Imagine that you’re angry. You feel it with all of your being. Every fiber of your being says you want to lash out. This expression of anger is justified in some self-help and New Age circles with, “This is my truth. I’m speaking my truth.”
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Your truth is not something that lives on the surface of your being. Your truth lies quietly at the depth of your being. It is your eternal quest in the name of your own self-unfoldment and psychodynamic health to pursue your truth. Like the pursuit of the silver chalice, you’ll never grab on to your truth, but the eternal quest for it brings you to greater and greater levels of mental health. So I’ve talked about the first response: your gut level knee-jerk reaction.
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Your second response is something that you come to through reflection, pondering, questioning, thinking, waiting, feeling, and perhaps coming back into balance. Then the idea is to come up with, not the second response, but a second response. And not something that you decide, “Oh okay, I looked at this for 15 minutes or 2 days, and now I know my second response.” You found a truth (not the one ultimate truth) that lies deeper than your knee-jerk conditioning.
