Sandcastles of Belief: Part 1

 

Have you read last week's post, Nice to Meet You, Voice-in-my-Head? 

It's a great place to start. 

http://waitingforthereply.blogspot.com/2022/02/nice-to-meet-you-voice-in-my-head.html

If you've been around for more than a couple decades, you've probably heard the mantra, "Your beliefs determine your reality." 

If that's true—if your reality is based on what you believe, wouldn't it be helpful to take a closer look at what beliefs are? I don't mean what your individual beliefs are; I mean what beliefs, as a concept, are made of.

Many of us—myself included—go through life assuming that our beliefs are solid indications of what kind of person we are. Beliefs look personal, as if they are part of our core identity. We categorize and label people based on their apparent belief systems. "She's a racist. He's a narcissist. They're anti-vaxxers. She's a bleeding heart liberal. He's a right-wing Trumper. Christians are hypocrites. Lawyers are liars." 

Did you find yourself having any visceral reactions to one or two of those categorizations? Did you notice an increase in heart rate or body temperature? Maybe you noticed a feeling of resistance or contraction. If so, you're in good company.

We feel our beliefs in our body as if they are as intrinsic to us as our blood and organs. Most of us will defend our beliefs to the end. We go to great lengths to protect and uphold our beliefs. We put stakes in the ground and draw lines in the sand based on them. We're willing to lose friends and sever ties with family members over them. We use them to justify exclusion and hatred. We say that we feel "triggered" by people whose words and actions go against our beliefs. On a larger scale, wars are declared and blood is shed on the grounds of conflicting beliefs. 

A few months ago, I observed a conversation between two of my daughters, Megan and Taylor. Taylor made a rather bold, matter-of-fact political statement. Megan recoiled as if Taylor had just personally attacked her. In true form, Megan steadied herself and proceeded to offer the most high-level, airtight mountain of evidence to contradict Taylor's political stance. Honestly, Megan's reply was nothing short of genius. Still, Taylor held her ground, repeating her initial statement without one ounce of emotion. Megan broke down into tears. Her most compelling evidence had not done the very thing it was supposed to do: win her "lost and wayward sister" back to the "right side" of the belief system. 

We are so intertwined with our beliefs that having them challenged or disregarded can be physically and emotionally painful. But, what if the very thing on which we stand in order to differentiate good from bad and right from wrong has nothing to do with who-we-are? What if we are not the layers of thoughts and beliefs we've been accumulating since we were in the womb? What if we are so much more?

This exploration, believe it or not, has nothing to do with the content of beliefs. It's not about finding "better" or "more helpful" beliefs. How would we even do that? Humans have tried to coax, persuade, and bully other humans into changing their beliefs for thousands of years, mostly to no avail. 

This exploration is about stepping back for a minute and seeing how beliefs develop and get innocently baked-in to our identities. 

Let's begin with some very general, fifth-grade level science. It's a little sciencey, but persevere! It sets up a pretty radical opportunity to see something new. (And if you're the kind of person who understands science at the level of quarks and gluons, proceed with grace). 

Here we go.

You have a truly amazing brain with way too many cool parts and functions to explain in a 5-minute article. But, let’s look at a couple important features. Two parts of the brain known for their roles in pre-conscious functions are the amygdala and the hippocampus. By pre-conscious, I mean that these parts of the brain process information below your level of awareness. You have no say in how this information is processed, interpreted, or stored.

The amygdala is best known for its role in processing fear. Information about potential danger hits the amygdala before you are even aware of a dangerous situation. You may find yourself having an emotional or visceral response to, say, a sudden loud noise. You innocently but incorrectly believe you chose that response. You may even blame yourself for being “overly-sensitive” or “weak.” So, while your neurology is doing its job perfectly based on its programming, there is now a layer of guilt, shame, or embarrassment. But, that programming was established in utero and developed in early childhood. There was never a you deciding or choosing anything. And yet, you innocently call those reactions yours.

The hippocampus is best known for its role in the organization and storage of memories. It also makes connections between your memories and your bodily sensations and emotions. Again, this is all happening without a you in there pulling levers and pushing buttons. You are not choosing which memories get stored or which memories make you feel sad. This is all happening at a pre-conscious level, based on programming that was established in utero and early childhood. Still, you have a voice in your head that will happily jump in and say, “I remembered that event and it made me feel triggered.” Such a cute little voice.

According to Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford University, we don’t see reality. In fact, our vision runs about 100 milliseconds behind the real world. As a result, we are seeing a story. This is not a mistake in evolution, though. It’s a perfect adaptation.

“We don’t have the necessary machinery, and we wouldn’t even want it, to process carefully all of the amount of information that we’re constantly bombarded with,” says neuroscientist Susana Martinez-Conde.

Your brain has more than a billion cells, and each cell links to thousands of other cells by way of synapses. Conservatively, that means your brain computes about one quadrillion operations per second. There is no way your conscious mind could process and interpret that much data.

