To love truth for its own sake means that at some point you give yourself over to the truth. This, however, is not a consequence, not a matter of cause and effect. It’s not that you give yourself over to the truth and then the truth reveals itself. It’s not even that you give yourself up to the truth because you love the truth. Loving the truth is giving oneself up to the truth. To love the truth for its own sake means that in the very instant of loving the truth, your self-centeredness has vanished. This is very profound, yet it can be very, very subtle. It means that in the moment I’m exploring, in the moment I’m investigating, I am in an attitude of giving. I am in a non-self-centered attitude. All of my consciousness, all of my attention, is sacrificed for the truth. Even “sacrificed” isn’t correct—it’s more like, “Whatever needs to happen, I am willing to do it.” Frequently, that doesn’t mean sacrificing anything. It’s more that loving the truth for its own sake means an implicit readiness to let go, to give up the self. To give up the self means, “I am willing to not protect myself against the truth. I am willing to not defend or resist.” Most of the time, giving ourselves up to the truth means giving up our defenses, manipulations, positions, and strategies—all the things we use to shore ourselves up or to continue to preserve ourselves. And because loving the truth arises from a place where we are willing to be selfless, we cannot try to figure out how to be selfless. The self cannot figure out how to give itself up, because in the very act of thinking, the self keeps on preserving itself.

There is a place in us that loves to know the truth, that wants, values, and appreciates the truth. Only inquiry inspired by this love can serve the functions of activation and transformation. If we inquire out of love to know the truth, our inquiry will naturally disclose the truth that we love to know. We all need to inquire into our own hearts to see if there is a place in us that really loves to know the truth, where we love it enough to do whatever we can to inquire, to investigate. This loving to know the truth is nothing but the response of our Being to its own dynamism. The dynamism is revealing something new, and it manifests initially as the Soul’s interest in discovering the truth for its own sake.

Our exploration is not only into the nature of our experience or state, but also into the totality of who we are, including the nature of the part of us that observes or explores. All of this must become an object of study and inquiry. This means that to be objective about a situation, we, as the inquirer, will need to become objective—free from subjective influence. For when we inquireinto what prevents our understanding from being objective, we find that it is the fact that we bring our subjectivity to our experience. The truth arises as the truth, but we do not see it as it is because of our own unclarity, our own positions, prejudices, identifications, limitations, preferences, and goals—the totality of which we call subjectivity. However, if we really love the truth for its own sake, we will want to see it as it is, we will want to behold the objective truth. This will translate into the wish and passion to discern all our subjective positions that are preventing objective perception. So, for instance, I do not just realize, “I’m feeling angry,” but I also observe and discern how I feel in response to seeing my anger. Do I have a judgment about it? Do I believe that it’s okay to be angry or not okay to be angry? What are my opinions and prejudices about anger? I explore everything I bring into the experience of anger. In other words, we always need to be aware of our subjective reaction to our experience in order to see how we interfere with it.

I say loving the truth instead of seeking it, because if you are seeking truth you might seek to avoid feeling pain. You might seek truth for another purpose, which will then make you not see the truth. But if you really love truth, then you will automatically want to see all of it, not for any particular reason but because you like seeing the truth. So loving the truth is not exactly seeking the truth, even though it might include seeking the truth sometimes. Loving the truth is the attitude of the heart. The heart falls in love. It falls in love with the truth, with an aspect of reality. The heart falling in love with the truth is one of the most important realizations, the most important change, that can happen in a human being. The heart really turning toward the truth is the most far-reaching realization because if you really love the truth, you’ll realize everything. However, if you love one particular state, then you might realize that state and not others. The truth is not just one thing. The truth is all that there is, whether or not you know it. Loving the truth does not mean you love the truth because it is going to help you realize everything. That is an ulterior motive. That is not included in loving the truth. You don’t care if it is going to lead you to this or that. You just like it. You can’t help it.

