The Truth Inside Everything You Do

One Simple Rule for Living

There’s a truth in everything you do. Everything that you are is contained in every little action you take.

Every single action is a seed. That seed sows a great law of human existence.

That which you do will be visited upon you. It’s already been true in your life, hasn’t it? Not in material terms. But in existential ones. If you stop and think about it carefully, you’ve found love when you were ready to love, made breakthroughs only when you were broken open, found meaning only when you’ve meant something to someone, been respected only when you recognized and respected people for who they really were, stumbled when you were dragging people down.

What does that tell you?

That which you do will be visited upon you. Maybe you’ve even heard, or sensed, the law in this form. There’s a more accurate form. Only the things we do that truly which benefit others can contain our own happiness. The things we do that harm others result only in our own unhappiness and suffering. You can only ever be as fulfilled as the good you create, and as unfulfilled as the harm you do.

Like many, you will probably spend a great part of your life trying to desperately run away from this law. But it’s a law. So you can no more escape it than a lion can stop hunting, or a ball can stop falling. You’re probably trying to escape it right this moment, by pretending it’s a child’s fairy tale. It doesn’t make sense to the rational mind, right? Why should such a rule be a law of human life? Why has every great teacher from the Buddha to Christ understood it, been transformed by it, and taught it?

Let’s think about it. The Western mind, the conceptual mind, the mind of logic, thinks that this law requires a divine arbiter of justice. Someone, a giant computer in the sky, to balance the scales. But that is just the mind trying to run away from the law again. The law is about emotions, and how they are made, so it is beyond the 2+2=4 logic of cognition in the first place.

The reason for the law is as simple as the rain.

You treat yourself the way you treat others. Superficially it may be different. You might say nice things to others, while cursing them inside. But inside, it is the same. You are cruel to others, because you are cruel to yourself. No one is ever good enough, because you are never good enough. Everyone is a threat, because you cannot trust yourself. And so on.

The reverse is also true. You are kind to others, when you are kind to yourself. You are loving to the world, when you are accepting of your weaknesses. You are truly aware of the beauty around you only when you can see your own frailties and struggles as beautiful. And so on.

You treat others the way you treat yourself. Hence, that which you do is visited upon you. Not after the fact. But during the action.

Perhaps you see the truth of the law now. Here is what it really means. How we treat others is precisely the same as how we treat ourselves, for every self that ever is, was, will be. We all imagine that we are different, separate, divided. But in the illusion of selfhood we are all exactly the same, alike. There are no selves at all. There is just oneness.

We are mirrors reflecting a single light. Some of us are some broken, some are dark, some were never polished. We do not reflect the light well. And so the light never seems to find us, catch us, glimmer in us. But the challenge for us is learning to reflect it as brightly as we can. That which you do will be visited upon you.

It tells us a very great truth about what we are.

We are all seeking oneness. Always and in everything. That is our highest drive, our truest motivation. That is why we treat ourselves exactly the way that we treat others. Go ahead and try not to, for a moment. Be kind to yourself, and cruel to the world. Or vice versa. You will find that it cannot be done. The drive for oneness is so strong in us that we can only ever really be one, at our deepest level. We can’t treat others much differently than we treat ourselves, no matter how we try. The light we reflect is the light we live. They are the same. Oneness.

So. Let me return to the beginning.

There is a truth inside everything you do. That truth is greater than you know. It is everything that you are. Everything that you are is contained in every single action that you take. Every single action that you take reflects how you treat others, which is how you treat everyone, which is how you treat yourself.

Find that truth. Seek it. Know it. If it is ugly, embrace it. Befriend it, soothe it, heal it. Make it beautiful. When it is beautiful, celebrate it. Revel in it. Plant it, so that it grows. You are nothing more, and nothing less, than the truth inside that truth, which is all that is.

Umair
London
May 2016