the psychology of belief

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The psychologies of belief and ambivilance

Belief creates a strong frame of reference
The psychological feel of belief [of virtually any kind, scientific, religious, conspiracy, etc.] is like gravity and friction. It gives an overall orientation to one's perspective on the world and a reliable method for moving around that world. It gives a feel of weight and method of wielding weight. It has the feeling of satisfaction.
Aquistion of large amounts of inertia is relatively easy.

ambiguity [leading to abivilance] tends to more like floating in an ocean [of water/fluid or space].
Everything is 'up in the air'. Unknown and therefore it gives no frame of reference to work with. It tends to be directionless and lack weight and therefore inertia.

We usually seek truth, so we can believe in it and enjoy and use the frame of reference it gives us. Belief tends to feel empowering. It is mental/psychological certainty. It feels solid and satisfying.

Truth is actully untied to belief. ie. As most people now believe the world is a globe/sphere of rock with a thin biosphere on/in which we live. At one time people believed the world to be flat, which it certainly appears to be to the unassisted viewer.

Belief works best with eternal truths.
Ambivilance works best with changing truths.

By always working in the realm of beliefs, it probably tends to build up a certain musculature of the mind via weight and friction.

If you work in a realm of ambiguities, it tends to leave your world frame of reference more delicate and re-configurable. It tends to be lighter and more flexible, but tends to be vulnerable to assaults by weight, gravity and inertia.

The structures built up by believers tend to be massive [and if i may say so] somewhat gross and simplistic, but they also tend to be neat and tidy.

If you can get un-believers to build up structures they can easily be elaborate and complex. Because they are light they can be easily re-configured, lending themselves to any given aesthetic one cares to give them. Often though they tend to be messy and directionless.

I guess i would associate belief with emotion and ambivilance with intellect.

Comments? other thoughts?
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You were on to s/thing here. It's a shame that no one could either understand, or just didn't care to even TRY to understand why they may think or behave the way they do.

Beliefs are more restrictive in nature. If a physicist working on proving his theory applies one small part of belief w/out the proof of a formula and w/out accepting outside evidence, the experiment is sure to fail. Yet, at the same time, it is those 'instincts' - which to some would constitute a "belief" - that enable quantum physics to grow into what we think we know, now.

For example, lets use the movie National Treasure. Generations of lives were spent in search of a belief; Albeit, a belief that had plenty of 'signs'. Still - the acting father of Nicholas Cage seemed to understand that you can find plenty of *proof* when you choose to believe that everything that seems to be related, in fact, IS!

It's quite easy to fall into that little 'trap', and a little harder to get out of it.

Now, being ambiguous, to me, seems like the way of life in Yoga. It is the ability to be flexible - not only in body, but in mind. Being more flexible in mind would enable you to accept more willingly that what you thought you knew was actually the opposite of what you understood it to be. It could be s/thing as trivial as "we are not the only intelligent species on the planet" - or, it could be life-altering - "there really is no God".

Do you see the pros of being flexible? lol

Everything has survived, via evolution/mutation and only to the extent of their flexibility to change. Beliefs only 'help' a person to grow towards what they ~believe~ to be the 'right' path.

The real challenge comes when you start questioning the reasons why you, yourself, feel you need to 'believe' in s/thing.

The problem is how do you know what an eternal truth is? As far as I can tell, it's different for everyone all down time. The only th"bings that are eternal truths are like "gravity attracts" and "the speed of light in a vacuum is constant" and "Black holes really suck."

Everything else is up for negotiation.