Hello everyone…here is a journey into my labyrinth and I hope this provides you with something to contemplate. All the essays and thoughts kind of connect today…including the bonus section that gets a bit out there…or at least that’s what I think:)

Welcome, you wonderful multiplicity.

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So…let’s enter the labyrinth.

An Essential Lesson From Talking to a Christian About Truth and God…with the help of Soren Kierkegaard

“Yes, in the purely human world the rule is this: Seek out the help and opinion of others. Christ says: Beware of men! The majority of people are not only afraid of holding a wrong opinion, they are afraid of holding an opinion alone. In the physical world water puts out fire. So too in the spiritual world. The “many”, the mass of people, put out the inner fire — beware of men!”—Soren Kierkegaard

“Even though every individual possesses the truth, when he gets together in a crowd, untruth will be present at once, for the crowd is untruth.”—Soren Kierkegaard

We cannot find truth without asking, what is the purpose of truth?

I’ve been reflecting on my idea of truth, an interesting progression from last week when I found myself writing about certainty and uncertainty.

So, I was scrolling the other night, and I stumbled upon a Tiktok live of a Christian, taking questions from non-believers. And me being me, I took the opportunity to join his live and ask this individual some questions about what made him go from an atheist to a Christian (I didn’t do this purely for him as I’ve gathered a decent following on the platform, so we had a large audience tuning in throughout the conversation).

The questions I presented were also meant for those watching to hopefully raise some points that leave them reflecting upon their own beliefs.

When I enter these conversations, I don’t enjoy making it about whether the bible is literally true or false. The question for me has always been: why do you find the bible to be true and why is it necessary for me to believe in your perception of truth for your existence to make sense? And this question was relevant to this individual because his entire account is dedicated to converting non-believers into Christians.

Now, I’m not going to provide a long report of our conversation, so I’ll provide the highlights for the purpose of this post.

He provided part of his testimony, where he was a young twenty-something that was lost; he was into various substances and had little direction in life. He asked Jesus for guidance at that moment and felt the Holy Spirit. After, he felt peace and a sense of direction in life. He considers it a miracle because he felt saved. Wonderful. I’m glad he found peace through someone’s understanding of the words of God.

But that provides me absolutely nothing about why I must follow his truth, and it’s his truth. It simply provides me with an explanation for why he came to his truth. It allows me to understand him better and the reasons behind his beliefs.

And the essence of experiencing God is extremely subjective, given how difficult it is for us to measure our experiences with our consciousness. So, we are then left to express these experiences through imprecise language. Yay for us.

Okay, so at this point in the conversation, I wanted an opportunity to provide my own “testimony” as I have various spiritual experiences that have helped me—profoundly—they’ve helped me find peace, given me a sense of direction and a feeling of evolving with a higher purpose. All that fun stuff can be left for another post.

I’ll note, I left out my psychedelic induced spiritual experiences in this situation because my intuition told me he’d get caught up on that and proclaim they’re false because I wasn’t “sober.” It’s a ridiculous rebuttal. But time was of the essence!

So, I brought up a spiritual experience induced through meditation where I experienced a child-like state.

It was Euphoric. Peaceful. Wonderful.

This came from a point where I was also feeling lost as well, overly nihilistic, and couldn’t see the purpose behind anything I was doing. I was depressed.

I thought, “wonderful, we can connect on this!” but of course I was wrong. After this point, the conversation derailed…

He saw it as an opportunity to tell me my “testimony” was not a miracle because I didn’t find Jesus.

He tried to say his trauma was more severe, so I must not have needed a miracle. Sir, are you gaslighting? Yes. Yes, he was.

He, of course, asked if I was sober during that experience. Thus, my intuition about leaving out psychedelic experiences was well-founded.

He also proclaimed my miracle was false simply because I was still not certain of my views about God.

I pressed him on this…but he was just confused how I didn’t hold certainty.

Yes, you read that right.

He believes truth is only true if you’re certain of it.

Gaslighting me again? Absolutely.

Oh, and he said Christians don’t need to search for truth anymore because they’ve found it. However, other people should continue looking for truth…

I can’t make this absolutely ridiculous line of thinking up. The arrogance! Humble yourself, brother.

I’m not certain of my beliefs! So, I must not have had a profound enough experience.

More gaslighting. A theme is becoming uncovered…

That was essentially our hour-long conversation.

I tried to educate him on subjective vs objective truth, but it was like talking to a brick wall. His psyche was defending his poorly reasoned beliefs because it’s what brought him from a point of chaos into peace. But chaos is never truly gone. In the chaos, we find necessary insights around our existence and about ourselves.

