When I was in college, one of my professors, Clinton Rossiter, told his students that the value of a good education was to develop a finely honed “cr_p” detector.  (No, not “crop” – he wasn’t interested in crop circles or farming.)  Basically, Mr. Rossiter was telling us that we need to be able to discern truth from partial truth and from fiction and lies.

Since then, and even before then, I struggled to rid myself of naivety.  I went to college as an over-protected kid from a rural area who was more comfortable with books than I was with other kids.  I was the youngest student in the freshman class and was completely credulous about most anything. 

Obviously, something has changed.  I’ve learned not to believe a single thing I see on television.  I mean NOTHING on TV is the truth, as far as I’m concerned.  Ads are designed to tell us we are incomplete and inadequate in some way so that the company paying for the ad can sell us something.  Programs neither educate nor uplift us.  They are designed to keep us stupid and ignorant at the least, and distracted from important things at the most.  The medium is the message – sit there and don’t think and just absorb what the characters/actors/so-called “news analysts/pundits” are saying.  (This is also true for most children’s shows, even the ones on public TV, which I watch sometimes because they are at least non-violent and sometimes humorous.  Besides, they let my inner kid have some fun.) 

When watching TV there is no opportunity to question or contemplate or consider.  We are meant to be just sponges, absorbing mindlessly.  Even the news programs are not really telling us the heart and soul of an event – just the bits that will titillate us in some way.  The process of choosing what events to report mostly focuses on the negative.  And heaven forbid that more than one side of an issue should be explored.  “We’re out of time,” the comentator says.  Well, who is deciding how the time on a TV show will be spent?  Not the viewer.  TV is controlled by the people who own the corporations that own the stations and pay for the shows “they” want us to watch.  That’s the bottom line.

So how in the world are we supposed to develop our capacity to think, to question, to consider, to creatively decide for ourselves what is really going on, what really should be done to solve a problem?  How do we know which, if any, politican, is giving us some portion of truth, and whether any of them is telling us the whole story?

And by the way, don’t assume that “they” know better than you do because, frankly, I don’t think they do.  I think they are bumbling around or being lead by the nose by special interests or what they think will keep them in power.  But that’s another discussion.  Back to sorting out truth from fiction.

One of the really sad things is that our public schools no longer (if they ever did ??) train our children to think, either.  And with 30-50% of today’s children on officially prescribed medication designed to have them sit quietly, absorb like sponges, and do what they are told, there is little chance that they will develop questioning minds.  Obedience and passing the test by giving the proscribed answers are the gods that many educators and parents worship.  Frankly, I find this repulsive, dangerous, and tragic.  We are making our kids into puppets . . . preparing them to be automatons.  We are teaching them to give up their power, and that makes for poor citizenship in a democracy. 

But the chances are that you, the God Self reading this, are no longer of school age and are still faced with figuring out what and who is telling you the truth about anything.  So how do you go about doing this?

For some people, “seeing is believing,” but remember, what you “see” is actually determined by your brain, not by your eyes.  Light energy packets (photons) touch the cells of your eyes and are turned into electromagnetic impulses which are sent to your brain and then your brain interprets them based on what information it has accumulated during your lifetime.  As a result, what you think you are “seeing” may really be what you expect to see or what you have been programmed to see.  Hmmm.  Maybe we can’t always trust what we see?!

I’ve been watching the extended DVD’s of The Lord of the Rings trilogy recently, and when I saw the portions where they show how the movie was actually made, I realized that the final images we see in the film are created piece-meal and then put together and manipulated to make what appears to be a seamless set of images telling a story.  Wow!!  And this story evokes emotion and makes me feel like I am in Middle Earth when I watch it.  Boy, what a way to manipulate the audience.  Now this is fine, if everyone agrees what we are watching is fiction.  But what if the same techniques are being used to make us think that what we see on news programs is “real”?

OK.  So maybe we can’t trust what we see. 

Maybe you’re the kind of person whose truth testing system is auditory.  If you hear it, it must be true.  The power of “the Word” may be your way of determining truth. 

I submit that the spoken (and written) word is also to be questioned.  Of course, what we “hear” are actually sound waves that move the ear drum, creating electro-magnetic impulses that the brain then interprets.  We are back again to what we have been programmed or expect to hear.  And with words there are still other difficulties.

For example, the meaning of a word to one person may be something totally different to someone else.  “Pissed” in England means “drunk”; “pissed” in America means “angry”. 

Even when people agree on the meaning of a word, you can’t ways be sure what the person who is speaking is intending.  We often make all kinds of assumptions in interpreting what someone else means.  A politicians says, “I stand for Change” but fails to tell us what kind of change in any sort of detail and we fill in the blank with what we would like it to mean.  Or a friend says, “I’ll see you later” and when exactly is later?  Later today?  Later tomorrow?  Later sometime or other?

We provide our own context for words that others speak, assuming that we even hear the words correctly.  What about all the times we don’t hear the words the other person actually says?  For example, you’re making an appointment to see your doctor and the receptionist gives you a date and time and you write down a different date or time.  The person spoke one thing and you heard another. 

And how well do we actually listen to someone who is speaking?  Most of the time we are thinking about what our response to that person will be and we don’t really hear what is being said at all.

Even when you read, psychologists have demonstrated that most of us only read things that support our opinions and beliefs.  How often do you read something that creates dissonance, that make you uncomfortable because it doesn’t fit your belief systems.  If we only read things we agree with, how can we consider other possibilities and determine what is true?

There are so many ways that words can deceive us.  Maybe we need another way to test truth.

I propose that the best type of truth test is one based on your own discernment – your own intuition – your own inner “knowing” – your own “I AM Presence” communicating with you internally.  Since everything is energy, we can check out what someone is telling us by asking ourselves, “Does this resonate with me?”  “Does this vibrate in harmony with me?”  “Does this make me feel good about myself and the world, or is the speaker trying to make me afraid, trying to disempower me, or trying to manipulate me in some way?”

If you feel you can trust someone, ask yourself, “What about this person makes me feel I can trust him/her?  Is there any reason I should not trust this person?”

TRUSTING YOURSELF is a big part of this.  Let NO ONE, even me, tell you what is TRUE.  Only YOU can decide for yourself what is TRUE.  Stand up for yourself; take back your power of discernment; decide for yourself what to believe.  But to do this, you must QUESTION EVERYTHING you have taken for granted, one bit at a time.

The time to start is now, since “now” is all we have. 

Have fun doing this.  It will be an eye-opening experience.  It will be music to your ears.  It will give you new insights into your intuitive abilities.  It will be challenging, and exciting, too.

Nedda