assorted thoughts on beliefs and emotions
seasonal drop of ideas spanning guilt, self-sabotage, interpersonal relationships, and more
It’s been a while since I’ve written. That’s not to say I haven’t had ideas that have been floating around in my head; it’s just that for whatever reason, I just haven’t had the time (or to be completely honest, the will and patience) to actually sit and put pen to paper.
It’s really frustrating to be stuck in this kind of rut. It’s not that bad initially when you just have the seeds of a couple of ideas sitting around. Eventually, though, when they sprout, they start dominating your mental headspace to the point that you can’t think about anything else. And the most ironic part is that I’ve spent so much time thinking about these ideas that almost everything is pre-written in my head, but when I sit down and stare at a blank screen, all of a sudden it’s too daunting to actually start writing. It’s exhausting. I’m exhausted.
Long story short, getting this out is almost more about freeing my mind than it is about sharing whatever has been on my mind.
Recently, there have been 4 general ideas I’ve been mentally exploring:
The interesting dynamics surrounding shared group beliefs
The evolution of my own approach and attitude toward writing
Self-sabotage and the infusion of guilt with our routines
Emotion and interpersonal relationships
This is overall pretty rambly; I don’t think I really have any set conclusions or points that I’m trying to make, more so a series of observations that feel like they could be meaningful in some way even if I can’t see exactly how right now. And honestly, each of these might be better articulated if I spun them out in separate posts and went a little bit deeper. But fuck it. We’re going in.
shared group beliefs
A few weeks ago, my mom and I watched an interesting ‘docuseries’ on Netflix called ‘Ancient Apocalypse’ (docuseries in quotation marks because, well, the show does delve into conspiracy). Essentially, the show puts forward a theory presented by the host Graham Hancock which argues that there was an ancient, intelligent civilization that populated the earth long, long ago but was eviscerated by a cataclysmic event roughly around 10,000 BC. It further argues that the remaining survivors of this ancient civilization spread across the world and birthed many civilizations including the Inca, the Maya, the Mesopotamian, etc., and that these survivors were mythologized in many ancient stories passed along still to this day (which explains why there are so many similarities between creation stories from civilizations that developed on opposite sides of the world).
There’s only one issue with this theory; there’s zero direct evidence for this ancient civilization. Hancock basically presents a series of facts that mainstream academia and archaeology can’t explain and then puts forth his alternative hypothesis as the only explanation which can account for all the evidence. He just has no direct supporting evidence for his own hypothesis. He also spent a good chunk of the show shitting on academia and archeologists, saying they were so attached to their contemporary way of viewing the world that they were close-minded to any pieces of evidence that could threaten their worldview.
I obviously don’t have any stake in this fight. It’s the classic battle between a conspiracy theorist and an establishment institution; the conspiracy theorist argues that the establishment institution is dated and flawed in its thinking, while the establishment institution argues that the conspiracy theorist doesn’t know what he’s talking about and has no right to an opinion.
But there’s so many interesting dynamics to unpack here:
Conspiracies are typically simple to understand, and the people pushing them never really own the burden of proof. Typically, all they do is poke a hole in establishment institutions and sow distrust, while it’s the establishment that has to invest significant effort in explaining why the conspiracy theorist is full of shit. Does this mean we’re inherently biased to trust conspiracy theories? As a follow-up, which conspiracies have we unknowingly bought into simply because we’ve lacked the effort to properly investigate?
How do we know who to trust? In theory, we should always default to trusting institutions, right? The ones with the credentials? Well, at a time when credentials are turning into a marker of access not intelligence (getting into an Ivy League college is quickly becoming more about money and connections than intelligence, curiosity, and leadership), when institutions are becoming increasingly politicized, and when most agree that modern ‘academia’ is in decline and in the midst of a replication crisis in which most ‘findings’ are proven not to replicate in other settings, it’s becoming harder and harder to accept or believe ‘establishment’ ideas on face. That leaves individuals like me to sort out the mess. What the fuck am I supposed to believe?
The dynamic I’m most interested in, though, is the way people act within groups that share a belief. What types of beliefs am I referring to? Well, anything. Beliefs in political ideas, beliefs in the way you should start your morning, beliefs in the right foods to eat, beliefs in the right exercise routines, beliefs in who the best role models are, beliefs in what gods to pray to, beliefs in the best books to read, etc. You get the idea.
