Dialogue ~ 8

Something to consider in terms of conscience – is it active or passive? It is active in that it is an expression of our will; it is passive in that it is representative of our psyche and in which we are able to discern a voice of truth or reason. Always, this ground of our being or spaciousness is larger than our comprehension of the world; unless it is that we cease to listen, in which case this spaciousness is simply a self-created chamber with an echo.

Is the quest or search for purpose and meaning valid?

It is not that there is too much complexity in the world. It is that once we believe that we have found meaning, we tend to make it our truth. It becomes our foundation and orientation in the world. We take a ‘snapshot’ of reality and are confused when this image of the world breaks down and it no longer makes any sense. We are convinced that we are perceiving cause when reality is unbroken.

Our intention might be to decipher the meaning of events as we perceive them in the now, but we are searching for meaning in causes of the past. We ignore that meaning can relate to what is in the future, not simply because we cannot perceive what lies ahead, but cannot know how it will show up in experience.

We lose touch with authentic expression (our state of being-ness which simply ‘is’) as we impose our own (and other’s) interpretations of how things are and should be; it is as we judge one another that we create the perception of boundaries which leave some feeling like outcasts. Pain is an expression of discord, which western culture tries to suppress or deny; as suffering gathers in the form of a collective, we increase the measure of force used to push a problem away or else we engage in a blame game.

Consider that meaning is not something that we can attribute or put into words but is an ongoing experience of life. When we are struggling to find meaning in life or to comprehend why events are as they are, we have lost touch with simply being in the moment. So we create a sense of purpose or else we give up trying.

But, I can hear a voice asking – if it is not possible to attribute meaning, then how do we recognise truth? Isn’t God truth? Is there such a thing as an objective or universal truth or is truth relative? Is relativism an antidote for judgment?

What if truth, just like meaning, is also not something which can be defined or put into words? Like trying to grasp a slippery bar of soap, what if it is attempts to take hold of truth as a mental construct or as if it were a tangible thing or an object, which accounts for an experience of despair?

We can say that God is truth or is what gives life meaning but then we try to contain this truth or to hold it in our hand? We are comfortable with suggesting that truth is relative because who is to dispute that it isn’t?

Remember what Jesus had said in the Gospel of Thomas (verse 83): "Images are visible to people, but the light within them is hidden in the image of the Father's light. He will be disclosed, but his image is hidden by his light." 

We experience truth and meaning through the act of living, of showing up and being who we are in the moment. We are an embodiment of truth; to an extent that we are cognizant of this is revealed in an experience of the heart; we know. Knowing has no cause – it does not begin and it has no end. What we have interpreted as knowledge is like shorthand on a page; it can appear scholarly, poetic even and can reveal all manner of form of a subjective world to us. The subjective world is not reality - it is a window into reality. As Jesus said in the Gospel of Mathew (16), “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.”

If meaning and truth are revealed through how we choose to live, are they relative? Are they concepts and by which we can say to one another, “I have my truth and you have yours?” An interpretation of truth is complex in that we have associated truth with the validation of beliefs and consensus of reality – ‘this is so’ becomes a platform from which we begin to build. It is as our sandcastles collapse in the sand, that we are able to experience that we are learning about life and to revise what we had perceived as being truth. In this respect truth is experiential as well as consensual; it is impermanent whilst at the same time giving us a glimpse of ‘what is’.

Language for how we perceive the world is inadequate; language provides structure to our thoughts and is how we arrive at and experience clarity, but at the same time it obfuscates what is simply known.