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I went through a "wilderness experience" twenty years ago. I don't
recall spending much time thinking about religious matters during my
three-year religious hiatus. Rather I turned my focus to a study of what
made the rest of the world tick: business, psychology and other
practical matters. At the end of this period I relearned in a forceful
way a truth that I had known since I was a teenager: initially, you don't choose
what you believe.
That's right, belief is not a matter of choice, at
least in terms of the belief itself. Belief is a gift bestowed (or thrust)
upon you. You may discover what you believe, but you do not decide what to
believe. What you believe is a synthesis of your personal history, the
ideas you have heard, the context of hearing those ideas, how you
interrelated them and the force with which you were struck. The term ideas
may be way too strong. These may be fleeting thoughts, impressions, emotions
and may well up from within you or waft over you like a gossamer cloud.
- anonymous
Three Levels of Volition
Updated:
02/29/2020
There is a lot of truth in the quote above, but it is using
confused terminology--choose and decide are conflated--and it applies only
to the usual person who has not taken control of his own belief process.
VOLITION n: a three tiered structure of potential in the Homo Sapien,
which like language and other abilities and facets can be
awakened to nurture the spiritual growth of a Human Being.
It can be simplified in this way: 1) On the
deepest level we can exercise our personal sovereignty, stop
letting ourselves be programmed by the existing agencies,
and CHOOSE to seek the truth of what to believe and CHOOSE
our purpose, 2) Based on our belief and
purpose we CAN affect our attitude and our WILL on how to be
and feel, and 3) We DECIDE what to do. The
operation of the latter depends almost TOTALLY upon the first and
second levels and external and internal factors outside of
our conscious control.
Masters of Destiny
Are we ineluctably trapped in the syndrome described in
the banner paragraph above?
Humans like to think of themselves as volitional beings,
where if not in total control of their destiny, they have a significant
influence on it. Enough influence through volition to generally make the
difference. However, this "destiny" for our life on earth is understood
to have severe limits put on it by the 'Human condition". Given an
average lifespan in western civilization for those that survive
childhood of about 70 years, we can through judicious decisions about a
long list of things "significantly" affect that number by plus or minus
30%. And since there is no guarantee that a person is not going to die
in the next minute, hour, day or year, you can judge this to be significant or not.
It is in this context, of the severely limited influence that
we have on this life span, that the idea of an afterlife gains a lot more
traction. We feel that surely our striving to use our volition properly should have
more effect than just affecting 30% of 70 years. Religions that posit an afterlife
attempt to maximize this traction, and Christianity takes the carrot and
the stick to the extreme with an unimaginably swell eternal heaven and an
unimaginably awful and eternal hell.
The elephant in the living room is the overwhelming
evidence that our volition doesn't overcome or counter the vast
preponderance of factors that tend to control us. These range from our genetic
tendencies, traits and characteristics and run through hormone levels in
the body, gender, health, and intelligence, to religious and cultural
value programming, conditioning, training and habits, all not especially
due to our own control. Not to mention the situation that we may find
ourselves in, with pressure, whether light or unbearable. Especially
eloquent in speaking to this reality is St. Paul in Romans where he says,
"...but I am carnal, sold under sin. I do not understand my own
actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate."
The result of all of these factors in pushing us,
controlling us is so powerful that humans, from the ancients to modern
man, have a tendency to think in terms of God, the devil or demons
controlling us. There is a large part of Christianity that believes we
can turn control over to some kind of reified Holy Spirit. Modern psychology has come
along with a movement that either denies we have any volition at all or
makes it very obscure as to where and how it operates.
Nevertheless we also operate under the widespread
understanding that we are accountable, and can be held accountable, for
our actions and behavior. This accountability also rests on the
foundation that a person has volitional control over their behavior.
Even though we have many situations where we conclude this isn't so, we
have no other handle on accountability outside of a persons actions.
So, we clearly have 3 levels on which we can exercise
our volition, or to which we can point it:
-
On the foundational level we have our conceptions, values
and beliefs. Overwhelmingly most people are just programmed by their
spiritual environment as children–their parents, teachers and
religious leaders–to NOT think for themselves and NOT use their
volition on this crucial level but to just accept the prevailing
religious environmental package. However, we CAN take control on this level
and choose concepts, values and beliefs. These greatly influence and effect the next level
-
This is the level on which our
emotions and feelings operate, and these come largely automatic and
unbidden. However, we can learn to take some control over feelings
and emotions and counter or override them. However, this is very
difficult and damaging if done to any significant degree, and makes
a person seem somewhat mechanical or emotionally cumbersome. Much
better to deal with the first level and have feelings and emotions
come "naturally" that do not need to be curtailed or modified. Of course
feelings and emotions overwhelmingly effect what we decide to do,
our behavior.
-
On this third level, that of our behavior, we do
have some semblance of minimal control, but it has already been
largely determined by what we believe and by our conditioning, and
it is now motivated by our feelings and emotions. It
takes an almost superhuman effort to abort what our feelings and
emotions are telling us to do. Much better to take control on the
foundational level in the first place.
A simple analogy would be like we live in our own tree.
The roots would be our potential to internalize authority, take up
personal sovereignty so as to exercise CHOICE over what to believe, to seek the truth and
determine for ourselves what it is, and to choose our purpose and basic
attitude of being a constructive human being. The trunk would be our
WILL, a combination of our feelings, attitude, needs desires, ego and
emotions. The branches would be our habits, decisions, actions, and
behavior. The thing is, we can actually not only prune our tree but if
it is in danger of dying from lack of nutrients, we can uproot it and
plant it in different soil in a different location. This latter is quite
traumatic and destructive unless the "tree" re-grows to an extent greater
than the potential it had before.
Much if not most of psychological counseling and
psychotherapy are concentrated on and directed toward changing specific
behavior rather directly or doing it through changing how we understand and
feel about specific things. It seems to be dimly understood that the most
powerful solution to changing things across the board lies in changing the
foundation or wellspring through taking control of the value and belief
system, changing what is believed. This can only be done on the most basic
and powerful volitional level by taking personal responsibility and using volition to choose what you believe.
It must be quickly noted that psychological counseling and
psychotherapy operate in potentially dangerous territory. It would probably
be considered unethical in the medical profession to try to change a
person's religious foundation or belief, and yet this may be the most
fruitful level to address for certain problems. It would probably be
considered ethical to help identify, clarify and encourage humane values,
but this would still be skating close to the line and open to criticism.
Yet, both of these areas can ethically be addressed by asking careful
questions and careful challenges.
Choosing is not retaining
Choosing what to believe is quite different from getting in touch with what
we have been programmed to believe. Most people never choose what they
believe but rather expend their energies upon defending what they have
been given in the process of growing up. In contrast to retention
of what was injected into us, real belief is practically synonymous with
understanding and is based upon the inward journey to understand oneself; and it is an
active choosing of a position on the major issues (these are issues for
which there is no compelling external influence or evidence) and in the extreme being willing to
stake your life on your choices. It is pro-active, not passive and is
not controlled or determined by “fleeting thoughts, impressions,
emotions, etc. Most people have never even done the thinking to
identify the major issues, much less are they able and willing to stake
their life on their choice.
Finally, we do NOT have to be just complex programmed, externally controlled
meat-sticks, but for those that don’t exercise their
volition on the CHOICE OF BELIEF AND PURPOSE LEVEL that is
largely what they wind up being. This is the essence of the
significant difference between being a mere homo sapiens (a
species of animal) and a spiritually developed human being. |