There is a teaching within Christianity that the “truth will set us free.” I find this teaching profound for it suggests that a key characteristic of God’s truth is freedom. If a truth does not lead a person to freedom, then clearly this truth is not a truth from God. Rather, this truth is fake news, false good news. In this blog, I want to explore what Divine Truth is and how feeding on this truth leads us to greater freedom and more abundant living. This teaching “the truth will set us free” comes from the Gospel of John in the Bible. This gospel, written at least 2 decades later than the other three gospels, describes a very different view of Jesus. Instead of encouraging people to follow Jesus or believe in Jesus, John’s gospel stresses the importance of developing an intimate relationship with the mystical Jesus. For example, John’s gospel’s Jesus teaches, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15: 5). Jesus’ words “the truth will see you free” come from a similar context. John has Jesus teaching his followers, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” ( John 8:31-32). But what is this Divine Truth that sets us free? Divine Truth and Knowledge One common understanding of this freeing truth is that it is knowledge. As we learn this knowledge and put it into practice, we believe this knowledge can set us free. Within the Christian Church, this knowledge is often seen as knowledge about God, Jesus, and God’s Holy Spirit. This is why, being raised in the United Church, I memorized Bible verses and many small books of catechism. By people gaining this basic Christian knowledge, the church believed that this knowledge provided the basis to discovering a life of freedom. In the more conservative Christian tradition, this life-giving knowledge is often seen as believing that Jesus was crucified on the cross for our sins. If we believe in Jesus dying for our sins, this tradition believes that this will lead us to experiencing freedom from the guilt of our sin. Within the Old Testament and the Jewish tradition, this knowledge is tied to the Jewish law often connected to the Ten Commandments. By people becoming knowledgeable about the Jewish law and following it, this led people to greater freedom. It turns out that within the counselling profession, where I spend most of my professional time, knowledge is often seen as key. By helping our clients gain key insights about their presenting problem, we often believe that this knowledge is the truth that our clients need to be set free of their issues. But there is a problem to seeing this Divine Truth as knowledge. Rarely does this knowledge alone lead people to a life of greater freedom. It is interesting to note that the Bible actually describes this problem with knowledge. The Bible describes how knowledge and the law can teach us about what is good and what is sinful, but it cannot save or heal us (Rom 3:20; Rom 7:7). And this is very true in the counselling office. As counsellors become more knowledgeable about the counselling process through training and experience, we see more and more clearly the issues our clients are wrestling with. It is tempting to share this knowledge with our clients, and I have been guilty of doing this too, but that knowledge often only helps our clients see more clearly the issues they are living with. That knowledge reveals the problems within our client’s lives, just as religious law and theology exposes sinful behavior and thoughts, but that knowledge rarely alone leads to significant healing. What happens instead is, that with this knowledge, a part of us tries to make changes in our life to fix the problem. But as Apostle Paul describes perfectly (Rom 7: 14-23), when we attempt to make these corrective moves, we find another law at work within our soul. While there is a part within us that seeks to work at transformation, there is another part within us that resists this change and is often stronger. The end result is that we find ourselves in a stuck position unable to change. We echo the words of Apostle Paul, “what a wretched person I am.” The inner conflict that Apostle Paul describes so clearly is understood as a polarization within Internal Family System, a psychospiritual framework that I used in my counselling practice and teaching. There is a protector part within us, often an Ideal Self Protector, whose goal is to change our behaviors, thoughts, and feelings so they align more perfectly with what we believe they should be, the image of our ideal self. However, as soon as the Ideal Self Protector tries to manage our behaviors, thoughts, and feelings, we become aware of another protector part, a Fallen Self Protector, that part of us that wants to do the fallen behavior that we are trying to stop. This part is called a protector within IFS because this Fallen Self Protector is often a necessary coping pattern to keep us from feeling the anxiety, fear, anger, pain, or other negative emotions from past trauma or attachment wounds within our soul. Seen in this way, the Fallen Protector Protector is no longer seen as the problem for it is providing an important survival role to the client's internal system. Instead, the problem is the polarization caused by both parts, the Ideal Self Protector and Fallen Self Protector, being in total conflict, one resisting the other, and yet both are doing