How True Are Conspiracy Theories?
Q-Family members have bought into conspiracy theories. The data they present is compelling and seems to be convincing people that the government is in on the false information being put out. And certain heads of departments, including Dr. Fauci, Bill Gates, and others are profiting from the virus that maybe they created to get patent rights so that when a vacine is developed they will make billions. UGH! What to do? It does "shake me up".
Wish someone could tell me the truth that is at opposite ends of the spectrum, raising my own fears about what is actually going on. Hard to know and trust my own truth. Any thoughts?
A-Thanks for your questions. It seems that you might be using your mind to try and determine how true things are for you personally and also for the world with this virus. The mind is not suited to that task because it sees truth in everything. And since all there is is truth, that means all of our thoughts and fears are true....to some degree. However, they are not all equally true, and some of them have very little truth indeed.
It is our heart that tells us how true something is for us, and also how relevant, meaningful, important and real something is for us. Simply put, a bigger truth opens and expands our heart (including our awareness and our sense of our self) and quiets our mind. In contrast, a smaller truth contracts our awareness and sense of self and tends to activate our thinking mind. Truths come in all sizes from very big to ridiculously small, and so you can trust your heart's response to show you how true, important, and relevant any thought, belief, fear, doubt, intuition, inspiration, insight, desire, etc. is for you.
This is always relative and unique to each individual, so what is important and relevant for your children may or may not be relevant for you. You can explore more about the heart's innate wisdom in part two of the free ebook, Living from the Heart.
The mind in contrast is useful for gathering information to then evaluate with your heart. Specifically regarding the conspiracy theories circulating, you can quickly and easily find information that contradicts or debunks any particular meme that is out there by searching online, and then use your own heart to distinguish how true the conspiracy theory is or is not. Again, they will always have some truth, even if it is very little. The important question is how true, meaningful, and relevant is the information for you individually. I have also found the perspective in this article on Medium helpful on how easily some spiritual seekers are misled by certain kinds of information.
If you are on Facebook, there is also some useful discussion about this tendency for spiritual people to be more susceptible to conspiracy theories on this post by a friend of mine, and in the comments.
I have also written at length about the heart-centered way of discriminating the relative truth of things in these blog posts:
- Truth is Not Necessarily Comfortable, It is Just True
- Our Built-in Navigation System: Distinguishing Fear from Intuition
- Thoughts Are Not Bad, They Are Just Small
- Less Than Half Isn't Nothing
- Agony and Beyond and Back to Agony Again
- Small Truths Are Still True
- Truth Comes in All Different Sizes
I hope these perspectives are helpful.
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