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I have
always had an active imagination. As a child, I
read science fiction and fantasy voraciously. I
created my own stories, too, and created whole
worlds for my stories to take place in. There was,
I am sure, an element of escapism in this. The
imaginary worlds had vividness and meaning lacking
in my own life, and I had a sense of control over
what those worlds contained and what happened
within them.
But these
imaginary excursions were also educational. It is
remarkable what one can learn about geography while
mapping an imaginary world, or what can be learned
about language by inventing the names of alien
characters. I pursued a career in astronomy,
motivated at least partly by a fascination with
worlds orbiting distant stars.
Like many
scientists, I believed that the methods of science
were the only reliable way of securing knowledge
about the world. Nonscientific belief systems were
not something I could seriously entertain.
Nevertheless, I loved to study the nonscientific
beliefs, rituals, and practices of other cultures.
These things inspired my imagination, and I would
willingly suspend my disbelief for awhile, to read
and learn.
Gradually, I
began to appreciate that belief systems other than
my own can have value, by serving some purpose
other than that of obtaining scientific knowledge.
Some beliefs can support compassion and community,
can stir artistic or creative feelings, or can
confer a different kind of richness and depth to
the events of one's life.
I was
gradually coming to understand that thinking of my
own beliefs as correct and others as incorrect was
too simplistic to capture the way beliefs actually
function in the lives of individual people and the
cultures in which they are embedded.
This
understanding was just a mental thing for some
time, a philosophical abstraction I could play with
and trot out occasionally for the sake of
conversation. Then, one day, I decided to do
something new. I decided to actually try believing
something I didn't believe.
I had read
some about divination using tarot cards, rune
stones, and the like. Although I believed with
great clarity that casting rune stones could not in
anyway reveal new information about one's future or
personal situation, I could understand that the act
of sitting quietly and thinking about one's life
could be beneficial. By creating such an
opportunity, I reasoned, belief in divination could
be helpful for some people.
I might have
left it at that - indeed I had left it at that for
some time. But then, one day, I felt moved to
actually do divination. Naturally, I invented my
own method, something I had dreamed up for use by
people in one of my imaginary worlds. It involved
casting colored stones on a mandala I had drawn.
When I sat down to do this, my expectation was that
nothing very interesting would happen. The stones
would land in random places, I would interpret them
according to the rules I had invented, and they
would not convey much about my life or future,
except perhaps by way of some obvious accidental
coincidence. In a minute or so, I would have taken
it all in and that would be the end of
it.
Nevertheless,
I made a choice to approach this activity as though
the stones held a true and important message for
me.
The
experience was quite different from my expectation.
The placement of every single stone was meaningful.
Some were strikingly consistent with my own
self-understanding. Others were not so obvious, but
were even stronger - like a good friend telling you
a truth about yourself that you don't want to hear.
I finally turned away from the stones and mandala
40 minutes later, weary but much wiser, and
profoundly changed.
I
understood, of course, that one could construct a
psychological, "scientific" explanation of my
divination experience. It was not that the
experience was somehow inexplicable or impossible
to reconcile with my scientific beliefs. However,
my beliefs had set me up with expectations that did
not match the experience, and had I not chosen to
set those expectation aside, I would not have had
the experience at all. I would have dismissed this
as something I did not need to try, because I had
figured out ahead of time that it would not do much
of value.
Sometimes we
have experiences that our belief systems do not
anticipate or accommodate. Often, they are not
premeditated and arranged the way mine was. They
just happen, and our cherished beliefs totter
precariously in their wake.
One way to
react is by shoring up our familiar beliefs, and
re-creating the experience in our minds so that it
fits better. My favorite example of this is in
Dickens' Christmas Carol, when Scrooge reinterprets
his vision of Marley as a consequence of bad
digestion.
Another
reaction is to jettison one's old belief system
wholesale, and adopt a new belief system in which
the experience fits more comfortably. This is
basically a conversion experience: something so
profound and undeniable it turns our whole world
around.
There is,
however, a third way that lies between these two
extremes. We can let go of the need to have a
single belief system that answers all our
questions. After I had my first divination
experience, I realized that if I believed I could
receive important messages in this way, my life
would be richer and I would learn more about
myself. The scientific belief system I had embraced
most of my life was not helpful in this area; it
encouraged me to shut down and not receive
knowledge this way. That doesn't make it wrong, it
just makes it unhelpful in this
situation.
I decided
that I should give myself permission to use
different beliefs in different situations. Think of
the old cliché "If your only tool is hammer,
every problem looks like a nail." When we insist on
maintaining a single belief at any cost, we either
limit our experience to situations where that
belief is useful, or we overextend and misapply it,
setting ourselves up for conflict and
disappointment.
Beliefs are
tools. You can get a lot more done if you have an
assortment of them. As tools, beliefs can be
amazing things. They solve problems, open up
opportunities, and teach us wisdom.
By casting
pebbles on a mandala that day years ago, I learned
many deep things about my situation at that time. I
don't recall any of it. Life has moved on. I'm now
a different person, living a different life. But
one thing did stay with me from that experience: I
learned to use my beliefs in the service of my own
life, instead of being used by them.
Page
Two: Stepping through the Door
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