What is belief? And what truth really means
You believe.
What do you believe in? We are free to believe whatever we want. No matter what our belief is, we can easily find justifications and confirmations through the internet or other sources, and we can constantly reinforce and condition our beliefs through personal experiences. But can we trust our experiences? We are looking at everything filtered through our own lenses of biases and beliefs. There is always more than one perspective, and the way you see things might be very different from how they really are.
The map is not the territory. This concept indicates that our understanding of reality is not how it actually is, but is rather based on how we represent it on the map we draw inside our minds. To view the world through the narrow lense that has been handed to us by family and society, is mistaking the map with the territory.
By looking at something in a different way, we can change the way we see it. Changing the input, gives you a different output.
‘It has become possible for man to
chemically alter his mental state and thus alter
his point of view. He then can restructure
his thinking, and change his language so that his thoughts
bear more relation to his life and his problems,
therefore approaching them more sanely…’
Now, reality as you know it, is defined only by yourself. The best allegory to describe this is the highway: every individual is driving its own car, and their personal, tailored reality is defined by what is inside the car. They can look outside of it, and they can see others, but they will only pay close attention to what is inside their own car, or at the traffic signs. You could be living in a completely different universe from the person passing you by.
We are the illusions we have chored, a mere memory construct. Now notice how circumstances, perspective and body chemistry can influence what you feel and think. Start to question your beliefs, and begin to restructure your thoughts.
How did you start believing anything? Is it because it’s true? How can you know if your belief is related to the truth? What is truth? The definition of truth is most often used to mean being in accord with fact or reality, or fidelity to an original or standard. Now let’s get to the facts, how can we verify facts? Is your belief based on a real fact or simply your version of it.
The root cause of why you started believing can be very difficult to find. Maybe you trusted one particular source, or had an experience, or maybe you assumed that a true statement brings with it a whole set of other beliefs, for example: if you believe in God, you are inclined to also believe he is the way you heard about in the bible, or if you belive you are safe because the police is always doing its job, then police is not corrupt and never breaks the law.
Belief can do amazing things, it can help you achieve your goals or it can stop you from doing something just as easily.
How can we know something for certain?
Doubt is an unpleasant condition, but certainty is impossible.
You would be amazed to see how many of the things you believe to be true, are in fact unjustified beliefs, and how hard it is to prove anything. Let’s consider the physical world, we are all living in it, we trust our senses, and now we believe it is real. But how can we know? How can we know we are not living in a simulation? We can’t. We don’t experience reality directly, we do it through our senses.
Our senses and experiences can deceive us. We are all different, our experiences and feelings are subjective. And on top of that, we have a lot of defense mechanisms and justifications that stop us to change our view, for example: confirmation bias, convenience or laziness.
Consider in how many ways you can be wrong, all the justifications you have for believing something, then consider how many things must fit together just right to fit in with your worldview. Chances are, everything you believe is false belief.
Many have trouble looking at themselves for problems, so you can start by looking at others. You will find that it’s much easier to find ways for other people to be wrong, than looking at yourself.
The absolute truth is nothing more than the ruling idea.
Why do we agree on things? There definitely is a version of reality which we have to accept in order to understand each other. The liberals have different beliefs than socialists, but who is right? You have to find the party that resonates most with you, the fact is that nobody is right. All the belief systems you can choose are constantly evolving machines, with constantly moving parts. Someone new can enter the system and change it at its core. Therefore the truth is not always stable, as it should.
Limiting beliefs
Not all beliefs are the same, some can be helpfull, like believing you can achieve anything if you work hard enough, or they could be limiting, like believing you are not smart enough and you can never get up the latter.
Limiting beliefs are almost most of the time unconscious, and they started at a very young age, that’s why they can be so hard to track. We also tend to know the belief as absolute fact, and never question it.
How do we stop believing, and start knowing more?
Humans by nature desire to know, but knowledge must be always justified, otherwise it’s just false belief. Question everything. Try to reach a conclusion verifying everything that leads to it. Assumption is the mother of all mistakes, rememeber: Knowledge is only true knowledge when it’s justified, and it takes a leap of faith to know almost anything. We could have never discovered the whole TRUTH.
‘Men must attempt to develop
in themselves and their children
liberation from the sense of self
…men must be free from
boundaries, patterns and
consistencies in order to be free
to think, feel and create in new ways’
If you want to discover more, feel free to listen to my spotify playlist here (YouTube alternative here), or you can also access it from the menu. It is built to a structure, and it’s better if you play it in order, the message is in there. Now, read the italics, and do not think like you have to follow only one artist in there. Nobody is perfect, and they don’t know everything. I repeat, the playlist has a structure specially made by me.
