ExploreTruth

I’ve been thinking a lot about Faith lately. The proposition that suggest there is a dimension outside of our physical world, where a real Creator, or divine entity interacts with humanity.

I’ve also been thinking about the things that get in the way of fully and firmly settling if this dimension exist. Saying you believe in God is one thing.  Experience is another.  And there seems to be a place between those two claims that will house the individual who either isn’t sure, or who prefers to remain that way.

What is living in this in-between place?

That’s the place somewhere between a humanistic(what you see is all there is approach to life), and absolute certainty that there is a supernatural reality beyond what we can see with the naked eye.

It’s between adopting the mantra: ignorance is bliss, or tumbling down the rabbit hole.

Living in the in-between can look like:

• Choosing to not know the truth, in favor of a more comfortable, numb, escapist life.
• Wearing the fish symbol as a bumper sticker, but really never seeing the hand of God act in your life.
• Living a life based on assumptions, without ever getting around to wrestling with your inherited beliefs.

But the thing is…

It’s Comfortable To Live In The In-Between(Sort Of)

Lets face it.  What I see, hear, smell, taste, and can touch, I can deal with.  You don’t have to convince me .  The material world, that time has sandwiched me into, is my reality.

For me to entertain, that the space between birth and death may not be all that there is, requires of me, a desire to do some work.  Some thinking.  Some intuitive and rational snooping around, in the waste basket for any possible cosmic clues to what life truly consist off.  That’s half of what Explore Truth is all about.

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” – Albert Einstein

Here are two videos that provoke us to question if this is all. Both deal with aspects of Plato’s Allegory: The Cave

(If you are interested in seeing the complete documentary on the meaning behind the Matrix Trilogy, search “Return to the source” on youtube.  You’ll see all the parts there.)

But alas…

There Are Some Pesky Habits That Prevent Us From Exploration

• The busyness of life
• Some aspects of religion that don’t promote deep questioning.
• Laziness.  Having someone else do your thinking for you is just easier(religiously/spiritually/politically,etc).
• Subscribing to a lifestyle that promotes escapism as a the only way to deal with the pressures in life.

One ought to be suspicious of all forms of authority.  One ought to be suspicious of all forms of obedience that require certain kinds of blind submission to authority. – Dr. Cornel West

Are We Trapped By The Material?

In the matrix movie, Neo, had to “free his mind” from the things he saw and sensed.  It was tough.  Now this can have a range of meaning.  But for the purposes of what I’m droning on about here, I’m simply advocating the exploration…the questioning, and the abolition of any of these things that are habitually preventing us from fully grappling with the meatier issues in life.  From exploring the possibilities that may lay beyond what our senses tell us.

Blinded By a Perfect Life

But on the bright side(depending on how you look at it), I’ve discovered that something in particular seems to work well in shaking people out of these apathtic in-between zones that threaten our quest to know what’s going on.

There’s a strange choice I have to make when I am faced with the very real and sharp edges of life. I’m talking about those curve balls that seem to nail me right above the nostrils, reminding me that sometimes the other side doesn’t play fair.

What I am begrudgingly learning from personal experience, is that there are hidden incentives to exploring truth, that lay within our suffering. The obstacles seem to remind us that life isn’t always about merrily rowing your boat gently down a stream.  The bumps force us to grapple with truth, or revisit assumptions, that sometimes the sunshine of good days, allow us to ignore.  But the tough times are a foreshadowing of an inevitable reality.  We are finite. And like Dr. Cornel West so deliciously likes to describe, we will become the “culinary delight of terrestial worms.”  And that, at least for me, has a way of begging the question: Is there more?

Featured picture by Luke Robert