All of us, we are wrong...

by daystar 24 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  daystar

  Way to plagarize Bill Hicks, Butters.

  It's Just a Ride - Bill Hicks

  http://www.tehomet.net/bill.html

  The world is like a ride at an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it, you think it's real, because that's how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round and it has thrills and chills and it's very brightly colored and it's very loud. And it's fun, for a while.

  Some people have been on the ride for a long time, and they begin to question: 'Is this real? Or is this just a ride?' And other people have remembered, and they come back to us and they say 'Hey! Don't worry, don't be afraid -- ever -- because... this is just a ride.' And we kill those people.

  'Shut him up! We have a lot invested in this ride! Shut him up! Look at my furrows of worry; look at my big bank account, and my family. This has to be real.' It's just a ride. But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that -- ever notice that? -- and we let the demons run amok. But it doesn't matter, because... it's just a ride, and we can change it any time we want. It's only a choice. No effort. No worry. No job. No savings and money. Just a choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your door, buy bigger guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love, instead, see all of us as one.

  Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, into a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defense each year and, instead, spend it feeding, clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would do many times over -- not one human being excluded -- and we can explore space together, both inner and outer, forever. In peace.

  You also refer to that old Chaos axiom, attributed to Hasan i Sabah, "Nothing is True, Everything is Permissible".
• 

  lowden

  What I'm suggesting is that we are all living our lives based upon our best guesses; that Truth is an illusion; that very little, if anything is a certainty, no matter what side of any argument you stand upon.

  I'm agreeing with most of this quite arresting statement. I do believe though, that we can come near to the truth whilst on this earth (if not find it altogether) and we do this by the process of refinement within our own personal system of belief.

  I do not for instance, think that any religion related to Judaism (i.e. Christianity, Islam or the aforementioned Judaism) holds any true spiritual enlightenment. I believe this to be part of the TRUTH and that there is absolute certainty in that deduction.

  As for absolute truth, i don't worry about it but i believe that ALL of us will one day be fully enlightened. Each ones personal journey is different but eventually it will result in absolute truth.

  Nice thread Daystar.

  Peace

  Lowden
• 

  daystar

  lowden

  I do not for instance, think that any religion related to Judaism (i.e. Christianity, Islam or the aforementioned Judaism) holds any true spiritual enlightenment. I believe this to be part of the TRUTH and that there is absolute certainty in that deduction.

  That statement is not entirely true. There are many mysteries contained within the Judeo-Christian tradition which you, and most of society, are likely to not be very aware of.

  You can only be certain that from your particular perspective now, that that seems to be true. Certainty is illusory.
• 

  MsMcDucket

  Daystar, if I keep listening to you I'll become psychotic! It reminds me of my patients that are hallucinating. Their reality is not mine, and I can't comprehend it. For instance, the little lady that sees the little babies on the ceiling. I'll try to re-orientate her to her environment. I'll say there are no babies on the ceiling. She looks at me and says "Yes, there are babies on the ceiling. You just can't see them." Ok!

  They tell me mother was yelling out for her babies the other day. She was looking for her children. I have a sister that is missing and is presumed to be dead. My mother has never accepted this. She feels that she is still alive. So, at the nursing home (long story), she kept yelling "Sister" (that's my sister's nickname). I wonder what she was feeling or seeing. It's strange. She has went back in time, a time where all of her children were younger. She recognizes us all and sees that we are adults, but she still goes back to when we were children.

  Do you see what I see? Are we on the same page? What if there are really people that are psychic? So on and so forth.

  The mind is a vast territory that hasn't been fully mapped or tapped. It's tricky!
• 

  greendawn

  Human beings are deeply ignorant, in fact even today only the surface has been scratched in all fields of knowledge. So it will not be surprising if many ideas held by the masses are wrong.
• 

  daystar

  Hmmm... even truth is relative. The closer two people are geographically, culturally, etc. their truths are more likely to be similar. But the father apart they are, the less likely their truths are to be so close.

  What makes one person's truth any more valid than any one else's? I think, what if I were to have been born (as unlikely as that possibility might be) in a Muslim country, to Muslim parents, but genetically the same? I would be a different person, ultimately, with a very different view of the world. And yet, I would be the same person, just having been born and raised in a different part of the world. Who I am, then, become quite elastic, it would seem to me.

  When I think about things such as this, this is the reason why I must entertain a certain amount of doubt about all things; that those things I am most sure about are not likely to be very certain at all; all is in flux.

