dark nights of the soul to the other side, we can be changed forever with the understanding that hope again sparks. My position is that if you wrest the gift of this despair, you don’t need to continue again and again to lose yourself.
I can only speak for myself, but my experience has been very different, Deborah. At significant turning-points throughout my life I’ve traveled this dark night, sometimes retracing previous steps, sometimes not, but always returning to my life changed in some fundamental way.
Some have described it as a crisis of consciousness, which can be another way of saying we surrender to despair what once we thought we knew. In this surrender (of illusions and false self), something in us awakens and remembers so that we might begin to see the world and ourselves through this new lens. I imagine I’ll travel this dark road next lifetime too.
I’m not sure I’m actually disagreeing with you LB. But I’m saying, for me, that once hope is recovered, the existence of its light is always there calling me forward from those later treks into dark nights. The lens itself has already changed.
Yes, “the lens itself has already changed” and yet, it continues to change with each dark night of the soul and in every loss of illusion and death of self. None of us can know what we don’t yet know. In that respect, our awakening and remembering is more of a process than a destination.
Our conversation reminds me of something I read years ago and which has stayed with me ever since. In Allison Peer’s translation of the text, “Dark Night of the Soul”, the author writes “. . . so immense is the spiritual light of God, and so greatly does it transcend our natural understanding, that the nearer we approach it, the more it blinds and darkens us.” p.156
Though I’m no masochist and don’t enjoy suffering, I have learned to appreciate the gifts darkness can bring.
The hard fact of truth is that it can be relative and depends on the vantage point. therefore, it requires much soul searching…
That surely is a contradiction in terms. The truth is ‘that which is’ and ‘that which is’ – is immutable. You may not want to face it – you may indeed take a ‘vantage point’ of it – deny it, twist it, distort it, try to simply ignore it or do what you like with it. But a vantage point is just that – nothing more than a way of looking at something. And the way of looking at a thing, has no effect on the reality of that thing.
I should let the other Susan respond to this besonian. Thank you for coming by .. an immutable truth in my understanding is something that cannot be changed over time, regardless of the observer/s. Many truths were seen to be immutable but along came Copernicus for example. There are immutable dogmas, which can ‘surely’ be challenged eg religion. The individual person can bring his/her vantage point to the endless philosophical or psychological discussion in his/her search for truth –
Besonian ~ Your understanding of the nature and *reality* of truth echoes my own. No matter how unpleasant, truth acts as a unifying force that connects us to one another and all of life. Truth cuts through illusion, propaganda, cultural conditioning and subjectivism and goes to the root. It sets us free, but first disturbs us. What we do to one another, we do to ourselves.
It’s amazing how a relatively small thing such as me finding your comment here today (and being surprised by it) isn’t really small at all. Your soulful and edifying comment has filled me with hope. I hope you read this, so you know how much it matters.
Hi LB – yes, I did read it – obviously! And I thank you very much for it. It’s good to come across another who has a like view on a subject as profound as this. However much one may be tempted to go along with one’s own version of the truth – and examples of that fill the air waves, blogs, political speeches, etc., etc., day after day – it’s self-inflicted deception. You run the risk that when the truth – the real version – comes out, as sure as hell it will, sooner or later, you will have compromised yourself and maybe many others along with you. There’s a lot of worthy talk these days about the parlous state of the world. And it sure seems to be in a mess. But the ‘world’ is not just some physical object we happen to inhabit. The ‘world’ is us, the people. We are ‘the world’ and we are the mess. One of the primary causes of that is the scant regard that we and our political leaders so often have for the truth. As grown-ups we owe it to ourselves and all young people who see us as parents, guardians and elders to tell them the truth. Not some version of it – but the real actuality with all its pain, its discomfort, its joy, its challenges and its unequalled power and promise of redemption.
I’m glad you read my comment, Besonian. I think the last two sentences of your reply go to the root of it. Thomas Merton once observed how the more we try to avoid suffering, the more likely we are to invite it into our lives. I would add, if not immediately, then inevitably. To embrace truth is to stop chasing after happiness. There’s darkness, but also joy and a more profound sense of connection. Even to those we disagree with.
I’m probably preaching to the choir, so for now I’ll leave it at that. Once again, it’s good to know I’m not alone in my passion for truth and its ability to inform and be of service to love in a larger sense. We can’t choose wisely if we don’t know and don’t want to know. Take care, Besonian.
Thanks Susan – that is the task, ongoing soul searching in a critical and constructive way.