The Collision Point
We live in a time when living your truth is celebrated as a marker of integrity and self-awareness. A worthy aspiration — and yet, in many places, this effort has been misunderstood. Increasingly, personal truth is used as a justification to override agreements, disregard boundaries, or act without regard for the impact on others.
Personal truth is sacred. And it is not a universal permission slip.
What Personal Truth Really Means
Your personal truth emerges within the alignment between your inner knowing, your lived experience, and your values. Truth is how you understand yourself and the world in this moment. Your truth is precious and uniquely yours.
Further, truth is not static. Truth evolves as you grow, as new experiences and deeper understandings emerge. And because it is personal, truth exists within all aspects of your life. However this does not make personal truth a blanket justification to ignore the commitments, ethics, or agreements that govern shared spaces you choose to participate in.
The Boundaries of Communities
When you step into a community, you are entering into relationship. You are establishing and acknowledging connection. These relationships are held together by shared agreements, mutual respect, and ethical commitments.
These shared agreements form the boundaries of the community. Boundaries are not simply lines of limitation — they are the shape of mutual responsibility among those present. They define how engagement takes place, what is protected, and how trust is sustained so the deep personal work can occur. Without agreements, boundaries become vague, and the stability of the community erodes.
Especially in spiritual communities, these boundaries are not arbitrary rules. They are part of the sacred structure that protects the spiritual work itself. Agreements and boundaries ensure that everyone who enters can engage with trust, safety, and the freedom to go deep without fear of misuse or disrespect.
Where the Collision Happens
The trouble comes when personal truth is used to bypass the shared commitments of the community.
For example:
- It’s my truth to pick which agreements I keep.
Agreements in a community are not a menu of optional choices — they are the shared foundation which make community learning possible. Selectively keeping only the agreements that suit undermines the integrity of the whole and shifts the burden of holding the community’s structure onto others, especially on to the community leader. - It’s my truth to adapt this sacred material into my own creative work.
Sacred material in a community is shared within a specific context and under mutual agreements. Adaption without consent attempts to remove the material from the legal and spiritual protection inherent within community structures and agreements. The attempt is to try to turn a shared trust into a private claim. - It’s my truth to speak critically about another because I’m just being honest.
In a witness community, your role is not to fix, correct, or offer unsolicited suggestions about another member’s path. Even when framed as honesty, speaking critically about someone shifts the focus away from witnessing and into judgment or intervention. The commitment here is to witness each person’s truth without inserting your own evaluation. - It’s my truth to remain unseen during gatherings.
In a witness community, visibility is part of reciprocal presence. Choosing to remain unseen often isn’t about privacy but about splitting attention — doing something else while in class. This disengages from the shared moment and erodes the mutual presence that allows witnessing to be authentic and whole.
In each case, personal truth is invoked as a shield against accountability within the agreements of the community. This is Power-Over — placing one’s own will above the mutual agreements that make the community possible.
The harm is real: trust erodes, personal effort is distorted, and community relationships can fracture.
Why Personal Truth Gets Misused as Permission
Beyond bypassing accountability, personal truth is often misused to ignore agreements for several reasons. One is the belief personal truth carries a kind of moral or spiritual exemption — “If it’s my truth, it must be right for me, therefore it can’t be wrong.” This bypasses the reality that what feels right for one person isn’t necessarily true for another. This limited view can cause harm in relationship.
Another trouble is the elevation of authenticity above all else. Here, being authentic is treated as the highest value, automatically outweighing collective agreements. The assumption is that personal alignment matters more than the shared commitments that make the community safe and personal work deep. Interestingly this is a form of hierarchy which attributes worth by elevating a particular standard above any other.
There is also a common misunderstanding of freedom. Freedom is often seen as the absence of limits, rather than the choice to act with integrity within limitation. In this view, agreements are mistaken for constraints instead of being recognized as a valid structure of depth and trust.
Some simply resist anything that feels like external authority. In this mindset, any request or requirement feels like “someone telling me what to do.” This confuses mutually chosen agreements with imposed control, overlooking the fact that joining the community is itself a voluntary choice.
Finally, there is the comfort of self-referential logic: “If it feels right to me, then it is right” becomes the only measure. This closes off awareness of other perspectives and of the relational impact of one’s actions. In each case, personal truth is no longer a guide for integrity but a shield against mutual responsibility.
Honoring Truth Without Breaking Trust
Honoring personal truth does not require breaking agreements. It does, however, require discernment. Discernment is the ability to perceive clearly and judge wisely between different courses of action, especially when both feel personally valid. It is the inner skill of asking: Does this choice serve only me, or does it also honor the commitments I have made to others? In the context of community, discernment is what allows a person to hold personal truth alongside the relational responsibilities that sustain the shared work.
If personal truth calls someone toward an action that is outside the community’s agreements, the ethical choice is simple: that truth can still be lived — but it belongs outside the community.
Remaining within the community while breaking the agreements is not a neutral act. Remaining can impose one person’s will on the entire group without the consent of other community members. This is control. The benefits of belonging are exploited solely to personal benefit while discarding the mutual responsibilities that belonging requires. In practice, this shifts the balance of power, forcing others to adapt to a choice they did not agree to, and undermines the integrity of the commitments that make the community possible.
Freedom and Responsibility as Partners
True freedom is not the absence of boundaries. It is not the right to act without regard for the impact on others. True freedom emerges through integrity — the choice to act in alignment both with personal truth and with community agreements. In this sense, integrity is the bridge between what feels right internally and what has been agreed to collectively.
Responsibility is the partner of freedom. Responsibility means honoring the agreements that create the conditions for the work to thrive. Responsibility recognizes that belonging comes with mutual obligations, not just benefits. When personal truth no longer aligns with those agreements, responsibility calls for stepping away rather than attempting to reshape the community to fit an individual preference.
When freedom and responsibility are held together, expression becomes deeper, more authentic, and more trustworthy. Freedom without responsibility becomes self-indulgence; responsibility without freedom becomes compliance. Together, they allow truth to be expressed in a way that strengthens the community rather than eroding it. This balance makes it possible for each person to live fully in alignment while also sustaining the integrity of the shared work.
A Call to Maturity
Living personal truth is not diminished by honoring commitments. Personal truth is deepened with clarity about inner boundaries and commitments with others. Maturity is measured not only by the fierceness with which truth is held, but by the skill with which it is held in relationship with others.
In a healthy community, personal truth and collective agreements are not competing forces — they are partners in sustaining trust, depth, and safety. When either is neglected, the foundation of the community is challenged and the shared work suffers. When both are honored, the work thrives and everyone benefits.
The choice is not between self-expression and community integrity. The real choice is whether truth will be lived in a way that strengthens or weakens the bonds that make the work possible. The mark of maturity is the ability to live one’s truth without diminishing the truths, rights, or agreements of others.
Your truth is yours. The community belongs to all who enter. Both are sacred — and in a witness community, both are honored together, or not at all.
This article comes from the Witness Community Library -- click here to read more.
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