Intruder said
My own 'personal truth' is that... there is no truth. There is however, collective awareness.


Anytime you get in a subject as deep and variable as what "truth" is, then semantics are going to come into play. I would say that your phrasing of "collective awareness" is roughly what I was aiming for.

Continuing with Intruders point:
There is however, collective awareness. It's a global collaborative effort aided in recent times by the Internet. It has no purpose, no particular meaning though. If it should have one it would become an example truthiness.


I thought about this as I wrote this essay. From a semantics point of view, if it (your idea of "truth")works for you, then it can only work for you. Thus truth can only be your truth. It becomes truthiness if you try to "sell" it to others.

I do have a "truthiness" to offer. It is that we all need to do the legwork ourselves on these questions of "spiritual truth". I think as you stated at the beginning of your response Intruder....
This truth is often all too defined in our minds even before we set out to search for it. The trapping of 'personal truths' as you called them, is that we tend to adopt them because we're comfortable with them. This also the domain of religious 'truth'. Since we basically presume everything we know or is contained within our consciousness regarding reality, religion commits the greatest transgression in claiming an ultimate truth.
I actually think there is great relevance in coming to a comforatble conclusion on our own as opposed to being comfortable with accepting what organized religion sells, especially since it has well been documented how manipulative most religions tend to be in promoting themselves. In my opinion, one can only be comfortable if they have done the work themselves.

That is an interesting statement you make about reality. What is it? Everyone's reality and circumstances are different, thus necessitating the need for different "spiritual" outlooks and truths.

For me to be intellectually honest, I can't say that some of the conclusions I have drawn are true or proveable. It's about the human experience, and what helps us to get out of bed each day, especially when things are down.

I am coming to a personal conclusion, and that is that humans don't run on facts. The fact that god does/may not exist as he is taught, doesn't help give us meaning in life. I view it as a limitation of evolution and science at this moment, in that such studies are basically limited from a pragmatic POV to discovering facts and ruling out theories and hypothesis based on tests. One doesn't have to believe in "god", but one won't find meaning to life in science either. One must search for that meaning in onesself, imo. That is the biggest truth to discover in my opinion, ones purpose in life, and it definitely shouldn't be farmed out to organized religion.

Jeff

The good old days weren't always good
And tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems
-Billy Joel