What it is?

It's a rare person who maintains an honestly scientific eye for the truth – even in scientific circles. Most seek to prove that existing theories or beliefs are correct. They feel obliged to defend the notions that they've learned, hatched or had handed down to them. They tend to see only those things that fit into their preconceptions; or, to forcibly interpret things that conflict with their notions until they mesh, acceptably. Although this may be more comfortable, it's not exactly realistic, practical or wise.

I was talking with a substantially overweight lady the other day who was explaining to me that she didn't consider herself fat; rather, called herself “healthy”. No doubt, it made her feel better. No doubt, it's about as contrary to the truth as possible. Being overly over weight stresses backs, hips, knees and ankles. It greatly increases the risks of diabetes, heart disease, breast cancer and organ failure. And it limits potential by making everything from breathing to climbing stairs more strenuous and taxing.

She's hardly alone in her delusion. I was a teen the first time I heard that particular substitution of terminology. Some might say that she's better off living with the illusion, so that she feels better about her self. I think that condoning any embrace of lying to oneself sets a horrible precedent. Once it's presumed an acceptable practice, the pattern will begin to pop up any and every where. It may be cute when tykes think that closing their eyes shrouds them in a shield of invisibility, but we hardly want our children to grow up planning their lives around such notions.

We learn and evolve much better, and direct our actions far more intelligently, when we see things as they are; and then, adjust our views and beliefs to accommodate any new evidence. It may sound like a no brainer, and I suspect that a large percentage of folks assume that they do just that, but reality would disagree with most.

Religious fundamentalists and scientists can be two peas in a pod here. Feel good fantasies become die hard beliefs that no amount of evidence can dislodge. And, if it's not proven by committee, repeatable and measurable, it's obviously not real. Both close ones eyes to possibilities and close ones mind to new ways of conceiving. Previous generations, whose understandings would be laughable today, were confident in their unquestionable grasp on things. The same will surely be said of us in the future. Truth, as a concept, has to expand and evolve to accommodate our ever clearer understandings, as we crawl toward seeing an ultimate truth.

Where ever the tendency comes from, how ever it manifests, and when ever it became engrained, it can be undone. But reprogramming takes a long time, a lot of work and powerful dedication. The desire to see and know the untainted truth, as it reveals itself, has to be systematically absorbed and integrated ever deeper and more holistically. You have to want to be bathed in, and filled with, welcoming silence more than you want to entertain whatever floats through your field of awareness. You must wish to know the truth more than you wish to feel that what you think, know or believe is accurate. The roots of these yearnings need to reach as deeply as your most primal motivations.

If you haven't been there, you can't conceive it. If you've only heard tales of it, your conception is a far poorer representation than the others abbreviated phrasings of their fractured memories of their partial viewing of it. You need to go there to begin to know it, and there are places that you can't know how to get to. Creativity, intuition, invention, revelation, insight, compassion, ... none of these can be born from a logical progression of thoughts.

There's a whole world and an infinite universe out there, and to be self limited to the boundaries of a particular neighborhood is silly. How can one ever expect to make new discoveries when unwilling to go beyond the familiar? How can people ever expect to know themselves when they're obscured by junkyard sculpture representations of who and/or what they are? How can anyone not want to know the truth, on its own terms? And, how can anyone imagine that they actually know just what it is?