Beliefs Are Not Real

How Awareness Transcends the Constructs of Belief and Self-Identity

Ram Dass invites us to identify awareness as the sky observing drifting clouds of life.

However far you wander, awareness is always there.

However far you look, it stretches past the horizon.

Awareness doesn’t have a beginning or an end. It’s just behind everything hanging out, observing and omnipresent.

Walter de Maria Lightning Field, New Mexico

Your life is a cloud in the sky of awareness. 

With high winds the clouds of life are in movement or stillness without. They cast shadows and are illuminated in sunset. 

The content of the clouds includes everything you identify as you.

It is the unique genetics and experiences that have formed your ego. It is your name, which Dale Carnegie described as the “sweetest, most important sound in any language.”

Ego is your inner voice, which is the voice of your parents, which is the voice of their parents and so on. 

The ego wants to be remembered. It wants to exist. It will tell you it’s real. The voice of the voice of the voice of your ancestors in your head has to be real, right? 

The super organism will always fight for its survival.

Through stories we remember egos past. Some have been been so large and dense they remain as mythology in the history of the species.

But ego is formless like clouds. Time moves forward and egos appear, change and dissipate into nothingness. 

It’s important to understand that the clouds are not fundamental to the existence of the sky. On a cloudless summer day the sky exists.

Awareness is what remains when you discard the content of you.

Most people die having lived a life in the clouds. Everywhere they have looked cloud is all they’ve seen so it is all they know. To most nothing else can exist because that is all of life.

Most civilizational cultures have a mythology of life outside the cloud.

Christianity has heaven, hell and purgatory. Islam has Jannah (paradise) and Janannam (hell). Hinduism has samsara (reincarnation, the reforming of clouds) and moksha (liberation from the reincarnation cycle, dissipation of clouds). The Buddhists call moksha nirvana. Judaism, while less explicit, sees a final divine judgment and the occasional resurrection of the dead.

Dante and Virgil Climb Down on Lucifer, The Divine Comedy, Dante’s Inferno, 14th Century

At the moment of rapture the faithful dead are resurrected to join the faithful living in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.

At the moment of rapture the voice of the voice of the voice of your ancestors exists in perpetuity. You too shall live forever in the kingdom of God if only you truly believe in your heart of hearts.

The Last Judgment, Michaelangelo, Sistine Chapel in Vatican City, 1541

You see, the ego wants to live forever. To each and every one of us it whispers the fear death. However, ego is the one afraid of its inevitable non-existence.

Why would the sky fear non-existence of the clouds if they are not fundamental to its existence?

The collective ego of humanity is the author of its own mythology. Our collective unconscious is the invisible hand guiding the ouija board to spell its own name. 

Beliefs are not real. They are not fundamental to the workings of the universe.

The belief structures of humans exists on top of the structure of reality. This meta structure has existed for a very short time on the scale of the universe. For our species, at this moment in time and maybe forever, it is a black box. We do not know what other meta structures exist in the complex adaptive system of the universe.

Beliefs are a guess at the inner mechanism inside the box knowing all phenomena observed with our detectors of physical reality are in a constant states of flux and transformation.

However like ego, beliefs appear, change and dissipate into nothingness. 

A belief is not falsifiable. There are no measurements or observations that can refute it. 

For instance, the statement “all swans are white” can be refuted by seeing a black swan.

On the other hand, the statement “there is a force that influences us but is undetectable by any scientific instruments” is not falsifiable since no observation or measurement can be made to disprove it. 

Falsifiability allows for hypotheses to be tested and disproven, which is the fundamental mechanism by which scientific knowledge progresses. 

A non-falsifiable hypothesis is a belief. It may be meaningful in philosophical, theological or personal contexts but is not real. 

To be a Christian is to believe in the resurrection story of Jesus. It is a belief because we cannot falsify the resurrection.

To be an Atheist who proudly states they do not believe in God is also to hold a belief. Atheism is just a belief nestled inside the belief in God. Since there is nothing measurable in fundamental reality that falsifies the existence of God, it is also a system of belief.

The Atheist example illustrates how tricky the structure of belief can be. Beliefs feel real. They feel like critical scaffolding which holds the weight of your identity. This is the illusion of ego.

Remember you are awareness. You are the sky and not the clouds

New Mexico

If you thoughtfully trace back the cause and effect origins of your beliefs you come to see beliefs are an inheritance. They are a narrative you have told yourself your whole life. But they are more of a feeling, often the feeling of safety, certainty and equilibrium. 

Your beliefs are an inherited bloodline of narratives from your tribe as a child. They are mimicry of the beliefs of the apes you most wanted to please as a child. Anyone who has had children understands that at our core we are mimetic creatures. Consider the five chimps theory.

All the joyous and painful experiences of your life have shaped the cloud of your beliefs. From experience, the tendency is to prematurely conclude something about reality as a universal truth when it is not. That is the human tendency deep in the cognitive programming. It’s the man behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz.

Recognize the truths of your childhood are not falsifiable. When you feel anger or discomfort when strongly held beliefs are challenged it is the ego fearing for its safety, certainty and equilibrium. Recognize you are defending a feeling not a truth. 

Awareness is to empty your mind of belief structures and be formless and shapeless like water. When put into a cup, water both forms into a cup and does not need the structure of the cup for its existence. Belief and ego are not required for the existence of awareness. That is to say, there is no spoon.

It’s the principle of Wu Wei. It’s awareness allowing ego to float effortlessly with the river of life rather then drown trying to swim upstream. It’s Bruce Lee saying “be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.”

It’s Emperor of Rome, Marcus Aurelius writing in his journal that the constancy of change must be accepted because there is no other option than death.

Marcus Aurelius, bronze, 175AD

Beliefs matter. Beliefs are relevant. Beliefs change the world of humans and so have power. They are important.

But only to us and our egos.

For they do not exist in physical reality. They are not fundamental to the workings of the Universe.

The practice of meditation is the practice of discovering there are edges to the clouds. It is the practice of moving beyond the margins of ego into awareness. It is understanding the clouds of life are not the totality of existence. It is a way of moving you may have never experienced because you move outside of intellect, ego and belief.

Without awakening to awareness, you are the child who knows only white swans.