How Can You Discern What Is True & What Is Not?
Posted in Intuition on 02. Feb, 2009
Last week, I had a disagreement with a healer friend of mine, who I had trained with. My friend wrote to me with some information that she had discerned about me psychically. What she told me didn’t resonate with me at all.
She told me that she had read my Akashic Record and received the news that my soul or spirit had finished its work on the Earth plane; that it would leave my body next week and I’d get a newer, more ‘evolved’ soul in my body in its place and a change of personality and life would ensue.
Upon receiving the email, my emotional reaction was upset and confused. Intuitively, my gut told me NOT to believe the information. My mind labelled it as untrue and my ego straight away began to judge this person who was my friend as ‘wacko’ and ‘crazy’.
How could she believe such a thing was possible, I thought? Rationally, it made no sense to me, because my soul was the part of me that was evolving, right? How could I outgrow it if it was me?
On her website, she also wrote a blog post explaining that she had come up with this theory because she believed her soul had that week left her body and had been replaced by a new soul. She concluded that this process was some kind of soul ascension and she thought it might be a universal phenomenon because according to her, it was happening to people around us and she was seeing it in her clients.
The reactions from those who read her blog post were divided. Some of the intuitive healers who were trained in the same modality (including our teacher) reacted like me and disagreed with her theory, as they had seen no evidence of such a phenomenon and I guess they could see that such information had the potential to frighten some people.
But other blog readers resonated with it and thought it may be true, as applied to their life experience. And it seems she remains convinced of her theory.
So, who was right?
A few days later, I tuned into my Higher Self and asked who was right. I did not get a clear answer from my Higher Self straight away, but within a few hours I began to receive insights into what was going on.
I was told that my healer friend was right, and so was I. How could this be, I thought?
Isn’t something either true or untrue?
I was told that there is no absolute truth. I was told that ‘truth’ is a very personal, subjective thing. Something that is ‘true’ = a perception or a belief that serves us personally.
My guides then explained this, using the law of attraction to illustrate it. They said:
“You know that your beliefs create your reality and that you can create any reality you want by changing your beliefs. If you focus your attention on something and hold it as a belief, whether you like it or not, you will begin to see evidence of it being true, all around you. Therefore, you must only believe things which feel good to you. Truth is that which feels good to you; that which serves you.”
So, according to my guides:
Truth = something you have focused on, something you decided you want to experience = it shows up in your reality.
Untruth = something you reject, something you don’t want to experience = it doesn’t show up in your reality.
So, that which is true for you is not necessarily true for someone else. Your truth is NOT an absolute thing that you can apply to everything and everyone, as we’re all living in different realities and we all have different perceptions.
Why is this so?
We create our reality according to our beliefs.
A belief that we hold that serves us personally in our reality does not necessarily serve someone else. Everyone is walking different paths and needs to experience different things. Wouldn’t it be a boring world if everyone believed the same things? We would only ever see the same things manifested in the lives of those around us. Everyone would agree! Just because you believe something, and manifest according to it, does not mean it’s universally true.
An example: You may believe that there’s a recession and that it’s bad. You may focus on it and stress about losing your job. As a result, your perception is skewed towards the belief that there is a recession and you see evidence of it everywhere.
Whereas I on the other hand, do not focus on the ‘recession’. Therefore, I have seen no evidence of it in my personal reality. My business is thriving and the only evidence I have of the recession is the people being laid off around me and the people on the TV telling me there’s a recession. But none of these things affect me. I accept that the recession is happening for people around me, and that it’s true for them and for the wider world. But for me, I have seen no evidence of recession in my life. It’s not true for me because results would indicate otherwise.
Someone else is experiencing a recession, but that doesn’t mean I have to experience it too.
So, what is ‘true’ for you does not have to be ‘true’ for someone else. Results also show this. Your results don’t always match someone else’s. What works for you doesn’t necessarily work for someone else, on a really deep level.
How can we know what is true, then?
It’s clear that we can’t discern any absolute truth. There is none. All we can do is discern what is true for us, but we cannot discern what is true for our neighbour or impose our truth on them.
