A truth we surface from within, and recognize in others.
A walk in rhythm with life, a return to what is whole.
When I first began writing the tale of Onala, I said that everything it carries would live in this spirit.
It feels important to begin by saying that this is simply how we view life. These reflections are the foundation upon which Onala is being built. They are the words of a student—still stumbling, still learning, still tender in many ways—yet hoping our intentions and foundations are clear as we extend our offerings to the world.
What Is Truth?
Truth. What a slippery word.
At times I thought I had it, only to later realize I was deceiving myself. Other times, I didn’t even know it was there until life shook me awake. So how do we know when we have touched truth?
Life has shown me that words themselves are slippery things. Taken out of context, they can be turned against another. A word can mean something entirely different depending on the life of the one who speaks it, on the life of the one who receives it, the environment it arises in, or the meaning assigned by the person using it. Out of context, a single word might be interpreted a hundred different ways. Even with context, it is hard to know if it is ever enough for someone else to truly hear what was intended.
Each of us reads a book, experiences art, or walks through life and may take away something vastly different. And that is natural. Some will tune into the message, some will not—or at least not yet. And that, too, is okay.
Still, beyond all the words and interpretations, I have found that truth can reveal itself in another way—quietly, from within. It does not always arrive in language, and it does not always surface to the top. Sometimes it comes as a subtle recognition, stirred by a wisdom planted deep inside each of us.
However it came to be there, it remains. But in the noise of our days—with so much judgment, so much movement, so much distraction—we rarely give it the silence it needs to be heard.
The Faces of Truth
Looking back, I see truth revealing itself in many disguises.
Sometimes it arrived as loneliness. Sometimes as frustration. Sometimes as joy.
Sometimes it was mirrored in a person nothing like me.
Sometimes it was hidden in the grief of losing a dear friendship.
Sometimes it was accompanied by illness.
Sometimes it came through foolish choices, and sometimes in the surrender of tears.
Sometimes it took the shape of the quiet presence of a place in nature.
Rarely was it a grand, shining revelation. More often, it appeared in fragments—progressive glimpses, becoming clearer over time.
Some truths were practical, some relational, some profoundly spiritual. A few so intimate that I may never dare to speak them aloud.
Truth, I’ve noticed, is not so much what I can describe. It is something felt in the bones, a quiet trembling that shakes me and changes me.
Truth has felt less like a spotlight and more like water seeping through cracks in the earth — slow at first, almost careless. It slips into my life in hidden streams. Sometimes I ignored it and built dams; sometimes the dam held for a while. But water, patient and relentless, always finds the weaker places and seeps through again, widening the gap.
Over time, those small openings become channels, the water carving an ever larger passage. The longer the dam holds, the stronger the current once it can hold no more.
Sometimes it brings fear — the water surges and my choices narrow to two: be destroyed by the flood, or embrace the flow. To open the gates and let what comes reshape what I have so carefully tried to protect.
This is where surrender begins.
The Pattern of Surrender
Every time I encountered truth, it came with surrender.
Sometimes willingly. Sometimes unwillingly, when no other option remained. I cannot explain why I did not disappear within the flood—only that once I fully submitted to the pain, something in me died, and in its place a new seed was planted. For reasons I still do not understand, that seed has, over time, slowly sprouted and grown, even through the seasons when I was certain I could not endure.
Surrender is always tinged with mourning—mourning the comfort of old thoughts that had become familiar companions, mourning the hardships I have faced and the heavy toll I paid in finding the ways to endure them, mourning even the people and relationships that helped uphold the worldview I once created.
It is frightening to begin again—to let resentment soften into forgiveness of others, and even harder, into forgiveness of yourself. To accept that the deeds are done, and that they, too, are part of your path—a necessary path, telling the story of where you have been. Even so, you are not bound by that old self. You can take a trembling step forward on unstable ground, carrying both the weight of your past and the freedom of what is still to come.
Within surrender, there is courage, and there is lightness. The pressure gives way, the burden of falsehood slips off. Joy flickers in, subtle but real. There is a sense of connection—the rhythm of life itself. And with every pulse of this rhythm, it is as if the ripples in the water still for a brief moment, and you catch a glimpse of your own true reflection—familiar, and yet somehow new. Almost like recognizing an old friend.
Closing Reflection
In that glimpse, I have come to see truth not as a final destination or an absolute to be claimed, but as a rhythm—a rhythm of life itself, a return or perhaps a journey to the true nature of self.
This, to me, is the essence of Onala: a wave returning to the ocean, a step back into the wholeness we never truly left.
Yet Onala is also meant for the ordinary choices of daily life. Our commitment to truth shows up in simple ways:
- Offering only what we genuinely feel is good and honest and letting the rest fall away. Time will bring new lessons, and with them, our offerings will naturally shift and flow.
- Never pushing onto others—allowing each to find and choose in their own time.
- Extending grace to ourselves and to others—we are all on a journey, just in different places along the way.
I cannot claim to have embraced truth fully, or to live always in its light. Often I resist. Often I am not ready. Sometimes life circles back, offering the same lesson again, and I finally step into it. Other times, I walk past. But when the ripples grow still and the reflection appears, I remember—even if only for a breath—that beneath all our stories, there is a current that carries us home, like the wave returning to the ocean from which it came.