[dis] BELIEF

what’s more offensive? your claim i am going to hell for eternity or my asking you to prove it before i accept your position?

i’ve shed a great deal of beliefs throughout my 20s and 30s. most were handed down and still more acquired in an earnest search for Truth and wisdom and identity. struggling with OCD has been a constant wrestle with my own mind to notice and ignore when it forms beliefs to quell anxiety or spur me to action in order to avoid an apparently inevitable catastrophe.

how do you deal with the unknown? what are you worried about? what are your plans? who do you think you are?

humans are believing mammals

humans have a talent for adopting ideas that inspire action and cooperation. it's perhaps what is responsible for our massive numbers and thriving societies.

even the most convicted atheist is riddled with beliefs. take me - i believe that a green and white cotton rectangle is worth $1 whereas a cotton rectangle with different symbols and a blueish green is worth $100. i believe the chair i sit on is in south and not north carolina. i believe humans have rights. i believe my partner and i will share a beautiful future together. i believe the stock market will magically turn my money into more money. i believe my flight next saturday will take me swiftly to D.C. i believe AI could be humanity’s final invention.

if we did not believe in abstract concepts or futures impossible to know, and we truly lived “in the moment” as gurus suggest, we wouldn’t even be able to have a conversation about the calendar. a defining feature of our species is this mechanism that allows us to build a future or concept and birth it into reality. delusions of grandeur are what propel almost every start up in silicon valley. their form of belief is a potent jet fuel causing 99 in 100 start ups to explode before take off. but does that make it a necessary catylist for the 1 to reach orbit?

there are over 300 million people living within the borders of america who all collectively believe they are americans. upon their autopsy i would challenge you to find the american portion of their body.

however we developed belief as a species, it has undoubtedly been useful in predicting the future, both the horrors and pleasures we wish to avoid or achieve. we hate the the unknown.

i am often afraid of the unknown. what if my partner’s feelings about me change? what if my team quits and my business fails? will AI take over the entire world and reduce my quality of life to that of a chicken in a feedlot?

our brains would rather us be scared than dead.

to pass on your genes, you ought to stay alive until you've had a chance to reproduce and raise offspring.

still, i wonder if this is a bug or a feature.

the problem arises when we think we know everything or we are inspired to harm. this can stop science in it's tracks or lead to genocidal tendencies like those of the hebrews in the bible. the number of times "god" directly ordered the total destruction of anything living in an area is astonishing. you can justify anything with the big man signing off.

in the 1500s during the age of europe’s exploration of the oceans, the west started considering maybe they didn’t know everything. all of a sudden maps were drawn with blank spaces around the edges because the cartographers were finally free to admit they did not know what lay beyond there. before this period the maps contained images of ice walls, shear drop offs into space, dragon infested islands and sea monsters which discouraged exploration.

filling in “god” where a fact would be stifles curiosity. if you believe you know how the earth was made, why research it? we need to be honest about our ignorances to even begin to search for answers. if we start with a bag of answers, we give our brain an artificial patch that declares no further investigation is necessary. in this way, faith is a limiting factor in our development as a species when the god of the gaps approach is applied.

has god allowed us to remain ignorant? the reigning cosmological idea during jesus’ time was that the earth was a layered dome with the heavens extending vertically.

odd, that god’s own son wouldn’t set them straight on their cosmology.

we respect belief

we consider faith a virtue.

calling someone “a man of faith” is high praise even in secular circles.

we are supposed to respect these types of beliefs, but i cannot find it within me.

i respect your right to belief, just like i respect your right to feel afraid of harmless snakes. however, i do not respect the belief you hold that a harmless snake could in fact harm you. or that you need to blow yourself up in a crowd of people to earn your reward.

would you respect my belief that i were the tooth fairy or spiderman? no, you’d have me evaluated and committed.

beliefs need respect because they’re made up.

i don’t have to respect how old you think you are because there’s a fact behind it. if we know what year you were born, i don’t have to respect your assertion that you’re 35 when you’re 45. i get to laugh at you. absolutely no faith is necessary for me to take a temperature reading of the air or remain under the pull of gravity.

earth doesn’t need my respect to keep spinning but if all the muslims in the world stopped believing the quran, allah would disappear.

