Okay me, listen up:
There’s a popular saying, “You’re entitled to your own opinion but you’re not entitled to your own facts.”
It’s a clever statement that seems self-evident.
But who’s facts are they if they aren’t your own? What “facts” exist outside your story? How can you be sure any “facts” arising within your story have any validity outside of your story?
This sounds like woo-woo talk. But when I get quiet and question what I really know about anything, I’ve come to see that there are no facts that I can confirm outside of my own awareness, that no fact is 100% verifiable, much less consistent, across all observers.
How do I know something is true? I don’t. I don’t know anything is true. The closest I can ever get is believing it’s true.
That’s it.
I can collect mountains of evidence and I will never know.
I’m not saying there aren’t degrees of reasonableness. Some “facts” yield consistent enough results for me to navigate the world effectively. But there are times even those break down. There was a time that “the earth is flat” was the most reasonable “fact” to acknowledge based on the evidence available ...until it wasn’t. When it was, it was a very good way to navigate the world (and still is in most everyday scenarios). I’ve just seen more and now believe something different. It stands to reason that right now we’re all believing in perfectly reasonable “facts” that won’t hold true for us later.
What this time of fake news and conspiracy theories and virtual reality is opening up to me is the inherently subjective nature of “knowing.” Nothing perceivable is true for everyone, only true for the one perceiving and believing it. And whatever I believe in any moment will seem true for me in that moment and I’ll find that life will seem to play out that way.
Because the mind builds the world I experience from the inside out, that’s the only way I can experience anything. Every fact I ever experience is the result of a construct of my mind. Forget being entitled to them! In reality my facts are the only facts I will ever have!
But here’s the good news: if I am entitled to my own facts, I’m completely in control of my experience of life. When I recognize that I have this power, peace is entirely in my hands.
If I’m entitled to any facts I want, why would I ever choose any facts that would cause me a moment’s consternation? Why would I choose to experience anything but total peace in the world and a sense of oneness with everything?
Maybe just for the fun of it.
And if it’s not fun, I can explore different facts. I am entitled to them - because they are all mine to begin with.
When I understand this, my experience of life is entirely in my hands.