By David Valentine, co-founder of Rethink and partner/practitioner of the Veritas Lifestyle and Veritas Life Adventures
What does it look like to live completely in tune with our created nature? We are wired to live a certain type of life. Call it evolution or divine creation, our bodies, minds, and spirits seem to thrive under very specific parameters.
What is the Veritas Life though?
For a simple man, like myself, I find definitions very helpful. Veritas is of course a latin word, and translated veritas means truth. So what is the ‘truth’life, or the truth of life?
Integrated Beings
You are a brilliantly integrated being, made of dust and spirit. You cannot be separated from your body, and you cannot your body from your spirit. It’s common for people to see the various parts of who they are as individual from the other, but the reality is you are an integrated being. If you have emotional baggage that you haven’t worked through, it will manifest itself in your physicality. If you have poor eating habits it will actually affect your emotions.
Central to the Veritas Life is living with the innate awareness that all of you is longing to be healthy. Every part of your being longs to be in sync with it’s creation. Which means we can’t treat our bodies have to be treated like sports cars, and our souls have to be given the right arenas to breathe.
Death, To New Life
If you’ve spent any time with Grant Boatwright you know he lives and breathes Veritas. He’s passionate about seeing everyone everywhere live more full lives. Most people don’t know that he gets up at 3am every Tuesday to work at Starbucks so that Veritas can go where he believes it will. Every Tuesday he dies to himself, so that his wife, friends, family, and Veritas Seekers can live.
Veritas living requires sacrificing some of our time in order to live out what we want to do in the others. It also means living with a keen awareness that what we do affects everyone around us. We don’t just sacrifice for our own good, but for the good of others.
Pursuit Of Truth
There is a beautiful quote from Jesus where he says, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”The quote is in reference to his teachings, and the difference they offer compared to the other religious attitudes of his day. There is something truth does to our souls that is unlike anything else. It unlocks deep seated realities that are begging to burst forth from our chests. It’s equally as important to seek truth. Whether it’s in a counselor’s office, amongst friends, or in a religious gathering it’s vital for us to pursue what is true.
The Veritas life is a brilliantly beautiful one. It is a life where all of you is present and integrated. It is a life bent on dying, so that you may truly live. And it is a life built on the pursuit of ultimate reality. When we live in these ways, we discover that we can be more alive than we ever believed possible.