So, the pre-conscious parts of your brain, like the amygdala and the hippocampus, handle it all for you. That complex system of neurology that you developed in the womb efficiently processes and filters everything for you. Then, in a tiny fraction of a second, it hands you—the conscious part of your brain—a nice little package of filters and calls it The Truth. In that same fraction of a second, your narrator-brain jumps in and says, “Look what I did!"

It's kind of like a professional football coach and all his assistant coaches getting together to create a brilliant, winning strategy for their team. The team adheres to the strategy and wins the game—only to have the commentators in the big glass booth say, "Wow, look what we did! Our strategy worked! We won the game!"  The commentators claim the victory. But they're really just the narrators. They have NO idea what went on in those strategy meetings. That's what the voice-in-our-head does when a decision is made or a belief is believed. It disregards, or has no knowledge of, the millions of pre-conscious "decisions" that were made. So it claims the victory (or the defeat) as its own.

It has always looked like we consciously select our beliefs; as if there is a relatively universal "buffet of options" from which to choose. We then apply that idea to everyone else in the world, assuming they must have the same buffet of options showing up in their conscious minds. Following that logic, everyone has the same opportunities to make the "right choice" or have the "right belief." But everyone's conscious mind is NOT receiving the "same buffet" of choices. As a result, everyone does not have access to the same "options." We judge people as if they are seeing the same world we are seeing; as if their pre-conscious programs are presenting the same packages of truth that our programs are presenting us. But how can that be? We all have drastically different programming that is determining our moment-to-moment experience. 

Based on my programming, it's hard for me to imagine that a choice to physically assault someone would ever show up in my buffet of options. But this is a very real and "best" option that shows up on many buffets. On a smaller scale, when someone disagrees with me on Facebook, the choice to call them vulgar names or destroy their reputation also does not show up in my buffet of options. This is not at all a reflection of ME. It is only a reflection of a lifetime of programming, none of which I had any control over. It's all part of a brilliant, intricate system that has evolved over millions of years. 

The clever, meaning-making brain will jump in and say, "Fine. Different choices show up in different people's conscious buffets. But once they appear, everyone has the same opportunity to select the best option from the ones that are presented." And yes, it looks like that to me, too, sort of. 

So let's say the two options that arise to my conscious mind are, "Call the lady who ridiculed my Facebook post all kinds of vulgar names" and "Find out where she works and destroy her reputation." Suppose the options, "Ignore her" and "Have compassion for her" are not anywhere on my buffet? Then, in that moment, calling her vulgar names IS the best choice to my conscious mind. And perhaps your mind, responding to its own pre-conscious programming, will judge me as harsh and unenlightened. But, in that moment, nothing is happening other than two minds just doing exactly what they were programmed to do: categorize and judge. 

So why does any of this matter? 

It matters because when it looks like beliefs are based on conscious choices "we" make, we buy-in to the judgements they create. We listen to the compelling voice in our head that tells us who's in, who's out, who's right, and who's wrong. We also listen to the voice that tells us how we, ourselves, have been wrong, "bad," not enough, and unworthy of love and forgiveness.  In doing so, we carry shame, guilt, and remorse, sometimes for decades. We innocently misidentify with our stories and beliefs as if we had somehow chosen them.

When we start to tease-out who-we-are from the beliefs and stories we have acquired, we certainly don't stop having opinions and judgements. And we wouldn't want to! Our little meaning-making brains love their jobs of judging and compartmentalizing. But, what does happen is that we stop identifying so closely with the thoughts and beliefs that arise within us. We begin to see them for the programming they are. And we see other people's thoughts and beliefs for the programming they are. From that space, we start to really SEE people for more than the labels our minds have placed on them. The rock-solid nature of what is TRUE begins to shimmer a bit. 

Our minds may still insist that change can only happen from a space of vigilance, rage, defiance, and steadfastness. It may say, "If we stop identifying with our beliefs, how will we know who's right and wrong? How will we keep ourselves and our loved ones safe? How will we fix this broken world?" 

But maybe deep, lasting change doesn't happen through judgement, brute force, and vigilance. What if it happens as a result of seeing something new? When we see something new, the lenses through which we see ourselves change. When we see who we are beyond all of the pre-programmed stories and beliefs, we begin to see the world and all its problems in a new light. We do the things that make sense to do in each moment—not from a place of fear and hate, but from a place of curiosity and hope. The world changes because we change, not the other way around. 

(And if your mind is freaking out and scrambling to find its comfortable foundation, it’s doing precisely what it was evolutionarily designed to do. And we wouldn’t want it any other way. Hang in there.)

Next week, we'll continue the journey as we look further into how our beliefs shape our reality. 

For a sneak peek at next week's follow up to this, click here:

http://waitingforthereply.blogspot.com/2022/02/sandcastles-of-belief-part-2.html