We live in interesting times with the rise of fake news and continuous battles, often verbally vicious and sometimes physically violent, around what is true. But that does beg the question, what is truth? Being raised in the church, I was taught that God’s truth was the essence of truth, but what is this Divine truth that guides our world, and what does it mean to seek it? These are the questions we will explore in this blog. There are two key teachings about truth that the Christian tradition highlights that Jesus taught. One is found in the gospel of Matthew. Here, we see the teaching, “seek first the Kingdom of God and God’s righteousness and all your needs (what you eat, drink, and wear) will be given to you as well” (Matt. 6: 33). This teaching highlights how God’s righteous or truth is something we are to seek. This invitation to seek righteous suggests to me that God’s truth is not always obvious, or that you ever get the full revelation of truth. There is a sense that you are always seeking it, that you don’t just find it and then your seeking is over, but rather you find aspects of truth that whets your appetite to keep seeking so you can learn more aspects of this truth. The second Jesus teaching comes from the gospel of John where Jesus says “that if you follow my word/truth, you will know this truth for this truth will set you free” (John 8: 32). This Jesus teaching highlights an essential quality of God’s truth: it is a truth that sets people free, not just me, or Christians, but anyone who embraces that truth. God’s truth is a universal truth, a truth that everyone can embrace, a truth that sets everyone free. From these two teachings, we learn that truth is something we are always seeking, and we know truth if it sets all people free. But this is not the way many people understand truth in our world. Instead of always seeking God’s truth, many people claim that the truth is something you can possess, control, and protect. And yet, all of these people, who claim to possess this truth, don’t agree with one another. This is why we have such intense battles around truth in our culture right now. Furthermore, these truths that people demand as being essential truth are not very universal in nature; these truths may bring freedom to members of one group who embrace this truth, but those, from other groups who can’t embrace this truth, don’t experience this freedom. So how do we make sense of all this conflict around truth in our world? I have found Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory helpful in understanding these different conflictual views of truth. This Integral framework is based on a developmental view of humanity. His Integral Theory talks about three different aspects of human development: growing up, waking up, and cleaning up. The process of “growing up” refers to the natural psychologial development that the human soul passes through as people mature. The process of “waking up” involves the expanding of our consciousness where our awareness moves through different levels of development leading to greater, deeper, and broader awareness. Finally the process of “cleaning up” involves people working intentionally at the shadow side of their life, the often unconscious blocks and patterns that keep humans from developing and maturing at the psychological and consciousness levels. The Growing Up Process When we look at the “growing up” process, we see that humans pass through different stages of development. Lets look at each stage briefly. Notice how each stage of human development has a different notion of truth. One of the earlier states of human development is known as the Magical stage. Before we experience education and the school system, we naturally, as young children, look upon our life experience through a magical lens. Most things in our life feel outside our control and so we need stories involving magical entities like Gods and angels and demons and fairies to help us make sense of our life. These magical stories bring order to the often-chaotic experiences of positive and negative in our life. These magical stories were our truth, and we were often convinced of their truth. The next stage of human development is what Wilber calls the Mythic/Literal stage. Over time, due to our magical truth system failing us, we look more and more to external authorities we trust to guide us in making sense of our world and life experience. Education and religious communities like schools and churches, and the books they use, become key sources of truth for us. If you grew up in a Christian home like me, the Bible was important document of truth as were the textbooks we studied in school. Teachers at school and church along with parents were important sources of truth for us. However, due to how humans develop, people with a mythic-literal faith see truth as literally true. If the Bible recorded it, then it had to be literally true: it happened exactly as written. If our school teacher or a history book taught a certain version of history, that version was literally true. There was no other version of truth. When we hold truth in a literal way, there is no such thing as historically true or scientifically true or rationally true or emotionally true or any other form of truth. Our minds, at this stage of development, cannot grasp such nuance understandings of truth. Any other forms of truth we quickly dismiss for it challenges our literal truth, which we are certain is truth. This certainty has a lot of emotion wrapped up in it for this mythic/literal truth framework brings order to the chaos that we see and are experiencing in life. If this literal truth is wrong, we fear getting lost or overwhelmed or hurt by the chaos that we anticipate will follow. As we progress in our education, our minds often develop further and we find ourselves developing critical thinking and enter what Wilber calls the Scientific/Rational stage. We begin to look