We are living in a new age and new times. A lot has changed since our childhood and how we have been brought up. Especially is you are over 50 !! Well then, a lot has changed.

When I was young we were trained into a particular religious faith. Trained in a set of doctrines and beliefs that we had to adhere to as Truths. In my day, whatever the leaders of that faith – which in my case was the Catholic faith, whatever they said was gospel and not to be questioned.

A lot has changed and a lot remains the same. As this info graphic shows.

It shows what is changable and what ( well as far as our understanding at this time goes) doesn’t change. Subjective truths…relative truths…are basically influnced by culture and by personal choice and understanding of the times.

A subjective truth in terms of the Catholic faith would be …in the past it was a rule that you had to fast before receiving Holy Communion…these were rules …but at the time they would have been understood as unchangeable and a given if you wanted to receive Holy Communion. If you were to revist and speak to someone of that era – say…1930…they would consider it a sacralige to even think of going to Communion without fasting from the night before.  And that the Chruch leaders would abolish this rule that was in place for centuries …would be sacraligious upon sacralidge. The more famous big one that thanfully has changed is the belief that the Catholic Church was the one true church, meaning that you must convert to Catholicism or your doomed. In other words God must be Catholic!!

While universal truths on the other hand stand the test of time. A universal truth is a law of nature. It is something that doest change with time.

Truth can be a difficult thing to work out.

What I love about this info graphic is that it helps us see that rules and believes that are changable are what causes conflict and this sometimes as we painfully know – this sometimes leads to war and often in the name of religion, sadly, regarded as in the name of God.

Universal truths on the otherhand create unity and peace and equality and respect and cause us to flourish and develop as we were designed to. Universal truths are our signposts on our journey to truth, to our essence and to Love.

Sadly because God has been so associated with religion and which usually is built on  a mixture both types of truth…subjective and universal truths…when something changes…the danger is that we defend it as if it is a universal truth.

So the name or word God can have a negative or a postitive effect depending on your experience. If you have had something drummed into you as a universal truth that must be adhered to and then you see that it changes or see that it wasn’t truth …then often this is associated and equated with God and God gets thrown out with the bath water. Whereas in truth…what has changed is simply, our understanding has evolved and so our consciousness of who we are and what we believe has evolved too. Like for centuries the world was believed to be flat, can you image that impact of finding out and discovering that the world isn’t flat …but round!! Scary stuff. And many clung to the ‘fact’ that the world couldn’t possibly be round if it was always believed to be flat. “Oh no …We’ll fall off”!!!

But this is an opportunity to understand and work out what is God and what is not god. Just like working out what is everlasting truth and what is time bound truths- changeable in time. It can be a scary time. We are living in a time when we have to do our own search and  almost everything has to be worked out, whereas in the past …out ancestors didn’t have to do this…they learn the rules and the doctrines and were guided by them on their faith journey. We are living in a time of exploration and some people including myself find this is exciting. But for a lot of people this is very scary.. (But perhaps its experienced as scary because the god they were taught as absolute is not now the absolute god…then what can they do. The truth here is that this is really a step into a mature faith…maturing in their search for God…the God of Universal truth ( will come back to how to navigate and keep your footing )

Evolving Faith

As we develop a more personal relationship with God or whatever you call or conjures up Universal, Truth, or Love or Goodness for you …then we leave the safe path of being reigned in and coralled by truths and beliefs of others. It is risky to step out beyond the boundaries of the collective group…but with guidance it is the way to the truth about you…about life…about God. God beyond religion.

Please include attribution to http://mindvalleyacademy.com with this graphic.