Go on a belief diet. You'll feel lighter and happier.

Most of us are concerned about putting on a few (or many) physical pounds. We correctly recognize that carrying around extra unnecessary weight is unhealthy, unattractive, and unpleasant.

But when it comes to psychological excess baggage, such as unneeded religious, spiritual, philosophical, mystical, or New Age'y beliefs, we aren't as worried about how all that "fat" is affecting us.

Well, it does. So I'm recommending a belief diet -- paring down our craving for what Michael Shermer terms "patternicity" and "agenticity," two strong appetites in every human brain.

The brain is a belief engine. From sensory data flowing in through the senses the brain naturally begins to look for and find patterns, and then infuses these patterns with meaning.

The first process I call patternicity: the tendency to find meaningful patterns in both meaningful and meaningless data. The second process I call agenticity: the tendency to infuse patterns with meaning, intention, and agency.

These are natural appetites. But so are our cravings for fat, protein, and carbohydrates, which can become unhealthily morphed into a fast food addiction. Yum! Got to have that big burger, large fries, and a 24 ounce coke!

Likewise, it's easy to become hooked on finding meaningful patterns in just about every aspect of life, leading to belief obesity.

Meaning, our minds get crammed with unfounded assumptions about how special and important we are. Our egos get expanded with delusions of religious/spiritual grandiosity. Whatever happens in our lives is meant to be; it's God's (or guru's) will; it's the universe (or karma) leading us in a destined direction; it's a lesson for us.

Here's another much more likely possibility. Whatever is happening is simply what's happening. Flowers, birds, whales, and dogs don't wake up in the morning and return to believing that the world revolves around them.

They just get on with their living. Only the human brain, with its evolved capacity for patternicity and agenticity, considers that finding a parking space, looking at a beautiful sunset, or holding a baby in our arms is a message from the cosmos.

More and more I'm learning how pleasant it is to let go of that unnecessary mental crap.

Sure, it's impossible to do this completely, just as it's impossible to go entirely without food. But we can reduce our belief intake in the same way as we can lessen our caloric intake. Mindfulness is one approach to shedding excess psychological believing pounds.

If I simply focus on what my body and brain (which is the conscious aspect of my body) is doing at any given moment, there's much less of an opportunity for belief birds to take wing and fly off in all sorts of strange directions.

The driver of that car must have seen me coming. Why did she pull out right in front of me on this curvy two-lane road? She must want to slow me down on my way into town. What a jerk!

That's option #1. Option #2 is to simply be aware that a car pulled out ahead of me in my lane and I need to slow down.

Likewise, we can either go through life believing that a God, guru, angel, fate, or some other supernatural power is guiding events and giving us lessons, or we can simply go through life.

It isn't unpleasant to dethrone yourself from being the King or Queen of the World, the center of the universe, the reason why everything happens the way it does. Actually, believing this is exhausting. It's stressful. It requires a lot of mental effort to keep unfounded concepts alive and well in the brain.

Let them go. Feel what it is like to be leaner, belief-wise. Once you try it, I bet you'll like it.

Comments

[cc]

If you must hold a belief, hold it for questioning.

The unexamined belief is not worth having.

[Fillian from Tyndrum]

The yolk is easy - and the burden light.

Hines - keep searching - I'll be here whenever you have questions.

[Osho Robbins]

Once we buy into a belief - it becomes self-fulfilling.

we convince ourselves that it is the truth.

we dis-regard any evidence to the contrary and we create evidence to support the belief. The truth doesn't matter - all that matter is our personal viewpoint. We believe our viewpoint IS the truth.

One example. I asked someone who follows RSSB why they continue to follow when they have strong evidence from Charan Singh that he claims no inner experience and in fact in his diary entry (printed in the book Treasure Beyond Measure) he makes it clear that he has no inner experience at all.

Furthermore he also makes it clear that he is not all knowing - and is in fact frustrated because he doesn't know why he has been appointed the successor when he has no access to inner regions.

The answer I got was this: I KNOW he is a true master because many people I know have seen his radiant form. People dying say he has come to take them at the time of death.

In other words - it doesn't matter what Charan Singh says - they assume he is lying - because they have evidence that he really is a true master.

I told the person that what any person experiences - is their own creation and a projection of their own mind. naturally they cannot accept this because this would turn their world upside down.

So beliefs run our life - we continue to believe what we want to believe regardless of the evidence. It's much easier to put your trust in some external master than to question. Questioning is uncomfortable because you may not like what you discover.

[Mike Williams]

Great post Osho,

You are a genius

You too Tara

[Robert Searle]

Osho,

The following points maybe of interest.

1. How do we not know that Charan did have inner experiences in later life?

2. How do we not know that a inner, or "outer" projection of Charan, or any other respected Master such as Christ, or Buddha is actually a manifestation of our own Higher Self? See Faqir Chand!

[Machar]

Interesting.

Is it possible that we are created with a tendency toward 'gradually increasing confidence' during adolescence - which can manifest itself as selfishness and greed - as a sort of grand model for self-preservation?

Recall your past. Your body was hi-jacked by hormones when you turned about 12 years old - and you started to 'get it back' when you were around 30 - when you had the opportunity to once again 'become your true self'. Some of us find this prospect fightful - for it threatens our new (macho) self-image with thoughts of downhill mortality. It's physiological - which I venture - all experience. It's natural - and you're designed that way.

If embraced, this pivotal moment is the opportunity to consider others - your offspring, grandchildren, their friends, your enemies, their enemies - imparting harmony between those who may threaten posterity from an even grander perspective. What a blessing to submit to this reality sooner than later!

