What is Truth? Human Dignity Outside the Pit

The dimensions of time and space limit the ability of humankind to recognize this Authentic Self or human dignity, at least fully. The reliance on material epistemology to know what is True about human dignity conditions the individual to a certain perception of human beings and dignity within the context of a given time and space and fails to see the entirety of humankind. Simply put, we often become easily fixated on the material Truths of human dignity and the Authentic Self, and this fixation can cause us to forget about the deeper, more mysterious and more profound realities of who we are made to be. I tell my students to think about the Pit. I draw a picture of myself at the bottom of the Pit, and, in the picture, my eyes are looking downward and never up. I remind students that the top of the Pit is so far away that it is almost as if it doesn’t exist to me; if I can’t see it, then it must not exist. My entire perception of reality, including my human dignity and my Authentic Self, then, becomes conditioned by what I can observe and study in the Pit around me. The next step is a little complicated, but it takes some logic, which, if I go slowly, my students can understand. I tell them, “The Pit around me conditions my perception of Truth, but what if there was not Pit? What if I was outside of the Pit where there are no limitations? How do we describe ourselves without those conditions of being in a Pit?” I lob this one across the plate.

The Basilica of the Sacred Heart, Notre Dame, Indiana. Sometimes, if we are looking, we can see greater Truths outside of the darkness of time and space. (P. Smith)

A student raises their hand. “Well, I guess you could say that outside of the Pit we are unconditioned and free to know the Truth of who the Authentic Self is.”  I smile. The unconditioned self’s perception of human dignity is not limited by time and space. The self and the other is viewed as having equal dignity. I do not push it right now, but some of my students remember that based on this model or this analogy, only God is Truly free to see us as Beloved; only God can really see us for what we are made to be. But if we could somehow tap into that vision that God has of us, maybe we can be free too?