 Dear Reader
We don’t know about you, but for us, mass media reporting of recent events such as the election campaign and the foot and mouth crisis has been so obviously not ‘the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth’, and yet it has had such a powerful effect on public opinion and the course events have taken, that we have been asking ourselves a lot of questions. What is true? What isn't? Who is misleading whom? Why?
Brooding on this, and on how easy it is for us to be misled about the way things really are, we couldn't help thinking that our human minds are like ships without anchors – tossed to and fro, swept hither and thither – by whatever waves and currents happen to take hold of them. And if our minds give the appearance of stability and steadiness, it may be not so much because they are anchored safely in the haven of Truth, but more likely because they have run aground on the reefs of prejudice, wishful thinking, misinformation or just sheer complacency. We read something, we hear something, and whether we believe it or not depends not so much on whether it is true, but on the spin which has been put on the information by those who gave it to us, how close it is to what we already believe, and how much it appeals to our current motivations, desires and fears.
Is it possible, then, for our minds to be 'anchored in the haven of Truth'? Well, we all believe it is, don't we? And isn't anchorage in this harbour the ultimate goal of all our seeking? How do we reach it then, given the fickle nature of our minds?
Well, much as we would like one, we don't think there is an easy answer to this question. In fact, don't you think the desire for easy answers may be one of the greatest obstacles to Truth? Of course, the obvious answer is: we can aim to be guided in all things by the part of ourselves we call the 'soul', which – like a compass pointing north – seems always to be magnetically drawn towards that Higher thing we call the 'spirit'. By persistently orienting ourselves towards the Higher, the Greater-than-us, we will always be drawn upward by it, with a corresponding increase in our ability to apprehend reality intuitively and directly, rather than intellectually and indirectly.
But the moment we think we know what the Higher is, we make it, in a certain sense, lower than ourselves, and thus we fall into error. That's why, in our own lives, we find one of the most important things is to make a very big and very silent space in our hearts for what we do not know; an altar, if you like, to the Unknown God. There is more about this in the article entitled, The Sacrament of Ignorance.
Finally, some special news we’re sure you’ll want to share. On 2nd May Samantha gave birth to her first child, a beautiful boy called Tommy.
With much love from all of us,
Geoff, Ann, Jackie, Derek, Martyn, Jackie M, Sue, Samantha, Regina, Jon, Sam, Bertel, Sandra, Pat, Karena, Louisa, Mary, Emma, Em and Belinda.
Text & photographs © Cygnus Books 05-Jul-2001
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