If you still believe some of the same things you did when you were young, do you ever think: “Is it weird that I was born into a family and cultural tradition that had the corner market on truth?”
Is it more reasonable that the things you learned when you were young were absolute truth, or is it more likely that you grew attached to what you learned, and that facing the reality that people in cultures all over the world have different experiences, belief systems, and traditions that have similar merit is just a little too much to take in? I guess we can imagine how Occam might answer that….
Joseph Campbell once defined myth as “other people’s religion.” In short, if someone else believes in an unexplainable phenomena, it’s obviously a myth, but if you believe it, it’s obviously truth.
In a world as connected as we are today, it seems almost more difficult to turn away from the reality that miracles exist in every spiritual tradition. Still, it seems more comfortable for most people to minimize the miracles that occur in religious traditions other than their own and amplify the amazing things that stem from their own beliefs. One does not have to be mutually exclusive from the other, however. There is room for multiple beliefs. There is room to accept diverse experiences.
I understand that idea might not sit with those who are certain that their beliefs are absolute truth. I am no one to deny what anyone believes. I just think it’s a blessing to have the ability to question our world – to question what we’ve been taught – to question our nature, our traditions, and our beliefs – but to also truly purse answers to those questions.
The challenge for most people who begin to question things is that they have a tendency to move from one extreme to the other, so once they see that life might not be exactly how they imagined it to be (or were taught), they tend to “throw the baby out with the bath water.” I remember college students telling me when they encountered other students who shared different perspectives with them, “Well, if some of what I was taught isn’t literally true, then none of it is!”
I’m not convinced you have to live in extremes. It seems possible to find the balance that what appears to be truth to you might just very well be true in some ways, but not quite tell the entire story.
Of course, I could be completely wrong about that. That’s okay with me. I’m human, and I’m fascinated by the psyche. Question as much as you can, especially what I throw out there – but you’ll know you’re on a path of effort when you see how hard you actually pursue answers to life’s biggest questions.
It does seem to me that if you only look for answers from the sources that will confirm what you already believe, then there’s almost no reason to go searching (of course we can imagine what Godel might say about that…). But if you’re willing to truly explore – to dive into the depths of the undiscovered psyche, through the fields of comparative mythology, religion, anthropology, evolutionary psychology, quantum physics, astronomy, and many more – you might just stumble on some fascinating answers that tie directly into your current experience of life….
