The other evening I went to an event held to give some visibility to the Glass Lake Studio (Expressive Arts Therapy Program) and to bid farewell to its founder and his wife, who are moving to Canada to join a community led by “guru” John de Ruiter.
According to de Ruiter’s site,
Canadian born John de Ruiter responds to invitations World-wide, addressing audiences from “core splitting honesty” and his unconditional way of absolute surrender and servitude to Truth.
Because I steer clear of anyone who spells Truth with a capital “T” (and run fast in the other direction from concepts like “surrender” and “servitude”), I am always a little taken aback when people who have been among my circle of friends go off to embrace such Truth so blissfully and assuredly. With the de Ruiter Truth, it’s not just the couple to whom I recently wished “safe journey.” Another couple I know — both well-trained psychologists with successful practices — have already moved, at least temporarily, north to de Ruiter’s Canadian enclave.
Without a doubt, truth is very important. Look at the mess the world is in because so many of our leaders have forgotten how to tell it. It’s interesting that de Ruiter’s wife recently left him because he is sleeping with two of his lovely blonde followers. I think that he has some sort of rationalization of the difference between his own “personal truth” (small “t”) and Ultimate Truth (capital “T”).
Heh.
It all makes me stop to think about how many ways of defining “truth” there are out there. There’s scientific truth, historical truth, personal truth, mythic truth. And then there’s the capital “T” Truth, the idea of which always seems so compelling. It also tends to be the idea behind many of the most gruesome murdering sprees of mankind, from the Crusades to the war on terrorism.
Scientific truths change and evolve as new information is added to the mix. Historical truths often are a combination of actual facts colored by personal truths. It’s all so messy, so chaotic, so lacking in surety — kind of like life. To believe or not to believe. We make our choices and we take our chances.
Personally, my choice for truth usually is to try to match up my personal truths with the kinds of mythic ones that Joseph Campbell so eloquently and artfully described and analyzed in his too-soon-forgotten series of PBS programs and books. I guess it’s my way of integrating the big picture with the little picture, the personal with the planetary. Because, for me, it’s the only way for me to arrive at truths that I can count on, that provides the loom on which I can weave that chaos of science and history and personalities into the fabric of a life that I can wrap around myself for safety and sustenance.
All the rest is someone else’s truth. Someone else’s Truth.
That’s why the current American intrusion into the Middle East is so confusing to most people. (Makes you want to run way and hide in the bosom of de Ruiter Truth, doesn’t it?)
To help you get at some of the truths about Middle East Truths, you might want to link over to Bob Harris’ post on here , which begins:
It may be anything from a play for leverage in Iraq to the opening drumbeat for another war, but the White House, Rumsfeld, and Blair have all gotten on Iran’s case for allegedly harboring Al-Qaeda suspects, which supposedly even led to this week’s increased terror warning.
Iran denies the charge.
Who’s telling the truth? I don’t know. But keep reading.
It’s well-worth reading.
And to get a better fix on the continuing un-truths being thrown at us by the Bushies, check out Peter Beinart’s article in The New Republic Online that spells out “the record over the last eight months.”
Whose truth. Yes, indeed.
