How do you discover what's true?

[GeorgeLawson]

As I'm sure many of you on this forum share, I have always been fascinated by the question; 'How do you discover what's true?' and yet am still unable to answer it. It appears that during the current virus lockdown we have had a lot more time than usual to self-reflect and contemplate what truth means to us.

Then again, we've also had a lot more time to get dragged into conspiracy theories, because we have a fear of not knowing, and want to fabricate assumptions of what's true from the comfort of our own bedrooms and youtube videos. I don't know about you, but after everything, I've got to be completely honest with you all; I don't know. I never have and I don't know if I ever will. 

But I don't mind this. In fact, if I knew then there wouldn't be anything left to discover, learn or be curious about. The game would be over, so to speak.

As Peter Ralston said in The Book of Not Knowing: 'Whenever you or I learn anything, “not-knowing” has occurred – whether we intend it, or we haven’t a clue that it is taking place. Even when we try sliding quickly through not knowing to get to knowing, somewhere in there not-knowing has occurred or learning didn’t happen.'

Not knowing, then must be the foundation of discovering what's true. I can't begin with any truth claim, because that would bias my investigation - I'd much rather begin with a clean slate, and be prepared to clean off the slate all the bullshit that will undoubtedly worm its way onto there. 

The hypocrisy of conspiracy theories lies in their claim that authority systems such as governments get the people to believe their ideologies through fear. All the while, the conspiracy theories are guilty of the exact same mechanism - the spreading of fear in order to get people to buy into their ideologies. The etymology of the word 'conspiracy' originates from the Latin 'conspirare,' literally 'to breathe together.' A group of people could conspire together to do something either 'good' or 'bad,' whichever way you interpret it. You could conspire to murder someone, conspire to build a hospital or school, or even conspire to create a conspiracy theory. Either way, a conspiracy is simply a working together of people, by definition, be that for 'good' or 'evil.'

Who do you trust to tell you the truth? Whoever you trust, you're delegating the responsibility of truth to an authority. That seems too lazy a solution for me. I would rather allow direct, first-hand experience to guide me. I went for a walk in the fields earlier, where there no people, (luckily), and the information I was receiving through my direct senses; the sight of bright yellow rapeseed scattering the fields, the sound of a bee buzzing by, the smell of the pines, the taste of fresh air, the feeling of the blades of grass in my hands... These experiences seemed to speak truth more genuinely to me than the bullshit we've been using to make sandcastles with online.

So can we, the people of this forum, conspire together to discover what's true? I don't think so. That's what religion and science have been trying to do for a long time and their progress is questionable, to say the least. This is probably because truth-discovery is an individual, not a collective endeavour.

What we can do, though, is share techniques and methods for discovering truth, and report to each other the effectiveness of these techniques after doing the hard of work of trying them out. So let's have it. What are your favourite truth-discovery techniques and why?

[Preety_India]

 

By following mainstream media. 

 

 

[Consept]

I think it's pretty impossible to get to an absolute universal truth, our reality is constantly evolving and we perceive the world through our finite senses and mind. Like Eckart Tolle says you know you're aware of something and that's pretty much all you know for sure. 

Having said that there is such a thing as relative truth within this game of life. I have found the best way to discern that is to work out what's not true and to do that I believe epistemology is probably is probably the best way, so this looks at how you got to your belief. It does have its limitations of course but it can make you see through biased thinking or circular logic very well and you can even go through you own beliefs using this method.

This video will give you a much better idea of the process as it's quite long to explain fully - 

 

Edited April 16, 2020 by Consept

[LaucherJunge]

Yes, get your daily dose of news. Be very skeptical and always question everyone, but don't you dare question the mainstream, that would be a fallacy, you can't question evidence, scientific evidence is a fact!!!
I mean look at these wonderful inspiring politicians who do nothing other than spread love, they guide us through the hardest time with compassion and love and we thank them by questioning what they are saying.... Please stop it, don't question them anymore because I'm gonna go cry.
Poor Bill Gates, he has done so much for humanity, he is my personal hero! Since I've been a child I've totally looked up to Bill Gates! And now these crazy people are insulting him all over his social media, how dare they?! Don't they watch the damn news?!

