Let’s see if we can agree on a definition. Truth is not matter of how many of us agree on it, how important or integral it is to our worldview, how central it may be in the definition of who we are, or how it makes us feel. Truth is not what we want it to be, or what the authorities say it is. Truth, rather, is a measure of how reality-oriented an idea or belief is, how well it orients us in reality and connects us to what is really real.
We human beings spend a good part of our lives making up the meaning of life, constructing the quality worlds (W. Glasser) that make life meaningful. That meaning is more or less true in the degree it orients and connects us to reality. When it doesn’t, we are living inside something else – a fantasy, a delusion, a deception: something more made-up than real.
It’s fashionable these days to speak of “my reality” and “your reality,” as if we each can decide what is really real. If it works for me, then it’s “my truth.” You can have yours, and our truths don’t have to match or agree. But if we can agree that truth is a measure of how reality-oriented our quality worlds are, then it’s about more than just what confirms our beliefs and supports our individual (or tribal) ambitions.
Reality is always beyond the meanings we spin and drape across it, and our beliefs allow more or less reality to show through.
The word “truth” from the Greek (aletheia) refers to removing a cover to show something for what it really is. Truth, then, is not the thing-itself but rather the thing-as-revealed, in the moment of revelation (or realization), an experience whereby the present mystery of reality appears through our constructions of meaning. Our experience of it is mediated by our beliefs about it.
To have a genuine experience of reality, our beliefs about it must be true; otherwise our beliefs will not reveal anything and all we have is meaning. You might ask, What’s wrong with that?
My diagram illustrates the standard sequence of Four Ages over our lifespan, represented archetypally in the Child, Youth, Adult, and Elder. (The numbers between Ages mark the critical threshold years when our engagement with reality shifts and everything gets elevated to a more complex and comprehensive perspective on reality.) Childhood, then, is the Age of Faith; Youth is the Age of Passion; Adulthood is the Age of Reason; and later adulthood (our Elder years) is the Age of Wisdom.
As far as the construction of meaning (or our quality world) is concerned, adulthood is the time when our belief system joins the mainstream and we take our place as custodians of culture.
The reality orientation of our beliefs and belief system, however, is largely a reflection of how things went for us during those earlier Ages. In ideal circumstances – given perfect parents, a supportive pantheon of taller powers, and a protected resource-rich environment – the Age of Faith would have instilled in us a profound sense of providence and security.
We then carried this positive sense of security into the Age of Passion, when we set out on the adventure of experimentation and discovery. We formed new relationships, expanded our circle of influence, and became more centered in our personal identity.
Having achieved a high degree of ego strength, grounded in a provident reality and positively connected in a web of relationships, our belief system is now open and flexible. We understand that our knowledge-claims need constant updating in order to be more reality oriented, and we are conscious of the fact that our beliefs – the names, definitions, explanations, and predictions we hold about reality – are only labels and mental constructs.
This acknowledgment keeps our mind in a state of perpetual curiosity: forming questions, testing conclusions, making more associations, and expanding our horizon of knowledge.
At some point, which typically corresponds to a breakthrough realization that our identity is a construct separating us from what is really real, we come into a unifying vision of reality: everything is connected, nothing is separate, and All is One. This universal truth – true of all things, everywhere – is the high mark of spiritual wisdom. By the light of this realization we understand that reality is a universe (a turning unity), that we belong to the whole and have a responsibility to our fellow beings. Furthermore, we are a human manifestation of being, a personification (or coming-into-personhood) of the universe itself.
Our unified vision of reality doesn’t suppress or discount the play of opposites generated by and arranged around the ego – body and soul, self and other, human and nature – but rather enables us to appreciate their mutuality and interdependence, the way they together comprise a dynamic whole.
Otherwise …
Our belief system is fixed and closed, with no significant reality outside the box even recognized. Truth is absolute – pure, everlasting, and utterly beyond question: It is the only one of its kind. It doesn’t include everything, but is rather above and outside the rest. Our devotion to absolute truth is glorified as conviction, which perfectly names the condition where our mind is held captive (as a convict) inside the prison of rigid beliefs. Truth is not a matter of looking through our constructions of meaning to the really real, since our constructions are the truth.
The psychological habit of thinking this way came about as part of a strategy for screening out anything in reality that might challenge our emotional need for things to be black or white. Our belief system helps us compensate for and manage a personality that lacks a clear center of executive self-control (aka ego), an inner balance of moods, and a stable grounding in the rhythms and urgencies of the body.
Because we are off-center and insecure, we insist on being accommodated by everything outside ourselves.
The future of truth swings in the balance between curiosity and conviction, which ultimately play out into the alternatives of wisdom or terrorism.
Tracts of Revolution 