closely at the discrepancies between what we have taken to be literally true and the truth we see in front of us due to direct observation or experience (science) OR the truth arising through careful logical thinking and reflection (philosophy/theology) OR both. Rather than dismiss these challenges of literal truth, people who enter this stage of human development seek to investigate the discrepancies to fully understand them. Overtime, literal truth found in the mythic/literal stage no longer makes sense to us. No longer do we see a religious and educational institution having authority to simply declare truth to us. Truth must be now verifiable, able to be confirmed through scientific observation or rational thinking. People who fully embrace this scientific/rational stage of human development are often quite critical of those who have a mythic/literal view of truth. Due to further education or broader life experiences, we discover that people who take scientific evidence and critical thinking seriously come to different conclusions, even when they are analyzing the same experience of life or the same collection of writings. Through my time in seminary 30 years ago and since, I have encountered different approaches to interpreting the Bible: historical, cultural, canonical, scientific, narrative, feminist, psychological, queer, etc. And each of these approaches bring to the surface different insights and truths, even when analyzing the same section of scripture. It becomes apparent that truth is dependent upon what lens one brings to the area that is being studied whether it is Bible, history, life experience, etc. Furthermore, since being a pastor and spiritual director for twenty years, it has become apparent that even my personal sense of history (male, privileged, white, Irish/English, Canadian, family man, religious, heterosexual, etc.) shapes the truth that I discern in someone’s life experience or in something I am reading. No longer is their one objective truth which the scientific/rational stage of human development professes, but now there are many truths depending on one’s context and lens. Once we fully embrace the Postmodern stage of human development, we are often quite critical and dismissive of any notion of objective truth espoused by people who value the scientific/rational framework. Wilber's “growing up” framework of human development helps us see the seeking nature of truth as I highlighted earlier. The reason human development happens in this model is because there is a conflict between our current understanding of truth and what we are experiencing in life. This discrepancy creates a desire to seek the deeper truth and this seeking naturally causes us to grow in our understanding of truth. Our understanding of truth deepens. As this truth deepens, we also notice that this truth brings greater understanding and freedom to our world. We are free from the false truths that we see embodied in the lower levels of human understanding. However, this freedom is not complete for we see that in each stage of human development, there is a often a rejection of the people who are less developed. We can no longer value their version of truth even though at one time in our human development we did. We noted earlier that, for truth to be fully true within the Christian faith this truth must set everyone free, not just a select or self-chosen group. What does this mean? It means that there must be another level of human maturity or development that gives us the ability to experience a deeper truth that builds upon the truths we know from the different levels of human maturity, but goes beyond. Wilber calls this level the Integral stage in his “growing up” model of human development. But what does this look like? And how do we get there? It requires another type of human development to occur, what Wilber calls “waking up.” Lets explore briefly this process of waking up. The Waking Up Process Based on scientific research, Wilber describes another human development process involving different states of human awareness. The lowest state of awareness is what is called the Waking state, and most people spend all of their time in this waking state. This is our world of thoughts, feelings, and all the input from our senses. Our sense of truth is wrapped in all the things we notice in this waking state. Within Christianity, this waking state is symbolically labelled as Earth, all the dynamics we notice in our physical earthly world. However, Christianity, and the other religions, teach that there is more to reality than what we notice in our waking state of consciousness. In Christianity, this other realm is called the Kingdom of God/Heaven which is seen as the spiritual dimension of earthly existence. When we have mystical experiences that arise spontaneously or through intentional acts of prayerfulness, contemplation, meditation, or mindfulness, we are no longer experiencing the waking state. We have entered one of three deeper levels of awareness that scientific studies have uncovered, maybe the subtle state, or casual/inner witness state, or nondual state of awareness. Let me briefly describe each of these states of awareness. When we are in the Subtle state of wakefulness, we notice more things happening in our experience beyond our thoughts, feelings, and input from our senses. We notice in this subtle moments that a separation or space has opened up between our sense of “I” and what we are thinking or feeling or sensing in our field of experience. There is a sense of “I”, which is often called the “witnessing I” or “inner observer” and what we are experiencing. This is often called self awareness but normal self awareness for most people happens after the fact. We notice that we were angry or sad or happy or we remember what we were thinking a few moments before. This suble sense of self awareness is different from this normal self awareness that people talk