Mantus

Well here is a scenario concerning beliefs:

Say you just saw a scary movie and went to bed. You hear a noise in your room and your imagination starts running wild. Your heart rate goes up, your senses sharpen and your breathing becomes shallow. Your body certainly thinks that there is something going on.

Now you tell yourself that you are being silly and to go back to sleep, yet feel like you are lying to yourself. What if you are wrong, what if it’s real? Doubt is still there and then you hear another noise. At this moment your mind stop doubting the validity of your fear and you end up cautiously listening for something. For a few seconds you “believe” in something and you really don’t care if the evidence is bogus or not.

You can blame this on our instinctive autopilot but the mind was never shut off, in fact it was assisting in accessing the possible threat.

Now one has to wonder just how often our instincts and emotions make us believe things we would not in a normal mental state. How many times have we convinced ourselves that we wont be able to make it though the day if we don’t hit snooze on the alarm clock? How many times has our sex drive got the better of use and made us say or do things that are against our values? There are many forces out there that can apply pressure on the mind to make it think in one way or another. Some of those forces are even created by the mind itself, such as habits.