Reality, Consciousness and Symbols, and the Identification, Valuation and Attachment to Beliefs
First came reality, within which we exist. Consciousness exists in existence.
Second came knowledge of reality that we form within consciousness. Consciousness means (etymologically) to be with-knowledge.
Third are symbols or language that we create to reflect and communicate the knowledge about reality (or unreality).
Our ability to invent symbols reflect our attempt to describe the actual objective reality/existence we share in common, or the subjective reality/existence where we can imagine any number of things that don't actually exist.
The first symbols we created are pictographs which are images that directly reflect the objects in objective reality. A tree symbol represent a tree, and other corresponding symbolism we can associate and correspond with it's qualities or characteristics, such as hardness or biological life, for instance. We can then create more abstract secondary symbols through lines and curves which don't directly reflect any imagery from existence itself, such as letters used in an alphabet.
First we had direct observance of reality and nature reflected through symbols (pictographs), then alterations of those visible reflections towards more abstract models that were less corresponded with nature's visible processes (letters).
At the basic and most descriptive level, a symbol is an analogous references to reality through an image that represents reality. Abstraction allows us to create symbols (letters) and language that can be more precise in meaning, rather than have a wide range of possible symbolic interpretation (pictographs).
Symbols were primarily created to represent reality -- the nature and phenomena in reality that we can ostensibly demonstrate to exist. Thousands of years ago symbols were created to reflect and communicate about the objective reality so that we can understand what is around us, and share knowledge. To communicate about reality, we need to create symbols for the diversity, variability and multiplicity of existent things in existence (truths). We can also create symbols to communicate non-existent things we imagine (beliefs).
We are able to reflect and represent factual aspects of reality (tree, sun, water, etc.), or imagined images, concepts, ideas or belies that only hold form in our mind's eye. Some things actually exist in the objective universe (existence), while others are only potentials or fantasy that exist in the images and imagination of our subjective multiverse (consciousness). Our subjective imagination can create many phantasmal (fantasy) images. We can create multiple parallel universes that only exist within our individual consciousness, but not in the universal existence we share in common.
Our individual perception of reality (the maps we all make) can be in alignment, harmony, balance, equilibrium or non-contradiction with the objective reality/existence (the territory that is). We can also invent and create fantastic imagery through the imagination factory powered by the engine of consciousness.
The first order of symbols we create from consciousness, require us to observe nature/reality/existence. These symbols reflect the natural science of observation in nature and the processes/systems within it. They reflect reality that can be demonstrated. In symbolism and symbolic representation, we can even represent aspects of ourselves, our psyche, and communicate about the nature and being of consciousness (psychology). Symbols can reflect descriptions of the inner-working of consciousness that exists in existence/reality. Demonstrating qualities, characteristics, attributes and properties of the psychological dimension can be communicated and understood.
The second order of symbols are potential attempts to imagine what could be real, but only reflect imagery in our consciousness, from our powerful imagination. These are beliefs that exist in subjective consciousness, but aren't demonstrable in objective existence.
The beliefs we invent or accept don't necessarily reflect reality/existence/truth. In failing to distinguish between demonstrable, veritable, veracious, verifiable truth (veritas), we can mistake a belief as "truth" because we have faith, trust and loyalty in a belief we have identified with, value, and become attached to, wanting it to be true.
The more we associate with and connect to a belief or idea, the more we potentially identify with it and take it into not only our world-view, but our self-view. We then highly value these beliefs or ideas. This can lead us to become quite attached to beliefs, and not want to let go of them if a contradiction arises between a demonstrable truth in objective reality in the external existence and our imagined subjective reality from internal consciousness.
If our perceptual map of reality is not aligned with the territory of reality, we can enter a cognitive dissonant mode and refuse to accept the actual reality that is, because we don't want to lose the valued beliefs we invented or accepted to try to make sense of the world or ourselves -- that we identify with and provide us with value and meaning in our lives.
It's not always that we have or hold ideas or beliefs, but that these ideas or believe have a hold on us. We can become uncritically attached, not wanting to revise and verify what we believe, mistaking it as something "true", which results in us rejecting what is true because we become willfully blind to seeing things as they actually are in reality.
New information that is true is ignored, denied, rejecting or deflected in cognitive dissonance, favoring to hold onto the highly valued old information that gave us a false sense of grounding to make sense of the world (worldview) or make sense of ourselves (self-view, sense of self). The more we value and identify with something, the more potential influence and power it will have over us to hold us in it's grasp.
Many beliefs are influenced and conditioned into us from the current condition of society, accepted uncritically as the truth, because our inner vision, our thinking capacities, are not functioning properly to detect the falsity.
Our parents and schools feed us information that gets assimilated and believed in, trusted in, where we put our faith into it and become loyal to it. Conditioning into accepting information without processing it to understand it properly, is a form of mind control, brainwashing, where our mind i s being controlled by others because we are not thinking for ourselves.
We must be willing to unlearn what we have uncritically learned, and be ready to revise old information with new information, to demonstrate the truth about an aspect of reality before accepting such as a reality. Simply accepting something and believing in it, doesn't make it true.
Thank you for your time and attention. Peace.
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It's very easy for us to become attached to our belief and it's very important that we try to question them at least from time to time. Even truths that seem self-evident should be questioned from time to time.
