Open-Mindedness (poem)

OPEN-MINDEDNESS, by Nguyen Tuan Anh

We tend to think that being open-minded is about being open to the possibility that something we disbelieve is true.


That is only half of the picture; being open-minded also means being open to the possibility that something we believe is false.



The Truth is that we tend to believe what we want to believe. And as long as we merely want to believe something to be the Truth,
we will never know the Truth.



You can choose to believe the lover who left you to have left because you were too good for her. But it is just a belief;
the Truth might be that you were not good enough for her.
And because it might hurt you to ask, and that she might hurt you in telling you the Truth, you will never know the Truth.



Yet it is an assumption that you will be hurt -
an assumption that the Truth will not set you free,
 when your false belief keeps you prisoner from reality.



When we speak of seeking spiritual Truth, it is not about a vague unseen mystical concept that explains everything. It is about discovering aspects of reality in everyday life, such that one lives in greater and greater light of clarity, such that one becomes more and more down to earth in a non-mystical way.


The day we are so down to earth that we are rooted in the here and now, is the day we awaken to all Truths that already lie naked before us, another name for which, is the Truth.