The Price of Truth - High-Frequency, Low-Budget Living

 

 The hour is that indefinite stretch between late night and the early premonition of morning, when the silence in the room ceases to be a mere absence of sound and becomes a dense, palpable presence. I sit before the white page and feel the ink hesitate before soaking into the paper—just as my soul wavers at the threshold of the words I must utter to myself. Today I understood, or rather, finally admitted, that truth has its own, sometimes cruel, economy. It does not simply demand; it clears. It is that invisible hand that shakes the dust from the folds of our being and often, far too often, leaves our pockets empty.

For a long time, I tried to delude my inner voice into believing that it was possible to navigate between light and shadow, that compromise was merely a form of flexibility, of social maturity. But the psychoanalytic gaze into my own abyss tells me otherwise. Every compromise with the truth is a small death, a tiny fissure in the integrity of the Self, through which our life force leaks away. When you stand before the mirror of your conscience, you see not your face, but a fractured mosaic of roles you played to be accepted, to be "successful," to be part of the common rhythm. And then comes the moment of the great sobering: truth empties the pocket because it does not tolerate counterfeit currency. It does not accept the gilded coins of hypocrisy with which we are accustomed to paying for our peace of mind.

We live in a world where the lie has acquired the status of an art form, a necessary tool for survival. I see it everywhere—in the gazes of people, in the structure of institutions, in the very air that vibrates with unspoken and substituted meanings. When a lie is marketed as truth, it creates a distorted reality, a psychotic field in which sanity begins to sicken. To remain in this field is to accept the slow poisoning of the spirit. And here, courage is born—that pure, almost desperate impulse to hit the brakes. To stop abruptly, to hear the screeching of your own will against the inertia of the world, and simply to leave that field... whatever the cost, even if it empties your pocket.

Leaving is an act of sacred escape. It is not an escape from responsibility, but a return to the highest responsibility—the one toward the divine spark within us. From a psychoanalytic perspective, this is the collapse of the False Self, that painful but liberating tearing of the mask that has become too tight for our growing soul. Spiritually speaking, it is kenosis—self-emptying. To be filled with divine silence, you must first discard the noise of external expectations. High-frequency, but low-budget living. How paradoxical and beautiful that sounds in a world in love with possession.

To vibrate at a high frequency means to be in resonance with the Source, with the Logos, with that Truth which needs no proof because it is light itself. But this frequency is subtle; it is fragile in its power and cannot exist within the heavy, sticky matter of the lie. When you choose this purity, you inevitably renounce the weight of "having." Your budget becomes low because you no longer invest in illusions. You do not buy approval, you do not pay for a seat at the table of the powerful, you do not expend energy maintaining facades. Your capital becomes silence, peace, and the ability to breathe deeply without feeling the noose of a guilty conscience.

I often wonder, why are there so few who choose this path? Why has integrity become an exotic rarity, an antique object we view with curiosity but fear to possess? Perhaps because truthfulness requires radical vulnerability. It requires you to stand naked before the world and before God, without the armor of social status. It is a surrender of control. In psychoanalysis, we know that the fear of losing the "object"—love, money, security—is one of our deepest anxieties. To leave the field of lies means to accept this loss. To say: "Yes, my pocket will be empty, but my heart will be whole."

I remember moments when my breath was taken away by the sight of a mountain peak or the sound of the sea in the early hours. There is no lie there. The rock is rock; the water is water. Nature lives in absolute truth. We, humans, are the only beings capable of creating "non-being" through our word. And precisely therein lies our fall and our possibility for redemption. To choose the truth is a form of prayer without words. It is an act of faith that the universe will hold you, even when the ground beneath your feet—your material security—vanishes.

Transformation is not a one-time act; it is a continuous, rhythmic movement. Every day we are faced with the choice to add one more coin to our pocket through a small compromise or to leave our pocket empty, but clean. This "low-budgetness" of being is actually a higher form of spiritual aristocracy. It is a refinement that needs no silk or velvet because it is clothed in light. Integrity is an inner architecture that is unaffected by external storms. It is that pillar of light connecting us to Heaven while our feet still tread through the mud of the everyday.

There is a peculiar melancholy in this choice. It is not bitter, but rather resembles an autumn sunset—quiet, humble, filled with grace. It is the sadness for the world that could have been, but is not. And simultaneously, it is the joy of discovering those few "truthful" ones you meet along your way. They are recognized by their eyes—there is a particular clarity in them, a gaze that does not judge you, but sees you. These people are like islands of meaning in an ocean of meaninglessness. They do not speak much of honesty; they simply radiate it. Their life is their only and most powerful argument.

When you hit the brakes and leave the field of lies, you initially fall into a frightening void. Social ties built on mutual benefit dissolve. The phone stops ringing so often. The spotlights fade. And precisely in that darkness, you begin to hear your true pulse. Here, in the silence of the "empty pocket," the most important meeting occurs—the meeting with the Self, that Divine "I" that has always been there, waiting for you to stop burying it under things and pretenses. This is the moment of surrender, in which you realize that true wealth is not in what you possess, but in what you cannot lose.

On a psychoanalytic level, this is the overcoming of narcissistic trauma. You no longer need the world to tell you who you are through the mirror of success. You know who you are in the mirror of Truth. And this truth makes you free. Free to be poor, if that is the price of your integrity. Free to be lonely, if that is the price of your purity. Freedom has always tasted of wind and smelled of earth—it is harsh, but real.

Today I reflect on the word "honest." It carries within it the root of something ancient, something connected to the purity of the beginning. To be honest is to be "frequent"—to maintain that frequency which allows no distortion of the signal. This is a sacred service in the temple of the everyday. Every action of ours, every word we utter, is either a brick in this temple or a hole in its foundations. Courage is not the absence of fear of destitution, but the realization that spiritual destitution is far more terrifying than a lack of funds.

What did this choice cost me? Everything and nothing. It cost me sleep, the comfort of illusion, the social mask. But it gave me the opportunity to look in the mirror and not turn away. It gave me the right to speak of the light because I have known the darkness of compromise and rejected it. And here I am now—in this quiet room, with empty pockets and a full heart. I feel my breathing become more rhythmic, the heartbeat of the world fading, leaving only that great, pulsating Presence which neither buys nor sells, but simply Is.

Few people are like this. But perhaps that is how it must be. Truth is not for the crowds; it is for those ready to burn in its fire so they may rise in its purity. Integrity is a quiet revolution. It needs no banners or slogans. It needs the will to say "no" when everyone says "yes," and the courage to walk away when staying would mean betraying the God within.

I close my diary. The lamplight flickers, as if in agreement. Outside, the dawn breaks. A new day is coming—low-budget, perhaps difficult, but vibrating at the frequency of truth. And I greet it not with outstretched hands to receive, but with open palms to give. Because in the end, when everything else disappears, only this will remain—how truthful we were, how much courage we had to be ourselves in a world that wanted to turn us into someone else. Truth emptied my pocket, but it lit my path. And that is more than enough.

I will sleep for a while, wrapped in this silence that no longer frightens, but heals.