What is your concept of the truth, and why is it germane to the practice of your life?
Well think about it. If you live your life according to things that you believe are true, and they’re only partially true or flat out wrong, what do you think the impact would be on your life?
Pretty dramatic.
More often than not, unexamined beliefs cause people to place artificial limits on themselves and others, and cause people to separate themselves from others.
And what about you? Do you think this applies to you? Probably. Unless you’ve already been spending a considerable amount of time on self-reflection, I think it’s a pretty safe bet.
How do I know that?
Well because you’re human. And not because there’s any genetic limitation in us seeing the truth, just that our historical conversations, and institutions don’t teach us to look for truth as an evolving dynamic concept.
We’re not taught to validate sources, we’re not taught that we could only be seeing part of the truth; we’re not taught that under certain conditions one thing is the truth, and under other conditions something completely opposite could be true. We’re not taught to look at truth as an ongoing conversation about authentic inquiry into the way things are, were and could be; an ongoing conversation that constantly builds and deepens our connection to the world, each other, and to ourselves.
At least we’re not taught to live with this relationship to “truth” in our day-to-day lives. Any thoughts?
Funny, I just finished posting my manifesto and musings… one of which was: “Save yourself the heartache – you can’t outrun the Truth.” There is no partial truth; truth can’t be a fraction. It is either Truth or it isn’t, period. Pretty clearcut. But it’s taken me a long time to realize that. Watch my blog for an upcoming personal story on Truth.
The Qur’an is the 100% pure Truth without any doubt as it is from God, and as Muslims we are taught to have a good relationship to the Qur’an in our day-to-day lives.
Brenda, what a great opening for a conversation. My point was exactly the opposite, that when we see the truth this way we stop looking. Yet the strange thing is you are also 100% correct, which leads into an upcoming post on contradictions, things that appear to contradict yet do not.
I see your distinction. My comments refer to Truth, capital T… the absolute, universal Truth that is everywhere and within each of us.
We call some aspects partial truths (a.k.a. “white lies”) consciously to sugar coat things and hide from the absolute Truth.
[...] what she sees when she looks at you: an invasion justifying, selfish creep.
[...] THE (my caps) answers to certain life questions. This reminded me of some of my earlier posts on truth where I talk about the concept of truth and that perhaps Jack Nicholson’s character was right [...]