I don't "actually believe" that I have energy forces in and around me, in the sense that I would be *shocked* if we found some evidence for this through tests around physics or whatever. But I still "hold a frame of belief" that there is, because this enables interacting with it.
Conversation
As in; I sometimes have an experience of energy moving through or around my body, and in order for me to make sense of this experience, to hold and reason about it, some part of me needs to step out and "believe" it. I know it's a believing part cause it makes predictions;
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As in, "If I move my arm like this, I think the energy will move through it; if I crouch like this, I think I will feel energy over here".
If I *refused* to engage with this belief part, my guess is I would have a lot more difficulty actually feeling the energy at all.
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But I think many ppl have difficulty realizing they can both hold a belief part that predicts where energy goes, and also hold another part that predicts external testing will not uncover any magical energy system; these frames *collapse* into each other, which is V DANGEROUS
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the healthier way to be is to let beliefs like these pass through you, not try to extrapolate. If you take a drug and have an experience where you're Jesus, you can just "be Jesus" for a while; if you try to extrapolate this after you come down from the drug, its gonna be rough
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Taking "I had an experience where this was my belief" and not following up with "so this indicates x about reality" is v important. This is what I mean by conflating the ownership of frames; there's *internal* and there's *external*, and moving an internal to external is bad juju
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And there's a whole list of reasons why conflating this is covered with MEGA DANGER WARNING signs; it's *very easy* to make mistakes here, to quietly slip into very poisonous areas; if you're subtly placing internal beliefs onto those around you, you are *failing to see them*
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To conflate the two is to close off being able to see each for what they are; to use external science-proof-rigor only is to override your internal actual experience; to use internal belief-experience only is to override the surprising gigantic mystery of the world
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And if you realize you can make great reads on people, this has a very insidious risk of causing you to believe your reads on people are correct when they're not; or even worse, causing *other people* to think your reads on them are correct when they're not.
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Woo beliefs are good to hold, but they must be held lightly; the vast majority of time I've seen people engage with them, the beliefs grow and overtake the person's ability to see the outside world. Woo beliefs make you feel special, powerful, in control.
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I think this thread gets your point/sentiment across very well, actually! The last two tweets are on the money. I feel this issue is also transferable to the way independent, critical thinkers often struggle to not become conspiracy theorists (as in ‚actually believing´ in them)
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When you refer to holding woo beliefs? Are you essentially talking about conceiving of woo phenomena or mentally simulating woo phenomena?
Or are you referring to something different?
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so glad you’re sharing this even though it’s hard to find the words. I also see the potential and wish more people were open to play with energies etc. without needing to know if they are true. building trust in the part of them that is rational might help?
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Well said. To put it another way, imagination is a useful tool for interpreting the world, but it does not follow that everything you imagine is true.
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