What is you 500 year plan?

[Roger]

What is this 'true' self? How does one become one of these 'true' selves?

Am I currently in a 'false' self mode? If there is a true, then there must be a false.

Same for the 'higher' self. What happened to the lower self? Does being lower, mean something, not so good?

What would an inner projection of Charan look like? Say, I never looked at a picture of this Charan person, what would I be looking for inwardly?

[Machar]

Good point Roger - bad choice of semantics - we are always our true self.

I probably meant something along the lines of: 'realizing our place in the universe', or 'proper relationship between creator and creation', or 'contributing member to the positive advancement of humankind in balance with our means of Providence', or from my perspective, born of the Spirit and engrafted into the eternally begotten Body of Christ.

I don't know who Charan is or was - and don't plan on looking for him inwardly - but I'm sure he was a good person.

:-)

[Richard Bradshaw]

Here's why this makes so much sense to me. I work with people who are mentally ill and you know what? They are not short of beliefs, quite the opposite; they binge on belief. They believe so much stuff it overwhelems them; typically they cannot distinguish between facts, reasonable speculation, bold hypotheses and total codswallop. In listening to a psychiatric patient I may well get, in the course of five minutes, today's news, horoscopes, what the devil has been saying to them, the story of how they became a multi-billionaire/prevented World War III or whatever their fantasy might be, and the symbolic meaning of birds flying in formation. They believe all of that, intensely and uncritically.

When they start to get well, the most bizarre beliefs go first; others may linger for a bit, but I know several patients who "get religion" when they have a psychotic episode and lose it just as fast as the medication takes hold.

I may be forcing the point but: if recovery from mental illness as clincally recognised involves the shedding of excess belief, why does not the same apply to growing in maturity within the parameters of "normality" (not that I'd care to define that word too precisely)? For me, the whole history of liberal Protestantism, which is the tradition I currently embrace (although I was raised a fundamentalist, or near as dammit), has to do with discarding the extraneous and holding on to the essentials. As you get older you learn that in religion not as much matters as you used to think, but what does matter, matters a lot.

(Just discovered this site, I'm hooked already.)

[Roger]

Machar,

You mentioned,

'realizing our place in the universe', or 'proper relationship between creator and creation', or 'contributing member to the positive advancement of humankind in balance with our means of Providence', or from my perspective, born of the Spirit and engrafted into the eternally begotten Body of Christ.

--while this statement is nice, i'm still fascinated with the true self. Could you write a detailed description of this type of self. Write in exact and absolute terms.
In addition, what exactly do you mean by your realizing? What is this realization, you refer to?
Thanks Roger

[Blogger Brian]

Richard, thanks for the interesting comment. I haven't thought much about the relation between mental illness and excessive believing. It makes sense -- that people whose minds aren't working correctly will see patterns and meanings everywhere they look. And that mental maturity involves discarding beliefs in unreal patterns, while holding on to what is genuinely meaningful and true.

[cc]

"And that mental maturity involves discarding beliefs in unreal patterns, while holding on to what is genuinely meaningful and true."

But if I'm more inclined to believe in "what is genuinely meaningful and true" than to doubt, I'm not mature because experience shows that there's always more than meets the eye; that things are never what they seem. It's what we don't know that matters.

[Machar]

Good questions, Roger!

Are concerned that you, perhaps, that we do not have a 'true self' - if static defined in only an infinitely instanteous momnt in time? How could we not? Does it matter?

What drives our thoughts? media? our peers? memories? the 'id', hypothalamus, or super ego? Is our 'true self' possible only in Plato's cave?

True self defined: in flux

Realizing defined: ephemeral, physiochemical reactions stimulated by sensory perception, biased and sythesized by other stored physiochemical markers

I am not a biologist, philosopher, theologian, or sociologist - so I wouldn't don't put much stock in any of this.

All the best.

[Marina]

Regarding belief and mental illness, I am wondering if it has something to do with being too ‘intelligent’ that leads to illusions and paranoia. The film ‘A Beautiful Mind’ comes to memory. ~Saying that, I do think a lot of us are to some extent 'mentaly ill' but it is easier to see in the extreme cases.

I do think the ‘way to go’ is questioning beliefs as these seem to be the ‘fuel’ that keep us deluded.

Beliefs in general are harmless, like I believe when I turn on the tap water will come out (usually) but the ones that need questioning for me are – any that ‘give’ me a bad feeling (guilt, fear etc) and even the ones that give me a good feeling (feeling better than, superior etc).

I see it a ‘problem’ with beliefs when one grasps onto some belief, idea, notion or when one has a ‘fixed’ point of view – then separation, illusion seems to be ripe. Then starts the arguments back and forth about who's view or experience is the 'right' one. What is good for 'me' may not be good for 'you' and vice versa.

It can seem that people hold onto beliefs as a protection from feeling some fear inside themselves and it can be a safety mesh from facing or looking at what is the truth or what is real. Beliefs can cover deep core assumptions (fears) as a protection from all the crazy programming/conditioning that society/culture/families/ourselves, have unknowingly (or knowingly) brainwashed us all from the ‘start’ to a more or lesser degree.

If one ‘OD’s’ on anything, sure problems inevitably arise but again, there seems to be a ‘warning’ bell (if we listen) of some sort that one can feel when we rigidly hold onto something too tightly. We can feel dis-ease.

One of the biggest beliefs and attitudes is that things should be different than the way they are - 'that driver shouldn't have drove out in front of me!'
The mind can be a fine instrument or a dangerous weapon.

Marina

[Moongoes]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCD3hg6OEQw&feature=player_detailpage