By

Bill Cottringer

“Belief is the insistence that the truth is what one would “lief” or wish it to be.” ~Alan Watts, “The Wisdom of Insecurity.”

     After all is said and done in any intelligent discussion of the great mystery of life, there always remains one unanswerable question. This is, in one version or the other, Are we inventing reality with our consciousness as we go, or is it out there and we are just on a human journey as spiritual beings to experience if as it is? Or, is ultimate reality materialistic and spiritual, or perhaps both? Regardless, it is always good to ask the why question behind the important question. One very creative High School teacher asked my daughter such a question to successfully complete graduation requirements.

   The question was a simple straightforward one that took a lot of thinking about thinking to come up a sensible answer. The question was, “How do you know for sure that what you know is certain? At the end of any reasoning, the inevitable conclusion is that you don’t. After thinking about what you think you know for sure, it becomes a leap of faith in the validity of the source of the information—whether from scientific research, sensory perceptions, some higher authority, transcendental meditation, critical thinking about personal experiences, or wherever else the knowledge comes from.  

     As Alan Watts brilliantly points out though in the above quote, we often forget about the faith nature of our beliefs and prefer to cling on to them rather than let go. Since our beliefs drive everything we can think, say or do, and we certainly wish to improve interpersonal relations and understand reality better, it is imperative to gain a solid understanding of the dynamics of our beliefs. A good starting point here is to realize what beliefs really are—a  mere outward expression of a haphazard collection of internal, semi-conscious experiences, perceptions, thoughts, feelings, assumptions, hopes, fears and perspectives—which we will do almost anything to defend as true .

     Whatever particular journey we are on it is probably a good idea to get good ideas to be more successful in navigating the side we choose to be on at any given time. With either side It is smart to question an emerging attribute of beliefs, that being their control over how we think, communicate and act in our interpersonal relationships. At this point in our evolution, they seem to have gone way past their original purpose, which was to just put a name to what we were experiencing.  Now they have become the truths that bring about more negative, destructive outcomes in our personal, societal and world-wide relationships. Of course, note that this is a belief itself worth questioning as all beliefs are.

    There is plenty of good evidence that the worst outcomes in human relating come about from defending the truth of questionable beliefs based on incorrect or incomplete perceptions and interpretations, pre-mature perspectives and unverified assumptions making up the leap of faith in their truth for us. The obvious solution to this dreadful state of affairs is to reclaim the steering wheel by seeing that we are all still trying to figure out reality and how to be more successful in dealing with it, however it may be apart from our personal beliefs.

“Once you convince yourself that your belief in something is righter than another’s, neither of you are right.” ~The Author.