We can gratify ourselves with truth.

Edification is increasing your capacity to be good, both for yourself and those in your circles of stewardship, by implementing truth throughout one’s continuums of being. Of all the truth that exists, it’s not all equal when it comes to our unique position and implementing particular truths is going to be more/less advantageous than others. There’s plenty of things that are true that if we focus on ‘adding them to our being’, it wouldn’t help us either more consistently do good, or do more good, and therefore wouldn’t help increase our capacity to be good. We need to focus on the truths that we have the greatest need to implement, to produce the most benefit.

So there remains truths that wouldn’t help us to focus on, despite how true they are. Furthermore, there are truths that we shouldn’t focus on, because doing so would be less advantageous or even disadvantageous for us. As gratification is filterless and edification requires intentionally filtering, despite being an inherently good thing, truth also needs to be filtered, when we’re aiming to edify.

Now all of this is said in the context of somebody trying to be good. There remains plenty of situations however, where due to offense, anger, confusion, greed or countless other reasons, we’re actually not trying to be good, but have some other primary motive. Filtering truth in these circumstances is arguably even more important, as in such states we can be so ‘hell-bent’ on producing our desired end that we’re willing to use and respond to even in the good, in gratifying ones. Yes, we can and often do, gratify ourselves with truth. This is why we can give an angry person the very thing they ask for, and they remain unsatisfied. Perhaps they’ve asked for something bad, perhaps they’ve asked for something good, either way, once they get it they remain hungry, angry, bitter, incomplete. 

We need to find the right balance between applying new truths for their enabling function and appreciating that we are capable of adding disabling truths to our beings, when insufficiently prepared, or poorly prioritised. There are plenty of irrelevant and unhelpful truths that just serve as distractions or unnecessary baggage. When we leave the house in the morning, it’s rare that we take the entirety of our possessions with us, because only a small handful of those things is going to be helpful throughout the day. If we try to take it all we’ll simply incapacitate ourselves. We can’t use it all at once, we don’t have a reason to use it all at once, and therefore, we shouldn’t carry it all at once. The beauty of our bodies being the home of our truths is, wherever we are we can instantly ‘bring out’ whatever truths we are required to focus on, at any given point in time, and leave the rest within us, to be utilised or worked on at more appropriate times. Remembering that the more we focus on a truth, the more we can end up implementing them into the many layers of our being, as such sometimes there are truths that we need to set aside until focussing on them is going to be helpful for us, and not disabling. Sometimes it’s disabling because it’s not true, sometimes it’s just because we’re unprepared for it, either way, let it be a focal point to the extent it’s more helpful to be so than other things.

It might be true that I suck at something. Perhaps I’m particularly bad at some one particular thing. In that context, it’s true, I suck. However, if we continually focus on that point, the degree to which we give the truth ‘real estate’ in our mind/focus/life, might not be ‘true’. Perhaps it’s true that we’re awesome 99% of the time and we suck 1% of the time. Both parts, separately true, but if we spend more of our energy focused on the 1%, in a very real way, we’re lying to ourselves. We can gratify ourselves with truth by overvaluing or over-prioritising it.