Beliefs as Closed Worlds
Las creencias como mundos cerrados
A student reflects on how believing she fully understands another person creates a closed world, and the teacher responds with the difference between holding beliefs and holding maps.
Beliefs as Closed Worlds
A student reflects on how believing she fully understands another person creates a closed world, and the teacher responds with the difference between holding beliefs and holding maps.
You said something earlier about remembering that other people are more than what we think they are. That brought up emotion for me, a kind of relief, because it connects to something I was exploring with you a couple of days ago about my relationship. I realize that I do this: I decide I understand who someone is, I understand their conditioning, and a part of me thinks that's being helpful. But actually it creates a closed world. I'm not open to things being a different way. And I feel like I can do that with a lot of people without realizing it. I don't have a specific question, but that insight opened something up. If anything else comes to mind about it, I'm open to hearing.
That's great. I don't think I have much to add. It's just good stuff to see. These are the beliefs we carry, and this work is all about seeing through them, knowing them as beliefs. Then we recognize that we cannot truly know, that it is mystery. At that point, what used to be a belief becomes just a map, and we see how useful or not it is at any given moment. When it's a belief, it's pretty much always problematic. That's it. Just keep seeing.
And by not being so stuck to beliefs, does that allow you to connect more to people, and to yourself, because you're not constantly judging and putting labels?
Yes.