Meditation of the week

[Guest guest]

Meditation of the week

 

The Truth Is In Here

 

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" Every one wishes to have truth on his side, but it is not everyone

sincerely wishes to be on the side of truth. "

Richard Whately

 

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What we believe and the truth can be two different things. Sometimes we

may believe things because they meet our emotional needs. If I am in

the business of having an enemy, it serves me to believe all manner of

uncomplimentary things about him. If I plan on bombing his cities, I

had better believe that all of his people and their children are evil,

stupid, worthless or bad in some other ways. How can I bomb a city if

it contains innocent children, people with beautiful hearts and minds,

genius artists and poets, and servants of goodness and compassion? I

couldn’t think well of myself if I were to kill such people, whether

the bomb was strapped to my body or delivered from miles away.

 

Slaveholders had this problem too. If my prosperity depended on the

enslavement of black people, I had better believe that they were

inferior. It would’ve been best to believe that they couldn’t compete

intellectually or morally and that they didn’t really want the things

that I wanted. It would’ve been best to believe that the people I

enslaved didn’t really feel the same kind of feelings I did. Maybe they

didn’t smell nice also.

 

Racism always has an agenda other than the truth. If you have a war to

win, it helps to think your enemy is subhuman. For bonus points you

believe they don’t value human life like you do. If you haven’t got

much going for you in the sense of lifestyle, it helps to have somebody

lower on the social scale you can point down to. It feels better to not

be the bottom of the social barrel.

 

It is amazing how when an employee goes on worker’s comp the employer

can begin to believe that formerly excellent employee was always a bit

of a secret slacker. When a marriage breaks up, the ex-husband or

ex-wife, who was once hot stuff and the one true lover, becomes a no

good, lying, avaricious and lazy evildoer. Circumstances change and

people’s behavior does change with them, but some of the time, the

unflattering belief about someone is formed out of the agenda it

serves, rather then out of objective truth.

 

While we may remember with intense detail when we were treated

unkindly, we likely have no recollection of when we were mean or unkind

to family or friends. Some victims plan for years what they will say to

their abusers when the time is right, and then the perpetrator acts

like nothing ever happened, perhaps because they don’t believe anything

did. Nobody likes to think of themselves as evil wreckers of lives, so

the objective truth and its memories may be jettisoned.

 

Beliefs and perception are shaded by our emotional habits. We learn

some beliefs and ways of viewing the world from parents and teachers

and some we get from the moral giants who run the entertainment media

conglomerates. Some beliefs we just pick up along the way in life, and

some we may make up because they suit us. While a certain amount of

denial may actually be helpful to us as we make our way in the

dangerous endeavor of human life, we are usually best served by honest

perception and belief in the truth.

 

We can also take the position that most of what we know about ourselves

and others is likely delusion anyway, so why be attached to our

understanding of it? The worst evil and ignorance may come from people

who are convinced that they have a monopoly on the truth. Perhaps the

wise way is to seek truth with the reservation that we may not get it,

speak truth as we understand it, and hold our beliefs with the relaxed

hand that is able to grasp tightly or let go as events require.

 

 

Practice:

Think about what you believe. If you were to write a personal creed, a

statement of belief, what would it include?

 

How do you know the truth about your beliefs? Have you reasoned them

out? Have you had personal experiences? Do you accept your beliefs

based on the authority of church, scripture, or some other supposed to

be correct source?

 

What do you believe about yourself? Do those beliefs serve you well? Do

they serve the truth?

 

What beliefs do you hold that exist to support your emotional

well-being?

 

Do you have flattering or unflattering beliefs about yourself that may

realistically be inaccurate, but that help your world make more sense

if you believe them?

 

Where is your belief system rigid?

 

Practice trying on the perspectives of those who disagree with you. See

life from the point of view of people you might consider enemies. Grow

in understanding and compassion and you may find that you have no more

enemies.

 

 

 

 

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