[Preety_India]

55 minutes ago, LaucherJunge said:

Yes, get your daily dose of news. Be very skeptical and always question everyone, but don't you dare question the mainstream, that would be a fallacy, you can't question evidence, scientific evidence is a fact!!!
I mean look at these wonderful inspiring politicians who do nothing other than spread love, they guide us through the hardest time with compassion and love and we thank them by questioning what they are saying.... Please stop it, don't question them anymore because I'm gonna go cry.
Poor Bill Gates, he has done so much for humanity, he is my personal hero! Since I've been a child I've totally looked up to Bill Gates! And now these crazy people are insulting him all over his social media, how dare they?! Don't they watch the damn news?!

Not sure if you are being sarcastic. But much of the mainstream information is true. 

But I understand that there can be loopholes and sometimes exaggeration of facts and figures. 

What I would recommend is to do a bit of fact checking. But at the same time I understand the limitations of fact checking also. 

We aren't actually visiting a place and checking out for ourselves but relying on the word given to us. 

This is a very complicated issue and a very complicated question because it has no specific objective solution. Almost anything can be a lie. 

What are the limits that help you ascertain the truth of a piece of information? Is it an audio or a video, a live recording? A stamp of approval from an agency? 

The problem here is two pronged - - one is that the source that you're relying on for the truth or facts can itself be biased in its agenda in serving the information to you so you never know what the intent was behind the information and if or other helpful information was purposely held back. The second is the problem with technology. Let's say you watch a video. You instantly want to believe what you are watching. Because it's a video after all. 

Now I'll present you a distinct problem with videos. 

Here is an example. 

The video shows a clip of President Obama lip syncing a speech at an institution. (but it's fake and for the purpose of humor) 

When I watched this video, I instantly believed it but I still felt a sense of doubt so I checked the comment section and the internet to verify and it turns out that the video and the audio are carefully and heavily edited to give the impression that he is lip syncing. This is a real danger because many people are going to believe it as true if additional information is not provided 

Now towards the end of the video, it obviously becomes clear that it's all staged  and it's for humor, but what if that part is cut out. And if this video gets released by mainstream media, then it will be instantly believed. 

So here you see how misusing technology can instantly change the information you are trying to review. 

Also, take into account the fact that a lot of mainstream media sources or channels tend to simply copy each other in succession like parroting each other's scripts without initially trying to verify it. This chain copying presents another problem with transcribing information. It's like the classic problem of the Telephone game. 

A lot of information is still circulated via the word of mouth fashion, only the agency or technology used is different. 

Even slight manipulation of information renders it vulnerable to propaganda and therefore useless. 

If it's so difficult to trust mainstream media then it's even more difficult to trust alternative media because they add a lot of their own juice into it.. 

I already showed you that even actual physical evidence can be manipulated through the use of technology. 

Unless you are the first hand eyewitness of an incident, everything that you are learning about it is always from another source whose true intentions will never be known. 

So we can always say that we should only look for facts and evidence and constantly fact check but understand that even evidence that looks like evidence can be manufactured by diplomatic intent or the evidence can be manipulated or tampered before it reaches the audience. 

 

Edited April 17, 2020 by Preety_India

[Leo Gura]

https://www.actualized.org/articles/how-to-discover-whats-true

[Preety_India]

@Leo Gura thanks for leaving that link. Didn't know this video existed. 

