Breaking Through Beliefs — Set Yourself Free Series

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Break­ing Through Beliefs — it’s easy to get caught in the right­ness of our beliefs. We then end up defend­ing. Instead, there’s sim­ple awareness.

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So, this guy I know likes to think he’s the smartest guy in the room. In fact, he’ll go so far as to declare him­self so. He also has some­how per­suad­ed his wife to play this game. He’ll say some­thing, and then look at her, and she’ll go, “Oh! I nev­er thought of it that way! You’re so smart!” or “You sure do know a lot!” 

It’s kin­da gag-wor­thy, espe­cial­ly since I know that I’m the smartest per­son in the room… ROTFL 😉

The oth­er day, he (after 7 beers in 4 hours) told me for a sec­ond time in a month or so why he despis­es the Monar­chy. It occurred to me that he was pret­ty stuck. What I noticed was that his belief sys­tem seemed “fixed.” Despite being well-read and knowl­edge­able, there’s no room for move­ment in his thinking.

So, maybe we could say he’s smart, but not wise

I see this phe­nom­e­non a lot–people get­ting stuck in a “thought trough.” You notice this espe­cial­ly with Trump fol­low­ers and the MAGA crowd.

Some­where, some­time, they con­clud­ed some­thing, and dyna­mite can’t budge them from it. 

In rela­tion­ships, it’s often around rules and roles. Who should do what with which, and to whom kind of things. It also hap­pens around sub­jects; for exam­ple, the infa­mous cat­e­gories “Mom­my told you not to talk about.” Sex, reli­gion, politics. 

My favourite story here involved a young couple we knew. 

Both were staunch Bap­tists; he’d been to Bible Col­lege. He’d reg­u­lar­ly go off on his view of sin and hell, to which he was sure I was going.

We’d known her since she was 12 or so, and had watched her grow up. Sex was nev­er dis­cussed, and she was quite conservative.

One day, after their mar­riage, they declared that she was going to get a breast enlarge­ment, which was a surprise.

A few months lat­er, she and the new, quite large sup­ple­ments arrived. 

Hus­band was beam­ing. He then announced that and he and she had start­ed doing the “Hot Wife” thing, which Urban Dic­tio­nary defines as:

“A mar­ried woman who has sex­u­al rela­tions with oth­er men, with the hus­bands approval. Usu­al­ly while the hus­band watch­es or joins.”

As you might expect, I have no trou­ble with “hot wives” or any oth­er thing any­one wants to do, pro­vid­ed every­one agrees. 

My prob­lem was with the con­tra­dic­tion between his end­less Bap­tist rants about sin­ful­ness and hell, and his lifestyle choic­es. It smacks of hypocrisy. 

It begs the ques­tion: why is this so hard for us to see? 

I guess, giv­en the young man’s protes­ta­tions when I men­tioned all of this to him, that he’s got his Chris­t­ian beliefs well and tru­ly boxed up, and unavail­able for dis­cus­sion, let alone change. 

In anoth­er sealed box is his sex life, and nev­er are the two to meet. 

Same with the first sto­ry. He’s got “Monar­chy belief” in a box and there is no room for move­ment or even discussion. 

These rigidi­ties feel good to us, because what kicks in a cer­tain sense of pride­ful, arro­gant invin­ci­bil­i­ty. I know what I know because what I know is right, and besides, I know it. 

If that seemed redun­dant, it’s because it is. It’s based upon belief, and that’s one of those dif­fi­cult things. 

It’s alto­geth­er anoth­er thing to rec­og­nize how ten­u­ous belief is. Yet, that is where wis­dom lies.

I think it’s really important to subject beliefs and knowledge to a test

The test is, how is my belief going over? How are oth­ers react­ing to my rigid state­ments of belief? 

Such ques­tions allow us to open up a bit, and light­ly explore. 

I’m not talk­ing about chang­ing or deny­ing your beliefs, by the way, although that might hap­pen. With the “hot wife” guy, there has to be a moment or two where he ques­tions how this fits with his rigid Chris­t­ian fundamentalism. 

Because the way things are, there is a huge con­tra­dic­tion. If he notices, he might also notice how he’s keep­ing those two sets of beliefs sep­a­rate and seg­re­gat­ed; they just can’t live togeth­er. And notic­ing, he might then take some time to explore the two sets, and see how he keeps them apart. He then might want to look at his Chris­t­ian and sec­u­lar views re. sex. And work at bring­ing them into agreement.

This is the Zen of not knowing

Not know­ing is not “not know­ing” — it’s being flexible. 

• It’s hold­ing beliefs light­ly, and remain­ing open to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of anoth­er view­point or two. 
• It’s decid­ing, per­haps, not to decide — not to hold one’s beliefs rigid­ly.
• It’s acknowl­edg­ing that there are tons of cul­tur­al — reli­gious — polit­i­cal belief sys­tems out there, and hav­ing a death-grip on any of them is often a problem. 
• It might even be hold­ing on to your beliefs, yet let­ting oth­ers off the hook — not shov­ing your views down oth­ers’ throats. 
• Becom­ing more and more com­fort­able sim­ply being with oth­ers, with­out need­ing them to believe what you believe, with­out insult­ing their beliefs, with­out need­ing to judge.

Not easy, espe­cial­ly with one’s close­ly held beliefs, but bet­ter than end­ing your life hav­ing nev­er felt the free­dom of just let­ting go.

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