The perception of reality—which is more objective than the perception of separateness—is the perception of oneness: the direct knowledge that there is only one, one beingness, one existence, indivisible, eternal. If we do not see that, if we do not experience that, if we do not live according to that, then we are still believing certain lies. There are things we do not see about reality. There are illusions in our individual minds that we haven’t penetrated yet. So the goal of someone who is sincerely doing inner work is oneness, or unity, which means that it is not just for you. It is everyone and everything, and it is for everyone and everything. The nature of this oneness is absolute goodness. It is the source of all love, compassion, color, beauty, peace—all inner richness and fulfillment. The oneness is the source of all the Essence that you know, all the goodness, all the beauty you’ve experienced in your life. In fact, it is the source of everything. It also is everything. So to believe that you are an individual little thing, and you are going to get your share of life, of reality, is to isolate yourself from this rich, immense reality, and to make yourself poor, small, and insignificant.

So let’s see more about truth, lies, compassion, and the relationships between them. I think we know more about lies than anything else. Everyone’s an expert at lying to himself and others. We’ve been doing it for years and years. It’s important to see the attitude we usually hold, which is that truth is our enemy. That’s why there are such things as avoidance, repression, and resistance. If we didn’t think truth was our enemy, we wouldn’t resist and repress our emotions; we wouldn’t try to avoid seeing the truth. But usually we aren’t aware of the fact that we reject the truth and fight it. If you can see that you resist truth, already one layer of the lie is removed.

This brings us to the question “What is truth?” Let’s begin, again, with the ordinary sense of truth, the one we understand at the beginning of our Work. Usually we see truth as a characteristic of a statement or a perception. We say, “This statement is true,” or “This statement is not true,” or “This perception is true,” or “This perception is not true.” This is the ordinary understanding of truth. When we work on our unconscious, finding the truth means finding out what is actually there, discovering our actual beliefs, our unconscious motivations and conflicts. First we see the truth of our defenses, the lies we believe in. We see that they exist, and we begin to identify them. Through observing our lies, we can see the deficiencies we feel underneath the lies. We discover how often we consciously believe the opposite of our unconscious beliefs and feelings. We unconsciously feel we are weak, and so we create a lie in the form of a belief that we are strong. Because we may even believe that we feel strong, it will be difficult to uncover the feeling of weakness. It is important that compassion be present for that to happen.

This experience of awakening operates on two dimensions simultaneously: the psychological and the phenomenological. Psychologically, to be awake means you are literally awake—like having awakened from long sleep, or from illusions, from dreams, from all the sufferings of ignorance. This is the psychological awakening: Now you see the truth and wake up from the lies and the ignorance that you have been living in. It also means you wake up to your true nature: You now see what and who you are, instead of what you thought you were. The second sense of awakening is phenomenological. It is the sense of being awake, clear, and bright, as if you just woke up. Suddenly your head is above the clouds, and you start seeing. So this awakening is not only a matter of awakening to some truth; it is a particular state of Being. It is being awake —you actually and literally experience yourself as a bright and brilliant presence. You have not only awakened, but you are the awakeness; you are the awake and brilliant presence.