Belief, Faith and Doubt

Part of our ‘human condition’ the way we work, is the basic instinct of ‘fight or flight’. This is built into our ‘primaeval’ or ‘reptile’ brain – the lowest level of operation of our body and nervous system. It’s probably fair to say all sentient life forms on this planet, those aware of their environment, their surroundings, and what’s ‘going on’ have this instinct.

In the ‘higher’ animals, humans and who knows what others, we also have the concepts of belief, faith and trust. Fight or flight is essentially something which kicks in in a situation of fear, uncertainty or doubt. If we are unsure about what’s happening the flight reaction is usually chosen; if we know the situation, through belief it exists, we may take the option to confront it and fight.

But life for us is so much more complex. There is so much more ’going on’ – much of which we don’t fully understand. We’re constantly presented with options, with opportunities, with threats. We have some consciousness of our strengths and weaknesses and attempt to come up with an ‘answer’ to any situation we are presented with even if the ‘answer’ is to ignore it and do nothing.

On the one hand, the negative side, we have fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) and on the other, positive hand, belief, faith and trust (BFT). If BFT is stronger than FUD, we’ll go forward with a positive move. If FUD is greater than BFT we’ll back away, and if they are equal, we’ll do nothing.

Alongside FUD we have some very powerful ‘belief states’: FOMO, Fear Of Missing Out, FOFO, Fear Of Finding Out and a whole series of other fears of this type which strongly influence our motivation to do whatever we do. Like ‘away’ and ‘towards’ motivation they control our lives to a large extent.

But what about these concepts of Belief, Faith and Trust? The others are more primal and easier to understand but none are ‘tangible’, belief, faith and trust are feelings (as are the negatives) but what do they mean and where do they come from?

Many people don’t distinguish between them but here’s the convention we’ve adopted in the Freedom Academy for the sake of clarity. First of all, we disconnect the word ‘faith’ from any kind of religious organisation (or political for that matter) but hold ‘faith’ to mean not something we ‘believe in’ but something else, a feeling we have in or about something without it having to be ‘proven’ in any way.

Belief on the other hand is held as being in something that has been ‘proven’ correctly or otherwise by any means, usually through a process of science, logic or observation. Trust is different, trust is held ‘in’ something or someone else usually on a ‘second-hand’ basis where we ‘trust’ in someone else’s faith or belief, but don’t necessarily hold them ourselves.

As we progress we’ll explore this further. Be warned, your beliefs will change, you will develop a different attitude to trust, often that it will become more temporary, and your faith or faiths will morph into something you feel applies more closely to who you are and why you are here.

At the same time you’ll understand better how to deal with and eventually eliminate fears, uncertainties and doubts. You’ll move to a place where you have complete confidence in what you are doing and why you are doing it.