And anytime he didn’t have a response he’d regurgitate a bible verse. Typical.

So, I ask people, why do my spiritual experiences, especially those I’m uncertain of, need to match with your experiences? A desire for me to agree entirely with your discoveries through your own subjective experience is based purely on ego.

If you need me to fully believe in your subjective experiences to validate your experiences, your ego is insecure, and your arrogance is showing through that insecurity.

You don’t hold all the answers to existence. I don’t hold all answers to existence. And your God doesn’t hold all the answers to existence.

Welcome to the human experience.

The desire for a doctrine to follow is a desire to be collected.

The collected are never free.

And I refuse to be collected.

“He did not want to form a party, an interest group, a mass movement, but wanted to be what he was, the truth, which is related to the single individual.”—Soren Kierkegaard

This one distinction is where conversations around truth go wrong

…with Yuval Harari

I was revisiting my notes from Yuval Harari’s book Sapiens, and I came across this critical distinction once again.

It’s critical because we often lose this distinction in debates about law, justice, God, religion, and experience. We operate under the impression that we can turn a subjective truth into an objective truth.

It’s a foolish endeavor.

It’s an endeavor that operates for the need for certainty. You cannot find new truths if you operate with the mindset of certainty. I’m mostly certain of this.

So, can we agree humans desire order?

Now, is this order certain?

Or is this order…imagined?

Let’s consider the popular forms of order as Harari does…

Religion. Capitalism. Democracy. (And Christianity in particular).

For this order to work, we must have many people believe in it. Especially many people part of a particular society. However, if we wish to evaluate our systems of order we must come to an understanding that this order isn’t an innate part of our objective reality, as it relies on the subjective truths of millions.

This is the distinction we will get into.

Consider this beautiful summary by Harari…

“The most cherished desires of present-day Westerners are shaped by romantic, nationalist, capitalist and humanist myths that have been around for centuries. Friends giving advice often tell each other, ‘Follow your heart.’ But the heart is a double agent that usually takes its instructions from the dominant myths of the day, and the very recommendation to ‘Follow your heart’ was implanted in our minds by a combination of nineteenth-century Romantic myths and twentieth-century consumerist mtyhs.”

We can never fully escape the imagined order.

We are born into these myths — they make us — and they create our every desire.

We can come into some form of control by becoming aware of reality, yet we are one person. You will inevitably encounter person after person after person unconsciously embracing the imagined order.

And honestly? To some extent, we should not blame them, as we all do it to some extent! It’s inevitable for our own sanity.

And this is where the important distinction comes in…

The inter-subjective order that we all inevitably exist within.

As your subjective world is inevitably influenced by the inter-subjective world around us. The world that every person with their own subjective experience contributes to.

“The inter-subjective is something that exists within the communication network linking the subjective consciousness of many individuals. If a single individual changes his or her beliefs, or even dies, it is of little importance. However, if most individuals in the network die or change their beliefs, the inter-subjective phenomenon will mutate or disappear.”—Harari
So, when we escape one imagined order we simply fall into another.

However, there’s hope, right? Yes.

We should all become aware of the imagined order we embrace and know why we embrace it.

We should be constantly asking ourselves the purpose of the created order we have in place.

And be willing to cast it aside! As that order is never certain, absolute, or objective.

The imagined order always has the potential to be killed off by critical thinking and a new understanding of reality.

However, it’s also important to note that this imagined order can never be escaped. It is always with us, shaping our desires and influencing how we communicate with the world around us.

So long as we are humans, we will always live with the imagined order.

And honestly? I’m okay with that. And so should you.

As this is simply truth…the truth of history, the truth of society, and the truth of our inevitable inter-subjectivity.

If you come to believe it’s time that more people question this order, we must begin by having people evaluate the political, religious, and economic structures we have in place.

They must be willing to accept that they’re not certain!

They must be willing to be wrong about a new imagined order!

And we must stay curious!

Shall we make the prison of our imagined order…bigger?

The Inter-Subjective Nature of Our Multiplicity…welcome to the land of your Other

That in language our message comes to us from the Other, and—to state the rest of the principle—in an inverted form. (Let me remind you that this principle applied to its own enunciation since, although I proposed it, it received its finest formulation from another, an eminent interlocutor.)—Jacques Lacan

A Philosopher's Stone (Brenden's Labyrinth)

An Essential Lesson From Talking to a…

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