The personal truth expressions that give rise to the feelings that others have for you are varied and vast. Your mother may have first felt your presence when she missed her period and experienced an uneasy stomach. You communicated something important to her when you moved in her womb. She may have relayed your expression to family and friends with the words, “I felt my baby move!”
When you were little, your parents and siblings didn’t examine your brain to surmise what you were thinking. They simply watched you grab a cookie, heard you cry when you didn’t get your way, and realized how quickly you quieted down when they lifted you into their arms.
Your friends didn’t need to ask how you felt when you didn’t make the team or when you received a blue ribbon for your entry at the fair. You told them when your face fell or lit up.
The point is, others cannot get inside your body or your brain. They can only know you through your expressions. These expressions are your personal truths. They convey the understandings of your mind, the feelings of your heart, the health of your body, and the wellness of your soul. Your truths come across in your shape and walk, the clothes you wear, the surroundings you prefer, the places you frequent, the performances that interest you, and the activities you favor. The friends you keep, the groups you join, and the memberships you hold present clues that come across in your energy, lassitude, willingness, and hesitation. Your truth expressions are conveyed in those you accept, reject, and ignore; those you fear, and those you follow. Young or old, rich or poor, sick or well, happy or unhappy, your personal truths will be expressed and exquisitely so.
There are currently over seven billion of us radiating and relaying our personal truth expressions. We see and hear these expressions as we go about our day. We feel them in a handshake or a hug. We may smell them as we walk about and taste them when we eat.
When discussing the sharing of our truth expressions, it helps to view humanity as a world relational web (WRW) of individuals with links between any two individuals who directly experience what each other says and does. Interestingly, in the “Facebook web” of friends, the fewest intermediaries between any two randomly selected Facebook users is usually fewer than four! https://research.fb.com/blog/2016/02/three-and-a-half-degrees-of-separation/.
In his prize-winning novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn cogently conveys the expressive radiations impacting the author during a twenty-four hour period while imprisoned in a labor camp in Siberia. The book opens with his being awakened by a hammer striking an iron rail. During the day, he responds to a constant stream of comments, shouts, and gestures by his guards and fellow inmates. Occasionally, he reflects on how past events led to his current circumstance. That night he goes to sleep contemplating how his actions gave rise to “a day without a dark cloud. Almost a happy day.”
Like Ivan, we are showered with truth expressions from our associates in the WRW throughout the day and respond appropriately. Before we do, each sensed expression somehow influences the exchanges among the neurons that make up our brain, a complex neural relational web (NRW) of tens of billions of members signaling each other at blurring rates. We seldom give this signaling a second’s thought, yet it determines the responses that we share, sometimes instinctively and instantly, sometimes thoughtfully and slowly, and sometimes contemplatively hours, days, and even years later.
The appropriateness of our innumerable truth exchanges is maintained during our lives because of two great coordinations between the WRW and our NRWs. The changing relationships among members of WRW is somehow mirrored in the relationship and exchanges among the cells of our NRWs. If they were not, it would be a fanciful exercise to contemplate relationships and schedule activities with those with whom we interact.
A dramatically faster coordination takes place when we interact. While arguing or playing, the truth exchanges are rapid, meaningful, and coordinated. Said another way, the “outer” dynamic of discernable truth exchanges among the participants must be highly synchronized with an “inner” dynamic of each participant’s NRW. We could never get “lost” in the interactions taking place in an event without that synchrony.
The outer dynamic of an interaction ends when we stop exchanging personal truth expressions and go our separate ways. The inner dynamic may continue through the night and into the next day. The spirit of even the smallest comment can continue to reawaken that inner dynamic for weeks, months, and even years until a conclusive meaning to what transpired finally puts it to rest.
Whether it be a fight or a reunion, when we think back on what happened, the details can be obscure, but the spirit of the activity continues to work on our minds. If a unifying spirit pervaded the activity, we will be contemplating future exchanges that will strengthen our relationships with the relevant participants; if a divisive spirit, the opposite will likely be the case. Either way, our region of the WRW is correspondingly altered.
It may be helpful to think of your mind as the inner dynamic of your NRW. Hovering over that dynamic is your embodied spirit. It first manifests itself via your bodily movements in your mother’s womb. Later the truths and desires of your embodied spirit enter the minds of others through the expressions of your physical being. They smell your perfumes, taste your treats, hear your sounds and claps, see your dress and motion, feel your shoves and hugs.