You can discern your own personal truth by asking yourself, how does it feel to me when I believe/think this?
If something feels good to you, it serves you at that time, to believe in it.
If something feels bad to you, it does not serve you at that time.
And don’t expect something that makes you feel good (your truth) to make everyone feel good (and become their truth).
Everyone is on their own path and everyone desires to manifest varying experiences. Therefore, everyone will have differing beliefs about the world and about reality. This is all fine. It is up to you to decide what you want to buy into; what serves you. And it is also your task is to eliminate from your belief system everything that does not make you feel good, which does not serve you to believe.
The question to ask is never ‘what is true in my life?’ because anything can be true if you focus your attention on it. Instead ask yourself ‘what do I want to experience in my life?’ What serves me?
If something makes you feel bad, you can reject it from your reality and label it as untrue, because you do not want to experience it, and that is a good thing. It doesn’t feel good to you and it doesn’t serve you to believe such a thing.
However, if someone else focuses on the same thing, it may feel good to them, not limiting, so they accept it in their reality and decide that they want to create more of it. It’s ‘true’ for them. And that’s fine and all in the Divine order of things.
It CAN be true for them, but untrue for you.
(You can also decide that this bad-feeling thing is true for you, but this will create stress in you and become a ‘limiting belief’ that you may need to drop later on.)
Some of my truths on the concept of Truth:
- There is no such thing as absolute truth.
- Truth is personal and subjective.
- Truth is that which feels good to you.
- Different things feel good to different people, therefore, do not expect anyone to agree on what is ‘true’.
- It is futile to impose your ‘truth’ on anyone.
In this context, ‘I disagree’ becomes ‘I see that this is true for you, but it’s not true for me, because it doesn’t feel good to me.’
What do you feel about all of this? Please leave a comment!
Yes, you have the same soul as last week, as did I
Same soul over many times, constantly learning.
Hi Anna,
I just “happened” upon your website tonight via SP’s forums and have read many of your articles. Your article on star travelers really resonated with me and I will definitely be exploring that further (I can’t believe I’ve never heard of this before).
I found what you’ve written here very insightful. I have to remind myself that truth doesn’t really seem to exist here in an absolute sense. This article isn’t the only thing I’ve read lately stating this and I have had quite a few personal conflicts lately. Maybe I am being told something here!
Thanks for the reminder!
Brendon
Hi Anna, I have had a pretty identical experience to you with this particular situation. I also was told that I received a new soul last month. It did not initially resonate with me but I kept my mind open about it. And, it was interesting to observe that I felt quite saddened by the idea – thinking to myself but I really like my soul – my soul IS me, right? And, my guides give me a similar message as yours – there is no absolute truth – go with what feels best for you and support others in doing the same.
This situation has brought up some interesting thoughts: I understand that I have an individual soul – I am a unique perspective of Source here to enjoy my unique experience. But I also understand that concepts of separation can be a big hindrance – maybe sometimes I see individual souls as too separate – after all we are all a part of the same Source. So, I want to embrace at the same time the level of understanding where my unique soul and perspective exist and the level of understanding where all souls are one with each other and with Source.
Thanks so much for sharing your experience and thoughts with this
Love and light,
Adrianne
I think your friend is only right in the sense that everything changes and we are not the same today as we were yesterday. In a sense we are all always being renewed. This is true of our bodies and our minds.
Quite some time ago, I learned that my truth wasn’t neccesarily anyone else’s truth. I learned that what feels right to me may not for anyone else. I learned to look at what others say and think before accepting or denying it for myself. My gut knows even when I don’t. I haven’t seen this lesson explained anywhere else as nicely as you just did it. Thanks.
Hi Anna –
Is it ironic that I looked at this post and thought, “Man, I wish this WAS true?”
This feels right, but more in a wishful-thinking right, and that I’d be off the planet to believe it (that’s no intended offence – I think I’m off the planet all the time). But, hey, it seems to make sense and I’ll give it a try for a while and see what comes up! It works with the law of attraction, for sure, and /that/ I know I believe in. Why not? I have to try first, though.
