Two words that seem to mean the same thing on the surface, but for me, however, they have come to mean two different things.
Something being real doesn’t necessarily mean that it is also true. Or, as Peter Crone puts it so eloquently, “Things that seem real can still be based on untruths.”
My emotions are definitely real in the moment I experience them; they are usually based on an untruth, though. A memory of the past that isn’t there right now, or a projection into the future that also isn’t there now.
So, while it might be true that I am actually sad/angry/anxious/etc. right now, the emotion comes forth from an untruth that originated in the mind. Fear or regret, for example, are prime candidates for spawning untrue emotions.
Byron Katie offers two excellent questions: Is it true? Can I absolutely know that it’s true? The answer is probably no to both.
This definition-distinction also makes spiritual practice more nuanced. One of the standard traps we get caught in is the “it’s all an illusion anyway” or “we are divine beings having a human experience.”
Even if this is true, it’s still an illusion we have to exist in; it’s still an experience we are having. So why not realize it’s real but not true? In that way, we also embrace the human part of the divine.
For me, this idea merged the two and gave proper meaning to the phrase: “We are the divine having a human experience.”
Seeing things as real but untrue makes it more manageable, practical, and not “less spiritual.” I think we need more practical spiritual people anyway, but that combination seems like a bad thing to all the people who think “doing non-doing” means “doing nothing.”
If your spirituality consists of not doing anything and telling others the same, yeah, well… let me know how that goes. While philosophically, we will probably agree with each other, practically nothing will change.