These physical expressions inevitably fade, usually quickly. Not so the truths and the spirits we infer from them. They are ours. What had been localized in your mind and body has become a part of us and resides in our NRWs. When we, like you, share what’s in our minds, bits of your truth and spirit get shared as well.
The bits are endless. Their radiations are particularly intense for those with whom you spend most of your time. However, once shared, they quickly spread throughout your region of the WRW and can eventually reach the WRW’s furthest regions.
We need a phrase for the immensity, diversity, and ramifications of your personal truth expressions. The phrase must convey the ease with which your expressions enable us to distinguish you from others. It must convey the consequences of your expressions that get passed on from one generation to the next. Your personal truth galaxy is used here. Although birthed by your NRW, that galaxy resides not in you, but in us. Upon your death, its last tether to your mortal mind is cut.
Although your personal truth galaxy springs from the expressions of your body and mind, the lasting character of its truths and spirit rests solely with what ultimately resonates with the creative spirit of the WRW. That spirit has been around a long time. It is embedded deep within your NRW. You were conceived in a mating act. The same was true for their parents, their parents’ parents, and back into time, way into the mists of the mating act.
The mists extend back into the origins of the plant and animal kingdoms. Bits of the wisdom underlying the incomprehensible history of all the expressions shared throughout those kingdoms are somehow encoded in your genes. You know how to walk—that knowledge is encoded in your genes. You know how to talk—that knowledge is encoded in your genes. You know how to think—that knowledge is encoded in your genes. Your knowledge for walking, talking, and thinking stems from the dynamic of your NRW whose structure is somehow encoded in your genes. That dynamic is an utterly incomprehensible gift. It was overtly expressed in your first kick and cry.
Our children get in touch with the joy that comes with that gift when they freely play. They express it in the smiles, laughs and antics that we love to share. They learn the rules of new and more sophisticated games and naturally respond to those who teach them. They welcome and play with anybody who does not frighten them, wants to play, and abides by the spirit of game. That joyful spirit reigns until someone shoves, pushes, or takes their toys. When left to themselves, their choice is to leave or fight—unless concerned and fair adults bring everybody back into the game and teach them fair play. The spirit of these exchanges, both among and between the children and the attending adults, gives children their largely unconscious sense of what it means to be loved and wanted—or not wanted and even hated. By the time our children are teenagers, they have a sense for the game, the spirit of fair play, the importance of abiding by the rules, and the need for instructors and impartial referees.
This intuitive sense for the various spirits of the WRW enters into consciousness as we become adults. Parts-to-play are replaced by jobs and roles. Parental referees are replaced by policemen, judges, employers, and supervisors. Play groups are replaced by interest and social groups. Personal play evolves locally into team play in families and communities and globally into political play in nations and cultures.
At each level, the WRW is filled with our shared exchanges on who gets to play, the roles to be played, and the rewards to be received for that play. Should one’s focus predominantly turn toward material gain and personal influence, the joy and meaning in life can easily slip away.
Toward the end of life, we naturally reflect back on the consequences of our choices. If comfortable in that reflection, we will likely be at peace when contemplating the moment our personal truth galaxy is finally freed from our minds; otherwise, probably not. Those fully welcoming all into the game of life can know that the personal truth galaxy they are birthing will eventually reside in minds of all who rejoice in that spirit. Those joining groups that exclude and diminish others for selfish advantage and material gain will justifiably be ill at ease in their reflections.
Should you not be at peace in these reflections, you might wonder if anything can be changed. Intellectually, yes. Realistically, you must be drawn to the change you seek. If your outward actions change, but your spirit does not, neither does your personal truth galaxy, for it is the spirit that lives on in our minds. Whenever your spirit actually does change, that change is quickly recognized and passed on by the spiritually appreciative.
This possibility of change is pointed out in Luke 23:39-43. There two criminals are crucified alongside Jesus. One criminal, evidently reflecting back on his waywardness, turned to Jesus and pleaded for him to accept his new spirit. Jesus answered, “Truly I tell you today you will be with me in paradise.” Even should we know the consequences of his earlier criminal expressions, we are not interested in them. Instead, the spirit of his brief, but striking change continues to radiate like a beacon throughout an ever increasingly region of the WRW.
