“When a thousand people believe some made-up story for one month, that’s fake news. When a billion people believe it for a thousand years, that’s a religion…”
We’ve all heard how we live in a ‘Post-Truth’ world (a term coined in 2018 by Lee McIntyre). It is probably more correct to say that we live in the ‘Personal-Truth’ world, where what is ‘true’ is essentially up-to-you. That might sound self-evident, but it's actually very new... and it has ENORMOUS ramifications!
Power and Authority
From vaccines to fake news, 2020 made it undeniable for many of us, from whatever position on the political spectrum we sit that the traditional sources of guidance we have relied on to help us make life choices are no longer reliable. From newspapers and the TV to Politicians, the Reserve Bank and even Scientists and Doctors – we need to make up our own mind about everything!
I assert we’ve been struggling with, and resisting, this realisation for some time. We’ve known it is correct but we’ve wanted to hold onto at least some of the certainties of the past. Unfortunately for our alter-ego's, it's 'take responsibility for ALL our beliefs or for none of them'... there is no half-way-house (and that image of the perfect - white, monogamous, patriarchal - happy family is just soooo hard to let go of).
The process of resisting the ramifications of this realisation was hard and I assert came to a head in 2020, but once made, it has brought with it a newfound peace and confidence and a new power and authority (and direction) to our lives. By accepting that the only source of truth is inside and not outside us, we’ve opened a whole new world of learning and possibility.
Intuition - the ultimate source of knowledge?
At this point that I would like to discuss the role of intuition because it is the critical source of internal knowledge about the world. We are all going to have to learn what it is, how to access it and most importantly, how to train this faculty (which is largely dormant in most of us).
We don’t rate intuition very highly in the materialist western world but the concept actually has extremely deep, and well-founded roots in most philosophical traditions both 'modern' and 'pre-modern' (including 'The West''). Intuition certainly encompasses a great deal more than the amorphous ‘gut-feeling’ we limit it to. Rudolf Steiner's view, leaning on Goethe, wrote in the 1920s that:
[Intuition] denotes a clear, pure mode of comprehension akin to a mathematical concept.
Now that's different from what I automatically imagine it to be!
If intuition really is anything like a "clear, pure model of comprehension" that we can consciously develop and train, that opens a whole new world of knowledge and guidance. I think that's the route we are all going down and I invite you to start exploring what intuition means to you and when you use it (because you do) and when you ignore it!
Everyone I mention this to this year has a positive reaction.
We all know we need to look within and not without for certainty. That brings amazing confidence and clarity ... it is also confronting. YOU are the ultimate source of authority!
More on different conceptions of intuition and my own experience practising as I learn more to share :-) ... very open to input from you!
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