One of the psychological problems that causes this blindness that you are talking about here is the fact that we attach our individual value to being correct. In this way our ego becomes associated with our beliefs and we protect them even when they are contradicted because we want to protect our ego. I've found it helpful to try and attach value to personal growth and development and disassociating myself from ideas as much as I can. I try to celebrate when an idea I hold is proven wrong as this is an opportunity for growth, not a defeat.
Yup, the ego-personality-identity construct as I call it -- although I didn't mention it here -- is implicit for me when I talk about our self-image, self-view or sense of self and the related attachment to our identity through identification with beliefs. I should have specified or put that particular term in to make it even more clear. Wanting to know when we are wrong is required for us to gain more alignment with truth/reality overall. We need to want to know when we are wrong so we can let go of false perception that prevent an accurate understanding of something :) Thanks for the feedback!
Very well put! That's what I was trying to get at really :)
The best way I've gotten over my conditioning is by really taking a hard look at things and a hard look at myself without assuming I know what I'll find. There were so many beliefs rolling around in my head that once I got rid of some of them, my world looks completely different, I take more of reality in because I'm not blinding myself, and I still have a ways to go!
This article is really great, it shows in a scientific manner how we are blinding ourselves with belief. I'm hugely interested in consciousness and feel learning more about the self, what we are, and how the world works on an experiential level should be the next big pursuit for mankind.
The great thing is everyone can do it, no one can stop us from looking at life!
Absolutely. We can all introspect, self-reflect and self-analyze ourselves and what we take into our sense of self, selfview, self-image and worldview. We can engage in continual self-renewal, to remake ourselves better and more aligned with reality/truth. That is what "spiritual" (consciousness) alchemy is. Thank you for the feedback and appreciation of the content. Take care. Peace.
I think learning how to do this for ourselves, understanding instead of just gaining knowledge, is the real meat and potatoes of a spiritual practice
I always liked Descartes' approach (if not his conclusions) of starting from the most essential, from the unshakably true, and then build from there. His most unshakable truth, which I believe stands to his day, is his 'I think therefore I am'. Then he went on to bring God into the picture in a really unwarranted way, but at least his starting approach was novel and important.
And so if we take his example and apply it a bit to some of the content of your post: it would be impossible to react negatively toward new information that clashes with our beliefs, if Aristotle's rules of logic were not true. I could say a thing, and then say the exact opposite, and no contradiction or cognitive dissonance would ever arise. Clearly that's not the case: we react negatively toward new information because we realize it falsifies our old views.
So we know opposites exist, just from that reasoning alone. In that way we can build solid bases on which to ground our thinking, and proceed from there. But few people care to lay the groundwork these days.
Cognitive dissonance is a signal that alerts us to a contradiction, a conflict, with with the old info being wrong, or with the new info being wrong. We have to discern which is the case :)
I think therefore I am, and the theory of mind to recognize others as similar to ourselves, is a good way to invalidate deluded solipsistic thinking too ;) Descartes got the whole "animals are simply complex machines" thing way off though... denying a psychological dimension that is observable and demonstrable to those who interact with other fellow animals.
Thanks for the feedback.
Quite advanced concepts, It took me many years to understand emotional attachements and identity myself.
A way to explain identity which made it more clear to me was the following.
Anyway, you might like the Real Talk Podcasts , they really made a difference in my life explaining all these concepts on how the brain works and how to overcome social conditioning and how to adjust your emotional attachements.
Identity has multiple aspects: 1) individual body that all consciousness individuals have, making it a universal requirement for consciousness 2) individual consciousness within the individual body, making consciousness a universal quality of the body we all have in common (that some call the "spirit") 3) the ego-personality-identity construct as I call it (that some call the "soul"), which is an individual expression of "I"-self-consciousness-individual on top of consciousness-universal basic emergence (2) from human bodies (1).
Yeah and this tendency increases as we become old. If we had gone through the up and downs of life enough, then, for many of us, we had to have created some obstinate behavior to go through life, unless we are humble enough to meekly take the hit by life and learn. So most people are dead right there. I have to say, its a grace to be humble enough to learn. I see a lot of people, stupid in their lives not because they are ignorant, incompetent but just because they are not humble enough in some way. Humility has all in it itself.
And after that, because the point of knowledge is acquiring more knowledge they end up having none about life, and so stupid.
Great post though. thank you for sharing!!
Thanks for the feedback :)
Hello, congratulations indeed a nice post! I would have liked to read it in my mother tongue, I would have understood more things; the topic fascinates me so much, especially the attachment to beliefs that can sometimes stop us on our journey of personal growth. Thank you so much for the nice reading and I'm very sorry for my bad English. See you soon!
You have good English buddy :) Thanks for the feedback.
Thanks!!!!!!! :-)
Excellent post sir i like post and resteemed
For example, if hypnosis is given to someone with salt water and it is suggested that it is a sweet syrup, then it is said that the person responds to taste like drinking a slurp, when a sopper wants to see him as a snake, he should perceive it and escape from it, can see their own operation without suffering pain, showing how the instincts made under the consciousness affect the perception of the person, that is the perception of the sense of reality and the feelings of living.
Hello, congratulations indeed a nice post! I would have liked to read it in my mother tongue, I would have understood more things; the topic fascinates me so much, especially the attachment to beliefs that can sometimes stop us on our journey of personal growth. Great information..Thanks for sharing i will done upvote..A very good post
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