You Believed That ---- ?

This morning I had a huge breakfast but knew I wanted to go swimming. I remember being told over and over again that I should wait 45 minutes to an hour or I would get a bad cramp and drown. All these years I would wait after eating before I swam. This time, I jumped right in the pool and started swimming. I swam 500 yards without any issues. I continued my workout for an additional 700 yards of intervals. To my surprise, I did not cramp and drown. When I returned to my RV, I did a little research on this belief. I found that there isn’t any proof that swimming immediately after eating causes cramps and more importantly doesn’t causes a cramp that would cause me to drown

  I’m going to write a series of blogs associated with theories and research about the mind. I urge you to do your own research because it is very important now more then ever. Just look at what is happening in America today. So let’s dig in with our “belief” system. The problem with most people isn’t so much their ignorance as knowing so many things that ain’t so.
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  It’s really easy to question something like going swimming after eating but imagine trying to question a strong belief, something passed down by someone you trust, a parent, mentor, friend, family, group, etc. Beliefs shape the way we think and act. It is important that we accept that some, perhaps most, of our beliefs may be wrong. Another important thing to keep in mind is that your beliefs may have no relationship with/to reality.

  A belief is assuming something to be true. All beliefs are created by choice. Many times it is void of facts. A belief about a things existence is not the same as its existence. I believe that water is blue and in reality water is clear. Once your belief met reality you would start saying, “Water is clear”. There is no reason for you to believe. just state the fact. You can dig deeper into what is a “fact” and find that facts can be influenced by beliefs. You will see how this can make an infinite circle of discussion. I will discuss that in another blog.

 Mankind has been studying the human mind for hundreds of years. We are still a long way from understanding how we think. Most of our reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do. Historians can look back right now and see that many of the our popular beliefs are in most ways the same as centuries past, organized and collective nonsense.
  There was a line in “Men in Black” where Agent K said it best, “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everyone knew the Earth was the center of the Universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what we will know tomorrow.”
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 It’s hard for me to say at this point that beliefs are okay because many of us hang onto the unreasonable ones. We result to the many defense mechanisms when confronted with the challenge of those strong beliefs and how they have no relationship to reality.  This means that many of the most treasured beliefs may need to be discarded. I see belief as a disease and just like any health problem, it requires diagnosis.  The question is how do we collectively cure this disease.

edited by Vonda Smith

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