important protective functions within our soul/life. No wonder, we often feel stuck and in despair. From this discussion, It is apparent that knowledge is important but it is not the Divine Truth that sets people freed. This Divine Truth refers to something else. Divine Truth and Heart/Soul One way of working at this difference between law/knowledge and Divine Truth is noticing the connection between law and love found within the Bible. Jesus taught that the two greatest commandments are the love commandments, to love God with all your mind, heart, strength, and soul, and to love others as you love yourself. And then we read, “when you love in this way, you fulfill the law” (Matt 22:36-40). Apostle Paul comes to a similar conclusion (Rom 13: 8-10). He writes, ‘Owe no one anything, except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; you shall not murder; you shall not steal; you shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.’ I find it interesting how law/knowledge and love are brought together in Christianity. Law/knowledge is held within the mind, the head centre of the human soul. The mind is where we do our thinking and holds all the knowledge we have learned throughout our life. The mind is the home of our mental truth, which is what knowledge is. Knowledge always arises when our mind thinks about an issue with a goal of trying to fix it or change it or understand it. Our mind draws upon knowledge it has learned through education, TV, research on the internet, and past experience. In contrast, Jesus notes that not only can we love with all our mind but we can also love with all our heart, strength or gut, with our whole soul. How often have you considered truth arising from your heart or other aspects of your soul like your gut or body rather than only your mind? While our mind is home of mental truth, our heart, body, and soul are home to the deeper dynamics of truth, what I am calling Divine Truth. When our mind is engaging with Divine Truth, our mind is not thinking about an issue or problem or topic. Rather, our mind notices, in the present moment, the experience in our heart or body and finds language to capture the dynamics and insights it is noticing within our experience. This is Divine Truth arising. I remember my Diamond Approach teacher making a comment about Israel/Palestine that caught me and most of my fellow students off guard. He shared something like “we don’t need any law to tell us that what is happening in Israel/Palestine is wrong. Our hearts already know it is wrong.” My teacher’s insight helped me realize that laws are only needed if people are not in touch with their hearts that tells them what is true, what feels right or feels wrong. Laws are necessary when, we, as people, lose touch with the subtle dynamics of our hearts due to emotional numbing, avoidance, addictions, conflicting desires, and other emotional Protector parts, and live primarily from the thoughts of our heads. When this occurs, we need the outside world, through laws and knowledge, to tell us what is good and evil, what is right or wrong. We need laws/knowledge in our secular world to tells us what is wrong, just like religious law/theology informs us what is sinful, when we don’t have access to the dynamics of our heart and soul. However, when we do develop sensitivity to the subtle movements of our soul, including the dynamics of our mind, heart, gut, body and soul, we become aware of the manifestations of the Spirit of Truth. Divine Truth and the Spirit of Truth So far, we have seen that Divine Truth does not arise through the mental process of us thinking about an issue, question, or problem. Mental knowledge can be helpful in understanding the reasons why our problem or issue exists, but in most cases, it does not provide the doorway to freedom. In contrast, we have learned that Divine Truth emerges from a place of awareness, when our mind is watching, noticing, and describing our experience that is unfolding in our heart, body and soul. It is important to realize that once we receive Divine Truth and the healing shifts that arise from that truth, this insight eventually becomes past experience. Divine Truth eventually becomes mental knowledge, knowledge gained from past experience. This is a key teaching from the Diamond Approach. This transformation from Divine truth to mental knowledge explains why clients get excited at first by how IFS helps them understand the polarizations between their Protector parts in their inner world. At first, as I work with clients with IFS, my clients understand for the first time the inner conflict between their Ideal Self Protector and their Fallen Self Protector. This insight arises due the dynamics of Divine Truth and causes them to experience much grace toward themselves and their struggle. However, as soon as this Divine Truth becomes mental knowledge, knowledge we think about rather than truth that emerges in the present moment, Divine Grace disappears. They soon start believing that since this problem is so understandable now that it can be easily fixed. In believing this, my client often falls back into the inner conflict and soon becomes disillusioned. This tells us that there is another dimension to Divine Truth that we need to understand that finally brings about the freedom we are looking for. Let me return to the bible verse that teaches that