And Then There Is The truth

THERE ARE ALWAYS TWO SIDES OF THE STORY
& THEN THERE IS THE TRUTHBy
William Cottringer, Ph.D.

“Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.” ~ John Lennon

Actually there are probably as many ‘stories’ as there are people on this planet. But, there is but one overall, unifying truth that we can’t seem to agree upon because we have so many different perceptions, interpretations and words with which to communicate it. Zero agreement and total disagreement. We can’t even seem to be able to agree to disagree.

The truth is very hard to talk about because it is so obvious and simple that it remains very well-hidden from sight, hearing and even intuition. You have to see through and past what you are looking at to find the truth, in spite of the facts so to speak. The best way to get close to the truth seems to be through stories about it. This is in the spirit of, ‘this is what the trough sounds like…”

The good news is that the truth does seem to be gradually emerging in our lifetime, due to disciplined, critical thinking (removing truth contamination) in religion, spirituality and psychology. These fields have always communicated their current versions of the truth through stories. What story can better describe the most fundamental truth about life and its course and its problems and solutions, than the Garden of Eden? This simple story captures the very essence that makes up all our life journeys—the what, where, why, when and how of it all.

The bottom-line to life is this: We all move between the Yin and Yang of life to become more whole. The gist of the Garden of Eden story is that we were born into a perfect, problem-free paradise, the harmonious bliss of which we could enjoy without any hiccups of imperfection whatsoever. But, without self-consciousness and first-hand experience of the opposite of the simple, perfect order of the Oneness of the Garden—complex, separate, imperfect chaos of the many—we could not fully appreciate what we had in Paradise.

For whatever purpose or design this opposite process happens to compensate another half of reality, because we cannot appreciate the sense of appreciation of something without the opposite experience of wanting the something and not having it to appreciate. We have to become unappreciative, thinking we have nothing before we can understand there is something to be appreciative about. This is much like having to fail to learn how to be successful. Or being born to live and die.

So begins the journey of building our egos to separate from this perfect spiritual union with Oneness and go on our human journeys to experience the opposite of what we left, mainly just to come full circle and be able to rejoin it and appreciate it more. We soon forget all the commonalities we left and start paying all our attention to fix problems and differences with all our interventions and solutions so we can re-order things and return to the commonalities, we have learned to appreciate more because of their absence.

Somewhere about the middle of our journey we realize that we have completely disassembled life in many parts and really in effect divided it in half as okay, useful and good and not okay, useless and bad. Life taken apart results in alluring distractions, but eventually causes us almost unlimited annoyances, heartburn and grief in burdens that weigh our shoulders down to the ground sometimes. But these tests that appear as unfair burdens are really lessons to give us the skills and abilities to continue the journey back home—back to the Garden of Eden—by putting things back together again to experience true wholeness by reconciling all the halves we have created.

Now here is where this story gets interesting. We were all born with a secret success code, which we are challenged to remember, in order to get in better alignment with the truth and make progress at moving to the second level of our journey—stepping up from surviving quiet lives of desperation by using the wits of our egos and minds, to the thriving plane, where we begin to use our soul’s basic energies of creativity, compassion, wisdom, empathy and love to make life better for ourselves and others, physically, psychologically, socially and spiritually. Our end goal is to find abundance (of wealth, health, happiness, success, meaning, wholeness and peace of mind) in the Land of Simple. But all that means is returning to the Garden of Eden where we only imagined we left with our minds long ago as the first inhabitant guest/renters of the planet. Imagine that! No wonder Albert Einstein, Ben Franklin, Thomas Edison, John Lennon and Bill Gates have all talked about the power of imagination.

What can anyone do in the meantime? We can all try to discover what we can do that matters most to live our story the way it was written. Here are some tips:

1. Become more sensitive to when you are getting to half-time between your two halves of life. When you get there join some others who have already started experimenting with the needed transition tools needed to go from satisfying your egos wants to meeting your soul’s needs.
2. Catch yourself contaminating the truth so that it can be seen more clearly.
3. Slow down long enough to see the progress you are making on this journey and acknowledge other’s success too.