“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” – John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra, Chapter 6

When I read accounts of successful people, there are striking elements of similarity that to me reveal a connectedness of meaningful knowledge.

Take for example: “Visualization of the world you want as a catalyst to achieving it”. Over the past two years, I encountered many sources who provide their own lens through which to embody this truth:

• Napoleon Hill’s principle of autosuggestion
• Tim Ferris’ Dreamline in the 4HWW
• Craig Ballantyne’s vision exercise on Early to Rise
• Micheal Jordan’s account of always visualizing the player he wanted to be
• Qigong meditative visualization of self as “so happy and so healthy”
• Tony Robbin’s call for a state of certainty you will succeed
• The quote attributed to Henry Ford of “If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right”
• And hundreds of other sources I am not yet personally familiar with

Each one of these minds has created his own lens to view the same central truth. All of these lenses are slight variations of each other. Some may be rose tinted, others may be grey tinted. Each may have a different degree of clouding in the lens or a different amount of distorting imperfections. But they all orient towards a singular underlying truth that exists with or without the existence of each particular lens that is viewing it.

Most meaningful knowledge can be accessed from a multitude of varied lenses. One of the biggest issues of fragmentation of knowledge relates to the zeal with which people defend their particular lenses through which they view truth. They miss the inherent connectedness that underlies all meaningful knowledge. It seems human nature to purse with vigor a particular medium for viewing the truth rather than truth itself.

In putting these thoughts into words, I hope to better identify how I can purse truth that is decoupled from bias of specific lenses.