Living the Deepest Truth You Know
This is the introduction to my book, Living the Deepest Truth You Know. I hope it will give you a sense of the spirit - and challenge - of becoming open to our inner wisdom and acting on it. You can find out more - or purchase it - by clicking on the cover. - Albert Bellg One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began… - Mary Oliver, “The Journey" One evening a few years ago, my wife Laurin and I were sitting on our living room couch and talking about an issue that concerned her. She’s a physician and I’m a psychologist, and she was trying to decide how to navigate a particularly tricky professional situation with one of her medical colleagues. There were personal issues involved, no easy solutions, no simple way forward. Thinking about different options and ways of approaching the problem in the back and forth of our conversation, I surprised both of us by saying something that suddenly made her sit up and stare at me.
“Write that down,” she said urgently. “I want to remember that.” This was the only time in our life together that she’s said something like that to me, so of course I wrote it down. We even gave it a place of honor on our refrigerator for several months. What I’d said was this: Find the deepest truth you know and let everything else fall in place around it. There is something about those words that just felt right to both of us. For Laurin at that particular moment, they showed her a way through the confusion and allowed her to think clearly about how to handle the issue with her colleague. In the years since then, however, she’s used that statement to transform her life. She’s become more engaged with people, more confident about taking a leadership role at her work, more at ease speaking up and working with groups, and more willing to take risks and pursue what she truly cares about. It’s led her to write a wonderful and successful book about her experiences with her patients – which is something she never thought she would do – and inspired her to go back to school and get a Master’s of Fine Arts degree in creative writing. For me, I realized that “find the deepest truth you know and let everything else fall in place around it” is a simple statement of a personal process I’ve engaged in throughout my life. As I’ve made important decisions about relationships, where to live, how to pursue my career, what spiritual practice to follow, and whether or not to get involved in other activities, I’ve nearly always looked inside myself for guidance and direction. I may still do a conventional evaluation and weigh the costs and benefits of a particular choice, determine the consensus of expert opinion, follow cultural norms, or sometimes even just go along with what other people want me to do. But when I choose to look inwardly and follow what I call my inner wisdom, it’s led me into some extraordinary and meaningful experiences. There was another gift for me, too, in the statement I made. I came to understand that it’s personally important for me to share with others the process of finding the deepest truth you know. To do that, I also realized that I’d have to make significant changes in my work and my professional identity. I’d been a clinical health psychologist for nearly two decades, helping people cope with medical issues, make positive lifestyle changes to improve their health, and resolve their symptoms of depression, anxiety or stress. It was meaningful and worthwhile to me, and to the people I worked with. But as rewarding and satisfying as it had been to help patients with their problems, my focus as a psychologist had not been on guiding them to find their deepest truth and act on that truth with courage. So a little over six months after I made that statement to Laurin, I followed my inner wisdom and left a secure job with a corner office in a medical center and moved into a one-person office on a quiet, tree-lined street. It was the perfect place to explore my own inner wisdom and discover how I could work with people around finding and living the deepest truth they know. Taking off the well-defined professional hat I’d worn for so many years as a health psychologist let me look at this process from a broader perspective that embraces what I know of spirituality, writing and literature, nature, my personal experience – and sometimes psychology, as well. It starts with a simple idea: at the heart of creativity, healing, and personal and spiritual growth is a wise inner knowing. When I’ve looked for it, my inner wisdom has often shown up as a surprising but insightful awareness about a situation I’m in, or a question or issue I’m concerned about. It nearly always offers me a way of responding that is genuine and whole-hearted. One of the ways inner wisdom is distinguished from other ways of knowing is that it often shows you something distinctly beyond what you already know and want that reflects a deeper truth about who you are and what you really need. When you’re thoughtful and discerning about the insight it offers, the result can be life-changing. Inner wisdom has helped me – and I believe it can help you – decide what career to pursue, find a good place to live, be a better parent and partner, engage more deeply in spiritual or religious practice, solve problems, be creative, write in a more personal and authentic way, and heal emotional wounds. There is abundant evidence that inner wisdom can give you genuine insight into what is going on around you and in you, and help you discover what to do next. Where my inner wisdom has mattered the most to me, however, is not just in guiding my decisions and actions. It has also been part of the spiritual path that I see unfolding in my life, and has profoundly changed my sense of myself and my relationships with others. In much the same way that I have experienced the personal changes that happen when you love someone and create a committed relationship with that person, I have also seen the deep transformation that’s possible when you make a committed relationship to your inner wisdom and true self. As you read this book, I hope that you will be intrigued by the same questions that inspired me: What will change and grow inside me when I start to love and trust my inner wisdom? How will I be different when, every day, I look to my inner wisdom for guidance? What happens when I do my best to identify with that part of myself, and let my true self be who I am in the world? There is something both wonderful and humbling about bringing inner wisdom into your daily life, relationships, work, spirituality, and community – what I call living the deepest truth you know. In these pages, I offer my thoughts about how you can become more aware of your inner wisdom in a conscious, intentional and discerning way, and what you can do to make the deepest truth you know the foundation for how you live. Like my life, this book has its own shape and character. It has been influenced by the joys that have illuminated me and the deep hurts I have grown from and healed. My own spiritual journey and personal experiences are woven throughout it in a way that I hope will make them helpful to you. I’ve also included stories from people I’ve worked with as a psychologist (with their names and circumstances altered), the insights and learnings that have come from being a retreat facilitator, and the stories and thoughts of my friends and fellow explorers who are making the deepest truth they know central to their lives. Living the deepest truth you know in daily life is challenging, and I’ve not always been successful at it. You, too, may find it difficult to stay on the living edge of your inner wisdom. To do that as best you can, you need to actively engage in developing awareness of your inner wisdom and be willing to trust and courageously follow a path that others may not understand. You may also need to let go of conventional ways of thinking, heal old hurts, and forgive yourself and others. The gift you’ll find when you do – along with a sense of aliveness, connection with others, and peace – is a life that’s truly your own. Albert Bellg Appleton, Wisconsin May 2023 |
Albert BellgI've been a writer most of my life - a poet, corporate speechwriter, academic writer, and author - and I'm glad to share with you some of the things I've written.
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