The concept is simple; the engagement of it and enaction of it can be slightly trickier. Fundamentally you don’t know what you don’t know and in addition to this, you usually think you know what you know and never dispute it with the self!
This convolution we do whereby we have certain fundamental truths that we never investigate and yet we don’t know what we don’t know, means that it is very common for us to be believing something that is not true and yet never questioning that belief, whilst at the same time not believing something that is true, and being quite convinced in our superiority over those that believe this thing we call ‘nonsense’ because it is in our belief system ‘not true’.
We then continuously validate the lack of questioning or investigating around the belief. Said questioning or investigating might prompt the discovery that what we believe is in fact not as true or false as we have firmly decided. If something we believe is not true is in fact true, then this internal self-perpetuating belief system will, in one way or another, deter us from hearing, investigating or taking on board any evidence to the contrary of the currently held belief. The opposite is also true, if we believe something that is true, we may spend our time being blinded to all evidence that it is in fact not true. We are complicated creatures, with many blind spots, and an overall compulsion to ‘not look foolish’ and ‘to be correct’ – mostly these compulsions come from a fundamental desire for or orientation towards feeling safe in one way or another.
Finding this interesting? You can read the full article on Substack at: Jodi Maree Shares
