What is Truth?
The Philosophy of Integration framework defines truth as “a temporal description of awareness encountering sequence prior to the overlay of story, judgment, identity, or explanation. Truth marks the point at which awareness registers what occurred with only the minimal interpretation required for functional perception.”
What does that mean?
Truth is what is registered in experience before interpretation is added.
Truth is the very plain description of what is happening as it is encountered.
If you look outside and see that it is raining, the truth is simply that it is raining. Your thoughts about how hard it’s raining, whether you like the rain, or how much rain you’ve had lately belong to interpretation, not truth.
If you have a rain gauge and it reads 10 mm, that is still part of the truth. You are not adding meaning. You are extending perception with a tool to register what is occurring more precisely.
The difference is that interpretation explains what the experience means. Truth helps you register what is happening.
What About The News?
The news is a hot topic when it comes to truth. Are they telling the truth, or are they interpreting the experience?
For news to be limited to truth in the framework sense, it would have to report only:
What event occurred?
When?
Where?
What was the sequence of events?
What was said or done?
No adjectives. No explanations. No motives assigned. No framing.
The news generally doesn’t do that. It adds a layer of interpretation that includes:
selection of which events matter.
ordering that may not match actual sequence.
language that evaluates the event.
explanation of what it means.
context that guides how to feel about it.
To extract truth from news presented this way requires effort. With each sentence, you would need to ask:
What actually happened here?
What order did it happen in?
Which words are describing events?
Which words are telling me what those events mean?
You have to strip away the interpretation to find the sequence underneath.
The Missing “Why?”
The question that is noticeably absent is why.
In this framework, why belongs entirely to interpretation. Structurally, it is not required to register sequence. And yet, why is exactly where disagreements about truth arise.
We can often agree on what was said, what was done, and when it happened. We disagree on why it was said, why it was done, and what it means. The conflict is not about sequence. It is about interpretation.
The Independent Truth
Truth, as defined here, does not rely on explanation or meaning. It refers only to the registration of sequence as it is experienced.
Philosophical questions sometimes ask: if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to witness it, did it happen?
The framework does not need to answer that. It only observes that when a person encounters the event — whether directly, through evidence, or through report — they register it through sequence before they explain what it means. Truth does not depend on interpretation. Interpretation follows truth.
Why Do Humans Create Meaning?
So, why do we bother with meaning at all, especially if it isn’t part of the truth?
Because humans like to explain what’s happening.
We naturally narrate our experiences. We ask why. Anyone who has spent time with a toddler knows this. The questions come constantly, not because something is wrong, but because explaining is part of how humans make sense of what they encounter. Meaning-making is not a mistake. It is something humans do after they register what is happening.
The framework doesn’t try to explain this tendency. It simply observes that it exists. Meaning has no effect on sequence or continuity. It only affects how a person relates to what they are experiencing.
Interpretation is not inherently good or bad. It is simply part of being human. What a person does with their interpretation is entirely up to them.
Personal Note From Della
As a person, having lived this for many years, spirituality encourages us to become aware of our interpretation because that is where much of the pain we experience lives.
The framework offers a logical, functionally neutral explanation of experience independent of interpretation. Writing it offered me a clear, neutral way to see the difference between what was happening and the story I was telling about it.
I can tell you from experience that encountering sequence without the story can feel stark and confronting, but also deeply informative. It shows you how the story you’ve been telling was protecting you the entire time.
Love to all.
Della
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