Truth, Belief, and the End of Suffering
Truth, Belief, and the End of Suffering
by robert cinque
Pain is inevitable, but suffering is voluntary. Suffering is what we bring to pain. Doubt. Despair. Discouragement.
Birth is painful too, but it’s no reason to doubt, or despair, or be discouraged.
“What is Truth?” Pilate famously asked.
Jesus was silent. It’s not that he was unfamiliar with Truth, he just could not, and would not trivialize it with an answer.
Truth is unanswerable. Reality cannot be explained.
No one knows what Truth is. That’s because, whatever it is, it could not be an object, a thought, a thing, an idea, a belief.
To make matters worse, Truth, whatever it is, must be identical with Reality, Existence, which is also unknowable.
Truth and Reality must be identical because our experience of truth and reality is REAL. It’s not an illusion, and if it were, it would be a REAL experience of an illusion. Grasp the importance of this because it’s the one “thing” that’s NOT an idea. Ideas float through the Sky of the Awareness of my Experience. That means that Awareness is senior to, prior to, bigger than, ideas.
Realizing this in real time is the Point.
That’s right. Neither you, nor me, know what Truth and Reality actually are. No one, not Einstein, not Jesus, not the Pope, not the Mystics, no one knows what, or even where, Existence is.
The existentialists came to this conclusion and fell into an abyss of despair and meaninglessness. Our profound ignorance of what anything actually is, however, is cause for great celebration.
I’m not saying you can’t know how a radio works, you just don’t know what a radio is, fundamentally. You can describe it and explain its’ working mechanisms, but its’ existence, its’ molecules, its’ appearance in the world is a profound, unanswerable mystery, just like the world and the universe are.
Just like you are.
The Painful Fact of the Matter is: You Don’t Know Jack Shit and Neither Do I.
Ignoring this creates vanity, arrogance, stupidity. And beliefs masquerading as Reality. As Truth.
You and I are right smack in the middle of one fat Riddle. Mystery. Enigma. Paradox. Ignorance. Wonder.
It’s understandable that human beings would collapse emotionally in the face of this Inexplicable Realm and invent comforting stories while we whistle past the graveyard. But, it’s not necessary or inevitable. Nor, is it very useful, except as a coping mechanism.
When we doubt our actual Situation and withdraw into consoling “explanations” we create division, suffering, conflict.
Nevertheless, Truth is always our actual condition, we just don’t know what it is, why it is, how it could possibly exist, or where it is.
Being appropriately related to our actual Situation at Infinity is extremely useful, practical, sensible, and realistic.
Slathering bonehead, knee jerk, religious, scientific, atheistic isms all over it is what’s crazy.
The conventional religious and scientific presumptions of our day amounts to little more than spiritual and emotional pedophilia, molestation, and abuse of the Innocent. Jesus called it “sin” which is an archery term, “missing the mark”, ignoring the Obvious, and collapsing into a self enclosed idea called “me”. I call it the “Poor Me/Fuck You” syndrome, curable only by the Courage to be Intimate with That Which Births you and Eats you.
That’s why “loving God and your neighbor as yourself” are the greatest commandments because they replace ego withdrawal with love/intimacy.
Make no mistake: The individual we call you does indeed exist. But, it’s not a thing, not an object, not an idea in a conceptual framework. It (you) is one, big, fat, fucking Mystery.
The question is, What are you going to do about it? Or, to it?
Do you Embrace the Paradox? Or, do you Cry the Blues?
Do you Take Off Your Clothes and Get Into Bed with this Great One?
Or, do you run and hide and seek release from your angst through pleasure and distraction?
You get to choose. You’re not a robot, a thing, a mechanism. You are the Awareness of the mechanism. Start acting like it.