a hard part of maintaining relationships for me is the fact that i find beliefs so intolerable. feigned reverence is a disposition i struggle to produce. it’s like an allergy, as my friend matthew says. if i perceive someone’s convictions to be a work of fiction, i have to white knuckle my chair to keep from leaping to my feet, proclaiming them duped, even doomed.

the experience in my body is disgust - the mechanism keeping me safe from contamination. i don’t just find beliefs annoying, i feel physical revulsion as if you just shoved rotten flesh into my mouth. i am compelled to spit it out and knock it from your hand before you consume more poison.

is this because i spent the first 18 years of my life believing firmly in hell and the idea that having incorrect thoughts would send you straight there? am i merely an atheist made in the image of an evangelical fundamentalist?

one of the main beliefs in christianity is that other people must believe exactly what you do or they will be tortured forever. that even applies to other christians who got it wrong. some christians don’t even believe in hell which makes me wonder what they’re even doing calling themselves a christian.

either way - my, at times aggressive, irreverence clashes directly with my allegiance to pluralism. i believe we ought to tolerate our differences to create a cohesive, diverse, loving society. though coexisting peacefully is a value i aspire to, i find it quite difficult to put into practice. perhaps respect is simply tolerance in action?

belief is the beginning of suffering

on a recent meditation retreat, the teacher started his talk by stating “belief is the beginning of suffering.” what we grip onto and need to be true or are afraid is true create our own suffering. it’s a fight with reality we always lose. the end of suffering is to open your hand and be at peace with the way things actually are, so they say.

doctrine and dogma are obstacles on the way to liberation.

the entire point of the monastic path in zen buddhism is to drop all belief. drop all concept and thinking. drop any faith, prediction, and plans for the future. return to the now which is ever changing, arising, and disappearing.

impermanence is the only guarantee. everything is rented and must be returned by its due date.

beliefs are essentially metastasized predictions. our minds are prediction engines evolved to reduce surprise and uncertainty. i will suffer to the extent i believe my predictions to be true. pain happens instantly but suffering can last forever if the mind grips onto a story about it. a return to open awareness is the only refuge.

my personal journey with religious belief is a list of stories i've aligned with - christianity gave way to eastern philosophy and a suedo-hindu mysticism which gave way to a form of taoist non-duality and eventually atheism with a zen practice on the side. as i shed beliefs, they have leave me with vast expanses of possibility and curiosity.

i have come to crave the moments of tranquility where belief surrenders to the full light of reality. it feels spacious - like a pared down closet, a sunday afternoon where you don’t know where your phone is, the look your partner gives you that makes you forget you’ve ever wanted to be anywhere else.

now my practice is to sit silently and await beliefs to rear their head. the task is to investigate them with curiousity and allow them to pass, if i can.

presence is the opposite of faith. acceptance requires no hope. after all, hope itself is based in despair. no one experiencing a peaceful state or high emotion looks for hope. no, they crave something to relieve suffering and the dread of the void.

in this way, the abrahamic faiths (and most religions) are truly death cults, hoping for respite in the next life. their response to suffering is a promise it will be better when you die if you take the right steps in your miserable earthly life. it’s a race to the grave. for jihadists, it can be a literal race to the grave. may they wake up to their delusion or be swift in fulfilling their wishes of joining the prophet, peace be upon him, on their way to allah.

i am so curious what keeps christians from killing themselves and getting the shitty earthly part over with. it's the question i want to ask every one of them. i would guess it’s a combination of duty to one’s family, perhaps the idea of bearing witness. maybe they have a shred of doubt. the pope declared suicide was an unforgivable sin so that surely stayed a few shaking hands.

what do you believe?

what if this, the reality we encounter, is all there is?

do you find that to be horrifying or liberating?

when you stare into the naked truth of reality, do you shiver and squirm and hope for relief from your fears? or do you accept and even love your present reality with its uncertainty, ever changing as it is?

may we learn the latter despite our mind’s wish to fast forward and play horror films to keep us scared but alive.

may we be free from suffering as we find acceptance of the miracle of our existence.

may it be enough for us.

may we embrace our ignorance with rigorous honesty,

and admit when we are just making our best guess.

so, what do you believe?