Explorations of Personal Truth: Untying the Knots

Kerry Jehanne-Guadalupe

My beloved husband, Krishna, once had a dream about me in which three questions were posed: What are you afraid of? What are you most attached to? What are you willing to live for? I was immediately intrigued and felt called to sit with these questions rather than answer them quickly. Over several weeks, as I moved beyond surface-level responses and listened more deeply, a single answer emerged from within me—one that applied to all three questions: truth.

I am afraid of speaking my truth.

I am most attached to knowing the truth.

I am willing to live for the truth.

Speaking my truth  

When I was a child, classmates made fun of the speech impediment I had while growing up. I wasn’t bullied because I had a speech impediment. To say I was bullied because of my speech impediment puts the cause of the bullying on me. I was never the cause of other people’s cruelty; I was not the reason they became bullies. Yet, I did not understand this as a child. I believed I was the cause, I was the problem, and that something in me provoked meanness in others. Consequently, the fears I had to sort through concerning speaking my truth related to being verbally attacked, followed by being outright rejected and shunned.

I emerged from childhood as a passive participant in my own life. Often, I withheld my truth—even something as simple as expressing my needs, opinions, or preferences—out of fear of being emotionally dismantled by the words of others. In moments when I stayed silent, I experienced a painful duality: the temporary relief of feeling protected from perceived or real threats, alongside the quiet devastation of self-betrayal. I avoided external conflict by cultivating profound internal struggle. Becoming inauthentic in order to be accepted came at a steep cost, including a crisis of self.

For a time, this strategy seemed to work. Self-betrayal felt more tolerable than the potential consequences of being verbally torn down. Eventually, however, the weight of the internal conflict became unbearable. I reached a point where I could no longer live in fear of rejection by continuing to keep myself hidden behind a perceived sense of safety.

As I began to find my voice, I was emerging as a truth-teller, though I did not yet have language for that role. A truth-teller within a family or community is often the one who says, "Hey, there is some weird, toxic, funky stuff going on here that we should look at." What I came to understand is that not everyone wants to become aware of unhealthy patterns.

Speaking my truth carried a steep learning curve. I moved from being largely passive to, at times, pissing people off—not because I was aggressive in my communication, but because even the slightest reflection of what I was noticing challenged what they believed should not be spoken.

Although it wasn’t often that I provoked strong reactions, when I did, the responses were sometimes terrifyingly explosive. Such encounters were frightening and could shake me to my core. Over time, I realized that I needed to tend to the unresolved terror I carried from years of childhood bullying, as harsh reactions in the present activated those deep, unhealed wounds.

Family members were not the only ones who reacted strongly to my truth and perspectives. Many years ago, I deeply agitated much of the staff I supervised while serving as the director of an education program. When I was first hired, I remember walking the premises and telling the executive director, “This place feels like home.” I had no idea then that this sense of familiarity was a foreshadowing—that the environment would come to mirror the very dynamics of the home in which I was raised.

In my role as director, my intention was simply to bring awareness to patterns and dynamics that were detrimental to the program. The staff, however, did not want those dynamics examined. They wanted me to locate myself within them—to manage and maintain them—rather than question or dismantle them. They wanted a director of the dysfunction, not a dismantler. Only in retrospect did I recognize that I was once again occupying the role of truth-teller, just as I had within my family.

I now recognize that I step into the role of truth-teller from time to time and have gained a deeper understanding of the relational patterns that often accompany it. More recently, I encountered a man who presented himself as a shaman but was, in truth, engaging in deeply harmful behavior. When I began to see through the façade, I sensed that speaking openly about what I had observed and warning others would likely invite attempts to undermine my credibility or portray me in a negative light. As it turned out, that is what occurred.

When harmful behavior is named, the person being confronted may respond by turning against the one who speaks up, attempting to cast doubt on their character or intentions within the community. Narratives can be reversed, with the person being questioned positioning themselves as misunderstood or a victim. There is something deeply liberating in recognizing this relational pattern; I am no longer blindsided as I was earlier in my life, when others’ explosive reactions would overwhelm me. I have learned—and continue to learn—how to claim my voice and stand my ground while honoring my growth and remaining rooted in my truth.

I am not the cause of another person’s cruelty, though I have learned to anticipate it when I choose to speak my truth within highly dysfunctional environments—whether in families, workplaces, or even retreat centers. It took me many rounds in the truth-telling ring, many rounds of being flattened, to even realize that I was occasionally embodying the truth-teller archetype. If I enter the truth-telling ring with someone who does not want a truth exposed, they will likely throw some verbal punches and make grand attempts to defame my character.