Initially the truth might be a specific insight, some connection we make between various elements in our experience. But as the soul gives herself more to the truth, the truth becomes essential truth, and ultimately the absolute truth—the ultimate nature of everything in all its beauty, magnificence, and splendor. When we finally behold the absolute truth and see its beauty and magnificence, we understand. We recognize it as the source of love. We love it because it’s lovable. We love it because we are loving our true self. We love it because it’s natural to love the truth. Not because it’s correct, ethical conduct, but because in some very deep place in us, the truth is the Beloved. But even in this place, the question of loving the truth for its own sake can get subtle and problematic. When we see the beauty and magnificence of our own Being, we love it—but how do we love it? When you truly love somebody, you want to do things for them. You’re willing to go through discomfort in your life, you’re willing to give your time, your attention, your energy, but not because you’re going to get something from it. You want to give because the heart is overflowing out of love. That’s what love means. It is the same thing with loving the truth. Loving truth for its own sake means that you want the truth to be as deep as possible, as complete as possible. That’s implicit in loving truth. If you love truth for its own sake and you start seeing the truth, and that truth is not complete—there’s still more that you don’t see—the love you have will impel you to go further, to see deeper, to experience more fully.

No matter how you feel about it, at some point you must face the fact that the process of inquiry, of investigation, of understanding your experience, is a heart involvement. It is an affair of the heart that represents the spiritual dimension of your life. It is the lifeline of the soul. This means that regardless of what is happening in your life, there can be a thread of luminosity, sweetness, and intimacy running through it. You can love what is true and life can be a love affair that goes on regardless of what is happening

One particular identification is especially challenged by the love of the truth: our identification with being small, deficient, inadequate, incapable, and not up to the task. This belief in our deficiency can prevent us from opening to the love of truth because this love will expand us in a way that we are afraid we won’t know how to handle. It seems much easier to stay with the status quo and its cozy familiarity. If we allow the love of truth to become powerful, we will be confronted with this identification with inadequacy. The love of truth is a subtle and refined quality in our consciousness. It tends to be hidden behind many veils of emotion, instinct and identification. It may not be easy for you to contact this deep movement of the heart. Yet without the experience of loving truth for its own sake, regardless of the consequences – without the willingness to completely open your heart to the fullness of your own truth – you will not have the energy or the motivation to go beyond your familiar reality.

Truth is such that when you love it, it will tend to own your love. In other words, when you love truth for its own sake and allow that love to deepen and develop, you begin to see that loving anything else takes away from love for the truth. When you love something else besides the truth, there will come a time in the journey of inquiry when you are going to be faced with a choice. More precisely, the more you experience the love for truth, the more you will recognize that this love must become the dominant overwhelming love in your life. It can’t be just one of the loves.

If we inquire into the energy of the optimizing force, we find that it is love. Love is a creative energy that disposes the dynamism to move in an optimizing way. This makes love the fuel of inquiry – and points to a very clear relationship between love and the revelation of truth: when we love the truth for its own sake, we truly love. When our love is selfless and genuine, it is the love of what is real. This shows more specifically why it is the energy for the optimizing, energizing, evolutionary force. Love, by its very nature, is a matter of revelation, of unfoldment. It is a manifestation of Being whose very nature is a matter of opening up and unfolding, like the unfolding of a rose.

As you see, we need to investigate even our love of truth. We need to apply the love of truth to our love of truth and find out what it means to us. We need to find out what love is and what truth is. In the beginning you probably do not know what truth or love is. Who said love and truth are good? You need to find out for yourself. Truth is one of the elements of reality that, like a thread, goes all the way through all of the levels of reality because truth is what is actuality, what is present. If you really want to find out the truth, you can find out everything. So truth becomes the guide. Truth becomes a light that can guide you everywhere. I say loving the truth instead of seeking it, because if you are seeking truth you might seek to avoid feeling pain. You might seek truth for another purpose, which will then make you not see the truth. But if you really love truth, then you will automatically want to see all of it, not for any particular reason but because you like seeing the truth. So loving the truth is not exactly seeking the truth, even though it might include seeking the truth sometimes. Loving the truth is the attitude of the heart. The heart falls in love. It falls in love with the truth, with an aspect of reality. The heart falling in love with the truth is one of the most important realizations, the most important change, that can happen in a human being. The heart really turning toward the truth is the most far-reaching realization because if you really love the truth, you’ll realize everything.