At first, people choose to adopt beliefs for any one of a variety of reasons - maybe because people they respect have those beliefs, or maybe because they did research and came to a set conclusion, etc. What’s shocking is how quickly people identify with that belief; when people describe themselves, they describe their belief as a core aspect of their identity. And then after people identify with a belief, they usually quickly rush to find a community of other like-minded individuals who also identify with that belief.
Why does this happen? I think it has to do with security and power. Beliefs are cheap to adopt, but grant entry to a community that helps stem any sense of isolation and loneliness we may feel. And community backing grants power; it enables action to be taken on a larger scale, and the larger the community, the easier it is to convince others to join.
This explains a few different phenomena. For example, when things happen, people tend to look to group leaders to tell them how to respond and what to think. This is because, for some, group allegiance is more important than intuition; it’s more important for everyone to align on a shared narrative than to explore how we individually feel about certain things. Look at politics - as soon as any news is published, the first step people take is to go to their preferred outlets/personalities and see how they feel, instead of pausing to reflect and unpack their own thoughts and emotions.
It also explains why debate or disagreement escalates so quickly. It’s not just beliefs that are at stake - it’s not just about the correct policy to address gun control or the correct diet to address weight loss - but collective, group identities. Debating beliefs quickly becomes personal, eliminating any room for compromise or listening. And when group dynamics come into play, all it does is escalate the defensiveness and vitriol. Everyone becomes involved - an attack against one becomes an attack against all since they’re all connected via shared belief.
And it also explains why it’s so, so hard for people to change their minds. Identification with beliefs, especially after joining a group, means that the belief is extremely hard to let go of - we have to not only let go of the community we’re part of, but also have to let go of an aspect of ourselves that we once held dearly.
With all this in mind, the only thing that’s clear to me is that I want no part of this mess. Attaching yourself to beliefs only serves to cage you. I don’t want to be part of any of these belief-centric communities; I want to be free. And the only way I see to get there is abandoning the pursuit to be seen as holding the ‘right’ opinions (or in fact holding any opinions at all) and instead focusing on my ethic and my intention.
Process first. Always.
evolution of writing
I used to write from the standpoint that there were certain ideas that I was dying to share and convince others about; I used to relish the opportunity to influence others and saw my writing as a mechanism by which I could lead.
Now, it’s different. I don’t feel the same impulse to persuade or convince others. I don’t want to grab people by the shoulders and tell them what to think; it feels extremely disingenuous since this past year has largely been an exercise in dismantling everything that I thought I knew.
I feel a lot more contemplative now. I think the most accurate way to state my intention with my writing is to be extremely honest and open about the larger questions circling around in my mind with the hope that it’ll cause whoever is reading to at least take a moment of introspection themselves. So much online stuff nowadays is trying to sell something to you or trying to tell you what you think or what to do; I don’t want to do any of that. I want my writing to cause whoever is reading to take a moment to pause, to breathe, and to reflect.
At a higher level, I’ve only recently started to completely surrender to the belief that I have everything inside me to transform the quality of my daily life; that I am not reliant on anything outside of me to fill my life with an abundance of love, joy, and fulfillment. In the past, I’m not sure that my writing carried this level of conviction. But now, I want everything I write to be infused with that belief, and I hope my writing can evoke that same feeling in whoever is reading.
I don’t really know what this is going to look like or what to share or how to be evocative. But that’s my intention, and I hope that somehow I’ll get better along the way.
self sabotage and guilt-infused routines
Everyone has their own ideas on how to build a healthy daily routine, or what the keys to success are. They can include the right time to get up every day, the best time to work out, the number of job applications to send out, the number of people to meet, etc. You get the idea.
As varied as everyone is in terms of their ideas on what is best, there’s one unifying thread between all - pretty much every single person fails to consistently live up to the standards and ideals that they set for themselves, or the standards and ideals they know are ‘right’. I can think of two reasons.
The first has to do with guilt. Initially, when we start out with something, the novelty and newness of it give us the energy to wholeheartedly invest in ourselves in the activity. Even though we may initially see dramatic initial effects, over time, the practice gets normalized and we hit a plateau. The energy that we initially had is gone; every day, it takes extra effort to do it, and even when we do it, it often doesn’t hit the way that it first did. We know that if we stick it out long term, we’ll have a better shot of transforming our lives for the better, but we’re unable to be consistent day in and day out, and we hate ourselves for it. As a result, the only association we feel towards the activity is guilt for not giving it the energy that we should. We feel an obligation towards the activity, but can’t summon the energy to consistently perform it. At a high level, this dynamic is because guilt and a sense of obligation are energy depleters and interfere with our ability to find actual value in the things that we do.
