What do you think is true? Think of one thing in your mind that you believe is true.
Examples; God is a divine being, My Football team are great, I am an expert at something, My Dad is good…
There is no right answer, pick anything you want, it’s not about Judging, just pick something personal to you.
In your mind say, “I think it’s true that …“
Now say it again and make it clear in your head. Repeat it a few times. Stop reading this for a minute and repeat every word of the thought. If you can say it out loud, do so. Concentrate on each word and really get a sense of what you are saying or thinking.
Ok, now that you have your sentence “I think it’s true that…“
The next question is. How do you know it’s true?
Think of at least one reason you know it to be true.
Now say, the reason with your sentence. “I think it’s true that… because…“
Examples; God is a divine being… Because it says so in the bible, My Football team are great… Because they keep winning the league, I am an expert at something… Because I got an award, My Dad is good… Because he loves me.
Just like before, when you have your reason, repeat the full sentence a couple of times. Concentrating on your reason “because…”.
What you’ve done is state something that you believe, and can easily back up with a reason. I’m certain you could come up with a lot more reasons if I asked you.
The next question is: How do you know your reasons to be true?
At this point, I bet you can come up with facts and figures, quotations and examples to prove to me that it’s true. Who do you know they are true? Someone you trust told you?
The only reason it is true is because YOU believe that it is true. Now you might have some resistance to this idea, sure. But before you start a war, know this. I’m not saying you’re wrong or that your belief is false. It is almost certainly true – to you. This is the realisation to have here. You and you only make things true.
You might say, No I disagree its not just me, 1 + 1 = 2 because that’s logical and mathematics says so and everyone agrees.
I might point out that 1 +1 = 10 in the binary system, where there’s a different set of rules, so is it still true??Well yes you might say, it’s true in decimal rules, and it’s false in binary rules. So it’s both?
If it’s that easy to add uncertainty to the answer of 1+1, then why do you believe that your view of the world is absolutely true? The take away from this is to understand that you have a set of beliefs that you are willing to backup with lots of reasons and rules and all those beliefs together form your picture of your world around you.
Where did you get those beliefs?
When I was young I picked up a belief that money was evil. The belief came from the popular saying “Money is the root of all evil” Why did I believe it? It’s in the bible and every Sunday I was thought that the Bible was the truth. Imagine what I thought later in life when I found out it’s a Bible misquote? The real text in the Bible is “…The love of money is the root of all evil… (Tim 6:10)”. You can see there’s a very very important but subtitle change here. The love of money is the problem, not money itself. There’s me thinking the adults had by best interests at heart… but no they were just repeating a misquote they were told, something wrong, not the word of God they respected so much, the word of someone else. They never stopped to question the information they just fed it to the kids with large spoons.
30 years later I’m certainly free of that fake news – What information are you being fed that might be fake, how do you know if the source really knows what they are saying is true, are they just as misinformed? “Stand guard at the door of your mind” is a lesson I was thought by Tony Robbins who I’ve had the pleasure of attending a few times. Tony said he learned it from Jim Rohn and when I dug deeper Jim said that his mentor Earl Shoaff thought it to him. How extraordinary! This must be an important lesson for it to be passed through generations of mentors. What does it mean?
In essence, everything you believe in your head, gets in there some way, as do the reasons you have to back up your beliefs. You will absorb beliefs and reasons like the rays of the sun. You won’t even have to try. Your brain is a device designed to gather and process information on autopilot. It doesn’t need you driving. However you can filter. You can choose what information you listen to, read, see and you can question if it is true. You don’t even need to decide if it is true or false, just be open enough to question what you’re being told. When you do that, you get to decide where the information you are being given fits in your world view. You don’t need to just automatically accept and process. A warning, information is tricky and the way it’s put in your head is nothing short of cunning.?How cunning?..
Source: From the very fantastic mind of Rowan Atkinson as Blackadder.
Blackadder : Baldrick, I have a very, very, very cunning plan.
Baldrick : Is it as cunning as a fox what used to be Professor of Cunning at Oxford University but has moved on and is now working for the U.N. at the High Commission of International Cunning Planning?
Blackadder : Yes it is.
Baldrick : Hmm… that’s cunning.
..How cunning? To paraphrase the Jim Rohn example:
If your worst enemy puts sugar in your coffee what do you get? Sweet Coffee, no big problem… If your best friend puts poison in your coffee, you die. It doesn’t matter where the bad information comes from. And you can get it from a source that you trust because they just don’t know, just like the bible misquote. The information that forms your belief will often come from a source that you trust, a parent, a friend, a teacher, a website/app you trust, a podcast you are influenced by, a politician, an activist. They might have a malevolent intention to put it in your mind but they might think they are doing you a favour.
The manipulation of the human mind is nothing new but the tools are. The way media is presented to you now is cunning on a level that you can not even imagine. The information you consume is cunningly designed to act as a friend but it has an agenda and mostly that agenda is to extract the money from your pocket (99% marketing). But the manipulation may have more important purpose than money, it may be designed to make change in the world in a way that appears like its something that’s good for you. The next time you get information you should filter and process it before you store it in your mind. Stand guard if you will. As part of this responsibility you should think before you share, modern tools rely on you sharing. If you share information that you have not processed then you are aiding the spread and perhaps unwittingly putting poison in your best friends coffee. These day I use AI as a tool to check information, it’s a great way to question information.
Does your belief serve you?
Now that you see that your beliefs form your world view and that they may be based on reasons from information sources that you can’t be sure about, the next question to ask is, whether the things you believe serve you. What do I mean by serve you? By serve YOU I mean that do the things you believe and that rules that come from them deliver to you a life of fulfilment, joy and freedom from fear? If they do then congratulations on enlightenment. Or are you sure you’re not kidding yourself?
Are your beliefs fully 100% in your head because you want them there and they have the purpose of forming the world view that you want. I can’t imagine there’s many people that that’s 100% true for. I have been working on my beliefs for a long time and I still find beliefs hidden in plain sight that don’t serve me. So why are they there? Mostly fear and the need for security, we are terrified of not fitting in with the crowd. Society has evolved that way by design to keep you in line. Keep you on the wheel, keep you going to work every day, keep you paying your taxes, keep the system going. But you can pay your taxes and fulfil your obligations to society and be free of fear. Once you’re aware of that you can begin to live. You should only keep beliefs that serve you. The ones that you want. What’s the point in you believing that water turns to wine if you really don’t think that’s possible? Faith? Faith is not belief. You can believe in God if you want without the detail. You don’t have to believe every minute detail that you’ve been thought because you fear eternal damnation. If you choose to believe in God make it whatever you want, make it serve you.
Remember, stand guard, the person teaching you information may have an agenda, or more likely has never questioned their own beliefs themselves.
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