first a story…
As recently as 20 years ago, it was extremely rare to find a Western physician who did not believe that acupuncture was quackery, yet today more and more younger GPs suggest it to patients with chronic conditions that the GPs themselves cannot cure.
In the late 90s, my Jewish acupuncturist friend (there’s another great story there) related the following:
He said that a specialist in an American hospital was interested in connections between the human nervous systems. The specialist was using life sized maps with transparent backgrounds, and had laid the map of the Peripheral (Sympathetic & Parasympathetic) System over that of the Central Nervous System. As he stood pondering the resulting image, a colleague wandered in.
The colleague glanced at the combined image on the wall and asked, “You’re studying acupuncture?”. Startled, the specialist asked what he meant. The answer was that the main acupuncture points are located exactly at the junctures where the two systems intersect.
Now, as far as I know, Western medicine has yet to nail down any fully defined scientific basis for acupuncture, let alone really understand how and if it ‘works’. Nevertheless, the recognition of something that could be SEEN went further in broaching some time honored traditions of skepticism than any endless number of patients claiming or exhibiting relief or cure. Human opinions and claims, after all, are subjective, and can as possibly be imagined as real.
Scientists rely on facts and proof. In fact, there are now schools of thought that would see the abandonment of belief entirely, viewing it as useless and almost impossible to define.
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About Belief
We cannot function without lots of beliefs which we have not proven as fact.
We teach our children via their natural curiosity and desire to learn. If belief required proof to take on the certainty of truth, then every one of our children would have to burn their hands on the stove even though we’d told them what the result would be.
Our concepts of belief are inextricably linked to trust and credence, reliance and assurance.
If you sat down and actually listed the millions of things you believe, and upon which you base decisions and actions constantly, and then separated those which you had personally verified as factual truth from those you had been told or taught, you’d come up with one extremely short and another extremely long list. You could cheat and say, but someone else has proved this. You still chose to believe them.
Regular examination of our beliefs is a good and necessary thing, as exampled by:
Any experienced businessperson will only be successful as long as they continually adapt to changing market conditions.
Any government or political representative you choose to vote for should no longer receive your vote if he/she betrays your trust.
Any professional has an obligation to stay abreast of new knowledge, premises, laws, etc. in their field in order to practice responsibly.
Even in those personal matters where our love, faith, loyalty and allegiance are not subject to question, we participate in important rituals through which we renew and reaffirm our pledges.
Examination is a good thing because all our actions have consequences and we bear responsibility for these.
The strength, value, bases, and comprehension of our beliefs can be translated directly into personal happiness and success, the choice of appropriate and outstanding relationships, and exceptional realization of personal potential.
Think of a story from your own life experiences, of the list of beliefs you held when it began, of how any of them changed along the way, and of their relationship to the conclusion. If you are a strict scientist type, you could still try it secretly.
You may need a second step, to cull out expectations and even wishes masquerading as beliefs. An unexpected benefit of this exercise can be the recognition of fundamental beliefs so basic and long-standing that you haven’t previously examined them.
We do postmortems on business deals and transactions all the time. Extending that process to the personal level can have as many, and even more benefits.
Knowing what has worked well in our lives and what hasn’t, leads us naturally to repeat the first and avoid the second. Knowing why, as well as taking into account how the world around us changes, empowers us to broaden our scope with truer aim.
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Something Personal…
My first given name, Vera, has two translations from its Russian origin.
The first is belief. This meaning is widely exemplified in the common term for the Creed of the Russian Orthodox Church (the closest to original Nicene creed, I think), which is its first word –Veruyu – meaning I Believe.
The second is faith. In the Orthodox Church’s pantheon of saints, Sophia’s (wisdom) 3 daughters are named Vera, Nadezhda, & Lyubhov (also 3 of the most common Russian female names better recognized as Vera, Nadya, and Luba). The English versions of these 3 sisters’ names are Faith, Hope, and Charity (originally Love).
