Think you know what you are talking about? Meditation for 2/5/14

St. Helena Island; SC

“There are two ways we are fooled.  One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”  -  Soren Kierkegaard

“I know you heard what I said, but I don’t think you know that what I said isn't what I meant.”  -  Nurse Pat of Daufuskie

     The truth is one of the few things in life that is not subject to change.  The truth remains the truth, regardless of how often or for how long a lie is told.  Living in the truth is much easier than lying – we don’t have to remember who we told what when we tell the truth.  And when we are telling the truth, we fear no question anyone could ask.  But for a thing that is so seemingly simple and worthwhile to embrace, it sure can be elusive.

     First, there are all the lies we were taught in our text-books and by those that taught us when we were younger.  These were primarily lies about history – lies of omission, faulty perspective, one-sided stories and a host of other ways we were given false information.  These seem to be pretty deeply imprinted in us because we were so impressionable in our formative years.  We may repeat these for the rest of our life, having a fully clean conscience because we are convinced we are telling the truth.  Many of these lies that were told were designed to get us to subscribe to a particular political or religious philosophy and others were simply gross exaggerations or omissions that the deceivers were convinced were noble.  But many these lies subtly became a part of our “identity,” and when confronted with a vastly differing perspective later in life it is difficult to even entertain the new information because the old is rooted beneath so many layers we have built upon it.  And even if we learn the truth in these circumstances, the lie is usually so widely believed that trying to convince anyone else of the truth is counter-productive.

     Then there are those lies we come to believe because of our own limited perception.  In an old episode of MASH, the nurses are all angry at a new nurse because she received sweets and didn't share them.  The new nurse died and they were still bad talking her.  Then someone read her diary and found out that she didn't eat the sweets either – she snuck them into the hospital and gave them to the gravely injured soldiers.  Often what is plainly evident to us is completely false because we see such a limited perspective.  And other times we hear what people say and either we have misinterpreted them or they accidentally misspoke.  And just ask any magician if you should believe what you “see with your own eyes.”

      And then of course there are the lies we tell ourselves.  Mostly rooted in one anxiety or another, we take a circumstance and conjure up horrid scenarios about what the future holds.  We then work these into a story we tell ourselves, we end up believing our own story and we act on it – we actually alter our lives because of fantasies rooted in fear.   These lies may cost us more opportunity than all the other lies combined.

     The bottom line is that for the most part what we think we know is either entirely inaccurate, out of context or out of perspective.  It is the wise person who is cautious about believing anything besides the circumstances that are present this very moment.  And even when we think we know something about ourselves, this life or the force that stands behind this Universe we are wise to be cautious about what we swallow whole.

Today, may I be discerning.

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