In a recent previous post we discussed the courage of doubt. Let’s look at the use of doubt.
Why
Why do we harness this courage? It is to be our own person, to live with freedom, and accomplish who we are.
How
Undoubtedly, there are many avenues in which to approach thinking about doubt, or any concept really. We cannot consider one “better” or “worse” than another. But investigate we must if we are to seek freedom.
So, in one sense, it does not matter which path one takes. In another sense, it matters enormously. Can both be true? Yes, it can. If we are to truly investigate, we best to not choose a method or path that just reinforces our conditioned thinking. Our minds have a capacity and tendency to choose that which is often safer and easier. It is a form of self-preservation. We need to accept the challenge of the kind of thinking that will allow us to challenge our thinking.
This is where doubt comes in. When we consider doubt as something that simply exists, something that we do not need to control or be controlled by, as something that can be beneficial or harmful depending on how we employ it, as a part of human life, as a tool… then we can know doubt and allow it to help us investigate our world. Just as much as I am not my assumptions, I am not my doubt.
Avoiding jumping to the first conclusions we might come to is a beginning sign of the beneficial use of our doubt. In fact, it should be said that the questions we ask are far more important and significant than any answers we might arrive at. Living and breathing within the confines of the questions raised is a most favorable situation. This is not so in order to be unmoored from reality, but to see that the experience of doubt can be the lever from which we see the many aspects of the world around us.
Avoidance
When looking to investigate the world, I tend to avoid questions like “Why do I X?” where X is any activity I might engage in. Questions about my motivations are fraught with the personal, the personality, and the psychological world. It is complex issue to investigate one’s own psyche. Therefore the focus here is on questions like “What is this?” where the ‘this’ in that statement is not narrowed to a single item or persona or incident, but is the broadest definition of the word, up to and including the entire world experience. In the question “What is this?” no one word is emphasized. By stressing one word over another I might inadvertently accentuate one view over another. It is not “What is this?” It is not “What is this?” It is not “What is this?” All words in the question are of equal emphasis.
Use
Doubt, and its sister courage, combined can break through one’s conditioned experience of the world. When I realize I am not the assumptions that confine me, then I equally know I am not my doubt. I can stand and accept doubt as I experience it, but I am not doubt. When I accept doubt without owning it, I can see it and use it. That is why doubt is so powerful.
In The Real World
So this investigation might appear to be in the world of theory, psychology, spirituality, or metaphysics. But there can be very concrete applications of doubt. This use of doubt can filter all the way down even to my financial life. By embracing doubt, I must admit that often the reply to a question is “I Don’t Know.” I don’t know which stock will go up or down today, tomorrow, or at anytime. (No one really knows either.) I can surround myself in research, but that is just trying to add some additional percentage points to the variability of the equation. By not really knowing, I admit to myself that I am taking a chance, I am engaging in risk. I will need to take my chances and wait to see what happens. As a result, I try to assess what will happen under normal circumstances, under normal conditions. Since events often do not stick to “normal,” any plan I make is just that–a plan. And I can live with the risk because I live in the world of risk and doubt. It allows me to detach, or at least, distance myself emotionally from my conditioning.
Have you found your use of doubt? Let me know here.
The 12th Century carving of Adam and Eve eating apples is at the Lincoln Cathedral in Lincoln, England. The construction of the building itself started in 1072. The photograph is copyright Richard Croft and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license. Courtesy geograph.org.uk.
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