You meet someone and you
have a great conversation and you feel good. You think that you are
liked. Instead, you are getting set up for a sales pitch.
You’re happiness is real. The reason is
not.
You meet someone. They
leave abruptly. You feel like you said something wrong
because you often feel misunderstood. You feel bad about
yourself. You are unhappy. What is the reality of the
situation? You may never know, though never is a long
time. You get over it. You get an email from them
apologizing for leaving as they did. You struck a chord in
them and an issue they had, came up, and they felt very
uncomfortable. They thank you for your honesty because it
helped them see something in themselves they’ve been
avoiding. Now you feel good. It is the same event. All
that has changed are your ideas.
Knowledge is constrained by
past experience and ideas. Beliefs need not conform to the
past. The most profound life changing experiences are those
that defy what we previously felt we
knew.
Remember, it
can be helpful to think of facts, truth and knowledge as terms that
are references to the degree of our certainly about things rather
than as statements defining reality. This will help us
keep in mind the fluid nature of what we feel we have learned, what
we feel we “know”, so that we are less bound to our own
ideas that may not serve us as we progress in our lives. It
can also remind us to think through for ourselves what others may
suggest as fact, truth and knowledge.
Truth is defined as
something that is proven to be. It is consistent with fact or
reality. To know is to regard an idea as truth beyond
doubt. Truth and Knowledge are not
the reality of things. They are our understanding of the
reality of things. There is a great
difference. What we think of as truth and knowledge are
really just a way of understanding reality.
They are based on past experience and their
validity is only as good as our ability to perceive
correctly. Weak perception and comprehension will still lead
us to arrive at conclusions about reality, which we will think of
and call truth and knowledge, yet they will not reflect a clear
understanding of reality. Since our understanding of reality
is always expanding, what we commonly think of as truth and
knowledge will also always be expanding. When we work with
our beliefs we are at least aware that we can choose to see things
as we wish, thereby having more control over our own
feelings. When we feel that we are within the arena of
knowledge and fact, we tend to lose sight of just how much our
beliefs are responsible for shaping that
“knowledge”. “The great
obstacle to progress is not ignorance, by the illusion of
knowledge.”
