How we find new understandings of truth in our silence

A poetic journey of truth, madness, wisdom, and an understanding of our context

Hello everyone…here is a journey into my labyrinth and I hope this provides you with something to contemplate.

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Let’s begin with a quote…

“Be silent and listen: have you recognized your madness and do you admit it? Have you noticed that all your foundations are completely mired in madness? Do you want to recognize your madness and welcome it in a friendly manner? You wanted to accept everything. So accept madness too.” — Carl Jung

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I woke up in the middle of the night, sweating. What woke me? I couldn’t remember a dream or a nightmare. Nothing. I was simply sweating. This startling event of waking, when you’re in this out of the norm condition, causes worry to creep into your thoughts. Unnecessary worry? Yes. But a type of worry, nonetheless. So the worry creeps into my thoughts to bring an awareness of the silence. And the silence brings questions.

So, I was left alone in my room, bathed in darkness and silence that spread as I gazed out my window at the blackness outside; more darkness. And from my bed, I can see the night sky above the tree in my backyard through my window.

Is the ultimate purpose of life — the meaning — to find the best method of distracting ourselves from the silence?

But when the silence comes, we can’t help but be aware of our thoughts, those numberless thoughts in our minds that never end. We begin recognizing the thoughts we never knew were there, so the silence brings the questioning of those thoughts.

So this is where I was left, alone — in my room, laying in my bed, thinking “what is the purpose of the silence?” because when the silence enters your inner being you’re left wondering, am I living? Or am I simply existing?

And I cannot help but feel that when we awake into the silence of the night, it almost feels like a dream. We find ourselves waking from one dream to only then fall into another. Yet, somewhere within this awareness is finding the tune to be cheerful, but with a touch of misery. The balancing act of life to prevent you from falling into your own madness.

Madness, is that what the silence brings?

This brought me into a weird thought, or maybe a weird acceptance: truth is infinite.

Truth is ever present.

Science discovers useful patterns within knowledge, but this is simply a type of truth, and it’s a truth based on utility. It’s a formula for creating a degree of certainty within a condition of uncertainty. Since the conditions we create for that truth are inevitably incomplete, infinitely. We are left trying to understand those truths within a particular context.

Thus, we have no ultimate foundation to build our reality upon.

Truth…is ever present.

“Truth can be discovered by anyone, without the help of any authority and, as life is ever present, in an instant.” J. Krishnamurti

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And I can’t help but think that this is where religion fails people.

Religion claims to have the truth, and it makes promises about how to live life based on that truth. If you follow X, then life will be Y. This creates overly simplistic promises that are made by following a “magical” formula, without any attention to our evolving human context.

But there’s no ultimate foundation for what they claim — not really. They make up an idea of truth within their own framework and context, but this framework never contains all possibilities or truths because it’s limited by their tunneled context.

They close themselves off to truth by closing their context to new possibilities.

They try to immortalize a momentary truth, thus they build a foundation upon a false truth.

So, they commit the ultimate sin by demanding others follow their false truth.

They only operate within their knowledge framework, even though infinite possibilities exist outside of it. Thus, religion always fails, because if it recognized its own context, it would cease being a religion.

A religion’s context limits its utility; and yet they want to claim that its utility is infinite, but if you deny infinite truth, you cease being useful, thus your utility is no more.

All regions try to attach themselves to one truth, thus they make the attempt to stay within one dream. But the flow of life is to wake from one dream to then fall into another, and we find truth in between that falling into dreams.

So, what is a potential answer? There’re many types of truth, and we can find one understanding in the awareness that knowledge is not wisdom. There’s a cultural awakening to this understanding, as many of us know you can be a holder of endless facts (knowledge), yet be extremely unwise.

Consider the growing fascination that Western culture has had in the past decade with Buddhism, mindfulness practices, ancient philosophies such as Stoicism, and the increased use and interest in psychedelics. What do these all have in common? These are all schools of thought with a prime focus on understanding and cultivating wisdom.

Why is understanding important?

Although wisdom works with knowledge, it still operates within an alternative sense, as it is about becoming aware. And this becoming aware is a realization that we often feel in our bones, one that has us coming into awareness of meaning in our lives profoundly.

When we shut ourselves off from a new reality, we also cut ourselves off from the knowledge that might help us develop fresh understanding and meaning, thus cultivation of wisdom. This shutting off of truth is a foolish action that is rife with self-deception and self-destruction.

So there’s no purpose to the silence, yet wisdom is to be found there.

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty.” — John Keats

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Much love,

Talk to you soon,

Brenden