Universal truth and the art of deep-sea diving

It takes a hell of a lot of energy, courage, thought and faith to take your foundation, drop it off a cliff and start over. It’s the biggest undertaking any of us will ever attempt. And, for some reason, I’ve discovered that continually doing so is what keeps me motivated to keep going. I’ve never felt so satisfied realizing that I know so little.

It’s not so much that I enjoy freeing myself of my beliefs, philosophies and values. It’s more that, when I look at those who don’t go about this process, the cancer of complacency is written all over their graying faces. Challenging my own ideas is what I do best, it seems, and the one habit I can’t seem to free myself of when shedding my ball and chain is judging those who, knowingly or not, do not deny themselves — mind, soul and spirit included — for the sake of their own personal development and enlightenment.

Today, the concept of Universal Truth is on the table.

To those who deny it, it sounds like the product of fundamentalist rubes. Only one Truth is possible. One timeline; one explanation for life, the universe and everything; one way we’ll experience the afterlife, if an afterlife exists at all. It’s impossible that you and I could experience two very different things in the very same circumstance, and even less possible that two contradicting beliefs can both be right. It just makes sense.

But relative truth certainly has its appeal. A world where we can justify our actions by claiming relative truths sounds much fancier and full of options, but it’s hard not to wonder if the motivations still boil down to one enveloping universal truth: we don’t want anyone to challenge what we believe. In other words, selfish individualism (which potentially leads to the death of community and tradition).

On the other hand, universal truth denies the gray area of differing cognitive realities. Part philosophy, part neurology, we can’t prove that what I see is what you see. Somehow (if I’m not just imagining you all exist in my own self-created universe) we all manage to get on the same relational wavelength about whether or not that blue rubber ball just rolled off the table and bounced into a corner. But hallucinations, misinterpretations and crossed wires in the brain can’t be overlooked either, therefore invalidating the mind from being an entirely trustworthy vessel of Truth.

What it comes down to is the fact that it’s hard for me to shed the weight of 25 years of dogma — which I find increasingly full of cracks — when I’m trying to pragmatically explain why I know that, despite the billions of people that disagree, my truth is the Truth.

Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism. If there is one Universal Truth, why are we all so split on what we believe? Why is there no clear front-runner with the vast majority of the votes? What gives me, a WASP if there ever was one, the right to think that what I believe is right? If I were born and raised by Iranians in Iran, I’d be a Muslim. No doubt about it. My core foundation, that I continually push off a cliff — and eventually dive after to retrieve every damn time — seems more a product of my environment than some spark of inspired awareness imbued in me by a greater power.

Maybe I lack faith. Maybe I just got lucky. Or maybe the only Universal Truth is that every venue of faith is true and, despite the overwhelming list of contradictions, they all converge into one path in ways that are beyond our ability to understand. (It should be just as easy to use what faith we have to accept plurality as it is to faithfully believe in only one way; the attempted use of empirical evidence to pick one over the other will continually fail.)

But I don’t know. I really don’t. I’m somehow satisfied with not knowing. It’s surprisingly easy to relate to people when willing to admit to knowing nothing. And I like it that way.