If you love truth for its own sake, the truth will free you. But if you hope the truth will free you, you cannot be free. You must love the truth for its own sake, without hope. Then there is no question of freedom/no freedom, no question of Essence/no Essence, no question of enlightenment/no enlightenment. It's just love of truth, and that's it. Nothing else is there. Anything else will bring discord. Accepting what is, understanding what is there, loving the truth that is happening at every second is the natural state, the state without personality, the state of no mind, is the state of no division.

We can also say that loving truth for its own sake in the process of inquiry and understanding is the way that the heart and mind are united, becoming one – which is the revelation. This is the way to quicken the soul. In inquiry there is interest, excitement, and initiative. It’s as though a light in the heart had been turned on. Thus, the opening of the heart has to do with quickening of the soul.

So we’re not courageous to earn the approval of the superego—our own or anybody else’s. That won’t affect our real sense of value. We’re courageous because we know the value of knowing and living according to the truth. Acting courageously often is scary and painful. But by allowing that fear, that pain, something happens in us. There is a transformation that makes us feel satisfied, even though we might have had a difficult time. As you can see, this satisfaction is personal. It’s not something between you and other people; it’s between you and you. Between you and your own integrity. Between you and your own sense of truth. Loving the truth for its own sake means preferring to be sincere with yourself, preferring to be honest with yourself. Loving the truth means not lying to yourself, not being hypocritical. It means having the courage to penetrate your experience. It means having the courage to see your deficiencies and fears, your lies and delusions. The love of truth for its own sake can be expressed even with mundane issues. Every minute, we interact. Every minute, we conduct ourselves in some way. And we can notice whether the love of truth is present in these moments. Now, it’s also true that we are ignorant. We often don’t know what’s happening or what’s driving us or how to find out the truth. The teaching provides the means for paying attention and seeing what’s real. But we’re the ones who need to do it. We’re the ones who need to practice, to grapple with our life.

The love of truth, which the soul has learned in the course of her inner journey and through which she has invited the assistance of the diamond guidance, comes up against this basic human orientation. The soul recognizes that to continue to love truth selflessly requires a huge shift in her view of life and her orientation in living it. She sees that truth must come before pleasure, and that she must look inward for what she needs. Most human beings are not willing to make this shift, and are not even convinced of its truth or necessity. The conventionally conditioned soul is not only wedded to the orientation of seeking pleasure externally, but this orientation is part of a larger one, which is her allegiance to the world and loyalty to its view. This orientation has its roots in the soul’s very early experience of receiving pleasurable gratification from her mother. This early gratification creates an amazingly deep bond, such that the soul grows up deeply loyal to the mother who satisfied her needs and desires. Every soul with normal ego development grows up deeply, though often unconsciously, loyal to her mothering person, the first love object and object of gratification.

At some point, we recognize the libidinal soul as one of the main barriers to the love of truth. Love of truth is a subtle thing; it is the illumination, the radiance, and the melting sweetness of the heart. The animal soul, however, doesn’t love the truth. Not only that, it doesn’t even recognize love. This soul is dominated by cravings, by animal desires... We need to deal with this level of our soul if we are to liberate our heart, for our heart can truly love only when it is free. The heart exists at the level of the human soul rather than at the level of the animal soul. And unless the instinctual drives in the animal soul are confronted, they will confine – and ultimately control – the human soul and heart.

We want something for its own sake when we truly love it. There’s no other way to want something for its own sake. Conversely, when we appreciate something for its own sake, we call that love. So loving truth for its own sake brings the heart to a devotional attitude, an attitude of selfless affection and dedication. It is the heart’s openness, the heartfelt appreciation and longing, the gravitational pull that makes us want to see the truth, to be closer to the truth, to be intimate with it. The heart’s love of the truth is not a thought or an idea. It is not a matter of trying to live according to an ideal. It’s not a motive that comes from the mind. It is an impulse from the depth of the soul, a deeply felt motive from the heart. It is not that we think and deliberate and decide that truth is good for us, so we end up wanting it. Love of the truth is not utilitarian. The truth often ends up being utilitarian, but that is not what inspires the right attitude for the journey. The correct attitude is that of a lover who wants to be close to the beloved.

The love for truth, which reverses the attitude of defense, leads directly to the truth of experience, the truth that was defended against. And, as we already know, it is this truth that is the nutrient for the development of the Personal Essence. This indicates that when the heart loves truth it is approaching the specific nutrition needed for the essential person. So we can say, although it is only a conceptualization, that the heart loves the Personal Essence and its development.

