On Finding the Truth

Stingray - Maori Design
Copyrighted

Dear Readers,

I've been asked often how I crack open a case and how my mind thinks. This short article gives you a glimpse into how to do it.

On the left, is the Maori (that's New Zealand native people) design for a stingray. I remember, when I entered the worship house of the Maoris, called a Marae, I instinctively felt drawn to the stingray designs. They were painted on the columns of the Marae.

The chief of the Marae told me that stingrays represent wisdom because they search through the sands, foraging for food. Humans too must sift through the murky waters hunting for the knowledge they need.

I've mentioned it a few times, but I used to be a biologist. Think about this. How do animals like stingrays or crocodiles, which live in cloudy waters hunt for its prey? I mean, it's harder to get prey in water than air because the third dimension of water means the prey can hide in a three dimensional realm, rather than in a two dimensional one. Only birds and bats have the advantage of a three dimensional realm in the terrestrial environment right because they can fly - and everything else can't. Everything else is on the ground, limited by gravity?

The answer lies in their ability to sense electrical pulses through their skins. In other words, they're not using physical sight to see. They're using another sense. But which one?

Remember, those old karate movies, when the sensei (master) blindfolds the pupil and hits him so often with a stick to ensure the pupil learns to harness the other senses he has. Likewise, the search for the truth in a murky waters, requires that one learn to see it without the use of only the physical senses but also the extraordinary ones too.

The best insight I have into this is encrypted into my cat's name (Jeh Pan) - Korean for Trial. All Korean names have a Chinese root. The root word for Trial in Chinese is Shen Pan - 審判. Shen roughly translates into investigation. Pan translates into discernment. Since Trial is about truth, the Chinese have it right - truth is discovered through an intensive physical fact finding process, BUT it also includes the spiritual, emotional, and psychological aspect of discernment. Therefore, the insight of the Chinese version of Trial is that truth needs to be discovered through both physical and extraordinary senses.

In the Western World, we write off any way to arrival of the truth that is not physical in process, such as statistics, the scientific process, or mathematics. These are not to say that these are not valid tools, but we've idolized them into the only methods of arriving at truth. If you're really interested in understanding the fallacy of our process at discerning truth - Owen Barfield (C.S. Lewis's mentor) wrote a book titled Saving the Appearances on it (but I warn you, it's a difficult read.)

Now, before, I conclude this piece, I've often quoted George Orwell as saying that, "In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." Now, I tell you that we live in times of universal deceit because accepting the truth is also a revolutionary act.

When accusations and perjuries can easily be falsified in movies, photos, and testimony, the divining of the truth must come from not seeing with the eyes, but seeing with the heart - and to see with the heart, the heart must be clear and cleansed.