As for souls, I always felt like I didn’t really “live” until I was about four years old. I don’t know if this has anything to do with switching souls, or if this is just how I am.
I found it amusing your higher self didn’t give you a clear answer at first – I thought that was something that only mine did.
She often doesn’t tell me things because she knows I don’t want to hear the answer. I think she wants me to learn to trust her and my guides before they’ll give me anything which will require my faith to believe.
Back on the topic of truth – this is comforting for me to read at the moment, as I’m currently on a path which society says will have me doomed for the rest of my life and regretting a decision I made several months ago for as long as I live. To have faith in myself that I will be okay is a big thing for me. I’d like to believe in subjective reality more than I do right now. It makes sense, what you’ve said, though. I’ve seen it said many other times – but you shed a new light on it and said it in a different way that makes me think.
Can’t wait to form my own truths, and apologies for my disjointed rambling,
Zora
I’ve been following this “new soul” issue with great interest. But I don’t understand this idea about truth being subjective.
I don’t know about the U.K., but in the U.S. we define a recession as two consecutive quarters of economic contraction. This has happened, so the U.S. is in a recession. I can decide that the recession doesn’t affect me and I don’t need to pay attention to it, but it’s still happening.
Have we passed the date when your friend said you’d get a new soul? If so, are the two of you in agreement on whether it actually happened?
When you say you have a new soul – that sounds too general to even have proper meaning… I mean we are constantly changing so our soul is growing in vibration.
I mean our higher self might project itself into many bodies and thus we have many holographic copies of our soul in different dimensions possibly… and then you might think because two souls are converging towards the same probable future, the souls actually join together. I’m just speculating so this might not even be true.
The Kybalion talks about Truth as well. “All truths are but half-truths” until they are reconciled by extreme perspectives.
Hello Maria, Brendon, MarkC – thanks for stopping by and commenting
, glad this was of some use to you Brendon.
Hi Adrianne – Thanks for commenting and sharing your thoughts on this. It’s interesting that you got the same message and what you wrote about concepts of separation was hard to get my head around but interesting!
Patricia – “My gut knows even when I don?t” – so true!! I can feel it in my gut if something is true for me, especially in readings – I get an uplifting, good feeling in my gut when I’m getting accurate info and if I ever get anything that’s not quite right or incomplete, I feel it because it feels horrible to me.
Hi Zora – Thanks for your comments.
If society or anyone else says you are doomed because of a decision you made, and it makes you feel awful, drop it and feel better. Do ‘the work’ on it (www.thework.com) to get rid of it and turn it around. Your reality and future is in your hands. Cliched but very real.
Hunter – Of course the recession is happening for some people, but it does not have to affect you if you don’t want it to. That is the whole point of subjective truth.
Your reality is not the same as mine and does not have to be. We will have differing beliefs about lots of things. Of course we shape our entire reality according to what we believe, and the results of it will show in our lives. Just as an example, I may believe that psychic phenomena is real and you may not, so I will see evidence of it everywhere and you won’t.
Unless you believe the recession affects you, it simply cannot. Who taught you that ‘a recession is two consecutive quarters of economic contraction’? The same people who think we’re having a recession and are feeling the consequences of it. That’s their belief and their reality. You don’t have to mix your reality up with everyone else’s if it doesn’t feel good to you to do that.
Just in case this is sounding a little bit crazy, I’m not saying it serves us to drop all beliefs that we have absorbed, like ‘gravity is real’, cause if you jump off a high building, you’ll fall and die (and that’s the evidence that gravity is real), but in terms of beliefs like ‘the recession must be going on for me, because it’s going on for everyone else’, they’re man-made and if you drop them, you’ll see a corresponding change in your reality that can only feel better (unless you like recessions
).
As for your other question, I’m not sure if the date has passed when she said I’d get a new soul, as I didn’t get a set date. My guides say that this ascension ‘soul shift’ is not happening for me, not this week, not in the future.
Yang – I have heard of a distinction being made between ‘soul’ and ‘spirit’ – your spirit is the part of you which may project itself onto many different bodies in parallel dimensions and onto this one, but your soul is the part of your huge spirit, which is being projected here and now.