As we look into the nature of how love functions on the different paths to realization, we see that in the more devotional types of spiritual practice, at some point the heart explicitly becomes an ecstatic expression of the union with God, or the Beloved. This ecstasy becomes erotic at times, as in the case of some Christian and Hindu mystics. The spiritual paths of mind and knowledge do not tend to bring in this type of erotic and juicy feel; knowledge and its precision open our experience to new realms, but the love is implicit more than explicit. Similarly, when love is present in a devotional and respectful form, it rarely expresses itself as erotic love. In the way we usually work, we use the mind’s discriminating capacity, the heart’s loving nature, and the body’s precious vehicle of life to go beyond all of these without leaving any of them behind. We do not emphasize one over the other, nor does deeper refinement through our work mean that we transcend these centers of our being; we simply see the natural potential hidden within them all. In the course of our spiritual maturation, each becomes more capable and more fully realized, not less. Thus we use the mind to go beyond the mind’s limitations; we use the capacity of discrimination to reveal subtler levels of mind. But here, the heart’s innate love for beauty and truth is a guiding principle: The marriage of heart and mind is a must on this spiritual journey, for it is the segmentation of our experience that keeps them limited and restricted to conventional reality. The love of truth allows the mind to open to new possibilities that mental logic alone cannot reveal or consider entering. And the heart can be clarified of its historical and emotional content through the mind’s clarity and precision, making available the energy liberated from the trapped structures of our personal history, so it can nurture and enliven our evolving spiritual development. This is the hidden tantra within the work of this path.

Sincerity is an attitude or a capacity of the heart that orients us toward recognizing the truth and loving the truth for its own sake. But loving the truth for its own sake does not simply mean feeling love for the truth. Although that is part of it, feeling love for the truth will not actualize a real life. To love the truth for its own sake means also to live according to the truth. If we really love the truth, we gladly live according to the truth regardless of how difficult the situation might get. We actively choose truth as our priority, not in terms of what we experience but in terms of what we do. Our love of the truth determines how we interact with people, how we run our life, how we conduct ourselves, how we maintain our living environment. So doing the work is a serious matter. It’s not for tourists who want small tastes of everything, who want to learn a little something here, a little something there, and then go off and get married and have kids and forget about the work. If that’s what you want, the work will make your life miserable. If you come to the work because you’re looking for a wife, you’re in the wrong place. If you come to the work because you want a better job, you’re in for trouble. The work is not contrary to those things, but it will make our life satisfying only if we value the truth above those things, only if we value the principles of the work.

On deeper levels of realization, as on the boundless levels of Being, where everything is a manifestation of true nature, loving the truth becomes even more subtle. Here we feel we love everything, but that doesn’t mean that we love crimes and diseases and so on. We are aware of the reality that pervades everything and that reality is what we love. At the level of the boundless dimensions, we do not love an individual form but rather the immaculate nature of the wholeness. As we go deeper into our journey of discovering truth, we will see the meaning of truth change. At the beginning, truth is finding out about relative phenomena and space-time events: our emotions, our feelings, the world, conflicts, and relationships. But that is only one kind of truth, where the love is not of these elements but of the process of revelation of the truth, for this revelation is the essential truth penetrating our ordinary experience. In the next stage, essence becomes the truth. The various essential states are truth, various manifestations of truth. Here, we love both the process and what we discover. However, it is tricky to love the essence itself, because this can lead to the reification of essence and to the attachment to experiencing it, which is antithetical to loving the truth for its own sake. In the following stage, we go beyond essential aspects to something that is beyond essence and personality, the truth that is the essential ground, transcendent true nature. As you see, we need to investigate even our love of truth. We need to apply the love of truth to our love of truth and find out what it means to us. We need to find out what love is and what truth is. In the beginning you probably do not know what truth or love is. Who said love and truth are good? You need to find out for yourself. Truth is one of the elements of reality that, like a thread, goes all the way through all of the levels of reality because truth is what is actuality, what is present. If you really want to find out the truth, you can find out everything. So truth becomes the guide. Truth becomes a light that can guide you everywhere.