Letter 1: The Journey

Hi. I am Joshua, and these are my letters. They are a summary of findings from my journey to discover and comprehend the truth about life’s great questions. In them I will present theories that, to my knowledge, have never been published. I hope you will enjoy.

 

Before diving in, I want to spend some time covering a few important concepts regarding the truth, because my experience is that many people don’t really know what the truth is. Let’s start by defining it.

 

The dictionary defines truth as “Reality. Things that are fact.” This is direct, but what does it mean? What is reality? What is fact? The dictionary defines these as “Reality - The world or the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them”; “Fact - A thing that is indisputably the case.” Combining these definitions yields: “Truth - The world or the state of things as they actually, indisputably exist. Not necessarily the way that they are perceived to be.” Straight forward, but I find it still missing something.

 

Many years back, I stumbled across a book from Mormon culture that contains a very interesting definition of truth. The book is called Doctrine and Covenants, and in it God is portrayed to be speaking and giving instruction. In the 93rd chapter, he gives his definition of truth as follows: “Truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come.”

 

Notice that this definition makes a critical distinction, that truth is “the knowledge of things…” rather than “the state of things…” Truth on any topic exists whether anyone knows it or not, but is there value in an unknown truth or only in its potential to be known? According to this definition, truth must be known in order to be “truth.” Interesting thought, and it leads us to the topic of discovery.

 

Discovery is defined in the dictionary as “The action or process of discovering or being discovered.” In other words, discovery is the process of learning something new and it happens to every person continually in one way or the other. The problem is that there is an overload of things to be discovered, more than anyone can possibly cover in a lifetime. Thus, if one hopes to discover the truth about life’s great questions, they have to be a seeker of such and a determined one at that. This is because truth by its very nature is a needle in a haystack, for it is singular while falsehood has infinite possibilities. In order to find truth, a process of identifying it is needed so that the seeker knows when they have found it and when you have not. This process I call the Circle of Truth.

 

One of the beautiful things about truth is that it is like a close-knit family where members stand with arms interwoven, forming an unbreakable circle of support for each other. Although each individual truth is singular, it is connected to other truths that are in turn connected to more. If the process of discovery is used to find a single truth and then continued to discover the surrounding truths, eventually the full circle is complete and the whole truth revealed. This is why something that is true can stand against all tests and challenges because no matter how deep you dig; all of the other surrounding truths will support it.

 

This leads to an obvious question however: How does one complete the Circle of Truth? Well, unfortunately, one doesn’t. Doing so requires the knowledge of all things, for anything less leaves the possibility that something undiscovered will arise and disprove what was thought to be true. This is why we have only theories in this life.

 

The final facet of truth I want to cover is that truth cannot change. A truth that changes was never a truth in the first place. If this were not the case, then there would be no way to ever arrive at the truth. It would be a moving target that would render useless any success in finding it, for one could not rely on it remaining true.

 

Fortunately, truth does not change and what I will present in these letters, although not the entire truth about our existence is unique and, I will show it to be well supported in the Circle of Truth.

 

Much more to come.

 

Until next time,

 

Joshua

Reviews

[Rene Salinas]

Hi Joshua I have read 4 of your letters and I thankyou for your inquisitive mind it is great to read & feel. I also sense a lot of enthusiasm however I am bound by my enormous amount of ignorance on one hand and with a feeling that I cannot put and exact word to it which is peculiar becuase I do not often struggle with that. Not one to hold back I guess my ignorance will prevail and the truth is not something that entices in the least. I will of course continue to read as my emotions are neither here nor there. Still I will leave you with someones thought Jiddu Krishnamurti :"The fact is there is nothing that you can trust; and that is a terrible fact, whether you like it or not. Psychologically there is nothing in the world, that you can put your faith, your trust, or your belief in. Neither your gods, nor your science can save you, can bring you psychological certainty; and you have to accept that you can trust in absolutely nothing."

[Calypso]

Is this a personal thing? Or this a part of a novel? Either way you have stumbled upon some interesting ideas. What? Is? How about this?

[luciddreamer]

Interesting....will read more soon :)

[Tomislav Petricevic]

Although I like what you are trying to accpmplish, I somehow don't like the way you're doing it - the letter sometimes strays from that "personal touch" and keeps throwing information that makes it look like some kind of an encyclopedia. That will be a great advantage if you're planning to publish the book, but somehow it doesn't draw me in.

[CRAIG A. THOMSON]

I have to be honest,I'm not good with the truth!

[Myrmidon]

although i personally have no real perspective on what exactly truth is, im glad i finally found the time to read this. while i go simply by saying that "truth is what the majority believes it to be" iknow that that in itself is not true. now that ill be reading your letters im sure they will give me something to think about as i live on and experience for myself. who knows perhaps i will write something like this in the future. however i do not agree, nor disagree with anything you have presently stated in your first letter and look forward to read on to either just read, or form an opinion on what you place out here for us to read. thanks joshua.

[.]

Sensationalist dribble at its best. Giving it a rating would imply there's something there to rate, so I won't even give it the 0 that can be argued it deserves.

I really hope you don't believe you're answering any metaphysical questions.

[etxcp]

Awesome job!

[Diana Montoya]

I'm quite glad I found this. This type of things have always interested me, though I've never really investigated. Partly because I don't understand most of what philosophers, scientsits and such say, and partly because I was to lazy to.
But, can we really know the truth? I doubt it. Throughout history, we have searched for the truth, and have "found" it, only to be proven wrong. What makes now different? Technoligy? Science? We are still ignorant. And in my opinion, the truth is just out of reach.
However, I can be horrobly mistken. I guess I'll just have see what else you have to say.
Thanks for posting this.

[Jack Isaac]

Is truth the needle, or is truth the fact that a haystack is hiding a needle? Then one could wonder, which truth is the bigger reality? The needle or the haystack? And then there are three things we can always count on: death, taxes, and haystacks. Now, we have a threaded needle described as sewing itself in an eternal loop --how does a "death and taxes" kinda world relate to that? I am hoping that further reading will explain how to cheat death or save on taxes --but then I have my own issues. Otherwise, I really like this write, it speaks well to the masses --it is not arrogant at all --it is one person's educated opinion. And very nicely presented at that! Thanks for sharing this.