Good one, Anna.
Did your friend have your standing permission to access your record? If not…pffffft!
Rather disturbing topic for me – not the soul-shifting, but the possiblilty for harm because of wrong information being doled out. Perhaps people should stick to the program for a bit longer before they morph into Edgar Cayce.
Anyway I agree with most of what you say. We live on muiltiple planes, therefore many things can be true simulataneously, relative to our individual perspectives. But, we still share this dimension and need to hold some common ground for practicality’s sake!
Hi Anna, this is a long time discussed topic
When I take actions, I decide what to do measuring my intention on my beliefs, so that what results good take place. Of course if I move my belief I’m moving the meter that measures the intention and what felt good before may result feeling bad. If there is no good I have no means to divide bad and good except for mine’s own. SO. If the earth is not sharing a common good/bad sense and I’m left only with experience, would you try to avoid that a child be abused? You may say yes if it feels good to you, but someone passing by may feel bad about it and leave the child alone.
I don’t know if my point is clear, with a rationale like that we’ll never see world peace, for instance.
Hi Anna, This article resonates as the truth for me! I feel that we are all on unique paths and the truth is subjective for all of us…I just sometimes forget this and I try and put my truth onto someone else. I’ve learnt that doing so is not a great way to nurture friendships. Accepting and respecting the truth of others is true openmindedness. I too experience gut feelings as a barometer of what is right and wrong for me in the moment…along with a quieter knowing and a special guiding voice. Thank you for your article.
Hope it’s not too late for this to be seen –
But how does this work with oneness? If we are all one, wouldn’t there be one, universal truth? How can different things be true for different people, on a soul level, if we’re one?
Awesome article and I can relate to it very much. Often when asked questions of what I believe by my friends I try t explain to them that my truth might not be their truth and that that is okay. However, you explained it so well.
Also I beleive that, and I think it is very normal, that over the course of our lives our truths and what we believe changes…as we grow, learn, and move along our path and as we open up more to the possiblities of reality and what our reality may or may not be. It just that many people are stuck in the thinking that there can only be one truth…but life isn’t black or white and is a rainbow of colors.
And I know about walk-ins because I have had the pleasure of meeting a walk-in and learning first hand from them about what happens and why and what happens post walk-in. If your soul leaves the body and is replaced by a walk-in…that is no longer you although the body is the same. Even down to what the walk-in can and can’t do as opposed to the other soul. So if that had happened to her she would have been like a compeltely different person with even different skills and knowledge and it would have been more than just a little noticable. But even so as I read what your friend had said to you it didn’t not resonate as true to me either and I would have been quite upset by that as well.
Thanks for more really good writing.
Sherry
Sherry?s last blog post..Clairolfaction aka Psychic Smelling
Great and thought provoking article Anna. Thanks! I’m pretty new to this whole idea of Akashic Records. This article leaves me with just one question…are the Akashic Records open to interpretation based on the Reader? I hope that’s not the case. I’d rather the info be cut and dry and factual as far as where your soul has been, what it has experienced, what it’s still due to experience, etc. Can you shed some light on that? Thanks.
Hi Joe – That’s a good question…I’ll be doing an article Q&A on the Akashic Records and will include your question.
Hi Sherry – I’ve never actually come across a real ‘walk-in’ but yeah I imagine the person would be completely changed, that they’d want a different career and different relationships.
Hi Zora – We can be all one, in a spiritual sense, in that we all come from the same source. But here on Earth, we’re like separate extensions of Source, and this serves us on our path of evolution. We can learn from one another and grow by encountering other extensions of source with different points of view and different truths. But in spite of this, I believe there are some fundamental truths underneath it all, such as the idea that Love is all there is, everything is made of source energy. But perhaps those are just my truths, I’m not sure.
You’re saying whatever you think or imagine and believe is true? That’s SCHIZOPHRENIA.
Reality doesn’t need to be believed in. It is real. What’s the point of saying I believe in reality?
When there is no belief, there is only reality. Is this hard to understand?
Thank you Anna, your article has helped me to understand a few of my own questions which have been blocking my here & now life purpose……Love & Light