Over time, I have learned to fortify myself in my truth and to discern which words I allow to enter my heart. Earlier in my life, I absorbed others’ reactions and perceptions as if they defined me, allowing their words and behaviors to dismantle my sense of self. Now, while such encounters can still be painful, they no longer have the power to destroy me. Remaining anchored in my truth has become the center I hold when others push from the edges—a quiet strength that keeps me oriented amid turbulence.

Self-determining who I am has been essential so that no inner void is left where others’ perceptions can take root. This practice extends beyond moments when I find myself in the role of truth-teller; it is foundational to my everyday life. Part of allowing my truth to emerge has been the subsequent slide down the bell curve of “socially normal” into an outlier position. In this outlier position, I have had to self-determine what this means.

For example, in my work, I function as a channel of light language, a role that inevitably invites a wide range of perceptions. Some responses are benevolent; others are far from kind. Remaining anchored in my truth allows me to release judgments from those who unreservedly believe that people who function as channels are doing the work of the devil. It still feels miraculous that I can stand so firmly in my knowing of who I am and no longer be shaken by such perceptions.

In a moment of aligning with my truth, I found the courage to write a letter to my family, sharing what I do for a living and naming my fear of being disowned. I bared my soul, and most of them did not respond—a silence that quietly confirmed my sense of rejection. My human need for acceptance, approval, and the safety that comes from belonging has not always aligned with my soul’s deeper call. In the end, I chose to walk through the immense pain of losing people in my life rather than lose myself, as I can no longer trade my authenticity to blend in or be accepted.

Diverging from conformity and establishing a sense of safety on the outskirts of normality has come hand-in-hand with learning to feel safe in conflict, as well as feeling safe in being unloved, unwelcome, or even abandoned. It is one thing for me to have different values, perspectives, and ways of living; feeling secure in those differences is essential to me. If I am different without self-assurance, without being content and comfortable within myself, I am not free; I am tethered to fear, insecurities, and my desire to be accepted. My need for acceptance and approval diminished as my sense of self increased. I stopped fearing that people would leave me because I broke the habit of abandoning myself so others would not abandon me.

I came to realize that safety is not found in playing small but in aligning with my truth. I feel deeply safe when I am nestled within that alignment. This realization extends even to the simplest choices, such as the words I use. For many years, I intuitively adjusted my language for the Divine based on what I sensed would be most acceptable to others. I altered my vocabulary to align with other people’s frameworks, largely in an effort to avoid rejection, as the word God carries vastly different meanings and emotional weight for different people. Now, I no longer worry about people tuning me out or judging me because I use the word God. The fact that I no longer adjust my language—or my truth—to be heard or to avoid judgment is profoundly significant to me. As my truth is expressed, it will land within the context of each person’s life as it will, and I have grown comfortable with that reality.

As I have grown older, I have been learning to use my voice in ways that honor my nature and allow me to live according to my own rhythms. At my core, I am drawn to joy, gentleness, and connection, and I am sensitive—almost allergic—to conflict and drama. Staying true to myself has meant learning to speak and assert myself in ways that keep me aligned with my inner truth, including using my voice to gently withdraw from interactions that are not nourishing to my heart.

Speaking my truth has been a profound journey. In grade school, because of my speech impediment, I avoided speaking whenever possible; I could move through an entire day without saying a word to anyone. I was physically present, yet voiceless—living in isolation while surrounded by people. Today, I belt out light language, and I have grown into using my voice to speak my truth. I even wrote a book, The Devil’s Yoga: A Woman’s Journey from Entrapment to Freedom, which chronicles the horrific experience I endured with a false shaman who was, in truth, a sexual predator. That I was able to publish this book after growing up with so little access to my voice still feels nothing short of a miracle.

I am most attached to knowing the truth.

When I reflected on the questions from Krishna’s dream, I was surprised to discover that all three yielded the same answer. I had expected three distinct responses. I was even more taken aback to realize that what I was most attached to was something inherently life-affirming: truth. I had assumed the second question would point to something I feared releasing or something my ego clung to.

Becoming aware of my attachment to truth challenged my assumptions about attachment itself. I began to see that attachment is not always constricting; it can also cultivate determination, courage, and even liberation. In recognizing this, I also became aware of the cultural conditioning I had internalized—the belief that being attached to anything is inherently limiting.

