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*Brian Wilcox. 'graceful waters'. Flickr
There are many claims to truths, which are ideas, all mental, all arising from a collective memory. Many equate these ideas with truth. These truths seem to be competing, and we seem to need to choose based on which is the right truth, the true truth, the one truth. Or, possibly, we never choose, we were given these as a child and our truth is never really tested, a version of truth being chosen for us by those for whom it was chosen in the prior generation, and back and back, generation to generation. So, somewhat like a family heirloom. And, if we choose not to believe in something, such as not believing in God or Christ or Buddha or life after death or transmigration of the soul ..., this can be the 'family' heirloom. The family can be birth family, church family, agnostic family, atheist family, materialist family, ... and need not be persons we relate to as blood kin. Therefore, with that established, we begin with an insightful quote from Jean Klein, from his Living Truth, to introduce us to the journey we share today.
You can always objectify untruth but truth can never be objectified. ... So the moment you have really discovered what is untruth, you find yourself spontaneously in truth. ... But never try to objectify truth, to localize it.
So, our competing ideologies, truths, worldviews, doctrines, teachings, images, symbols, creeds, confessions, ... all arise out of the mind, out of the past, and are ideas. The best of these, pointing well to the truth, are objects.
And persons seem to tend to respond to this in one of three ways: first, react against what one once believed and choose another belief system; react against what one once believed and choose not to have a faith at all; respond to what one once believed and work through a process of discovering a new way of seeing things, not against his or her past worldview, but a transformation of it. Few persons are able to respond, not react, to a prior belief system they were devoted to once.
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