This I Believe

I actively strive to eliminate beliefs from my mind space. Belief often means: "explanations about the truth of those things that aren't known or those things that cannot be known." But I want to know something is true. Those things that cannot be known are technically the only things for which belief is needed. But then, if it cannot be known, then what point is there for attempting an explanation? Modern psychology would say that this is because we are very uneasy with those things we do not know - we cannot stand uncertainty - so then we determine an explanation that eliminates that uncertainty. Thus arise beliefs. 

A common belief is in the existence of God. But, this is not a reasonable belief. A belief is only necessary in the face of those things that cannot be know. But with God, there is knowing to be had. I know that God exists, and I have a system for explaining the idea without having to resort to belief. I define God as a higher order/consciousness/being. Then, I can observe and connect dots according to this definition, fitting in pieces finding how exactly this higher order/consciousness/being exists. Through what I observe, I arrive at the conclusion that there is a God.

Science asserts that those things that are not known just have not been shown to be knowable. Then, it is said that God is not knowable. But where does that leave us? God cannot be denied to be a part of our world's individuals' realities. I know that once God is defined well - as a higher order/consciousness/being - then I can observe and I can know God. I have consciousness, I am a being, I have an order - these are things I can observe with myself and know about. I can learn how to see these same kinds of things as if they were of something bigger.

But, some stubbornly resist the possibility of God, demoting it to belief and whimsical thinking. They choose to focus their attention on believers who talk about God, ones who do not take serious observations of God and truly do just believe, with their ideas of submission to authority and their unquestioning of what they have been told is so, et al. But this should not become a source upon which there is a counter-righteous dismissal of the possibility of God. There is a belief that all that can be known is all that can be measured, giving no credit to something that is knowable only at an individual level, seemingly immeasurable. But, it is only a problem of communication. There exists an uncertainty when determining the extent to which a person knows God. There is measurement going on, but it is wholly personal. Most of what we get caught up on is whether the measurements are easily communicable. There is a fundamental uncertainty present with the wholly individual nature of knowing something like God. It cannot be easily communicated, but, that doesn't mean it cannot be known.

We will often fail to see our own mind spaces littered with our limiting beliefs. There is the belief that, if there is this fundamental uncertainty, as there is when determining another individual's experience of God, then there is not truth present - there is nothing to be known. There is a belief that to assert God exists means that ye who so asserts can only resort to belief since this God character is not knowable. But again, it is a problem with communication. It is much easier to communicate about those things that we are certain exist, those things with small amounts of uncertainty.

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I like to call it my "mind space." This is the metaphor I have chosen to explain the "space" where exists all that makes up "Aaron Beach." It is beyond the mere physical appearance of my bodily form, surpassing the image of who I appear to be as a conscious being to the conscious beings I come into contact with. It is all that is, contained with "I Am." Surpassing? Beyond? Are not these things I describe as such the most beyond what is contained inside? But these questions do not allow understanding of the true nature of the space within, which is the only "space" where the seeming outside world exists. I certainly exist to you, but that is your mind space - my mind space is my universe.

It is a big dance of individuals interacting with each other, each living in their own mind space, each trying to act like what they think is going on is going on as a rule for each and every other one, each and every other one thinking their reality is the universe as well. Any imagined unknown is quickly replaced by an explanatory belief as if it is what is true. It is an attempt to solidify fundamental uncertainties impossible to deny, yet greedily sought to eliminate.

To each of us as individuals, the world cannot exist outside of ourselves. There is no way to prove that something exists before you know about it existing. There are all kinds of examples given by people who have forgotten what it was like to ever not know, those who do not remember how to accept and feel that they do not know, saying that they know before they know and always forgetting that to assert knowing before knowing contradicts their assertion. There is evoked instinct and genes and objective truth - those things that we "know" exist before we know about them. But even objective truth is just a low level of uncertainty, and you can never know about it before you learn it to be true.

That there is something outside of all that there is - our own personal experience - is an illusion, and a very persistent one. It seems to make sense - we receive all of this information from the outside right? Right. But that information we receive is only perceived within, can only be perceived within. There are so many differences among each of us sharing the same potential sensory input. There is still a fundamental uncertainty present with how a conscious being is, a being created among the environment into and through which it exists.

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I only want to explain about things I know and do not need to believe in. But I know there are things that I cannot know. For example, the future is a bitch, and for the most part, trying to predict it only leads to trouble and confusion. There is an approach where one adopts a "no biggy" attitude after seeing hypotheses end up not being true, but mostly, we try to predict the future with hopeful expectations for what will happen, and we get upset when what we expect to happen does not happen. We want to eliminate that uncertainty, so we come up with explanations expecting them to be correct.

A related example: I have no reason to know for sure what is going on in someone else's head, to know what exactly that person is thinking in relation to the object upon which my inquiry is focused. I could lessen that uncertainty by communicating with them, but those words will still leave open uncertainty. It ends up being one mind space making its own interpretations of what the other mind space wishes to communicate with no absolute connection to the other mind space's understanding. The understanding is in the end each their own. The understanding is developed within, with credit given to the attempt from the other mind space, but that is only a mere spark.

But, we are often not communicating with others when we think about them anyway. When trying to understand them, there is uncertainty, and we must deal with it. We often attempt to replace that uncertainty with an explanation of certainty. 

But, there is something else to do. It is something related to having belief - we can have faith.

There is not always a reason to be able to explain the unknowable, and it indeed is valuable to be able to not have to create an explanation for such unknowns. But we hate that uncertainty. This is where faith can help. I have not always liked this word, but in the last year or two, I have come to define it as something useful. It, as a concept, helped me deal with one of the most painful times of my life: my breakup. Woe is me! Haha, well, they certainly come and go, but during the uncertain times following the separation, I had the hardest time with not knowing. I was in a mind space constantly filling in my gaps in knowledge with destructive explanations about what she was doing and thinking, constantly thinking the worst and refusing to just stop and be with that uncertainty. But I had a talk with my brother. He has strong faith and he helped me to understand something: that I need to just have faith that it would be OK.

I am going into a profession that honestly kind of scares me. I want to help and I love the idea of getting to know my students and making a lasting positive impact on their lives, but I have no idea how well I will be able to handle it. I want to do a good job. I want to be the best. This summer's classes have been a sort of seminar saying to me, "This shit's gonna be hard." I will be in schools that are very different from my own growing up, with kids who have grown up in almost entirely different family styles than my own. I just don't know.

With my ex-girlfriend, I had no reason to understand what was going on with her. All I wanted to know was that it would be OK, but I never had a tool, no backup to ease my troubling mind. I had never allowed myself to be able to sit with that uncertainty. And that is all it is: sitting with it, meditating on it, allowing it to be. No expectations, nothing to know, nothing to predict. Nothing to see here! I now have a tool though, something that I can use to deal with my uncertainty. Through that experience I find myself better able to deal with uncertainty.

Now here I am looking at being a teacher. I do not necessarily believe that my experience as a teacher will be OK, but I have faith it will. Maybe this is what people mean when they believe in things. They believe that everything will be OK. They believe that, though the future is uncertain and often scary, it will still be OK. So I suppose this could be what I believe: we must have faith that it will be OK. But, the more I practice having faith in the face of the unknown, the more evidence I have for its utility, and the less the idea that everything will be OK is a belief than it is an assertion. It will be OK.