A reflection on truth, consciousness, and restraint
By: Roshan Jayasinghe
There are moments when life is simple, and I still manage to complicate it.
A tone changes.
A silence arrives.
A look feels different.
A sentence lands heavier than expected.
Before anything has actually happened in a visible way, the mind begins to move. It reaches for explanation. It reaches for a label. It reaches for certainty. Not because the mind is bad, but because uncertainty is hard for the human system to tolerate.
And this is where I notice truth can quietly slip away.
Not because reality is unclear, but because I add to it.
I’m writing this as a practice, not a position. I’m sharing this from my own observational truth, shaped by watching my own mind and correcting what I notice in real time. Not as a teaching, but as an attempt to stay honest in real time. Staying close to what can be observed, what can be felt, and what I cannot truthfully claim.
This may be familiar to you too.
What Can Be Known
A human being is born.
A body emerges from another body. Breath begins. Sensation begins.
I don’t see evidence of memory at birth. No awareness of origin. No knowledge of purpose. There is simply aliveness, responding to light, sound, warmth, and separation.
Anything said beyond this becomes inference.
Inference may be meaningful. It may be comforting. But it is not the same as truth.
The Habit of Naming
Soon after birth, a name is given.
With naming comes identity.
With identity comes story.
With story comes attachment.
The name is useful. It allows coordination, recognition, and communication.
But the name is not the person.
What I notice is that confusion begins when labels are mistaken for reality itself, when the story becomes more real than the living movement it attempts to describe.
Reality moves.
Stories hold still.
Consciousness Without Addition
When consciousness is left alone, it feels simple.
It notices movement, sound, presence, absence, injury, change.
It does not assign motive.
It does not infer intention.
It does not explain meaning.
Those additions arrive later, through thought.
Thought is not an enemy. But I can see how thought, when mistaken for truth, can create distortion.
Real Time
Truth is not a philosophy for me. It is a practice I can watch happening inside the body.
It happens in seconds.
A word is said.
A look changes.
Silence enters the space.
Before any conclusion, there is a physical signal. Tightness, heat, sinking, alertness. Then thought arrives like a clerk rushing to file the moment into a folder.
Anger. Disrespect. Rejection. Wound. Pattern. Intent.
In real time, I can see how easily the mind tries to become certain.
But if I stay honest, I notice something quieter underneath the labeling.
I felt something shift.
I do not yet know what it means.
I do not actually know what is happening inside the other person.
So I stop.
Not because I am passive, but because I’m trying not to turn an assumption into truth.
I return to what is true enough to stand on.
This is what I experienced.
This is what I am feeling.
This is what I am not willing to invent.
And in that restraint, something becomes clean again.
One thing I keep noticing is how quickly the mind tries to decide intent. Realizing my own intent feels honest, because it is mine to witness. But claiming another person’s intent is usually projection, because I’m filling in a space I cannot actually see. The moment I assume intent, my thinking narrows, and what was simple becomes story.
The Edge of Knowing
There is a particular dignity in saying, I do not know.
Not as a performance of humility, but as a refusal to pretend.
The mind dislikes open endings. It wants closure. It wants certainty. It wants to convert raw reality into a finished narrative. But the most truthful moments in life are often unfinished.
Clarity is not the ability to explain everything.
Clarity is the willingness to stop where explanation becomes fiction.
A Clean Standard of Truth
If one human harms another, what I can truthfully say without distortion is simple.
One human injured another human.
That statement is complete.
Anything added, justification, moral narrative, metaphysical explanation, may serve a psychological function, but it is no longer a fact.
Truth does not require explanation.
Truth requires accuracy.
Loss Without Narrative
When a human dies, what I can observe is this.
A body has stopped functioning.
A relationship has ended.
Pain is present in the living.
This is sufficient.
Statements about what happens beyond this, reunion, continuation, purpose, may ease the weight of loss, but they are not derived from observation. They are responses to uncertainty.
Not knowing is uncomfortable.
But discomfort does not justify invention.
Clarity does not deny grief.
It simply refuses to dress it as knowledge.
Knowing Does Not Confer Authority
There is another place where I notice truth can erode. Between people.
It happens when observation is replaced by assumption.
A tone shifts.
Words shorten.
Silence appears.
A message is read but not answered.
A question gets a shorter reply than usual.
A warmth that was there yesterday is not there today.
These are observable.
But then something else enters.
You are angry.
You are reacting.
This is your wound.
At that point, observation has ended.
Understanding a framework does not place one human inside another’s experience. What can be known directly is one’s own perception, one’s own reaction, one’s own limits.
Another human does not need to be analyzed to be understood. They need to be listened to without replacement.
The moment I assume I know who another person is, what they feel, or why they act, I am no longer stating truth. I am adding interpretation.
That is usually the point where clarity is lost.
Why This Feels Disturbing
When someone assigns an inner state that does not match lived experience, the disturbance that arises is often misread as defensiveness or anger.
But the body is not reacting to being seen.
It is reacting to being misnamed.
Something real was felt, but something else was said.
And when correction is interpreted as further proof of the original claim, the conversation collapses into certainty without contact.
This is not understanding.
It is narrative closure.
The Parallel With Metaphysical Claims
The same movement appears in beliefs about existence.
I do not know what happens after death.
In the same way, I do not know what occurs inside another human being.
Both claims move beyond what can be observed.
Both substitute certainty for humility.
Both may feel reassuring, and they may still be stories rather than truth.
Where Clarity Begins
Clarity does not come from knowing more.
It comes from knowing where knowing stops.
I can know what I feel.
I can know what I observe.
I can know when I am adding.
I cannot know another’s interior world.
I cannot know what lies beyond lived experience.
This is not a limitation to overcome.
It is an integrity to maintain.
A Simple Human Discipline
I try to stay with what occurred.
I try to feel what arises.
I try not to replace another’s reality.
I try not to add what cannot be known.
This does not make life smaller.
It makes it cleaner.
And in that cleanliness, something settles.
Not certainty, but honesty.
And perhaps that is the most human form of intelligence. Not the urge to explain everything, but the restraint to stop before I start inventing.
And when I can do that, even briefly, I feel closer to life as it is.
Author’s Note
I wrote this because I keep catching the same turning point inside myself. The moment something happens, and my mind rushes to finish the story.
I’m learning that clarity is not a permanent state. It is a return. I lose it, and I come back. I add, and I notice I added.
If anything here is useful, I hope it is this simple reminder. In real time, we can come back to what is observed, what is felt, and what we do not actually know.
About the Author
Roshan Jayasinghe is a writer and observer of human systems. His work explores the gap between man made constructs and lived humanity, with a focus on how economics, trade and everyday choices intersect with questions of fairness, responsibility and inner alignment. Through essays for publications in The Morning Telegraph, he aims to remind readers that they are not passengers in a fixed machine, but active custodians of a shared world.
