The Truth

This week I'm going to discuss my song "The Truth". It is from my CD called "A Chapter of Roots" and was written during a period when I was going through hard times. Life was very difficult for me and things just didn't seem to be working out. I'm sure everyone reading this can relate. Some of us think we have our lives all planned out but things just don't turn out the way we expect. People look at you from the outside and think that everything is fine but inside you are going through a lot of pain. During these times we all find that thing that will reduce the pain. Some people turn to drugs and alcohol, others get overly religous etc etc. My strategy to reduce my pain was to attempt to minimize my daily struggles by viewing them in the light of my universal reality. I told myself that whatever I was going through can't be that bad because suffering is relative in many ways. What is considered suffering today can be seen as a blessing tomorrow. It's all a matter of perspective. I felt that changing my perspective on my life and existence would help ease my pain. I believed that the magnitude of my daily challenges would be diminished if I saw myself as this soul that lived on this tiny planet that revolved around the sun in the vastness of our universe with billions of suns. Our sun is just one star and do you realize that there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand in all of the beaches in the world? Picture that for a minute and then you'll gain some perspective on your earthly struggles. It might sound silly to some but it worked for me and my struggles suddenly appeared insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

 As a singer/songwriter it has always amazed me how I can have a song in my mind, bring it into reality in the form of a recording and affect those who listen to the lyrics and melodies. I see this as a very powerful force and I've always considered humans as "magical" beings in many ways.

It is this type of thinking that strengthens my faith in God and myself and keeps me going through hard times. I try to extract from these experiences that which will help me become a better person and help me move closer towards my goals. I'll never give up my dream regardless of the circumstance in which I find myself. I refuse to allow myself to be defined by my present circumstance. I always tell myself that I'm going through a phase. Several years ago I started researching and writing......searching for the truth about my world and my existence. This song "The Truth" was borne out of this experience. "The Lord is my light and my salvation.... whom shall I fear. The Lord is the strength of my life of whom shall I be afraid". This was taken from psalm 27 which many Christians view as a powerful psalm to be read in times of difficulty. I continue "but sometimes I wonder why life's so hard....sometimes I wonder why life's so rough... and I cry". This crying has led to a lot of thinking about my life, our world, our reality and what really is the truth.

I was raised as a Christian and I love science and philosophical thought. I use them to help me understand my life and the world around me. I believe that when Christianity says that God created us in his likeness and image it doesn’t refer to our physical likeness but our ability to be creators... to bring into existence that which is in our minds. Look at the world around us and that seems very clear. What we take for granted now would have been considered "magic" not too long ago. Imagine telling a cave man that you can let him/her know what is in your mind without speaking. That is what writing does. It transfers our thoughts to other people without uttering a sound. Imagine telling someone a few years ago that you can talk to someone in a distant land across the seas and actually see them at the same time. It would be considered "magic" but that is what our technology can now do.

In "The Truth" I teamed up with a brilliant young African American poet called Khaos 9x who approached the song from an Islamic perspective to discuss the suffering that we all go through in our lives. Everyone reading this has gone through difficult times and hard struggles and it does make you wonder and ask the question why me? Why is there so much suffering and pain in the world if there is a God? I believe these are legitimate questions. I've come to the conclusion that the reason for pain and suffering in the world is for us to understand love and goodness. Imagine a world where everyone was feeling love. In that world we wouldn't know love as we now know it because it would be the norm and wouldn't be considered special. Love becomes the love we know and respect in the presence of evil and hate. If you look at the force that holds the universe together it is the force of gravity. Gravity is a force of attraction. I see love as an aspect of that same principle. Love is what can hold humanity together and it is an attractive force. When you love someone you want to be physically close to that person. But the force of attraction can only be understood in the presence of repulsion. When you hate someone they repel you and you don't desire close physical contact with that individual. These are some of the universal principles that I believe exist on  different levels. Again... a matter of perspective. You can only understand the power of light when faced with darkness. These emotions that exist beyond the realm of the material is what life is about. In the words of Bob Marley and the biblical verse of Ephesians 6 verse 12, it is said that we don't face a battle against flesh and blood but of spiritual wickedness in high places. I think that in the realm of consciousness lies another aspect of the truth. Just like there is an electromagnetic field that permeates the universe, I believe there is a field of consciousness that permeates the universe. It is in this field that the battle for our minds and souls exist.
　
What is the truth? In this case I’m talking about the truth about the reality of our existence. What are we as human beings? This has been an elusive pursuit from the beginning of human existence. Religion, spirituality, philosophy and science have all been used to seek the truth and in many cases they have been able to uncover certain aspects of the truth but we still don’t know anything close to “the whole truth and nothing but the truth”. In my song “The Truth” I sing about “The teachings of Jesus, the teachings of Mohammed, the teachings of the Torah, the teachings of Buddha, the teachings of philosophers, quantum physics, photons, neutrons, quarks….so much confusion about religion”.

One thing that we have to understand is that as human beings we have limitations in the understanding of our universe. We depend on this understanding through our five senses (smell, taste, touch, hearing, sight ) and some may say a sixth sense (intuition). As humans we can only hear sound that falls within a frequency range of about 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz. We can’t hear anything beyond that without some external device to detect it. This doesn’t mean that the phenomenon we call sound doesn’t exist beyond these frequencies it just means that we can’t hear them. All of our senses can only respond to a slice of the reality of our universe which begs the question can we ever know the truth?

People who claim to have all the answers need to step back for a minute and chill. We all need to reclaim some basic humility. There was a time when scientists thought they had discovered the truth by claiming that the universe worked by obeying Newton’s laws and Einsteins theory of General Relativity. The amazing thing is that it is part of our truth and experiments have been able to demonstrate it. However, it is only the truth when we deal with large objects of matter. Scientists figured out that when it comes to smaller aspects of matter in the subatomic world these laws don’t apply. They thought they had figured out the truth but they were wrong. They came up with new laws and a field of quantum mechanics that describes how matter and energy interact at the subatomic level. The holy grail for scientists is to reconcile both of these very different laws into a universal law. They think they can find the answer. I’m not too sure about that and my reason is simple. Our premise is that there is this one truth for everyone and everything. How do we know that is the truth?

What I find most fascinating about quantum physics is the fact that matter at the subatomic level exists both as a particle and a wave form. In fact the weird reality of our universe is that sub atomic material exists as waves until observed by human beings. When we look at subatomic waves they "magically" become particles. In other words we participate in the creation of matter. This is real science which tells us that our reality is actually stranger than fiction. Scientists have been trying to figure out what is in the nature of these subatomic particles that make them behave the way they do when observed by human beings. For me it begs the question what is it about human beings that can convert subatomic waves to particles by just observing them. Observation is just the activity of our consciousness so it is our consciousness that creates these particles. Hmmm.......

If we look at religions like Christianity, Islam, Judaism, they all claim to know the truth. They do help us understand certain aspects of the truth but most people are becoming aware that religions don’t answer all questions. I do believe there is a God and my logic is quite simple. I find it more strange to believe that we are the only conscious entities in this universe than to assume that consciousness is in some way a fabric of our universe. The universe is much too vast to assume that it is only earth that has this most amazing thing called consciousness. Think about this for a minute. Find one good reason why consciousness should be only confined to earth? If we assume that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of our universe then it would be logical for consciousness to manifest itself in other ways. Without getting into too much detail you can see where I’m going with this. I see God as the grand superior consciousness of our universe. This is an aspect of the truth as I see it. Enough of this for now....lets get back to the music. I have to figure out what my next posting is going to be. Until then have a wonderful time.