I’m pretty sure I could explain it, given time, a few false starts, and a patient audience. I’ve been finding that more and more, the English language and US culture sucks as a foundation for trying to explain the processes in my head :)
With that said, here goes Attempt #1 :)
Feel around in your head for a few statements, and compare them. Some of them will feel “factual” like “France exists.” Others will instead be assertions that you support—“killing is wrong”, for example. Finally, you’ll have assertions you don’t support—“God exists in Heaven, and will judge us when we die.”
The former category, “factual” matters, should have a distinctly different feel from the other two “beliefs”. The beliefs you agree with should also have a distinctly different feel from the ones you disagree with. I often find that “beliefs I agree with” feel a lot like “factual” matters, whereas “beliefs I disagree with” have a very distinct feeling.
You’ll probably run in to edge cases, or things that don’t fit any of these categories; those are still interesting thoughts but you probably want to ignore them and focus on these simple, vivid categories. If some other set of groupings has a more distinct “feel” to it, is easier to separate out, feel free to use those. The point is simply to develop a sense of what the ideas in your head feel like, because we tend not to think about that at all.
Next, you need to help yourself hold two perspectives at once: I think Alicorn’s City of Lights from her Luminousity sequence is probably a useful framework here. Divide yourself in to two selves, one who believes something, and one who doesn’t, something like “I should study abroad in Australia” from the shiny story examples :)
Compare how those two parts of you process this, and see how the belief feels differently for each of them. If you can do this at all, then you’ve demonstrated to yourself that you CAN hold two mutually incompatible stances at the same time.
So, now you know what they feel like, and you know that you can hold two at the same time. I find that’s an important framework, because now you can start believing absurd things, with the reassurance that a large part of you will still be perfectly sane, sitting on the sidelines and muttering about how much of a nutter you’re being. (Being comfortable with the part of yourself which believes impossible things, and accepting that it’ll be called a nutter is also helpful :))
The next step is to learn how to play around with the categorization you do. Try to imagine what it feels like when “France exists” is a belief instead of a fact. Remind yourself that you’ve never been to France. Remind yourself that millions of people insist they’ve witnessed God, and this is probably more people than have witnessed France. It doesn’t matter if these points are absurd and irrational, they’re just a useful framework for trying to imagine that France is all a big hoax, just like God is.
(If you believe in God, or don’t believe in France, feel free to substitute appropriately :))
If all three of those steps went well, you should now be able to create a self which believes that France does not exist. Once you’ve done this, believing in your horoscope should be a reasonably trivial exercise.
Alright, that’s Attempt #1. Let me know what was unclear, what didn’t work, and hopefully eventually we’ll have a working method! =)
I’m pretty sure I could explain it, given time, a few false starts, and a patient audience. I’ve been finding that more and more, the English language and US culture sucks as a foundation for trying to explain the processes in my head :)
With that said, here goes Attempt #1 :)
Feel around in your head for a few statements, and compare them. Some of them will feel “factual” like “France exists.” Others will instead be assertions that you support—“killing is wrong”, for example. Finally, you’ll have assertions you don’t support—“God exists in Heaven, and will judge us when we die.”
The former category, “factual” matters, should have a distinctly different feel from the other two “beliefs”. The beliefs you agree with should also have a distinctly different feel from the ones you disagree with. I often find that “beliefs I agree with” feel a lot like “factual” matters, whereas “beliefs I disagree with” have a very distinct feeling.
You’ll probably run in to edge cases, or things that don’t fit any of these categories; those are still interesting thoughts but you probably want to ignore them and focus on these simple, vivid categories. If some other set of groupings has a more distinct “feel” to it, is easier to separate out, feel free to use those. The point is simply to develop a sense of what the ideas in your head feel like, because we tend not to think about that at all.
Next, you need to help yourself hold two perspectives at once: I think Alicorn’s City of Lights from her Luminousity sequence is probably a useful framework here. Divide yourself in to two selves, one who believes something, and one who doesn’t, something like “I should study abroad in Australia” from the shiny story examples :)
Compare how those two parts of you process this, and see how the belief feels differently for each of them. If you can do this at all, then you’ve demonstrated to yourself that you CAN hold two mutually incompatible stances at the same time.
So, now you know what they feel like, and you know that you can hold two at the same time. I find that’s an important framework, because now you can start believing absurd things, with the reassurance that a large part of you will still be perfectly sane, sitting on the sidelines and muttering about how much of a nutter you’re being. (Being comfortable with the part of yourself which believes impossible things, and accepting that it’ll be called a nutter is also helpful :))
The next step is to learn how to play around with the categorization you do. Try to imagine what it feels like when “France exists” is a belief instead of a fact. Remind yourself that you’ve never been to France. Remind yourself that millions of people insist they’ve witnessed God, and this is probably more people than have witnessed France. It doesn’t matter if these points are absurd and irrational, they’re just a useful framework for trying to imagine that France is all a big hoax, just like God is.
(If you believe in God, or don’t believe in France, feel free to substitute appropriately :))
If all three of those steps went well, you should now be able to create a self which believes that France does not exist. Once you’ve done this, believing in your horoscope should be a reasonably trivial exercise.
Alright, that’s Attempt #1. Let me know what was unclear, what didn’t work, and hopefully eventually we’ll have a working method! =)