Introduction
Living the Deepest Truth You Know
This is the introduction to my recently completed book manuscript, Living the Deepest Truth You Know. I hope it will give you a sense of the spirit of inner clarity work.
- Albert Bellg, Ph.D. As I write this, there is a candle softly illuminating my desk. The candle holder is a round piece of birch wood, beautifully turned by First Nation artist Rand Tapper from North Bay, Ontario. There are dark curved lines around spaces in the wood that remind me of ancient maps of unexplored territories. There is also a place in the wood where a natural radiance extends from the top to the bottom, almost as if the light from the candle flame moves into and through the wood. There is also a dark place, a deep rift in the wood filled with bark where the tree attempted to heal itself after a break. I think of the healings I’ve seen over the years I’ve been a psychologist and psychotherapist, the deep hurts in people’s lives that have become part of something larger and stronger as they’ve moved forward. I’m grateful to have been part of their healing and growth. The practice of clinical health psychology has been a place where I’ve explored many of the things that interest me: my own and others’ personal healing and growth, how people deal with serious medical problems like heart disease and cancer, the uniquely personal ways that people change their behavior, the challenges and fascinations of being a scientist and researcher, and what it means to make a living doing something I love. But this particular professional hat, or at least the version of it that I’ve been wearing, feels too snug for the writing of this book. So in my imagination, I take the hat off and set it aside. It suited me for 20 years, and now I’m ready to take a look at things differently, from a combination of perspectives based on my experience of spirituality, writing and literature, nature, my personal life—and sometimes psychology as well. It starts with a simple idea that's essential to my spiritual experience and that I learned in a different way as I began training in psychology: at the heart of the process of healing and growth is a wise inner knowing, an insightful awareness of a deeper truth about the situation we're in or about ourselves that is beyond our ordinary thoughts and feelings. That inner wisdom gives us the opportunity (if we choose to take it) to move from where we are in that moment toward a more positive understanding of our situation and a greater sense of unity and wholeness. In psychology, the source of this inner wisdom has sometimes been called our true self or real self. In spiritual and other traditions, it's been referred to as our higher self, higher power, guidance, inner teacher, soul, heart, Holy Spirit, God, the still, small voice, and other names as well. The many names we give to the source of our inner wisdom speak to the wide variety of circumstances in life, both secular and sacred, where this experience is recognized and seen as profoundly important. What intrigues me personally about our inner wisdom, however, is not what we call it or where we think it comes from, but what it does for us and how we can align ourselves with it. It is remarkable to me how important our experience of inner wisdom is, and how much paying attention to it - or ignoring it - affects our personal growth, our happiness, and our sense of fulfillment in life. |
This is the introduction to my recently completed book manuscript, Living the Deepest Truth You Know. I hope it will give you a sense of the spirit of inner clarity work.
