Living in Truth

One of the problems we encounter when we first attempt to Live in Truth is that we have been so conditioned in the ways of Illusion. All our lives we’ve seen the same reaction to the same situations so we don’t even stop to realize there could be a different way to handle the situation.

For example, a friend of mine lived with her older married sister during her last years of high school. One day Sharon asked her sister if she could take the car to visit some friends. The sister said she could but she needed the car back by four o’clock because she was taping an educational TV show for a local channel. Sharon said she’d be back by four and left, but once with her friends she forgot all about the time—until it was six o’clock.

She hurried home, but her sister was gone. On the table was a freshly baked cake, Sharon’s favorite chocolate cake, with a note that said, “Don’t worry. I know you were having a good time. I managed to get a ride. I love you.”

In a situation like this most of us have only seen someone react in anger. So when someone lets us down or doesn’t keep a promise, we do what we’ve always seen done—we get angry. But all that does is raise our blood pressure, make us tense and fill us with vexation. Instead Sharon’s sister used that energy to bake a cake. You don’t have to have an IQ of 160 to know which reaction causes the offending person to be sorry and learn a lesson. Being late with the car never happened again and many, many years later the lesson Sharon learned that day is still in her heart guiding and directing her.

But what about the sister? By baking a cake instead of getting angry she escaped a great deal of unnecessary pain. She stayed in the realm of Truth where the spirit dwells. She went to the TV taping with positive energy instead of depleted from the vexation.

Sometimes when we feel anger swelling in us all we need to do to stay in Truth is ask ourselves the simple question, “How else could I handle this?” and then do something good with the energy building within us.