Simply Put #2

My 21st Century Spirituality model is an attempt to offer a contemporary alternative to old world religious metaphysics and new age magical thinking. As such the model asserts three key principles:

* critical thinking (and cognitive/intellectual self-development)
* inquiry-based (as opposed to faith-based) practice
* shadow-work (depth-oriented psychological honesty).

Simply Put is a distilled statement of critical thinking based truths that  have inquiry-based practice application in conjunction with shadow-work.

The first three installments will be a re-run from earlier this year and thereafter I plan to add more installments to this series. This time around I will add a commentary  and video blogs offering elaboration and meditation instruction - this is just the beginning:


Simply Put #2

"Everything is relative" is an absolute statement that contradicts itself.

That perceptions vary is a powerful truth that helps us to take the position of others.

The important recognition of relative perception does not change the fact that truth exists independent of perception.

While it is noble to allow for and honor multiple perspectives on truth, this does not mean that  everything is relative.

The relationship between truth and perception is of the essence.

This is spiritual truth number two.


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Simply put, there are three domains of reality.

These three domains are explored via three different methodologies or sciences.

The domains can broadly be called: subjective, objective and collective.

Their methods, respectively, are concerned with meaning, empiricism and ethics.

Each method has it's own ways of determining what is true within its particular domain.

We arrive at what is true by contrast with what is untrue, or false.

Truth cannot exist except in relationship to falsehood.

The idea that nothing is false because everything is relative is not only self-contradictory, but also a misunderstanding of the nature of truth.

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Subjective hermeneutics concerns itself with discovering internal truth or meaning - art, literature, psychology, philosophy, meditation. Beauty.

Objective empiricism concerns itself with discovering externally verifiable truths -  conventional Science. Truth with a capital "T."

Collective ethics concerns itself with how best we should live together and treat each-other -  morality,  sociology, politics. Goodness.


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The trouble begins when we confuse any of these domains with one of the others, or reduce any of the domains to  another.

The traditional moral worldview has tended to want to limit scientific exploration and artistic expression.

The scientific worldview has tended to deny internal meaning and moral truth.

The popular contemporary spiritual worldview has not only tried to assert the primacy of  relative perspectives and intentionality over  empirical truth and moral judgments, but also has negated its own domain - that of hermeneutic meaning.

All three of these reductions are forms of category error - they have overstepped their domains and distorted reality.


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Working with the  three modes of knowing can help clarify our awareness of and relationship to reality and its truths.

It is good medicine.

In meditation, contemplate the nature of truth and falsity as it reveals itself in all three domains.

It is true that I am sitting in this room. I am not sitting in the room next door. (Empirical.)

It is true that I am sad about the loss of my mother. In this moment I am not experiencing joy. (Hermeneutic/Psycho-spiritual.)

It is true that I feel regret at how I treated  my friend yesterday, it is not true that how we treat one another does not matter. (Moral/Social.)

The breath moves in - it is not an exhale. The breath moves out  - it is not an inhale.

What are the different sensations I notice on the inhale and the exhale?

My experience keeps changing as the moments go by, yet still I am sitting here and now.

So it is.