  We were wrong about the JW religion. And we believed it fully. We were certain. How certain are we of what we know now? Are we just as certain? If we were certain before, and were wrong, what makes our certainty now any different? We very well could be wrong.

  This, to me, greys the lines between truth and untruth, between reality and fantasy... did not we believe in a fantasy when we were JWs? Layers upon layers. Keep digging... keep doubting.

  That is not to say we can't choose to entertain a working set of beliefs for practical purposes. We must. But there should not be anything to say that we can't adjust from time to time, when we gain new insight into something, if we remain open to such a thing.
• 

  Carmel

  "....religious truth is not absolute but relative, that Divine Revelation is not final but progressive."

  (Shoghi Effendi, Baha'i Administration, p. 185)

  carmel
• 

  SixofNine

  ::I'm suggesting is that we are all living our lives based upon our best guesses;

  That's definitely not the lesson I took away from being a witness. My best instincts, from back when I was a questioning child, were to question the logic of many bible stories. I put away logic, and went with my second best guess, which was that all the people I loved and respected and (mostly) feared, couldn't be wrong, so I just had to get in line with what they knew to be right. Before you knew it, I knew it to be right too.

  Now I only trust my instincts to tell me where to point my logic.

  A couple people on this forum who were exiting at the same time as me, seemed to marvel at how fast I could ditch the witness beliefs and doctrines and fears of "what if they're right". I got completely over those things, quickly, because I wasn't guessing at all, I knew the witnesses were wrong, once I took the first step to challenge my beliefs. I ache for people who can't do that, who have to go thru years of mental and emotional anguish (or unhealthy sublimation) before finally being comfortable being "worldly", simply because they can't intellectualize their feelings and fears.

  I will at this point admit that knowing what is wrong, is more easily achieved than knowing what is right. And all that said, I think you and I (if I read you correctly) end up with a way of seeing that is fairly similar, in practical terms.

  I am just very comfortable with good old dictionary definitions of words like "truth", and VERY VERY uncomfortable with definitions that use the original definition to lend credence to an almost antithetical idea. It seems unfair to the language and the audience. The Watchtower's misuse of the word truth fucked me over quite seriously. I don't think they meant to be evil when they used the word in their particularly dishonest way, but still... I remained quite fucked.

  ::This, to me, greys the lines between truth and untruth, between reality and fantasy... did not we believe in a fantasy when we were JWs? Layers upon layers. Keep digging... keep doubting.

  While I wholeheartedly agree that we should be skeptical of our own beliefs (if for no other reason than that the ego is treacherous, and not to be trusted), why should that realization "grey the line between reality and fantasy"? The basic accepted idea of reality is that it is that which is not based on our personal "take", and the basic accepted concept of fantasy is that it is primarily based on our own personal mental conceptions, yes?

  Back to your original topic... In my view, the epiphany that I was WRONG, monumentally WRONG, was a gift. And if there is such a thing as a silver lining to being part of the Witnesses, it would be for me the monumental nature of that wrongness. I was simply wrong about everything really practical in life. "The Emperor has no clothes" has become a catch phrase for seeing the naked truth about others, but I think *we* are the Last Emperor.
• 

  purplesofa

  the epiphany that I was WRONG, monumentally WRONG, was a gift. And if there is such a thing as a silver lining to being part of the Witnesses, it would be for me the monumental nature of that wrongness.

  I feel the same way. The scale at which it is wrong is so vast and deep it gave me a better understanding as to what is right. Raised in the Catholic religion, had I stayed with it, the challenge would have never been before me.

  I don't think they meant to be evil when they used the word in their particularly dishonest way,

  totally agree

  We seem to have so many barriers before us to really have the truth. The closest I come to truth is when thoughts are floating, racing through my mind, when I let intuition, common sense and stillness happen and for a fleeting moment I can grasp it and as quickly as it is there it is gone. Everytime I am able to catch one of these jewels it changes my already programmed thoughts, ideas and truths and I feel I progress closer to real truth. Sometimes it happens so fast, that as soon as I accept a new concept it is already outdated.

  purps

  SixofNine,

  I especially liked your comment on this thread
• 

  SixofNine

  t/y, purps.

  "Raised in the Catholic religion, had I stayed with it, the challenge would have never been before me."

  I've often thought about that; it seems like the way we (or a great many of us) ex-JW's confront everything we believed, is rare among people brought up in softer (for lack of a better descriptor) religions. I have to try and remember that when hanging out with my "worldly" (lol) friends.