 

 

[LaucherJunge]

@Preety_India
Absolutely, we can't know what's true and that's why the only source I trust is the mainstream!!! Because what most people believe is always true!!11
I will always go on ridiculing people who are questioning the mainstream, no matter how much fake evidence and correlations they provide me with, I will never ever even consider for a single second that it might be true!!
I would rather have someone telling me what to think then to think for myself. Thinking can get so tiring after all.... And in the end you don't even know what's true so why bother in the first place... Just surrender to the mainstream agenda!!!
They should fire and admit everyone to psychiatry who dares to question it!
I've had enough of these conspiracy theorists, just because 2 presidents of the united states pointed out the corruption and dark forces at play(one of which was assassinated) doesn't mean that it's valid to question what's been going on there, now that would be batshit crazy!!!
These conspiracy theorists are absolutely insane people, you can tell by just turning on the news! It's so easy, it's actually free to know how crazy they are, you don't even have to actually consider what all these millions of people are saying is true, that would be mentally ill, admit to the psychiatry so that they can fix you before it happens!!!!111

[Preety_India]

@LaucherJunge lol. Gotcha

 

 

[Consept]

@LaucherJunge bro you have got a long journey ahead of you, I really hope you get past this block that you have. 

[LaucherJunge]

@Consept Thank you bro, I can only give that back to you.

[gswva]

@LaucherJunge Some of the issue with conspiracy theories are their pessimistic viral nature and their capability to evolve based on sensationalism with disregard to truth, caring only about fictional plausibility instead of hard evidence. They usually have a few real basis, but pretty much anything can be portrayed as pure evil given a specific perspective, even a saint. The summary of a person or social group skipping all good outcomes and focusing on all the supposedly selfish mistakes will always trigger hate, especially after being fine-tuned through memes.

It's all for fun anyway.

Edited April 17, 2020 by gswva

[LaucherJunge]

@gswva Surely a good point, best example of this is Trump. Although almost nobody on here is going to agree with me.
You have to see the big picture, at who is attacking what for what reason. Just blindly following the mainstream is not gonna cut it, same as blind following of anything is not gonna cut it, people will have to use their own brains and do their own research or this cycle is going to continue.

[gswva]

@LaucherJunge I understand your point of view. I don't think anyone is saying we should exclusively focus on the weight of authority when confronted to new info. Nobody would be here discussing about spirituality and stuffing ourselves with psychedelics in the first place if that were the case. One of your point being what defines a conspiracy theory is entirely subjective, it's not wrong. You might say science is a viral construct as well, but even with all its metaphysical flaws, scientists put great care pushing the overall quality of evidences upward and are self-aware about it. It somewhat opposes the unrestricted spreading of theories mostly influenced by biases and psychological shortcomings such as fear, social pressure, sunk cost fallacy, witch hunting or whatever the ego needs for survival.

In practice, we're living in a multifaceted world with many traps everywhere. Being aware of the pattern and their true origin is more interesting than looking for someone to take the blame. One of the potential reason mods can keep topics about duality here (aside from addiction) is that it helps understanding the puzzles we've trapped ourselves in. That's said chasing your own tail all you want will never get you out of it.

The limit of this mindset is where people or animals are confronted to unfair treatment and no way out, without unrealistic amount of willpower. Here it's probably better to keep it simple and focus on a few undeniable facts rather than building worldview stories around it.

[LaucherJunge]

@gswva That's not my point either that I think most of the people exclusively rely on it, I rather question how people don't actually question what's behind all that obvious agendas and lies of the media, you can't deny that they do lie and push their agendas, now you might say that's rare but maybe it's more common than you think and only us catching them lie is what's rare. Now why people don't look behind these and just put it up as conspiracy is beyond me. There are so many whistleblowers and murders/suicides around these subjects, that ignoring them is simply ignorant.
In all honesty, people who didn't even watch a handful of credible whistleblowers speak about these subjects, people who never seen the actual evidence and data supporting conspiracy thoeries, simply don't have the necessary data to connect the dots and get to real understanding of the issue, a few single points of evidence are easy to dismiss and then if there is even more evidence bias will make work of it as well, but if you are flooded with a sheer Mount Everest of evidence, you'll start to develop a holistic view of the matter. Granted hard evidence is very hard to come by, because hard evidence is very easy to sweep under the rug oftentimes, because it's very tangible.
And as always, I am not talking about believing such things blindly, I am talking about open mindedness and the holistic picture, instead of dismissing the whole while seeing just a fragment of said big picture.
Don't forget that science has become a popularity contest, you ain't gonna get popular with science that opposes the big powers, in fact you are not gonna be able to publish that data in the first place and if you do, you will lose your career and be considered a conspiracy theorist as happend with many thousands of scientists.

