What is the ‘Truth’? Using the Inner Eye
Posted on March 18, 2008
Filed Under Awareness, Society, Spirituality | 2 Comments
“Truth” is one of those rare commodities which people often excessively wonder about, even to the point of asking exactly what it is. I have heard a number of times people saying things like, “But how does one recognize the truth?” After all, is there really any universal truth?
There is something I have often noticed with anything that resonates with me as ‘true’. When I hear it, my attention immediately changes focus, I take on a sort of metaphorical inward stare. It’s a process which tends to momentarily stop all mental activity, as my inward awareness notices its own alignment to what this thing it feels is ‘truth’. That truth can be anything, a word spoken, a discovery, a new realization – regardless of how it happens the accompanying sensation is always the same. Maybe you experience this too? The turning inward of our attention.
This is an experience that many religious rites seek to replicate, the turning inwards of the inner eye. It is one of the focuses of the initiation rites of many a secret society.
In ancient cultures, this turning of the inner eye was a ritual to invoke an altered state of consciousness, bringing on a journey whereby the partaker would learn great hidden truths about themselves or reality. It is the shamanistic practice of hallucinogenics plants, of the tribal dances – which when danced to excess and exhaustion bring on an altered state. These altered states have been used throughout the ages in many different forms; the deep meditations of the East, the tribal singing and chanting, fasting and sleep deprivation. It can even be found within the original sacraments of Christianity.
Now this is where things can get dicey, because the modern churches and the cults which have been perpetuated through pop-culture and Hollywood stars – they understand this turning inwards of the inner eye. It has long been understood that this occurs during the recognition of ‘truth’. And so these cults and churches feed just enough truth to invoke this sensation of experiencing truth, they then use this feeling to lure individuals into their clutches…telling you ‘That was but a taster, and we…we possess the full measure of the truth!”
Naturally you have to feed yourself into their system and dogma in order to have them slowly reveal their dogmatic truths to you. Which these groups and organizations do is externalize the truth. And this is very effective in the modern materialistic age, where we seek all answers in terms of what they physically show us. This is why many people find truth difficult to recognize; because anything physical or material is arbitrary and objective. Such dogmatic truth requires the use of labels, and labels hold different meanings for different people.
The path of the ancients, of the shamans and of original religious rites was to take the inner path, to search and explore that area which the inner-eye uncovers. This is a path which many people fear, and rightly so…yet it is the only real path to self-awareness. Once we become self-aware we can no longer be bound by the rigors of institutions and authority – and this is why such learning is discouraged, it was the Forbidden Fruit in Eden.
It becomes clearer then, why society is full of noise and distraction; it silences the senses to the inner mind. Yet this is something I struggled with for so many years – because every fiber of my being was crying out for the awareness of the inner-experience; of the presence of ‘now’. And deep down I intuitively knew – as I suspect many people know – that knowledge of that ‘truth’ wasn’t to be found in organization, society or dogma, but rather in the awareness of direct experience.
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There is something I have often noticed with anything that resonates with me as ‘true’. When I hear it, my attention immediately changes focus, I take on a sort of metaphorical inward stare. It’s a process which tends to momentarily stop all mental activity, as my inward awareness notices its own alignment to what this thing it feels is ‘truth’. That truth can be anything, a word spoken, a discovery, a new realization – regardless of how it happens the accompanying sensation is always the same. Maybe you experience this too? The turning inward of our attention.
I’ve always tended to equate what you describe in the above quote to as an epiphany … those moments of intense clarity where everything tends to fall into place and resonate throughout.
[ Quote ]undeniable is a term i choose to validate this process
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