“You cannot perceive spiritual truth until you feelingly experience it, and many truths are not really felt except in adversity.”  [UB 557:02]

Thought Adjuster: “Let us ponder the above statement.  At first, it is somewhat puzzling, as many of you look at truth from a mere intellectual perspective.  This type of truth ‘makes the day’ of Philosophers—the ‘Lovers of Wisdom’—whose passion is to investigate the truths and principles of being, knowledge, or conduct.

“Spiritual truth has to be ‘felt’ to be perceived.  This takes truth to an experiential level.  Isn’t it the purpose of truth-finding to make it applicable to your life?  What good would it do if it remained stowed away in the invisible domain of the mind?  Taking into account the universal Law of Cause and Effect, truth has to be the element that ‘crosses over’ from the one to the other—serving as the bridge of understanding.

“Why is it then that “many truths are not really felt except in adversity”?  Whenever you experience ‘adverse life circumstances’, you perceive them as ‘undesirable’ turns of events, as they are connected with pain and suffering.  However, isn’t it so that pain never fails to get your attention, as it does not feel good and you will do anything to make it go away?  Such emergency situations make you receptive and resourceful.  They lead you to regret the many times when you lent a deaf ear to the wisdom of your inner guidance or the advice of ‘those who know better’. 

“Indeed, those who know better are those who have already extracted the spiritual truth from their own life experience.  By generously sharing it, they wish for you to bypass these difficult episodes by living according to these tested and proven spiritual truths.  Once you personally experience spiritual truth, it becomes integrated into your being, engraved in your mental hard drive.  By applying it to your actions, it leads you to embody more beauty and more goodness.  This is how you become self-realized.  As you can see, it is not just a mental process.  It is a way of living.”