PsiPog.net

One thing that bothers me is that we, as humans, forget to check our beliefs against reality. Sometimes we believe something for so long, and forget to question it, that it becomes a belief out of habit. A few years down the line, and this belief starts to become more rigid. Or maybe we find our belief so clever and elegant, that we feel it would be a shame to drop the belief. Holding on to beliefs out of forgetfulness or pride is dangerous... it's something we all deal with.

For example, in the previous post, an anonymous poster commented on a belief that I had that s/he disagreed with. S/he argued that stress or anger doesn't necessarily mean that we have an inaccurate view of reality. It surprised me that I had never thought of this possibility! I adopted the belief that anger and suffering are indications of faulty views of reality a few years ago in 2001. It originated from a book, Open Heart, Clear Mind. I don't think the book literally spelled out the belief, but it was something that the book inspired me to believe in.

Since then, I had never even questioned it. Even if the belief is true, it still shows how I hadn't questioned the belief in so long, and it resulted in me presenting it as fact. I think we all have beliefs like that, some true, but a lot are probably false. Yet we glance over them out of habit, and it's hard to notice they exist. It's important to check our beliefs against reality, and even if we think the answer is obvious, sometimes we gotta ask ourselves again: "This belief has made sense in the past, but does it still make sense now? It is accurate? Does it still represent reality correctly?"

~Sean