about. This subtle self awareness is in the moment for we are aware of what we thinking or feeling or experiencing right now as it is happening. Because of this dis-identification with our current experience, we can now explore and analyze the subtle or previously hidden dynamics of our experience. Our realm of wakefulness has expanded beyond the normal wakefulness to this suble level of consciousness. All of these dynamics in this deeper place of awareness will feel emergent in the sense that you feel you are not the cause or source of them. Rather, these emergent dynamics arise in response to what you are experiencing in the moment. For example, when we feel pain, compassion or inner tenderness will often naturally arise. When we feel safe and free, a sense of joy and playfulness may arise. When we are curious or seeking understanding, truth may emerge. All of these life-giving emergent dynamics that arise are seen as fruits of God’s spirit in the Christian tradition. However, we may also see other dynamics arise and these dynamics seem to be more structured and their goal is to shut down or manage your experience. For example, when pain arises, instead of inner compassion, we may feel pressure to shut down the pain—through suppression, avoidance, changing the topic, medicating through food, drink, technology, sex, etc. These managing dynamics are often called egoic dynamics or fallen or sinful dynamics within the Christian tradition. When we are functioning more from this subtle place of wakefulness, the insights and understandings that our “witnessing I” experiences feel very true to us. As we spend more and more time in this place of subtle awareness, and develop skills and comfort in this space, we will have moments of deeper states of awareness, what Wilber calls the Causal/Inner Witness state of wakefulness. In this state of deeper/broader wakefulness, we come to realize that we are part of something bigger than us, a field of conscious reality that what we, as Christians, call God or Christ Consciousness or the Kingdom of God/Heaven. No longer do we experience ourselves as a separate entity from God but as an active part of God’s Kingdom that includes many parts, and we are just one part. Truth in this place of wakefulness changes. No longer is truth defined by me, as it is when I function from previous states of awareness, but now I see ultimate truth as beyond me, something that is held within the mind of God. My goal now is not to find ultimate truth for we realize that this ultimate truth is beyond our grasp and can't be controlled. Instead, we focus on receiving the truth that is needed right now to experience greater freedom and life for all. Finally, the final state of wakefulness occurs when we experience reality, ourselves, and others as Non-dual experience. When this happens, we experience moments of no separation between God and us; we feel that we are one with reality, nature, with all of creation. We experience times of no separation between us and others; we are all part of one common human field. We encounter experiences of no separation within ourselves between our good parts and our negative parts; all are included in grace without judgement. Even the boundary between life and death can break down in these moments. In these non-dual moments, we embrace reality as it fully is with all its complexities and mystery. I realize that for almost all people this nondual state of wakefulness is myth, outside their reality, but more and more people are encountering moments when they experience heaven on earth. What Wilber highlights is that the development pattern of these wakefulness states is independent of the different psychological stages of human development. Anyone, regardless of their stage development, can have a mystical experience, and at any stage of wakefulness. But, how they will interpret their mystical experience or express the truth of their experience will be shaped by what stage of psychological development they are functioning from. If they are functioning from the mythical or magical place of human development, they may use angel and demon or God language to describe the dynamics they are noticing in this place of wakefulness. If they live from the scientific/rational stage, they may describe their mystical experience in biological or psychological terms with little reference to transcendent realities. If they think through a postmodern lens, they may interpret their profound experience through a very personal lens and how their transpersonal moment was shaped by their history and context. But it is unlikely, Wilber stresses, that each of these people could embrace as true the truth shared by the other people about their mystical experience, unless it agrees with their version of the truth. For all of these people, truth is something that we can possess, something that we can define, which suggests that we are the centre or determiner of this truth. We believe that we can know exactly what this elephant of truth looks like. This self-centred view of defining truth holds until we start having experiences of life beyond waking levels of awareness. When that happens, we begin to experience ourselves as part of something bigger than us. As these "heaven-type" experiences happen more often in our life, a humility begins to set in. We start to realize that we are less the definers of truth and more the the receivers of truth that comes to us from this larger Divine Mystery and Life that we find ourselves belonging to. It seems that people need to have a certain level of human wakefulness and psychological growth before they can begin to release their attachment to defining truth. While we can never nail down exactly what truth is, our heart’s longing for truth is the compass that helps us stay on the road of truth, and return to this road when we stray, a narrow road that leads to life and freedom for all. Questions to Ponder:
1 Comment
|