This is not about blaming somebody, it never has been. Uncovering the truth is the aim here. Blaming is what the media do with Trump and then a valid question would be, why? Now you may think because of his incompetence, but is that really the case? Compare everything Trump has done with Clinton, Bush and Obama with and unbiased view an you'll see that it's bs.

Chasing your own tail is not what's happening with at least some conscious people who are doing the work and are yet open to duality.
Or to put into the tail analogy, by chasing the tail with enough awareness you might find it becomes more and more beautiful into infinity, yes you'll never reach the end, see that's impossible with infinity being in play and same goes for the non-dual chase inwards, it will never reach an end, you can always grow as long as you are alive. Now if you die there is nothing to chase anymore anyway and you are at the destination you were trying to reach with your non-dual path. People simply underestimate how the ego is the ultimate growth mechanism. You can follow satan and fall further into low conscious states of ego, or you can follow Luzifer, who literally is the lightbringer. It's all difficult to put into words, but I hope you can understand what I wanna say.
I have gotten out of the chase temporarily and was in a state of no desire, yes it's the most beautiful state I've ever been in and yet there is zero attachment to it and by that I've ceased to strive for it. That state is eternal and will never be taken away from you as god, this life here is at least somewhat limited and temporary for the ego and that's why it's very beautiful, same as there is no light without dark, there is nothing special without limitation.







 

Edited April 18, 2020 by LaucherJunge

[gswva]

@LaucherJunge How do you know some of the sources you learn conspiracy theories from are more truthful than others? Isn't it just because they are pointing out "villains"? You assume every lies and agenda to be against you. Does the amount of pain you are experiencing right now really justify it? Or less specifically, do you think there are enough compelling reasons to believe the world would be a better place if i.e., popular media revealed the existence of extraterrestrial life? 

You are trying to build a holistic view of a system by scrapping together many isolated chunks of influence. This process is distorted by the ego's emotional state, wishful thinking and by cherry picking the data until an instinctive correlation is found with the belief that indifference to the quality of evidence doesn't matter when those are sufficiently numerous. The human mind is already awful when it comes to probabilities, but what would we even learn if, after all those layers of bias, the evidences are still relevant? It really boils down to what we want. Are we looking for the truth, or finding flaws on some imaginary system that may or may not be broken? What are the mechanics at work here? What are the possible alternatives?

I'm not trying to dismiss your ideas. This is a valid concern to fear being trapped by the lack of knowledge in a competitive society where many sources around you appear unreliable, always wondering what kind of trick they could be hiding. You could be right, maybe we are living in hell after all, and the world is twisted by lower stages, ego-driven space lizards. I just intuitively assume unlikely that the universe works in a way contradicting to the way I do. We should attempt to get at the root first. Becoming aware of God's framework might be an essential tool since this could be a required step before being able to commit any meaningful and comprehensive changes to the world.

The point is, what if this fear of not knowing is part of the trick itself? Don't you find this almost too convenient for the survival of the ego? Can we even trust any emotional states that arise from observing reality when pursuing truth? Just how hard is God even willing to trick itself in order to prevent itself from unveiling the illusion? We are talking about the fantasy of infinite intelligence here, there is no ceiling. All your so-called murders and suicides could be God acting, as far as I know. 

12 hours ago, LaucherJunge said:

there is no light without dark, there is nothing special without limitation.

Yeah, some of the life-style benefits we get from technology are linked to the issues the world is facing right now, not in a coincidental way.

12 hours ago, LaucherJunge said:

People simply underestimate how the ego is the ultimate growth mechanism.

Do you mean, intelligence isn't capable of creation without a dual state? 

