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"What is truth? Truth is something so noble that if God could turn aside from it, I could keep to the truth and let God go."--Johannes Eckhart, great Medieval Christian mystic; quote from Raymond Blakney translation, etc.
You know, if you carefully read the original post, you can end up with a completely different meaning of the statement, which may even be what was intended. That is, not "how do you distinguish what is true from what is false; how can you tell?" but actually How Do You Tell The Truth FROM The Lies, or, how can you get to truthfulness by having started from the basic material and orientation of the lies and false presentation, because, as a matter of fact, that is exactly what we all have to do all the time. If you have no source of truth, as we do not now, no free press that researches and tells us what is what, no public officials who expose things and yet do not pay a heavy price for it, no statements from our side that manage to get out to the public as they were actually delivered, no relief from the 24-hour-a-day commercial propaganda of the global corporate exploiter, then you can't get the truth, or even a framework of facts, direct. You have only the lies and games, crimes and persecutions, slanders and false fronts, to study and learn from; you can't be educated by the good, you can only infer from the evil.
What people look at and see, what they take notice of in the world--and how--becomes an intentional act, a characterizing of things, and not merely an objective, neutral "finding" of what was there, even though it was claimed to be, and may have even seemed to be. Whenever they "look at" and "see" a woman saying or doing something they don't like, suddenly it was a "bitch" doing it, and all she did from then on was "proof" that she was a "bitch," and that "everyone" has to agree. There was nothing actually "out there" being noticed and named, but an opinion from the thinker's own mind, putting the description there. It was an intent. To describe offensive behavior coming from someone, is not the same as attacking the woman with all the hate you already had there, waiting, then not do the same to a male who did the same. "It's worse when a boy gets raped than when a girl does," they claim, as fact, and this is their "wise compassion" that they "noticed" this. People get tarred with slanderous images and reputations all the time, and yet when you then finally meet them and listen to them, your impression of them can be so tainted that you can't get it out of your mind, yet don't even notice it. How many people "can hear" John Kerry "being" a flip-flopper, even when you know it was a totally phony, made-up ad campaign? Sometimes, when the idea is planted in your head, on some level, you believe it.
Of all the multiples of situations there are to pay attention to, all the multiples of traits, and ways of decribing each trait, each thing was made up of, the thing you claimed you "found" in the world, "as it was," is largely, clearly, your own invention. "Poor people are stupid if they can't find their way out of poverty and unemployment--I did it," then calling themselves "hardheaded realists," for "facing the facts and not being politically correct." Can you count the number of logical errors based on cold hate, listed here? All the favorable attributions go my way, all the dismissive contempt goes the other; my situation is equated to the poorest people who have no resources whatsoever--highly unlikely, even for me; several attitudes are muddled together, so that unfeeling coldness for the needy poor is equated with "bravely" going against the crowd, like a rebel, oooh! If any poor person ever does exhibit any ignorance on any topic--as we all do--then, bam!, there is the "proof," where there was really no such thing, only a fake connection invented. The lie is "chosen," by evil. Some silly people even attack women for being offended that males call everything good and courageous as "having balls," attacking women as not deserving their own truth and perspective on their own lives, and the bigotry against them. "They're just animals, not like us," you look at them, and never see or know them at all. That statement did not come from the outside world at all, but only from your own cold, flinty heart.
Sometimes it is hard to know which world we really lived in: we say, "that is great," when what we really meant was "I like it"; not an outside world, but an inside one. Is this a beautiful natural land, or an undeveloped commercial opportunity? Pick one. How many things do you not really know until you experience them, because they were not outside, but you were inside, of them? Then there was the story of the disciple of Christ "(whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such a one caught up to the third heaven." This one who was "(whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;)" was "caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words," which cannot be revealed outward, here; (2 Corinthians 12:2-4; Paul). How was it possible to not know if an experience were happening inside or outside of your own body, mind, in a different place or here? Easy--it happens all the time.
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