I’m not sure it’s uncertainty that’s the root of fear but the way it shakes our personal views esp when we see the need to find ways to adjust and change. The more difficult it is to do that, find comfort levels to continue to go on, the more anxiety we may experience.

I wonder what your thoughts are concerning what I see as a dilemma re: certainty and faith.

1) If one has formulated postitions on truth that seem so convincing that change and reformulation seems unnecessary, is this hubristic or not?

2) If open to tweaking our convictions, is this positive or not?

I’d be interested to hear your views.

Aloha,

This site and its founders are nothing more than capitalist exploiters of gains to manufacture their own truths, equating to murder and theft, like all beliefs do.

Democracy is a part of unnatural freedom; trading hypocrisy in tyranny as theft, if your values are tyranny and theft you’re just another corrupting being.

Peace and equality were as natural in all beginning as they will ultimately equate to in all ends…transition is a right not a labor.

Truth to the ancient seers, especially in India, was not an idea. It was their way of expressing their contact with a Supreme consciousness, a form of all-knowing omniscience of which the normal human mind is outwardly unaware, and only has subliminal or indirect influences. By its nature it could not be expressed or described in any terms knowable to the human mind. What they said, their teachings, were translations, limited aspects of that omniscience reduced to ideas, images, forms with some connection to human experience. And these, they understood, were always limited, merely secondary expressions of a knowledge which cannot be expressed. They were a concession to the limitations of human consciousness.

But much of humanity doesn’t understand that. It takes these limited expressions of the Truth as the thing itself. And that is the understanding most of humanity has of truth, that it is some set of ideas, some principles, some ideal, some morality, some other more or less fixed set of concepts which it can grasp. And that is a difference that many great Western minds have struggled with, have poorly or not at all understood. It is also a difference that has been lost to many of the subsequent followers of these traditions, resulting in the abundance of schools and sects expounding fragmented and divisive views, often in the name of the same tradition.

Likewise the meaning of certainty, passion and conviction, the manner in which one responds to and expresses truth, depends upon which truth. The normal human meaning of the words is that of the certainty, passion and conviction of a particular truth, of a particular set of ideas, a particular view of things, the meaning which has created such chaos in the world. It constantly produces strife among individuals and groups because each has his own limited truth, frequently conflicting with that of others.

And it is also the reason the passion and enthusiasm for the ideals of the 19th century were crushed by the great wars of the last century. Those ideals were limited truths, partial truths which needed to be surpassed in order for humanity to move forward. Without this larger understanding of truth, any passion and enthusiasm, any certainty, is merely for another limited ideal, another particular view of things, perhaps wider, grander, more appealing in some ways, but still another partial truth. It will ultimately face the same fate as all of the other partial truths of the world, to be pushed aside, lost in the conflict with other partial truths, or to become dominant over the others, only ultimately to suffer the consequences of its own limitations, its inability to express a yet higher truth.

The certainty of contact with the Supreme consciousness, the Truth as the ancient Vedic seers understood the word, is completely different from that of the mind’s conviction, the certainty of much of the world. It is the certainty of the Truth experiencing Truth. It is the certainty of the Supreme consciousness within us experiencing itself. And that is a certainty which has no other equivalent; it has a solidity unlike any other belief, independent of any external circumstances or support, a calmness the opposite of the intense fanaticism and dogmatic assertiveness so typical of religious or political creeds, or the qualified hesitancy of scientific knowledge, aware of its own limitations.

And the passion and conviction it generates are also completely different. They are not the bubbly enthusiasm, or the narrow intensity of some fixed belief, or the external expression of some personal need to save the world or impose some system of ideals upon others. Rather they are the calm and wide expression of a Supreme consciousness knowing itself.

The danger of the current re-awakening of the ancient spiritual knowledge, the emergence of an open need to experience and express some contact with this Supreme consciousness, is that in our initial enthusiasm, our early awareness of it, we grasp on the wrong meaning of truth. We merely repeat the same old error of asserting some new, or seemingly new, set of ideas, rather than understanding and developing within ourselves the capacity to express the real Truth as a dynamic, living reality.

And the danger also in our attempt to reach out, to grasp and encourage others in their own re-awakening to higher knowledge is to blind ourselves, to ignore this same error in them, to put on the same level attempts to follow some limited truth: to save the environment, to save the poor, to end tyranny, to right the wrongs of the world as we see them as humans.

While those limited ideals may be necessary for others’ development, even necessary for the great play of world forces, we cannot allow them to divert or dilute our own efforts to find and express the real Truth, the truth which can only be found within ourselves.

I like what I’m hearing so far except for that last point about gambling Wall St. fat cats having to pay for their gambling losses and not stick it to Us the Investors! Have you been following what the President’s saying about the financial overhaul? I’m somewhat reassured and think he’s to be trusted in trying to help Main St folks. Keep tuned.

I certainly don’t like that humungous bailout to the devious folks who figured out those mortgage schemes but I hope history will prove that the actions taken by the Obama administration saved from more severe consequences. I understand and even am nervous about how things are going but I still entertain hope that America and the world economy will recoup, survive and go on. What I really hope is that the bill for the gambling debts of those Wall St. gamblers will be assumed by them and not We the Investors in future dealings. Otherwise we’ll be suckered again not having learned anything.

It’s great to be humble in knowing but not so open-minded to resemble a sieve. Was it Plato who asserted that the truly wise realize that they don’t know and the more they know, the more they find more questions arise.

I think we can differentiate between those who have made a concentrated effort to inform themselves of that which they speak, not before, and those who are spouting off what are simply opinions based more on emotion than on qualified investigation and thinking on it.