Edited April 18, 2020 by gswva

[LaucherJunge]

@gswva
Something that caught my eye is that you seem to assume it's all coming from an emotional place. It did in the beginning stages yes, it was very emotional and painful but this was actually like 8 years ago that I woke up for the first time with research into 9/11.
Then I kinda dismissed it for a long time, because there was nothing I could really do about it anyway and the Wikileaks stuff came up with Pizzagate and that's when I couldn't simply ignore their deeds anymore.
It was painful to know all this but along with my spiritual path I integrated this and there isn't really much of emotions involved here to be honest.

Your first question is kinda hard to answer, because the sources are sometimes simply nothing that's dependant on trust. Wikileaks leaked podesta e-mails for example, like what is not to trust about it? It's simply there. Then combine that with all weird social media posts surrounding that pizza place and art collection and his connection to all these people of the establishment who are visiting this pizza place all the time, the owner officially became one of the worlds most influential men in a very short period time and he is just a damn pizza place owner. This is not about sources, this is just straight facts. The rabbit hole goes way deeper but lets not dive into that. These are just straight facts, not making any claims here, make of it what you will.

So the trust of sources mostly comes up when we talk about Whistleblowers and there are soo many... What is the point in doing that if not telling the truth? They put themselves out there and speak out about all this stuff, lose all their reputation for it and are even killed for it sometimes.

You automatically assume that I believe in this lizard stuff. I haven't seen enough evidence support this claim and so I do stay open for it to be the case but this is one of the things I rather keep out of the big picture understanding I develop about those things.

No, if media revealed extraterrestrial life it wouldn't change much and is not really of much importance to me, like what does it matter? Obviously there is extraterrestrial life somewhere out there and that's great, what does the media change about that fact? Now if there are implications of secret technology being revealed that's another topic, that would be obviously very useful for the whole of mankind, at least if it weren't dangerous like nukes. Edit: after further consideration I guess religions would go nuts, that would be interesting.
There are way more important topics for our survival at hand than extraterrestrial life though. Now please don't start demonizing survival and making it a relative issue, I am aware of all this, yet this doesn't mean I will not try to stop suffering and try to be compassionate towards humankind.

What we want is spiritual growth for mankind, don't we all?
How are we gonna reach that with an agenda to keep exactly this from happening on a large scale? We are literally being poisoned in so many ways. even Leo talks about the big pharma, now how does the pharma being so corrupt fit into the big picture? All these corporations gaining more money and power by the day. Is it really just the money they are after? Even if it were just money they are after, establishing control in the shadiest ways is still the way to maximize their profit and power. Keeping us from using our spiritual juice so to speak is the way to stay superior to us.

No we don't live in hell, we are living in the best time there could be, when people start to wake up and take back their power.
Hell is created in your mind, there is no matter what's going on out there. Yet you can make heaven easily accessible to everyone out of love.
Just because you dig into such topics doesn't mean that you won't develop a healthy perspective on them that keeps you out of hell.

Of course spiritual work is and always will be central. You think I hang out on the research for conspiracy material or whatever all day? That's just something you do now and then for a few hours and sometimes leave it be for months or even years.
Although with the current situation it's a little different, things are too interesting right now in the positive sense actually not to follow what's happening^^

I don't have any fear of not knowing. The only thing I know within the realms of duality is that I will never know everything, because everything is infinite. So I will always have a great deal of not knowing.

Emotional states are the compass to truth, but only when used wisely.

It is god acting indeed and people stopping all that will also be god acting, everything is god acting by definition.
 

1 hour ago, gswva said:

Do you mean, intelligence isn't capable of creation without a dual state? 

No, I mean the individual is not able to grow into infinity without his ego, that's why the ego is here. The growth process is eternal.
Someone whose ego is dead will cease growing, that's why physical death is here to get rid of those not able to grow further.





 

Edited April 18, 2020 by LaucherJunge

[GeorgeLawson]

Thanks for your contributions, folks. I can see here this ambivalence between following mainstream media and alternative sources. I'd also mention and understanding truth comes from direct experience, as well as from secondary sources and any kind of media, be that mainstream or alternative. 

@Consept I like what you said about relative truth. Even though we can't 'know' absolute truth on a conceptual level, there are truths that are relative to us humans and the society in which we live, and this is where transparency of online information and media becomes really important.