My over-arching meta narrative

Reading CS Lewis's Mere Christianity, several things come up.

First, what a magnificent mind. His triumvirate of logic, analogy, and communication ability compel and engage on many levels. And I suspect, as I finish, will seat the message in the heart.

The thing is, I strongly suspect - even before the read is complete- that the message will not exist *solo* in my heart.

That is, that the Christian message of separation from God and Christ as the only redemptive bridge to cross and fill forever the gap that separates me from Him - it is not The whole truth.

If that were the case, it would ultimately exclude all other claims to union with God as at best incomplete and at worst leading their believers to certain and everlasting damnation. I don't buy it.

And that is not a dogmatic cry for the absolute rightness of plurality. First off, that is a self-defeating argument - because I would be making an absolute claim in support of not being absolutist. Second of all, it is like a sibling to the feeling of right-and-wrong that Lewis so eloquently makes. Just as I have a feeling of transcendent right or wrong, so also do I have a feeling that Christianity's absolutist claims are only provincially correct. In Wilber speak, from the developmental stage that those believers are at, the absolutist claim is valid. Moving up a level, to transcend but include that level, the claim is seen as only part of the whole story

My meta narrative, which continues to evolve, would go like this:

• Take a major wisdom tradtion. (Monotheistic, Atheistic, Pantheistic)
• Spend some time with any of them, Google them and sup heavily on the true-believers *and* the detractors perspectives, arguments, and rhetoric.
  
• Compelling arguments can be made on many levels as to why each of those is the One True Way.
• Compelling counter-arguments can be made on many levels as to why each one of those could never be the One True Way

So how do you determine truth?

Discernment will be varied depending on the developmental level of the person doing the investigation.

And at *my* level, I believe that contemplation and esoteric practices lead to the deep place where opposites, paradox, logical inconsistencies and rhetorical grappling dissolve into That from which they arose.

Namaste.