Though I would love to know the ultimate truth of the universe and the nature of reality, I recognize that such knowing may not be fully accessible to me while my spirit is incarnated in human form. What feels accessible, however, is an essential truth about who I am—one that resides within me—and I continue to deepen my access to that inner knowing.

What is honest to my essence, to my most intrinsic nature, forms the foundation of my truth. My truth is rooted not in my mind or in culture, but in my essence. Ultimately, I wish to explore this life while being fully and uniquely Kerry, allowing my essence—the holder of my truth—to be expressed through my personality.

Being attached to knowing my truth has required venturing into the confines of my own mind. Examining my psyche—the good, the wonky, and the imprisoning—has involved not only recognizing how I have been shaped by external influences such as media, education, religion, mainstream culture, and countercultures, but also uncovering the ways I have internally tethered myself through belief.

I have been an expert knot-tyer.

My wanderings into the cul-de-sacs of my psyche and its internal prisons revealed that I had tethered myself twice over. I not only constrained myself at the level of personality through negative beliefs that kept me small and confined, but I also constructed a psychological prison that locked away my essence. My knot-tying skills took on new meaning in the phrase losing oneself in thought.

I lost myself at the personality level—who I could fully be as Kerry—amid the relentless bombardment of negative thoughts, and I also lost contact with my essence. In a very real way, I had lost myself in thought.

I have been mind-locked by negative thoughts and heart-locked by destructive emotions, which together kept me soul-locked. Living—though surviving feels more accurate—without any felt connection to my essence was a form of madness. All I had access to were my thoughts, most of them negative and relentless, and my emotions, which churned in a precarious mix of fear, resentment, and rage. I grew up with a traumatized mind aligned with my wounding rather than my essence—a mind that, at two different earlier points in my life, convinced me that ending my life was the only way out.

After many decades of depression that began in early childhood, my brain developed a neurobiology shaped by that experience, profoundly influencing how I thought and the conclusions I drew about myself. Many of those conclusions hardened into beliefs; my beliefs formed notions of truth, and those notions of truth gave rise to deeply distorted perceptions of who I was. Although these perceptions were often far from accurate, I trusted them implicitly. I believed the loud, self-deprecating thoughts rooted in self-loathing, as well as the quieter, more insidious narratives that ran beneath the surface. Each layer of belief tightened the knots I had tied within myself.

For many years, in many ways, my mind steered me away from my essence. I felt my essence was distant and inaccessible. I had zero concept of it. To get to my essence, I had to get through my mind and into my heart, and well, the passage through the mind was a doozie! Learning to use my mind as a navigation tool into my heart has been essential. My mind needed a proper job rather than running wild. It wasn’t about closing shop but about giving my mind a way to access wisdom from my heart that leads me to expand and bring out the best in me, instead of listening to the noise that makes me shrink and suffer.

This remains an ongoing dance: noticing when my mind conjures nonsense, and then gently redirecting it so my essence can offer guidance. Learning to use my mind as a pathway into my heart has been both life-changing and, quite literally, life-saving.

From time to time, I still find myself captured by my thoughts and emotions. Yet when my essence knocks at the door of my personality, it offers me a key. That key is not held by my personality, for the psyche cannot release itself; only essence can do that. I continue to learn how to step aside at the personality level and allow my essence to provide the guidance—and the energy—needed to interrupt hypnotic patterns of thought and emotion.

Anchoring in my truth has become an ongoing dance of liberation: moments of breaking free, followed by the discovery of new tethers I hadn’t yet seen. It involves recognizing where I am still holding myself captive and patiently learning how to untie more knots.

Much of my path has involved learning to listen beneath inherited noise and distinguish my own knowing from what I absorbed unconsciously. This has meant addressing not only the inner bindings of belief but also the subtle, pervasive shaping of socialization. At various points in my life, I have looked back and recognized how thoroughly conditioned I had become—how easily I moved through the world carrying borrowed assumptions, often detached from myself and my truth. This conditioning began early. Like many children, I was highly impressionable, absorbing cues about how to think, feel, and behave from those around me—family members, educators, coaches—as well as from cultural forces such as media, advertising, religion, and social norms. I learned these patterns well and lived accordingly.

