Walking the Proverbial Dog(ma): Moving Beyond Rules and Lies 02/28/26

“A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can get its shoes on.”

I heard that quote recently (attributed to Mark Twain) and it hit me immediately. Not just because it’s clever, but because it’s painfully true. Ideas can move fast, and narratives often solidify before we’ve had a chance to think them through. Language can have a way of hardening into certainty in the blink of an eye. So, the longer I sit with it, the more I find myself circling back to the idea of dogma.

Dogma is usually pegged to religion, but I see it everywhere. In science, culture, politics, and in the wellness sector, the word itself grabs me. When something becomes “unquestionable” or beyond nuance, it stops being alive for me. I remember a long stretch where that was enough for me to walk away from entire systems. Institutions felt like traps wrapped in good intentions. I wanted the light, the lessons, the curiosity, but I didn’t want the performance, the hypocrisy, or the fear.

And yet, contradicting that, I’ve always loved the biblical stories. Let me be clear, again,…Not the dogma. Not the hellfire or the moral calculus. I mean the actual stories, the flawed humans, the messy encounters with God, the betrayals, the wandering, the falling asleep at the wrong moment, the fumbling, and the humaness of getting lost and still somehow coming back to a deeper understanding of life. There’s comfort in it because awakening isn’t a personality upgrade; it’s more of a wrestling match where forgetting and remembering tussle over and over again.

When I read those biblical stories, I don’t see rules as much as I see nervous systems in motion. I see people struggling with forces bigger than themselves, longing for something they can’t name. Sometimes exile, or hunger, or wonder, and what moves me the most is the shift, which sometimes but rarely happens in an average conversation. Those “aha moments” happen through movement: walking across landscapes, building homes or arks, feeding crowds, crossing rivers, sitting in silence after an angry battle, picking up the pieces of a broken city. They happen through doing and self-reflection.

That is the pattern I’m noticing in my own life. Recently, I watched this YouTuber, Chase Hughes. He’s obsessed with this stuff, and he boiled down a handful of teachings that ancient traditions around the world all seem to agree with or land on as universal truth. He ends with a kind of protocol, a structured path for returning, remembering, and aligning. I love that clarity, and I respect the structure. It can be really grounding for us humans, but it wasn’t the steps he outlined that grabbed me; it was the spirit underneath: it’s not about talking yourself into truth. It’s about getting moving.

When you move your longing, your curiosity, your devotion, through your body or creativity, or relationships, through action. Going outside. Dancing, walking, making, showing up, you allow the internal frequency to translate into something visible, tangible, in your body, in the world. It’s one thing to talk about alignment and another to actually live it, where you sometimes have to stumble your way, sweat and fumble your way, and occasionally faceplant and still get back up. That’s what reorganizes the nervous system in a way language never can.

I’m noticing this more in my relationships, too. I’ve started to hold back a bit from giving advice. Lately, I’ve been catching myself mid-sentence. And the realization is funny, and humbling, and somehow freeing: do you actually want my advice? Or am I just trying to close a gap in the energy between us? That surge I feel—the one that wants to orient, correct, remind—isn’t always about them. Sometimes it’s about me, trying to feel that click of shared recognition, that moment where we both see the same thing at the same time. It feels like love. It feels like a resource. But it can often be an unhealthy attachment to a certain outcome or the hope that someone else remembers what I remember.

I’ve been learning to sit in that impulse without acting on it. To let the energy move elsewhere—into breath, into writing, into walking, into doing. Unless someone has come to me for advice or support, instead of explaining to someone what they should do. I go do it myself, I live it. Instead of telling someone to trust themselves, I demonstrate trust in real time. Instead of instructing someone to set boundaries, I hold mine. Instead of narrating alignment, I embody it whenever I can. And it’s a practice to walk the talk.

I try to laugh at myself, too, and that makes it easier. Sometimes I catch myself thinking, “Oh great, here I go again, trying to fix the universe one conversation at a time.” And then I laugh. And I let it go. Life is too short, truth is too vast, and to try to convince everyone of everything all at once is a losing game. Some people are walking deserts of their own longing, building arks, feeding crowds, wandering in contemplation. Some are asleep at pivotal moments. And that’s exactly the point: That’s their journey, their internal wrestling match, and their awakening path.

The stories I love are full of this. Lot’s wife, staring back at a city burning, caught in the pull of the past. Abraham wandering, unsure, negotiating with God. Jonah, running from the whale. And yes, Jesus asking Peter to walk on water, knowing full well he might sink. There’s humor in human stubbornness, in fumbling, in missing the obvious. There’s light. And there’s darkness. And they’re inseparable.

What I’m seeing now is that my own relational desire to fix, orient, or advise is just a little echo of the same internalized dogma pattern. It comes from love. It comes from wanting unity. But it’s also a subtle attempt control, homogenize, or to manufacture synchronicity and connection in a way that is soothing to me. The antidote is the work itself: Live your truth, walk it, and allow love to be present even if it isn’t mirrored back immediately. Let the remembering unfold on its own timeline.

Dogma, after all, is warm and neat and clearly labeled. To some, it’s seductive, but life is messy. It’s full of flawed humans wandering across deserts, falling asleep at the wrong moment, and somehow still being held in love. The stories I appreciate most are reminders that we can wrestle, stumble, and still show up fully for ourselves and others. We can love, fail, act, pause, and act again. That truth isn’t something to sit on; it’s something to walk with.

And if the lie gets halfway around the world before the truth gets its shoes on, maybe that’s okay. Maybe truth goes barefoot, embodying what it knows, showing up, laughing, and it doesn’t need to run.