- Albert Bellg, Ph.D. As I write this, there is a candle softly illuminating my desk. The candle holder is a round piece of birch wood, beautifully turned by First Nation artist Rand Tapper from North Bay, Ontario. There are dark curved lines around spaces in the wood that remind me of ancient maps of unexplored territories. There is also a place in the wood where a natural radiance extends from the top to the bottom, almost as if the light from the candle flame moves into and through the wood. There is also a dark place, a deep rift in the wood filled with bark where the tree attempted to heal itself after a break. I think of the healings I’ve seen over the years I’ve been a psychologist and psychotherapist, the deep hurts in people’s lives that have become part of something larger and stronger as they’ve moved forward. I’m grateful to have been part of their healing and growth. The practice of clinical health psychology has been a place where I’ve explored many of the things that interest me: my own and others’ personal healing and growth, how people deal with serious medical problems like heart disease and cancer, the uniquely personal ways that people change their behavior, the challenges and fascinations of being a scientist and researcher, and what it means to make a living doing something I love. But this particular professional hat, or at least the version of it that I’ve been wearing, feels too snug for the writing of this book. So in my imagination, I take the hat off and set it aside. It suited me for 20 years, and now I’m ready to take a look at things differently, from a combination of perspectives based on my experience of spirituality, writing and literature, nature, my personal life—and sometimes psychology as well. It starts with a simple idea that's essential to my spiritual experience and that I learned in a different way as I began training in psychology: at the heart of the process of healing and growth is a wise inner knowing, an insightful awareness of a deeper truth about the situation we're in or about ourselves that is beyond our ordinary thoughts and feelings. That inner wisdom gives us the opportunity (if we choose to take it) to move from where we are in that moment toward a more positive understanding of our situation and a greater sense of unity and wholeness. In psychology, the source of this inner wisdom has sometimes been called our true self or real self. In spiritual and other traditions, it's been referred to as our higher self, higher power, guidance, inner teacher, soul, heart, Holy Spirit, God, the still, small voice, and other names as well. The many names we give to the source of our inner wisdom speak to the wide variety of circumstances in life, both secular and sacred, where this experience is recognized and seen as profoundly important. What intrigues me personally about our inner wisdom, however, is not what we call it or where we think it comes from, but what it does for us and how we can align ourselves with it. It is remarkable to me how important our experience of inner wisdom is, and how much paying attention to it - or ignoring it - affects our personal growth, our happiness, and our sense of fulfillment in life. Sometimes our inner wisdom surprises us. In a moment of crisis, it can come forward and give us new insight to help us survive or make the right decision. However, we can also deliberately ask for inner wisdom or guidance in a more intentional way. It's a process that's familiar to people making decisions about what career to pursue or what house to buy, to seekers engaged in spiritual or religious practice, to researchers looking for new theories that offer a deeper understanding of their data, to business people making decisions about marketing their products, to artists and writers creating art and literature, and to clients in psychotherapy letting their inner wisdom lead them into and through the experiences they need in order to heal. There is abundant evidence -- although little scientific research about it -- that opening to our inner wisdom can give us useful and life-changing insight into what is going on around us and in us, and what we need to do next. Where I believe our inner wisdom matters the most, however, is not in guiding our decisions and actions, but in changing our deep sense of who we are and our relationships with others. Many of us have experienced the profound personal transformation that happens when we make a committed relationship with someone we love. What happens when we make a committed relationship with our true self? How do we change and grow when we love and trust our inner wisdom? How are we different when, every day, we repeatedly look to our inner wisdom for guidance? And what happens when we do our best to identify with that part of ourselves, and let our alive, vibrant, true self be who we are in the world? This book is about how we can become more aware of our inner wisdom and bring it forward into our daily lives and relationships -- what I've called living the deepest truth we know. There are three broad areas that it covers: our struggle to make our lives work when we don’t pay much attention to our inner wisdom (which is how most of us live most of the time), what we can do to become more aware of it in a conscious and intentional way, and what we need to do to make the deepest truth we know the foundation for how we live. Like the candle holder on my desk, this book has its own shape and character. It is influenced by the joys that have illuminated me and the deep hurts I have grown around and healed. My own personal and spiritual experiences are woven throughout it in a way that I hope makes them meaningful for your own journey. I’m also grateful to be able to include experiences of those I’ve worked with as a psychologist (as thoroughly disguised as I can make them), and the stories and insights of my friends and fellow explorers who are making their own deepest truth central to their lives. Living the deepest truth we know in daily life is not easy. It’s an ongoing challenge to keep the living edge of our lives vital and aware. Meeting that challenge as best we can, we need to develop a new awareness of our inner wisdom and be willing to trust and follow a path that others may not always understand. It may also require letting go of old assumptions and ways of thinking, healing old hurts, and forgiving ourselves and others. But the reward of doing so, the aliveness, satisfaction and peace that comes from living the deepest truth you know, is worth finding. Albert Bellg, Ph.D. Appleton, Wisconsin November, 2011 |