The second has to do with self-sabotage. The distance between what you’re currently doing and what you ‘should’ be doing gives you a convenient excuse for why you’re not living the kind of life that you want to be living. We create a system of rules that no one can humanly live up to, and we attribute our failure to live the life we want to with our inability to adhere to the rules that we set for ourselves. We do this because it gives us an answer to why we feel pain, melancholy, and sorrow; in theory, it’s because we’re not doing what we should be.
I think there are two layers of fear here. The first is a fear of the unknown; perhaps it’s more comforting to have an explanation for why we’re living the life we’re living than it is to actually try to change your life circumstances and find that you were wrong about everything. It’s easier to cling to the illusion that you know what is happening than it is to try and test your assumptions because if you’re wrong, you’ll in theory be in a worse place than before. Not just a failure, but a confused failure. The second is a fear of success; we’re afraid that if we actually live in accordance with the rules that we think we need to live by and if we actually get everything we want, we’ll find that we still experience restlessness, longing, melancholy, and pain, and then we’ll be fully incapable of explaining why we’re experiencing those feelings. We want to cling to the illusion that working hard and achieving worldly goals or living a saintly lifestyle will bring everlasting happiness, and we’re terrified that we’ll get to the other side and find that it’s not so different from where we’re currently at.
Overall, I think we have a really faulty mapping system. We incorrectly attribute the practices, rules, or systems themselves as the keys to achieving the happiness and fulfillment that we’re seeking, but those are just made-up rules. We’ve all experienced this with different practices that we’ve attempted in the past; we try something new with the belief that it’ll be the answer, but once we find that the unease, restlessness, and melancholy in our lives persist even after beginning that practice, the illusion is lifted. And instead of accepting the truth that nothing outside of us can bring us the fulfillment and joy that we’re seeking, we jump to the conclusion that we’ve simply chosen the wrong practice or rule to follow. Most spend their entire lives jumping from rule to rule searching and failing to find the answer.
What I believe is that joy and fulfillment can never be the results of some practice or process; they’re inputs. And I think that if we’re fully present in whatever activity we’re doing and that if we fully infuse our actions with joy and love, we’ll have the best chances of finding our external circumstances bringing all of that energy back to us in abundance.
emotion and human relationships
I recently finished the book Letting Go by David Hawkins. It was transformational, to say the least. I could go on for hours about everything I learned, but I wanted to share a couple of key learnings that I had about emotions and how they affect human relationships.
Learning #1: Emotion is borne from an attempt to incite a response from someone else with the hope that the response will help fulfill our own inner needs.
I’ll share a couple quotes from the book to further illustrate this point:
It is necessary to remind ourselves that feelings are programs; that is, they are learned responses that often have a purpose. That purpose is directly related to achieving an effect on the other person’s feelings and, by doing so, to influence their feelings toward ourselves and to fulfill our own inner goals.
…
As we shall see, all emotions toward others involve the basic belief that we are incomplete within ourselves and, therefore, others are viewed and utilized as a means to an end. Although we may not be able to influence the other person in the way we would like, the utilization of the other person still occurs on the level of fantasy and expectation.
For example, if we feel anger towards someone else, we have the secret hope that our anger will make them suffer or inflict pain on them.
I think the key insight here is that we aren’t our emotions. Our emotions aren’t intrinsic or natural reactions to external events, but they’re actually internal bundles of energy that expose the ways in which we feel incomplete and insufficient. Take the following example:
The feelings of apathy, grief, depression, sorrow, self-pity, the blues, hopelessness, and helplessness come from the inner program of “I can’t.” Their purpose is to elicit sympathy, to win back, to gain support, to make others sorry, and to summon help.
This means that there’s no static mapping between an external event and an internal emotion; it’s not inevitable that a driver cutting you off on the road produces anger. The external event is a trigger for an emotion that already lives inside you that’s borne from a general sense of insufficiency or helplessness.
This means we’re not chained to reacting in the ways in the past. Cultivating a sense of inner self-sufficiency and completeness in a way that isn’t dependent on the whims of the outside world will transform our experience and reduce the hold that our emotions have over us, allowing us to act with full presence and intention.
Learning #2: “Our feelings and thoughts always have an effect on other persons and affect our relationships, whether these thoughts or feelings are verbalized, expressed, or not.”
