Hi Folks:

The Tut qoute we mentioned in our beginning post for this week certainly gave me pause for thought, and there are a couple of reasons for this.  For one, it would be fair to say that a ‘search for the truth’ has been a main focus of my entire life, or at least the past forty years.  At the same time, it’s also ‘true’ to say that I haven’t thought much about an ‘absolute’ truth in a long time.  There are several reasons for that too.

There’s a new TV series coming out this fall called ‘God in America‘, and while it focuses (as much as I  can tell from the one preview I saw) primarily on Christian religions, it’s easy to see how powerful an effect religion has had on the shaping of our world – and not just on this continent.  How many of the world’s wars have been fought over religion?  Religions that profess love and peace and brotherhood?  As the old story goes, two men stand arguing – both agree that there is only one ‘God’ , but each feels his is better.  How is that possible if there is only one?

Anyway, I digress, but the one common theme to almost all religions and those who go out to teach them seems to be the idea that these people and the books and words they proffer are the one and only way to ‘the Truth‘… although some of the more enlightened may be willing to concede that others simply haven’t yet found their way onto the path.

It was somewhere around 35 years ago that I first read the book ‘Seven Arrows‘ by Hyemeyohsts Storm.  One of the first teachings in the book, and one that I have always striven to remember, is the story of the ‘perception wheel’.  We gave a brief description of the perception wheel in our first ‘He Says, She Says…‘ post last December.  If you want to go off and read it, I’ll wait…

Welcome back!

As you can see, the basis of the perception wheel is that we each have our own views, separate and unique to us, and that every one of them is valid – for that person, for that time.  Change is the only constant.  With so many differing but equally valid perceptions of the truth, is there any absolute truth to underly it?  That’s one of the questions I’ve been playing with for those past 35 years.  In my journeys I’ve explored facets and aspects of many religions, many different spiritual ways.  I’ve had many wonderful teachers (some of them even human), and I’ve managed to learn what I can from each of them.  I wrote a bit about my journey a few years ago in the story, ‘The God of Mike‘.

It would be relatively safe to say that I abandoned my search for ‘the truth’ back all those years ago, believing that only that which is All can hold all perceptions.  Instead my choice has always been to discover and maintain as untarnished a perspective as I can, recognizing that all I come to understand remains only a perception of what Is.  My desire has always been to unravel the wrappings, to peel back the layers of each Way, discarding ceremony and costume as much as possible and to search for the kernel within.  In time I came to see more and more that all Ways, although we tend to highlight the differences between them (sometimes forcefully), are really different verses of the same song.  All of the kernels are One.

When I was younger I often said that the more I learn the more I discover how little I know.  It has seemed to me to be like crawling up from the bottom end of a funnel – as my learning grew I could see more clearly the extents of the horizons as they receded into the distance.  I often wondered if I would ever learn so much I would come to realize I know nothing.

More recently I’ve come to wonder something else entirely.  It may be that my understandings, my perceptions have overflowed their banks, or it may be simply that I’ve reached a new plateau in my learning.  I’ve been trying to think of a way to describe it, and the best analogy I can find is that of the internet, and a more recent idea called ‘cloud computing‘.  If you think of the computer on which you’re reading this page, you probably see it as an individual device.  It sits on your desk or you carry it with you or whatever, but for the most part it holds YOUR operating system, YOUR programs, YOUR files, etc.  From that central point it has links to other computers and other information.  Using that as an analogy, we each carry within us our own views, our own understandings, our own beliefs, etc.  We share this information with others through conversations or books or through various other venues.  In cloud computing there is much less of a sense of individualized computers.  Rather than having 100 or 1,000,000 copies of the same program stored on 100 or 1,000,000 computers, there is only one copy stored on a shared server that everyone can access.  The same can be said of data (although some can certainly be kept private).  Relatively recent developments and increases in internet connection speeds and online storage are making this possible.  What this entails, however, is a paradigm shift not only in how we use our computers but gets into deeper issues of trust, ownership, sharing and many other avenues.

Using that as an analogy, my thoughts have been taking me further into the ideas of ‘truth’ and at levels deeper than my own perceptions of it.  Is that even possible, since, in the end, I have only my own perceptions of what I discover?  Perhaps.  I don’t have an answer for that yet.  But where it’s leading me is on a path that goes beyond the individual ideas of truth we each believe we hold inside ourselves.  Some might refer to the ‘Akashic Records‘, but this idea supercedes even that as the idea of a ‘hall of records’ implies their location in a single (if non-physical) plane of existence.  It’s not something I can yet describe, even to myself.  There are likely others who are on their own similar path, and yet even so our perceptions will differ.  We all walk such a path, alone, together.

Okay, I’m starting to babble, which is usually a pretty good sign that it’s time to close out.  I’m going to leave you with one final quote to consider, also from Seth.  Is it true – for you, in this moment?  Only you can decide..

“… You are a multidimensional personality. Trust in the miracle of your own being. Make no divisions between the physical and spiritual in your lifetimes, for the spiritual speaks with a physical voice and the corporeal body is the creation of the spirit.

“Do not place the words of gurus, ministers, priests, scientists, psychologists, friends – or my words – higher than the feeling of your own being. You can learn much from others, but the deepest knowledge must come from within yourself. Your own consciousness is embarked upon a reality that basically can be experienced by no other, that is unique and untranslatable, with its own meaning following its own paths of becoming.

“You share an existence with others who are experiencing their own journeys in their own ways, and you have journeying in common, then. Be kind to yourself and your companions.” ~ The Nature of Personal Reality, session 677.

Love,
Mike.

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Follow this link to read Marcia’s View.