Sufi Compassion

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Sufi Compassion - The Path of Infinite Grace

Truth, True Teachers and Spiritual Capacity

A person wrote in asking about whether or not everyone had the ability to recognize spiritual truth.

All of us have within us the capacity to recognize the truth. When one encounters truth in the writings of someone, like is attracted to like - that is, the truth within one is drawn to the truth within that which one is reading.

But, let me pose several problems for you. Let us assume someone is reading a book and there is truth in the book and something within the individual recognizes that truth as truth.

Is the truth which is recognized as true, true because of who said it, or because of something in the nature of what is being said, along with something inherent in the individual doing the reading, and, therefore, it would be true independently of who said it?

False teachers are experts - some more so than others - at being able to write things which contain - to varying degrees - elements of the truth and, yet, such people do not participate in, or have any gnosis of, such truths, even though their books may contain such truths. Unfortunately, we all have a tendency to confuse, sometimes, the message and the one through whom the message may come. When we do this, we tend to assume that the one conveying the message is capable of conveying the message because the message reflects what is within these people, but this need not be so.

Some people use the capacity within them for recognizing the truth and prostitute that capacity for the purposes of ego - namely, the wish to be considered by, and treated by, others as a spiritual guide and teacher. Such people may speak the truth - within certain limits - because they are adept at picking up on the truth spoken by others who are, unlike themselves, one with the truth, so that message and messenger are, for the former individuals, but different sides of the same coin.

False teachers are parasites on the truth conveyed by true teachers. As such, when an individual consumes any truth which may be transmitted by means of a false teacher, then like consuming any food infested with parasites, there may be problematic consequences for those who swollow such foods, even though the intentions of the one who is hungry may have been quite innocent and sincere.

Recognizing the truth and conveying the truth are not sufficient for someone to be a true teacher. The mystical path is not about ideas, concepts, theories, or the like, nor is it an intellectual exercise, and consequently, one can only get extremely linited flashes of the reality of things through written works.

Someone can write nice, uplifting, informative, interesting, amusing, thought-provoking, and even true books, but this does not mean that such people are capable of being the venue through whom barakah or grace is transmitted, and this alone is the key to spiritual progress and the lifting of spiritual veils. In being drawn to the truth of something, one has to understand Who is doing the drawing and who it is that is being drawn, and just what it is that one is being drawn to, and the means of one's being drawn.

Furthermore, although we all have within us the capacity to recognize the truth, we all also have within us the capacity for veiling and distorting and turning away from the truth. If the matter were simply a matter of being able to recognize the truth when we came into contact with it, then no one would need a teacher or spiritual guide, and everyone would be a realized mystic. Since this is not the case, the answer must lie elsewhere, and be more complex and subtle than that.

Truth/Reality is infinite. There are many forces within us and without us which are dedicated to ensuring that we never realize the full extent of the truth for which we have been given the capacity to do by Divinity.

Consequently, sometimes what we feel or believe or think to be the truth because it seems to resonate with something within us, this is nothing other than the ego looking at a mirror. So the problem is, how does one distinguish within oneself that dimension of one's being which is capable of recognizing the truth from that dimension of one's being which is capable of veiling and distorting the truth for its own non-spiritual purposes?

We read something in a book. It resonates with something within us. Because of the experience of resonance, or familiarity, or attraction which we have concerning what is said, we may say: "Ah, this is the truth."

But, is it? How do we know? How can we be sure? How do we test it? What are the criteria of evaluation which are to be used? What instruments are to be used in this process? How are these instruments to be calibrated so that we can trust the readings which they give? Who will confirm our findings, and how do we know that we can rely on such confirmation?

Who is doing the recognizing in any given case of calling something the truth? Is it the true self, or the false self? None of these questions can be answered on one's own. One cannot discern the truth of these matters merely through effort, concentration and diligence. Much...much more is needed, and that can only be found by associating (spiritually) with an authentic guide.

There are people who can speak and write volumes about the mystical path - much of it may even be true (up to a point), but they do not have the least taste of the reality of Being to which the mystical path invites each of us. The process of realizing the truth of one's true identity and one's essential, unique spiritual capacity goes beyond what can be recognized as true on the surface of things.

In fact, when one fully realizes the truth, the surface of things becomes completely transformed in the process. What one recognized as true previously is still true - assuming it was true at all - but it becomes something much more in the process - so much so, that one realizes that what one recognized as true previously was itself really a tremendous distortion of the Truth, even though it was true within its own framework of understanding.

So, in relation to the question which you have asked, the answer depends on what one means by recognizing the truth of something. Who is doing the recognizing, on what level is the truth being engaged, how did the truth come to one, and what degree of noise-to-signal ratio, so to speak, is involved in that which has been received or recognized?

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