I’ve never been able to understand how anyone could tell me what is true for me.
Not because I think I know better.
But because I don’t see how they possibly could.
No one lives inside my body.
No one hears the thoughts I don’t speak.
No one feels the quiet resistance or alignment that shows up when something is right—or wrong.
And yet, so much of what we’re taught asks us to outsource that responsibility.
We’re told to listen to leaders.
Teachers.
Spiritual authorities.
People who claim to know.
But I’ve never been able to make sense of that. How could they know what I should trust, when they can’t feel what I feel? When they don’t carry my history, my fears, my instincts, my inner signals?
Even the phrase spiritual leader has always felt strange to me.
How can someone lead the spirit?
The spirit isn’t a crowd.
It isn’t a project.
It isn’t something that can be directed from the outside.
At best, another person can share what they have noticed. What helped them. Where they stumbled or felt clarity. That can be useful. It can be generous. It can be offered.
But it can’t replace listening.
Because the moment we hand over the task of discernment, something essential goes quiet. We stop paying attention to our own internal responses. We begin to measure ourselves against someone else’s certainty. We confuse obedience with wisdom.
And often, fear slips in through that gap.
Fear is very efficient at keeping us compliant. It convinces us that we’re not equipped. That we’ll get it wrong. That someone else must know better.
But I don’t think truth works that way.
I don’t think it requires intermediaries.
I don’t think it demands submission.
I don’t think it asks us to override our own moral sense.
Whatever truth is, it has to be something we can encounter from the inside. Something that engages our conscience, not bypasses it. Something that invites attention, not surrender.
No one can do that work for us.
They can point.
They can describe.
They can speak from their own experience.
But they can’t carry the responsibility of knowing on our behalf.
That part is ours.
And maybe that’s uncomfortable. Maybe it’s why we’re so quick to give it away. But I don’t think comfort is the measure of truth.
Listening is.
— a Veilkin