"If people are furnished with the facts, they will be clearer thinkers .... If they are ignorant, facts will enlighten them. If they are mistaken, facts will set them straight.
In the end, truth will out. Won’t it?
Maybe not. Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It’s this: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.”
The above quotation comes from an article published in the Boston Globe on July 12th (2010).
Although the article concerns itself primarily with political beliefs, any horse person who was involved in the early days of the barefoot “wars” or has participated on message boards where hot-button issues like bits, horse slaughter, wild horse round-ups, or even equine nutrition are discussed, will recognize this syndrome that can be summed up in the statement: “Don’t confuse me with the facts -- I’ve made up my mind.”
Voltaire said: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
So, I think it is important to examine our beliefs. Whether or not we are aware of them, they affect our feelings and our actions. And, if facts -- even cold, hard, “scientific” ones -- do not have the power to make us change our beliefs, what does? What makes us change how we think, feel, and act?
I think that certain kinds of experiences can be transformative. For example, there are numerous accounts of people being completely changed by near-death experiences . In being with horses, a “Pasture Moment” (as defined and illustrated in this blog entry:http://wordsabouthorses.blogspot.com/2010/08/pasture-moments.html) can be such a transformative experience. In a Pasture Moment, Horse (finally!) breaks through the layers of false knowledge, misguided intentions, and faulty beliefs to which Human has clung; beliefs that have numbed us, blinded and deafened us to the truth of what’s going on right here, right now.
Unexamined, unconscious beliefs -- like those formed in childhood, for example -- are extremely powerful. They profoundly affect our attitudes, feelings, and actions without our even realizing it. They close us off to the present moment. They are static in the invisible lines of communication connecting us to the living world around us. When we bring our unconscious beliefs into conscious awareness we set ourself free to be fully in the reality of here and now. We are able to hear and see more clearly.
How do we do that? How do we make the unconscious conscious?
There are LOTS of ways, including various forms of meditation, martial arts, yoga, taichi, qi gong... to name just a few. One very powerful practice, heart rhythm meditation, is described in the book “Living from the Heart” by Puran and Susanna Bair. “Your unconscious mind directs your heart to beat and adapts the heart’s rhythm to your physical and emotional condition. When you become aware of your heartbeat, you will directly witness a behavior of your unconscious. Some of what was unconscious becomes conscious, and a doorway opens between your conscious and unconscious mind. Through this portal you can glimpse the power of your vast unconscious and begin to harness it to your purpose.”
By setting our intention to become aware of each movement, each thought, each heartbeat, and/or each breath for a certain stretch of time, we bring previously unconscious activity into conscious awareness. If we make awareness a regular practice, we become better at it. It begins to permeate all aspects of our lives -- including our being with horses. Our unconscious beliefs begin to rise to the surface and make themselves known.
We can help the process along by inquiring of ourselves: “What do I believe about horses? What do I believe about relationship between Horse and Human?
Whenever we feel ourselves “resisting” (getting angry, upset, irritated, etc.) in response to something that Horse is doing -- we can, instead of acting out or seething in righteous indignation, take a deep breath and ask ourselves: “What (unconscious) expectation is not being met?” What belief is being threatened?”
We can ask ourselves the same questions when we feel ourselves “resisting” (by getting upset, angry, defensive, etc.) or “attacking” someone who presents us facts about “hot button” horse-related things and activities like bits, riding, shoeing, round pens, etc. for example. Our angry, defensive reaction could well be a sign that beliefs are being threatened, that the foundation of our certainty is being undermined.
What are my beliefs about horses, about their needs, their abilities, their intelligence, their feelings? What are my beliefs about riding, about a human’s rights and responsibility toward horses? Where did those beliefs originate?
And, most important: Are those beliefs of mine borne out by the Facts, by the living reality of this Horse with me right now?
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