The uncritical mind often becomes confused in its consideration of what truth is. This confusion proceeds from a preoccupation with faulty assumptions about reality. If we begin with the wrong assumptions, we proceed to ask the wrong questions, and logically arrive at answers informed by our assumptions.
Such a mind approaches an event and begins its evaluation by asking, “Did it happen?”. The assumption being, if we cannot place that event in a specific time and a specific place, then its truthfulness is to be challenged. When we equate truth to facts, not only do we overburden the facts; we shortchange the truth.
Wisdom teaches us that the truth is often larger and more encompassing than a particular set of facts. The tendency of the uncritical mind is to limit truth to the boundaries of one’s particular experience. In doing so we end up with dogma. Historically, dogma has been used to serve the purposes of those who would negate the validity of those perspectives that derive from the experience of others. Herein is to be found the raison d’etre of so many tragic conflicts.
Instead of beginning our quest for truth by asking whether or not an event actually occurred, we might more wisely consider the accuracy of its depiction of the human condition. As an example, when we analyze the Edenic account of what we have come to refer to as “ original sin,” instead of preoccupying ourselves with questions about the “apple” or the “serpent,” we may more usefully contemplate the reality of temptation and beguilement in our experience. Is the story truthful? Yes… In the sense that it represents the experience of temptation and beguilement as real features of the human experience. Is it factual? In the context of the validity of these experiences… the question and its answers are of no consequence.
Seriously considered, in the unraveling of the dilemmas we must account for in the course of our humanity, myths serves us more completely than facts. This is so because a myth takes the truth out of the rut of a particular life experience and re- presents it as a feature universal reality. A contentious point, I will admit, to those who would rule the world with the prescriptions of their dogma. But “truth” was always “offensive.”
Myth is truth that is larger than fact, and story telling is still a safe craft. Well, that is what the ancients keep telling me… And I have come to trust their Wisdom ☮️
