Chinook Posted July 21, 2007 Posted July 21, 2007 I posted this on my blog today. I thought it might help a few guys here too... For today's post, I'm going to discuss two very important basic inter-related concepts which affect us all in life, whether we like it or not. Both these aspects of our lives, guide us in our interpersonal relationships with others. They also assist us to go through life without wantonly hurting or damaging those who put themselves before us. That is of course, unless these aspects are absent or damaged in some way. Truth What exactly is the truth in a situation...? Is it your reality or the reality of the other person or people...? Or is it actually some place in between...? Why does the truth matter so much to us as human beings...? What is it that we need from verifiable facts and accuracy that will lead us through life...? I will explain why I think we use the truth to guide us through life. The truth is a state of mind free of error, a state of mind which is an accurate reflection of things in existence, of the things about you. The first thing to know about truth is that it is unchangeable; it is ageless and constant. Truth does not vary or shift, it is a piece of unalterable reality. It follows, therefore, that truth is the same for all of us, according to our reality. The second thing to know about truth is that the discovery of truth serves a purpose and has consequences. To determine the true state of affairs of your physical and emotional surroundings (reality) is essential to a person's life; to take a simple example, it is important for one to know what is immediately ahead when walking about because a nasty fall can lead to being taken to hospital, or worse. Some of our "higher" mental concepts, if wrong, can also lead us to an unhealthy state. Therefore, it is fair to say that our physical and emotional truths exist in the reality around us. We cannot function at our potential best without living with the truths around us. For example, sitting here in my office... no matter how many times someone may tell me that the tree outside is yellow... my eyes still see that tree as green. It doesn't matter if the person telling me is of the highest order amongst men or the lowliest, the tree is still green. Therefore, it can be argued that your word, if speaking the truth... reflects your honour as a man (or woman; I don't discriminate) and as a member of the human race. This brings me to my next part of the post.... Instinct Last week, I did a communications lecture with my first year degree students. I posed the question, 'how do you know when someone isn't telling the truth...?' So... I pose the same question here. How do we know...? I'll tell you how we know. Instinct. Instinct is an inherited tendency of an organism to behave in a certain way, usually in reaction to its environment and for the purpose of fulfilling a specific need (like salmon going back to their breeding grounds etc). The development and performance of instinctive behaviour does not depend upon the specific details of an individual's learning experiences. Instead, instinctive behaviour develops in the same way for all individuals or the same sex. Behaviour in animals often reflects the influence of a combination of instinct and learning. Instinct, as opposed to reflex, is usually used as a result of inherited behaviour patterns that are more complex or sometimes involve a degree of interaction with learning processes. For millennia, human beings have learned the truth about their physical and emotional reality. Hundreds of thousands of ancestors have contributed to the finely honed instinct within each and every one of us today... the instinct of when we know someone or something is not true. We instinctively learn to recognise when there is a flaw in our reality. Very often, there is no concrete evidence or issue we can draw upon which will tell us 'yes, you are correct, this situation is untrue'. But we rely heavily on our five senses and the sixth sense of instinct to know when things are wrong. How we know is by watching, listening, feeling, touching and speaking. We listen to the words being said to us, we watch carefully the actions of those around us, we touch the skin and body of those around us and we talk and carefully listen to the responses. All this information tells us when something is wrong. A human being is a more keen lie-detector than any machine. In those cases where people say 'I didn't know about it, I was lied to' usually you will find if they look back, there has been something which has gone ignored which blatantly showed the truth. What it comes down to is, if your instinct is telling you that something is not right, then the chances are that there is something which is just not right. Women are often accused of being hysterical or neurotic because they sense something is wrong, especially in a relationship. When individuals sense something wrong, the most damaging thing anyone can do... is to dismiss that instinctual feeling, because in that moment you're damaging that person's self-confidence, self-esteem, trust and perspective on reality. The fact is in normal people, most individuals know where it's at....they know whether they can trust you or not and they know what the truth is about what you say or don't say. Most normal people will deal with the consequences of knowing the truth about a situation or person, rather than waste their time with lies. Most normal people when faced with an assertion from someone who they assume is normal too, will instead of believing their own instinct, question their own state of mind.... and what people who are lying do, is play on this. So you come out of the situation believing the tree could be yellow, even though your eyes tell you it's green!
Author Chinook Posted July 23, 2007 Author Posted July 23, 2007 Sometimes, something happens which confirms your instincts were right. Today, I discovered that he was in fact, cheating on me.
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