Divine Truth will sent us free: “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” ( John 8:31-32). What does it means to “abide in my word”? John’s gospel actually provides the answer to this question. Later in the gospel, John has Jesus teach, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come” (John 16:12-13). I want to suggest that this Spirit of Truth is what Jesus is talking about when he instructs his followers to “abide in my word.” When we abide in this spiritual place of Divine Truth, we will sense truth being revealed to us, and this truth will set us free. This Divine Truth or Spirit of Truth is not just something described in the gospel of John. It turns out that the psychospiritual frameworks of the Diamond Approach and the Internal Family System both have found this Divine dynamic within their exploration of human experience. Within the Diamond Approach, it teaches that “we can know what is true and what is not true in our experience—because inherent in our soul is a quality that is just Truth. Not a particular truth, but the presence of consciousness that is experienced as the presence of Truth” (Spacecruiser Inquiry, pg. 351). When we experience this Divine Truth, the Diamond Approach highlights that this is the actual presence of spirit, which is our true being (Diamond Heart Book Five, pg. 31). The Diamond Approach also stresses that “it’s important that we don’t conceptualize what the truth is; we don’t determine what this reality is that we are devoted to. That’s why we simply say it’s the truth and then let the truth reveal itself, whatever it happens to be, instead of saying from the beginning, “It’s God,” or “It’s Brahman,” or whatever religious concept you might choose. We can just leave it as the sacred, as divinity, as purity, as reality, and still be devoted to it in a personal way” (Nondual Love: Awakening to the Loving Nature of Reality, pg. 150). Through a Diamond Approach lens, when we learn to abide more and more in this place of Being, Spirit, and Truth, we are abiding in the Spirit of Truth as described in the gospel of John. In terms of Internal Family System, the experience of Self that clients discover, beyond their various Protector parts and Exile parts, echo of the Spirit of Truth described by the Gospel of John. Normally, when clients come into counselling sessions, their sense of Self is blended with their Protector parts. They are either merged with their Ideal Self Protector which causes them to strive to manage their behaviors, feelings and thoughts so they align with their ideal image of self. Or they are merged with their Fallen Self Protector, who resists being managed, and causes the client to do, or feel, or think thoughts that the clients believe are sinful and wrong. However, when clients are able to see these two Protector parts and understand how they function to protect them, they begin to unblend from these parts. When this happens, they become aware of another aspect of themselves, an experience of Self that is neither their Ideal Self Protector or their Fallen Self Protector. IFS simply calls this dynamic at the ground of our soul as Self which is experienced similarly to how Divine Truth is experienced…as the actual presence of spirit and true being within the Diamond Approach. As clients learn to abide in this Self or Spirit of Truth dynamic, they discover that this Self can provide everything that their soul needs to heal from the trauma and attachment wounds of their past. This Self provides compassion to the parts of our soul that carries pain. This Self provides truth to the parts of our soul that believe unhelpful lies. This Self provides strength to the parts of our soul that struggles with weakness. This Self is the doorway to access whatever spiritual dynamic is needed to bring healing to the struggles of our soul. When we learn to abide with our presence of Self, unblended from all our Protector and Exile parts, we “will know the truth, and the truth will set us free.” When we see Divine Truth through the lens of IFS and the Diamond Approach, it brings new meaning to words of Apostle Paul found in Romans 7. Apostle Paul writes, “ I find when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched person that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” Apostle Paul’s answers this question by proclaiming, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” But what does that mean? How does this truth of “Jesus Christ” become a truth that brings freedom to people trapped by this profound and powerful inner conflict that everyone experiences in life? If you read Romans 8, you will discover that Apostle Paul is not talking about believing in the human Jesus Christ that lived on earth 2000 years ago. He instead is describing the dynamic of Christ, what is sometimes called the indwelling Christ, a dynamic that I believe is found at the ground of every human soul. I believe this Christ dynamic is identical to the dynamic of Self that IFS uses to help people experience healing from their psychological struggles.
When we learn to abide in the Christ/Truth, using Apostle Paul’s and Apostle John’s language, or to abide in Self, using the IFS’s framework, we will know the truth, and the truth will set us free. Thanks be to God. Gord Alton MDiv RP CASC Supervisor-Educator
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