Misbelief vs Disbelief
Misbeliefs are always about you believing the wrong or incorrect things about self. Disbeliefs are always about you believing the wrong or incorrect things about others.
Beliefs agnostically self-reinforce instantaneously, creating feelings, thoughts, and actions in that order, which themselves create more self-reinforcing feelings, thoughts, and actions.
Mis- and dis-beliefs work the same way as noted above.
Misbeliefs are always about you believing the wrong or incorrect things about self. These are internal sources, primarily dispositional, epigenetic beliefs that predate each person’s birth by hundreds of years. (2005, The Biology of Belief, Dr. Bruce Lipton)
Disbeliefs are always about you believing the wrong or incorrect things about others. These are externally sourced data, information, facts.
Definition of belief:
• the feeling that someone or something exists, is true, etc., especially without proof.
• something that someone accepts to be true, in existence, etc.
• the feelings that something is good, valuable, etc.
• the feelings of trust in someone and their qualities, abilities, etc.
My biggest weakness is that I withhold. When it comes to stating how beliefs work, I fully expect people to do their homework without me telling them to do it.
Why? Because beliefs agnostically self-reinforce instantaneously, creating feelings, thoughts, and actions in that order, which themselves create more self-reinforcing feelings, thoughts, and actions.
See? Whenever the topic of beliefs comes up, it’s always about feelings, feelings that self-reinforce hundreds of thousands of times per day!
Concurrently those feelings create self-reinforcing thoughts hundreds of thousands of times per day!
Which creates self-reinforcing actions hundreds of thousands of times per day!
All of this happens automatically. You barely notice that it’s happening.
See the pattern? See what’s wrong with you and me? See why you and I are stuck and things are never going to change?
Understanding how your beliefs work is to dig into the roots. When you read or hear the words ‘mental health’ you should think ‘misbeliefs’. Everybody’s so-called mental health issue is a belief issue where one continues to believe the wrong things about one’s self. It’s not mental, it’s a bad feeling about one’s self which leads to bad thoughts, which leads to actions that hurt self and others, or others and self.
Self=Others. Others=Self.
Religion isn’t the problem. The problem is that people believe, full stop. People believe because that’s all we do, all we have ever done, all we will ever do. It’s who we are. It’s what differentiates us from every other organism.
The cure for misbelief is to treat others as you would have them treat you. The problem is nobody believes this even though it’s a primary feature in most of the world’s religions:
Could it be that religion is not about God, but rather about how to be human?
Periodically, I’m a stickler for definitions because they are irrevocably connected to beliefs in that they influence thought patterns. Dictionaries are the Bible of Meanings, and therein lies the rub. Different dictionaries have slightly different definitions, and like the Bible, it changes over time.
The online Merriam-Webster dictionary defines religion as “a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices.”
Religious? See what happened there? That word invoked your belief that something exists and/or is true.
Merriam-Webster’s Third International Dictionary — that 4-inch thick printed dictionary you used to see in libraries across the world — defines religion as: “the personal commitment to an serving of God or a God with worshipful devotion, conduct in accord with divine commands esp. as found in accepted sacred writings or declared by authoritative teachers, a way of life recognized as incumbent on true believers, and typically the relating of oneself to an organized body of believers.”
Oops, it happened again. The definition implies that you believe God or a God exists.
The Antidote EN app defines religion as: “a set of beliefs that relate to the supernatural world, especially when formalized as a social institution that includes ethics, morality and ceremonies.”
This worked for me until the last word. What do ceremonies have to do with religion, especially in the content of treating others as you would have them treat you?
There’s a disconnect between the definitions of the words religion and belief. Misbeliefs are internally sourced. Disbeliefs are externally sourced. Thus I define religion as “an externally sourced set of beliefs.”
When you hear the word ‘misinformation’ you should think ‘disbelief’ Did you believe what you saw? Did you believe what you read on Twitter? Did you believe that Ezekiel chapter 1 in the Bible was describing actual angels? Or were you like me and believed that it was a description of a UFO?
Disbeliefs create feelings that self-reinforce hundreds of thousands of times per day!
Concurrently those feelings create self-reinforcing thoughts hundreds of thousands of times per day!
Which creates self-reinforcing actions hundreds of thousands of times per day!
The cure for disbelief is to separate the truths from the deceptions. All lies/deceptions contain a kernel of truth in order to induce belief. And those deceptions are always fear-based, thus the feelings associated with disbelief tends to be anger.
The stronger the fear, the stronger the emotional response, the more violent the thoughts and actions are.
I’ve been writing about beliefs my whole life. And because beliefs cover all human behavior, all cultural and institutional expressions are about beliefs. Music and visual arts are among the highest expression of beliefs.
This is an excerpt of a song I wrote for a punk beach band back in the late 1980s called Aliens On Earth.
“Sometimes it’s fun to watch people on TV
Hey wait — why’s this nothing like I ever see?
It’s a soap opera that you watch for news?
Guys — you’re so weird I admit I’m confused
Chorus:
What’s in the water — I’ve got to find out
What’s cruising through the air that makes me feel strung out?
Who’s telling you the truth? Who do you believe?
Guys — you’re so strange I admit I’m relieved”