After decades of absorbing and regurgitating information from grade school through graduate school, and conforming to a wide range of cultural norms, part of my path to accessing my truth has involved breaking the often-invisible shackles of socialization and releasing internalized customs and ideologies. As I work to remain honest with my own truth rather than what I have been conditioned to believe, it has become essential to examine the foundations of my values, perspectives, and assumptions—including those shaped by countercultural influences.

There were times when I deviated from traditional paths, such as when I dropped out of college to teach environmental education aboard a sailboat that functioned as a floating classroom. At the time, I assumed that stepping outside mainstream society meant I was living my truth. In hindsight, I see that I had simply aligned with a different set of norms while believing myself to be free. Socialization, I have learned, can be remarkably insidious.

Being most attached to knowing the truth no longer feels like grasping for certainty, but like committing to an honest relationship with myself. It is a devotion to listening—again and again—for what is real in this moment, even when that reality asks me to loosen old identities, beliefs, or ways of being. Truth, as I experience it now, is not something I arrive at once and for all; it is something I remain in conversation with.

As my connection to my essence has deepened, truth has become less about explanation and more about presence. I recognize it not as an idea I defend, but as a felt sense that steadies me—one that lives in my body, guides my choices, and quietly recalibrates my inner compass. This has allowed me to trust myself in ways I once could not, while also remaining open to change, refinement, and growth.

What I am most attached to, then, is not certainty, purity, or perfection, but honesty with what is alive and true within me. This attachment does not confine me; it frees me. It asks me to stay awake, responsive, and humble—willing to release what no longer fits and to live from what does. In this way, knowing my truth is not a destination I reach, but a relationship I continue to tend—an ongoing dance between who I am becoming and the deeper presence I have always been.

I am willing to live for the truth.

Growing up, my relationship with God was bizarre and distorted at best. Like many, I grew up believing in a wrathful God. I saw “him” as very masculine, mean, and out-to-get-me. “He” felt more like a demon with a destruction story than a God with a creation story. When people would say, “Don’t worry, God is in control,” or “Let go and let God,” I would cringe, as I did not find relief in such statements. Let go and let God do what exactly?

It was difficult to trust life when I didn’t trust the maker of life.

Hell was tangible to me. When I was in 6th grade, I was digging under a tree in my backyard. Within about six inches, I came across the tree's red roots. I instantly thought that was the entrance to the devil's home, as if hell was that close and that easy to enter. I quickly covered up the roots. I had been well indoctrinated into the constructs that God was vengeful, which made hell a real possibility. I can see now that this wasn't my truth; it was an insidious indoctrination that covertly impacted my life.

As I began to no longer resonate with the church’s teachings, I slowly opened to the possibility that a good, benevolent, and loving God might exist. My mind was willing to consider this shift, yet my heart remained unconvinced. Intellectually accepting the idea of a loving God did nothing to restore trust. Opening myself to the experience of a loving presence was its own journey.

I carried my lack of trust in God into adulthood. When I was learning to meditate, I realized that I did not feel safe leaving the confines of my mind, regardless of how crazy my mind was. If I started to melt into and merge with spaciousness, I would come to full alertness with a hyper-vigilance, not of my mind, but of the nothingness, as I feared what I was melting into and wondered if it was safe to experience. Better the devil I know—my unruly mind—than to reach out to what was unknown. I did not feel safe reaching out to something greater than me to help me free myself from my mind.

As the construct of a wrathful God was dissipating, I began to experience God as loving. Yet, when I perceived God as loving, I realized how unworthy I felt of Divine love. I didn't need to think about receiving God's love when I understood God as unloving. Yet, when I began to experience God as a Mysterious Loving Presence, I discovered that I believed I was unlovable; an untruth that felt like an absolute truth. What I have come to believe is this whole notion of being or not being worthy of love is a human construct that has nothing to do with God.

Although I left the church in my early teens, its influence continued to live within me. Without fully realizing it, I found myself drawn to spiritual communities that echoed aspects of the religion I was raised in. Certain spiritual ideas and structures felt familiar, and I now see how that familiarity quietly shaped where I felt comfortable. In this way, some forms of spirituality seemed less like a departure from religion and more like a continuation of it, expressed in different language.

My search for guidance shifted from church authorities to intuitives, yet the underlying pattern remained. I continued to look outside myself for answers, placing intermediaries between myself and the Divine—the priest within the church, and later, the healer beyond it. While the forms changed, the dynamics often felt similar. Feelings of guilt and shame persisted, though they arose for different reasons, and ritual practices evolved from sacraments to ceremonies, some of which were not always held with care.

