Recently, I began wrestling with a difficult problem. The gods had become my friends, my peers, my allies; yet they often lied to me. They treated me the way society often unwholesomely treats children, when adults lie to children in order to get them to do what the adults believe is beneficial for the child. It always worked out well and led to profound growth. Yet I was tired of being lied to, and tired of being led around “for my benefit.” It felt like a failure of sovereignty, and I wasn’t willing to continue that way any longer.

As I have often written, our external reality is only ever a reflection of our internal reality. When I considered why the gods were treating me this way, I realized that at some level, I was still lying to myself. I resolved to fix that.

I began my journey of truth with what I would consider ordinary truth, where I was being generally truthful in my words and deeds, whenever I was able. Even this was an improvement from my pre-awakening norm, in which I generally sort of aimed for the truth, but was very loose with small lies all the time, without thinking about it much at all.

As my awakening continued and I saw the importance of clarifying the throat chakra through truth, I moved to precise truth. With precise truth, it was no longer simply about the words. I stopped being legalistic in my truth. I began genuinely working to convey truth in good faith, while doing my best to minimize misunderstanding. With precise truth, I was no longer willing to consider “good enough” as sufficient when it came to truth. This of course required a movement into greater integrity, so that I could be as honest as possible with myself and others at all times.

In the past week, I have arrived at exquisite truth, which takes truth to an entirely new level. With exquisite truth, truth is now something that is completely embodied, in every thought I think, action I take, movement of my body, expression on my face, energetic output, words I say or write, or concepts I convey. And so with exquisite truth, my internal reality and its external reflection are as close to identical as my current skillfulness allows me to reach. Full integrity between internal and external.

Accomplishing exquisite truth requires full integrity internally, without addiction to thoughts or delusions about the mind-self. Otherwise, it is not possible for our thoughts to align always with our actions.

Exquisite truth means that when I walk down the street and see someone, if I am judging them, or pedestaling myself or them, or thinking cruelly of them, or in any other way moving unwholesomely internally, then all of that is on display. I can't hide it any longer behind a bland smile or a mask of indifference. As a result, I let go of judging, and pedestaling, and racism, and xenophobia, and cruelty, and unwholesomeness, so that when I move, I am spreading love, inside and out.