| Just give me some Truth From the editor | by Tim Miejan "I'm sick and tired of hearing things | From uptight, shortsighted, narrow-minded hypocrites | All I want is the truth | Just gimme some truth" ~ John Lennon The EDGE has long been an open forum where readers could contribute their views on virtually anything connected to the exploration of consciousness, and fortunately, the community at large has submitted interesting articles ranging from personal experiences with the unknown, to dialogues on how we grow as spiritual beings, to suggestions on how to find wellness and peace of mind. Occasionally, we print contributions that contain scientifically unproven ideas and leave it up to our readers to use both rational research and intuitive guidance while journeying along the sometimes-primitive path toward Truth. Several e-mails have arrived in The EDGE mailbox recently questioning the motive of particular contributors and the source and validity of given informaton. The first, pertaining to an article recently published on Eye Movement Desensitization and Processing (EMDR), alleged possible fraud toward the public at The EDGE's expense because the writer had not understood the concepts of the therapy before making opinions about it. The second e-mail questioned the validity of information presented on such topics as Planet X, smallpox vaccines and SARS. "How do you tell the wheat from the chaff?" writes Carol Manning, M.D., a Minneapolis-based physician who is board certified in internal medicine and holistic medicine. "Internet sites that promote 'alternative' explanations of everything from SARS to Planet X to government plots -- are they totally fiction, true information that is being withheld from the mainstream media, or somewhere in between? How can you decide when you have no direct knowledge of the information, and not enough experience with the subject to even make an informed guess?" "If the information is going to affect your behavior," Dr. Manning writes, "start by gathering information. Ask experts you trust, look at reliable sources of information and do research in the library to understand what is known about the topic. Then trust your intuition. If it feels wrong, trust that feeling. But be careful to notice a tendency in yourself to trust all of one category of sources and distrust others. Give them all an open hearing, then decide what makes the most sense, given what else you know, and what feels most true." What Dr. Manning says has truth in it. We should not distrust everything that seems to run counter to our sense of how things are. It is wise to integrate ideas and choices from as wide a spectrum of information as possible. Integrate the best of all possible worlds. Explore new ideas from all angles. One can be just as narrow-minded by rejecting all of Western medical science as those who suggest that only Western medical science has the answers. Doesn't the answer to most of our questions lie somewhere in the middle? "There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it, fragment by fragment." ~ Anais Nin While many readers of The EDGE probably would consider themselves average people, many of them probably think outside of the box of accepted reality in some areas of their lives. While they may lean liberal and perhaps were among the 539,947 more people who voted for Al Gore than for George W. Bush in the 2000 election, they may have conservative tendencies when it comes to investing their money. At the same time, they could believe in extraterrestrials and will support their son, who is gay, when he marches in the San Francisco Pride parade this month. At the same time, they may eat basic meat-and-potatoes for dinner each evening and favor conceal-and-carry gun legislation, while reading about quantum physics and believing that our consciousness extends far beyond our bodies and is, in fact, linked with every other organism on the planet. The fact is, humankind is expanding in so many dimensions right now that it is impossible to judge anybody you see. Who we are on the inside is shifting so incredibly fast that who we were even one year ago is hardly who we are now. It's no surprise that you cannot keep up with friends who live out of state. We can hardly keep up with ourselves. The internet continues to offer an expanding array of information, and media outlets seem to be harvesting sub-plots while we sleep. And in the process of all of that, we are constantly having to re-evaluate what we understand to be true -- and I'm not talking about politics, where new versions of the truth are now being cloned due to the lack of donor material. And along the way, more of us are finding ourselves outside of the box of accepted reality. Perhaps the box is fading, becoming invisible, and when we least expect it, there will be no more box. How will we know what is true then? How will we know what is true when we die and change form? "Truth is from before creation (Mai ka po mai ka oiaio)." ~ Hawaiian Proverb Quantum physicist Niels Bohr once said that there are two kinds of truth -- small truth and great truth. "You can recognize a small truth because its opposite is a falsehood," he said. "The opposite of a great truth is another truth." The EDGE provides a forum that explores the evolution of consciousness, and in so doing, it allows us a chance to talk about the greater Truth. It is easy, I suppose, for us to forget who we are once in a while and begin dealing in truths and falsehoods, in judgment, in criticism and speculation and worrying about our safety and security. It is easy to fear nuclear attack and the end of the world as we know it. It is much more difficult -- and rewarding -- to keep our focus on the greater Truth, on who we are at our core and how, in Truth, we are all the same. We all want the same thing. Our challenge, as a collective group of people, is to work together to create that. When we allow ourselves to lose sight of the big picture, we get distracted and spin our wheels, moving nowhere in a hurry. We begin to try to sway others to think the way we do. Politically and legislatively, we spend all of our time and money trying to undue the things in government that we didn't agree with from the former administration. Perhaps it's time to put aside our differences and work for the common good. Perhaps it’s time to focus on the Truth, instead of running away from it. Tim Miejan is editor of The EDGE. Contact him at (651) 578-8969 or toll-free 1 (888) 776-5687. E-mail editor@edgenews.com Copyright © 2003 Tim Miejan |
||
|
|
|