Over time, I began to recognize how familiar I was with hierarchical structures and the uneven distribution of power within spiritual spaces. Years of religious conditioning had shaped my tolerance for these dynamics, making it easier to overlook patterns that did not fully honor integrity, accountability, or care.

While I am deeply aware of the harm that certain religious structures can inflict on the human soul, my own experiences have also shown me that similar risks can arise within spiritual communities. In some instances, communities that begin with genuine intention can drift toward cult-like dynamics, and individuals who present themselves as “shamans” or “gurus” may, at times, misuse their influence in deeply harmful ways.

I have also observed how spiritual communities can become echo chambers, where shared beliefs solidify into unquestioned truths. In these spaces, people may collectively shape a version of reality that feels internally consistent while dismissing information that challenges it. When this happens, personal or group perspectives can be elevated to universal truth—mirroring, in quieter ways, the very dynamics many seekers hoped to leave behind.

This is why I have learned to examine what my sense of truth is rooted in. This inquiry is not born of self-doubt, but of humility and awareness. As humans, we can feel as though we have transcended a particular level of consciousness, only to discover that we have unknowingly carried its patterns forward into a new form. What we believe we have outgrown can quietly reappear, dressed in different language or ideals.

Because I had the experience of being insidiously indoctrinated in ways I could not see, I have learned to make sure that what resonates comes from my heart, not from what is familiar. I have learned to trust myself to challenge notions of truth, particularly those that are culturally constructed, whether they appear in spiritual contexts or elsewhere.

I do not know the mysteries of the universe or the ultimate nature of God, though I would love to. Trust comes more easily when there is certainty, when something can be known and named. Yet because the ultimate nature of God remains beyond my understanding, faith becomes the ground through which trust is cultivated. Whether or not I trust an all-loving presence is not a reflection of God, but of my own capacity to trust. God is trustworthy. My journey has been about healing the parts of me that learned not to trust, and slowly allowing myself to rest in a love that does not need to be proven.

I have had moments of extraordinary surrender in which I felt myself open fully to the love of God—experiences where my sense of being Kerry faded and I felt myself as essence, inseparable from all that is. At times, I was cracked open to love, complete with the brilliant white lights and an overwhelming sense of unity. Yet within days or weeks, I would tighten again, pulling away from that openness and disconnecting from the experience.

Doubt would follow. I would question whether what I had encountered was truly God or something I had imagined. How do I know what I experienced was real? Was I deceiving myself? Even in the wake of such profound encounters, I found myself unable to fully trust my own experience or locate my truth within it.

At some point, I had to become deeply honest with myself. This was no longer a form of healthy discernment; it was doubt that functioned like a blade, severing connections. What I was facing was no longer about the church or spiritual communities—it was about me. I was the one holding the sword, standing between God and myself.

When I looked more closely, I saw that my inability to trust my own knowing was a subtle form of resistance. Doubt had become a way of holding on. Truly knowing God threatened the story I was still trying to keep intact, and letting go of that story felt more vulnerable than I had been willing to admit.

Though I am deeply attached to knowing the truth and willing to live for it, I have also encountered resistance to truth. Brushing up against any level of Divine truth carries with it a crumbling—a deconstruction of the ways I have understood myself and my reality. I cannot move toward truth and expect to remain intact.

While my essence may be devoted to truth and willing to live for it, my human self must also be willing to undergo a kind of death—not a physical one, but the surrender of aspects of my personality that keep me anchored in separation. I have come to see that I do not want to be more attached to my story than to knowing God. And so, deepening my connection with God has required an increasing willingness to loosen the knots, to recognize myself beyond my personality, and to release the straps with which I once tethered myself.

The ultimate truth may only be fully revealed beyond this life, when my essence may have access to infinite wisdom. Yet while I am here, inhabiting this human form, to live for the truth—to truly live—is allowing my essence to breathe through me as joy, love, connectedness, and gratitude.

Though my relationship with God is constantly evolving, I had to get this God thing sorted out to some degree in order to function in this world. I now trust God, and I now trust life, even when the nature of reality feels utterly bizarre at times. Within all the wonkiness that comes with being human resides my connection to God; at whatever beginning level that connection is, it is there, and for that, I am grateful. For that, I can live more freely as I journey with an ever-evolving personal truth, within the ultimate truth, which remains an ongoing mystery.