About Truth
Everyone wants to know the truth, but accepts only the convenient part of it.
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It is easy and pleasant to tell the truth. And it is often (if not always) unpleasant to see the naked truth and not easy to listen to it.
So how to tell the truth to somebody? How much can we (or should?) embellish it to be heard? Shall we benefit from that and from just what - from the truth itself or from embellished truth, which is a lie?
And then we inevitably come to the question - what is Truth?
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Everyone knows - it is what you see (hear or feel) here and now.
Yes.
And no, because different people perceive and describe the same object or event (let's say a street fight) differently depending on their inner convictions and preferences.
Also the point of view is very dependent on the degree of illumination, so "what is Truth" is not such a simple question as it seems. It's a candle lantern standing on a table in the dark at the illustration above. And what did you think?
The truth is "slippery” because it is about whether we embellish the truth (or lie) intentionally. Most of us know when we are lying. Therefore, all that is purely a question of conscience of a person. And human conscience is very flexible and strongly depends on material plane - to get some benefits in life like money, etc. Look at your politicians.
I love the expression: “The conscience is limited by the Bible, the Bible is limited by the knowledge of it, the knowledge is limited by the desire to learn it” (I translated it from my language in the best way I could). Since the U.S. is considered being a country of earning big money, all means are good for that, including a lie. Therefore, there are so much intentional or unintentional lying around - just for making money, nothing is personal. “Job is a job”.
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The deeper layer of understanding the truth is - people often don’t want to accept the truth about themselves and don’t even want to see it. For example, try to prove to an alcoholic that he is an alcoholic. It’s almost impossible despite it is obvious to everyone around.
And that brings us to the next level of understanding of what the truth is.
Truth is a simple, but multi-faceted and multi-layered concept.
Everyone sees his own facet of it at a particular moment of time and thinks it is the ultimate holistic truth. And it is a mistake because you can only see a few facets at a time. To see the truth in its entirety a person should look at the object from different sides (let’s say to listen to someone else's opinion on the subject) and spend extra time for observation. But nobody has time to listen, let alone the observation. That’s why there are a lot of half-truths (or just lies) in relationships, science, business, art, journalism, philosophy, history, politics, etc.
In Hinduism and esotericism the aggregate of those half-truths is called "Maya", which is a delusive mental construction, built by human mind. However, our collective mind calls it "civilization".
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To tell your unique truth you need to see it in full first. To see it entirely you need to see all facets of it which is impossible for you alone - you need to hear somebody else's opinion, i.e. different vision. Thus you need to listen to others, to study and observe your object in time. After all that you can see your ultimate truth and share your unique comprehensive vision with your listeners only to find out that they are not ready for it or simply don’t want to see that truth because it’s inconvenient for them.
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P.S. Dear Reader! I am very much interested in your opinion on the subject of this article. Please, write a comment or ask a question if you want to clarify something.
Yours,
Igor Chykalov
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