Believing Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast

"Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said. 'One can't believe impossible things.'

"'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.'"

~Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

I once questioned what I had believed to be a universal truth, a fundamental part of what I know about who I am, where I am, and what is real. I only did it because I was presented with evidence I couldn't deny, and this evidence seemed to contradict what I had been told all my life was a solid fact. I couldn't dismiss it, and I couldn't ignore it, so I hesitantly started looking at alternatives to the so-called hard facts, laughing at myself a bit for my doubts, only to be stunned to find that there was plenty of evidence to support a valid explanation for my observations, an alternative to what I had been told all my life was absolute and unquestionable.

It was a mind-blowing experience, and it started me down a path that has been equal parts eye-opening and infuriating. Challenging every belief you have held dear for your entire life is not an easy or comfortable quest.

Sorry to be so cryptic, but it's a necessity. I don't like to talk about these experiences with people except in very non-specific terms. It makes them uncomfortable. It makes them angry. Most peoples' knee-jerk reaction is to immediately dismiss me as ignorant or crazy, even if they have never engaged in more than the most superficial of thinking about the subject and refuse to do any further thinking about it. I find that particularly irritating, so I shut up about it, even if I don't stop researching and observing. The genie is out of the bottle, however. I can't go back to who I was before. I am not the same person I was before I asked that particular question.

The specific subject of my research isn't important here, anyway. What I consider vitally important for myself is being able to find and accept truth, no matter how hard it is to do. Truth is hard and uncompromising. It doesn't care about societal norms. It doesn't care about my feelings. It doesn't require my approval. It simply is.

Truth is.

I went through a period of rage at the beginning of this particular journey. The anger I felt was baffling in its intensity. It didn't manifest itself outwardly, but it was an internal battle of gigantic proportions. At the beginning, I couldn't even name a particular thing I was so angry about. I just felt this nebulous, undirected seething against....something.

This, I've since come to learn, is a normal reaction to having your core beliefs shattered, forcing your fundamental paradigm irreversibly onto a different track. I've heard others describe the same internal battle as they've gone through the same paradigm shift. Perhaps it's because we as humans like so much to be comfortable in our knowledge. We have this need to be set, to know, to be certain about what is going on around us. When that certainty is removed, when nothing is certain anymore, we naturally rage against it.

After a while, the rage died down but left in its wake a rawness, a distrust of everything I'd learned as scientific fact. But even as I felt this rawness, I also felt increased hope. I knew that I had taken a positive step in being able to start accepting truth no matter how difficult, no matter how bizarre, no matter how inconvenient it is. I know I still hold onto most of my former biases and prejudices about what is real and what is not, but I have taken one step toward truth at least: I can now question. Being able to formulate a question in the face of what I used to accept as certainty is a big step. I know I'm still naturally resistant to having my worldview torn apart and put back together in a different pattern, but at least I know I can survive it--though maybe only in small bites at a time.

That process is really what this post is about: being open to learning and understand what is true, what is reality. No, I'm not taking mind-altering drugs. I'm not, like, one with the universe and everything, man. But I have come to understand that what I want to be true is pitiful in the face of what really is true, and I prefer to know what is rather than live in my fantasy, as comfortable as that fantasy might be. I say that even though I know my ability to accept absolute truth is still in its infancy. I just hope to grow.

One thing I know is truth: God Is. All my evidence is subjective and unquantifiable, but I don't care if anyone else believes me. I know. My hope and faith have been strengthened immeasurably. Where truth is hard and unyielding, and God is truth, God is also merciful and kind. Everything else my be up for review, but that one, solid, comforting constant is a balm to my soul.

Someday, maybe I'll feel like sharing some of the experiences that have led me here. Someday, maybe, I'll share some of the spiritual experiences, as well. Like how I absolutely know prayer is one of the most powerful things any human being can do for another.

For now, I'm just trying to be big enough and strong enough to accept truth.