That’s another quote from the book, which basically says that even our innermost secret thoughts and emotions have material impacts on the relationships we have with others. This is because humans can intuitively pick up on the ways that other people feel toward them. Here’s what happens when we hold on to feelings of anger towards another:
We have the secret hope that our angry feelings towards others will punish and make them suffer. Actually, we are just providing them with justification to hate us back. We have to live with the fear of their retaliation and our own unconscious guilt, which often results in physical sickness.
With this as an example, it’s clear that the idea that holding on to our emotions will never influence others in a way that actually moves us towards achieving our inner goals; it’ll never move us in the direction of completeness, self-sufficiency, and love. All we’re doing is recreating the conditions that will further entrench the feelings that we have. It’s a self-fulfilling cycle; anger is met with anger, hate is met with hate, and violence is met with violence. None of this helps us cultivate self-love and self-worth.
The worst part is, the drive to validate our own feelings moves us further and further away from fulfilling our actual inner needs. We’re so caught up in validating the feelings of anger and hate towards others, that we lose sight of the fact that holding on to these feelings will continue to reproduce material circumstances in our lives that will reinforce those feelings.
Because people intuitively pick up our wish to control them, their response is to resist. So the only way to bring about relinquishment of their resisting us is to let go of wanting to influence them in the first place.
Instead of seeking validation, the optimal strategy for cultivating love and joy is letting go of the attachment to the feelings you feel towards others, recognizing that the feelings that you’re experiencing have much more to do with your own inner insecurities and fears than with anything anyone else did.
It will be discovered that all of our anger and resentment are due to our perception, that is, to the way in which we are viewing a given situation. When the inner feelings are relinquished, the way in which we see the situation changes, and we are often surprised by the abruptness with which feelings of forgiveness suddenly arise and the relationship becomes transformed, even though on the external level we did or said nothing to express this inner change.
With these two learnings in mind, there are two principles I’m trying to adopt when it comes to interpersonal relationships:
Live as if everyone else can read your mind and knows the feelings you hold towards them - This is because, on some level (whether conscious or not), they know, and your feelings affect the way they’re acting. This practice is also helping me find pockets of resentment that live inside me, and I’m constantly pushing myself to find ways to let go of all of that so that joy can freely enter and take its place.
Live with the knowledge that everyone is doing the best they can - Life is hard, and we can never know the emotional baggage that other people carry. No matter how self-destructive and harmful other people’s actions can be, they’re acting with the belief that they’re doing what’s best for them to get them closer to meeting their inner goals. It doesn’t matter how misguided they are; they’re trying, and their actions have nothing to do with you or me. With this frame of mind, holding feelings of bitterness or resentment towards others gradually loses meaning; there’s no sense in furthering the cycle of pain.
The past few weeks have been crazy. There’s been tons of travel, and with it, tons of thrilling, adrenaline-filled experiences. And I’ve noticed that I’ve started relating to these experiences a little bit differently than I have in the past.
Before, as these adrenaline-filled experiences were happening, I tried to hold on to as much as I could; it felt like these peak experiences were what life was all about, so I wanted to cherish the feeling for as long as I could. But even in the midst of the experiences, there was a sense of emptiness in the back of my mind; there was always a lingering question ‘Is this all there is?’ And once it was all over, the sense of emptiness that I felt was extreme. Not only did I have to grapple with a vacuum of external stimulation, but I also had to wrestle with the fact that the experience didn’t fulfill me in the way I desperately hoped it would; that no matter how hard I tried to cling, the experience quickly slipped away, leaving me emptier and more confused than I ever was before.
Now it’s quite different. I no longer feel as much of an impulse to cling; I think it’s because I’m starting to understand that my own fulfillment has nothing to do with the things I’m experiencing, but more to do with the way I relate to all my experiences. I no longer feel the same sense of emptiness as I did before; I think it’s because instead of seeking joy from the things happening around me, I’m trying to infuse everything with my own inner joy that I’m trying to cultivate.
I think all this is because I’m not as caught up in the material circumstances of my life as I used to be. I still have moments of confusion and frustration when I get caught up trying to control things that I can’t, and when I start to attach myself too closely to what is happening around me. It frustrates me how quickly I forget my intentions and get caught up in everything happening around me.
But I think I’m getting better.
As my circumstances continue to change and evolve, I will continue to remind myself that all I can do is infuse my actions with love and joy, root out any pockets of destructive energy within me, act in line with my intentions, and get out of my own way, letting the circumstances of my life evolve in a way that will enable the effortless and spontaneous fulfillment of my dreams.
🤙🫡