What if both are relative terms based on individual and/or collective belief systems?
You don’t have to go far on this planet to discover what’s held to be “right” for millions of people is considered to be “wrong” for a similar amount of people elsewhere.
What if, in “truth”, there is no “right” and “wrong”, there is only that which serves you and that which doesn’t.
What if the “truth” we live is only that – a “truth” we live, and not the “truth” at all.
What if there is no “truth”, only beliefs being expressed and accepted therefore as “truths”?
There are two truths of which I am certain:
1: Absolute truth only exists momentarily. It’s constantly in a state of flux, never static, forever changing. Therefore the only truth is change.
2: That no one who has ever walked the earth, or ever will, knows the absolute truth, because of the point made above AND because, in the human experience, we can’t hold in our consciousness the “absolute truth”.
Some time ago I spent some time at Ganga Talao, a sacred Hindu lake surrounded by shrines, temples and statues of Hindu Gods such as Krishna and Shiva. It’s a beautiful place, one of the most important Hindu pilgrimage sites outside of India.
As I respectfully observed and gave thanks alongside the worshipers in the temple, who had the peace, grace and love to allow me the privilege of both witnessing and sharing their experience, I was very conscious of observing nothing more than the expressions of certain beliefs, ideas that have been imported into the open, receptive mind of a certain “kind” of human being (a soul incarnated in the human experience on a land mass we call “India”), long before the mind in question had the ability to validate such ideas.
The day before, in attending the oldest mosque in Mauritius at prayer time, I observed exactly the same phenomenon. And if I’d been standing in a synagogue, church, gurdwara, temple, chapel, cathedral or any other building assigned to religious worship I’d have witnessed the same thing:
The assertion of a series of beliefs expressed through the minds of people who inherited those ideas, entirely, from their environment.
Regardless of the building or its theology, none of those present originated the ideas they hold to be sacred, and no one present has ever had the awareness or courage to question the validity of those ideas.
What if, in the blind rituals and worship of sources and entities outside of ourselves, we deny the conscious recognition of divinity within ourselves?
What if “good” and “evil” don’t really exist?
What if they, too, are relative terms based on individual and/or collective belief systems?
What some consider “evil” others consider “good”.
And, in the most illogical of fashions, what one person considers “evil” can, in the blink of an eye, be labelled “good”. Some years ago I had a conversation with a North American Christian who, in the course of our dialogue, felt the need to remind me of what he considered to be the divine directive “thou shalt not kill”.
He said there was no justification, in any circumstance, to kill another human being because it was “against the will of God”. I asked him how that applied to the assassination of Osama Bin Laden, to which he instantly responded, “that’s very different. That bastard had it coming to him. An eye for an eye.”
Hmmm. As Mahatma Ghandi accurately deduced, if the world continues to live under the context of “an eye for an eye”, the entire world will be blind.
And, as evidenced by the state it’s in, it unquestionably is.
What if what we label as “good” and “evil” is simply life asserting itself through the universal law of polarity (the law of opposites)?
Every “up” has it’s “down”, every “cold” has it’s “hot”, every “in” has it’s “out” and life has it’s Christ and it’s Hitlers – both being of the same source, both being opposite expressions of it.
And what if you are an individualised expression of that same source? After all, doesn’t the polarity exist within you? The most Christ-like of us can instantaneously find the Hitler within us when our kids are threatened by a knife-wielding assailant.
Is it simply coincidence, or symantics, that the word “individual” means “undivided from the whole”?
What if the multitude of labels we apportion to the “creator”, with all of the baggage that comes with it and the insane behaviours that are justified on the basis of what is nothing more than indoctrinated interpretation, all describe the same thing – the sponsoring intelligence behind this experience we call “life”?
And what if we are that same source, because it’s all there is and we literally can’t be anything else but it? And what if all of our problems at an individual and global level originate in our refusal to accept ourselves as “undivided from the whole”?
Stay in the “what if” question.
Be open to much broader possibilities.
Rather than follow the “conventional wisdom” from sources outside of you, rather than live by ideas you’ve been told to be true, rather than live as you’ve been told to live, rather than think as you’ve been told to think…
…choose not to be in-doctrinated, choose to be in-formed.
Allow your truth to be formed from within, rather than without.
Only then will you truly “know thyself”. Only then will you truly know the sponsoring intelligence behind this experience we call “life”.
P.S. At Ganga Talao, there’s an incredibly impressive statue of the Hindu God “Shiva”. Standing at thirty three metres tall and currently the highest statue in Mauritius, what’s most impressive about it is not so much its imposing impact on the surroundings, which is significant, but the incredible detail of the statue itself. Made of iron and imported from India, the craftsmanship is simply stunning. The iPhone didn’t do it any justice, but you’ll get some understanding by clicking here to see it.
Christian Simpson is the UK’s leading coach and mentor to business owners and entrepreneurs. For COMPLIMENTARY ACCESS to tried, tested and proven entrepreneurial success strategies, click here
