What You Know, Accept, or Believe
One of the most useful skills you can get out of meditation is the ability to see and experience objectively how you label patterns of thinking. Soon you realize you have a lot of incorrect labeling in your speech for your views, and you notice it in others. You also start to catch lazy thinking, especially regarding what we know versus what we accept, versus what we believe.
I’m as guilty as anyone, and now I am being careful how I label assessments of my world views. For instance, I know the Sun exists. I know this because I go outside each day and see it, feel its warmth, and this has been repeated throughout my life. The Sun is a part of my daily experience which others can verify through their identical observations of the Sun. What can be experienced and verified falls into the, “I know this” labeling.
I have fallen into lazy speech and said I knew things that I really don’t, however. This happens when you are confident something is true. So, let’s get real and admit the truth of this. There are many things we don’t actually know, but accept.
For example, back to the Sun. I’ve been taught and have read that the Sun is 93 million miles away from Earth. So, if someone asked me if I knew this, I would have answered yes. But that’s incorrect. I have never personally measured the Sun’s distance, so I don’t actually know, and I can not therefore verify. However, based on things I do know and based on what I have come to trust, I loosely accept that the Sun is 93 million miles from Earth. If scientists say, oops we were wrong: it’s actually 104 million miles from Earth, I’ll accept the new number if I trust the scientists making this claim.
Truth be told, most views fall into the acceptance category rather than the knowing.
I accept the theory of evolution as a good working theory. There is enough I can see in animal and human skeletons, and based on what I am learning about DNA and genetics, that I accept that evolution is the likely the process at work. I don’t know it. I can’t know it because I’m not actually in the field making these discoveries, and no one can really know how the first animals evolved or how humans emerged because none of us modern humans witnessed it. But I do accept it, and am open to new discoveries and more information in this area. I do have a lot of trust and acceptance in this field of study.
Now, let’s hit belief. I used to use this term a lot, and now I’m being careful not only to extricate it from my language, but not to fall into the ignorant trap of belief itself. Simply put, there is no reason to believe in anything. A belief is about something you don’t know, yet you claim is true. You can’t know something is true if you don’t know it. And we don’t need reasons for not believing in something. We do need reasons to accept something, however.
People tell me, “I believe that aliens are visiting here from outer space, and that’s what UFOs are.” As far as I can tell, they don’t actually know aliens are visiting, but they are claiming it to be true. Examine this closely. You can think it’s likely. You can accept what others have said about seeing flying saucers. You can even accept Earth is being visited by aliens. But you can not claim it as true unless you know it to be so. The only way to know is to have one land in front of you, and have a chat with the aliens, then have someone else verify that experience. We hear about this happening to others, but unless it’s happened to you . . . Also, be skeptical of your own unusual experiences.
Without verification, it could be a dream, a hallucination, imagination, or an interesting acid trip. I suppose one could argue that you could roughly know something that is only within your experience but don’t go spewing it everywhere until you can verify it. Our interpretations of our experiences are often wrong. So don’t be so quick to trust what you “think” is happening.
Examine your beliefs and see if maybe they wouldn’t be better labeled as acceptance. Usually we resort to having to believe because there is no way to know, especially when something really doesn’t exist or can’t be known. In that case, is it even worth hanging onto?
