Confidence and Doubt

The Confidence Bluff

Doubt invites attack by showing vulnerability and society protects its structure by trying to silence the questioner. Confidence draws unsure people like moths to a flame, because it gives them a feeling of safety.

Radiating this confidence signals that the person is on familiar ground and can take care of whatever arises, meaning their opinions are given weight by others. People wish to connect to folks who make them feel safe and are willing to accept their expert opinions, because of this feeling.

If you wish to lead others and have folks feed your feeling of importance, confidence in your beliefs is a great thing to have. However, being accepted as right and important does not make you either. It’s something others choose to believe about you, and is driven by fear and a need for acceptance. Finding your own path is the goal, not leading others. Confidence in your own path doesn’t mean your view is correct for anyone else.

Be aware that confidence is a construct of your conscious mind. This structure requires ordered clarity, an explainable understanding, and repetitive success. If you’re positive of a thing or sure of a situation, one of three things has happened. You’ve sorted things yourself often enough, or applied another’s successfully working structure, or are fooling yourself/others so you feel in control.

There is a need, by you and the folks that have chosen to look to you for guidance, to feel you’re standing in a known space, on safe, solid ground. Safe, solid ground is not a bad thing and is a great place to rest when you’re feeling overwhelmed. Everyone needs that from time to time, but it’s not the place that creates growth and change. Doubt gives permission for you not to know how you know. Doubt and vulnerability tell you you’re walking into the unknown, and the discomfort your conscious mind feels is a chance for growth.

The Stupidity of Intelligence

Intelligence doesn’t prevent you from hitting a saturation point of conflicting opinions and doubt, but it can make you believe you have it sorted. In fact, intelligence will build excellent structures to ensure your conscious mind remains comfortable. These are the structures folks sell to others as the answer. These are, at best, a temporary and unsatisfying respite from the search your spirit longs to continue. Your conscious mind’s comfort isn’t the answer.

Wait… what? Once the intelligent person spends all this time building a structure of understanding , they will, like everyone else, stop being open to new information unless it fits their story’s narrative. They have hit their saturation point and formed conclusions about the many things. These conclusions should be temporary and revisited as more info comes in, but often become permanent.

The more intelligent the person, the cleverer the conceptual idea and the more confident they become in their opinions. Unfortunately, they become more convincing as well, and can lead others to believe they have discovered the answer. That is, the all-powerful and never-changing answer, which will ease the conscious mind, but doesn’t exist in this word-filled reality.

Once a structure of ideas is finished, the intelligent person has achieved clarity and comfort. If they refuse the challenge of contradictory information, they miss excellent points of enlightenment others can offer. In this way, intelligent people can make very ignorant decisions. Their intelligence is turned toward defending the structure they have built and working to retain followers of their ideas, instead of seeking what should be their evolving personal truth.

Conscious Choices

This happens because the conscious mind thinks its comfort and surety is the goal, when discomfort and doubt is actually necessary to the cycle of growth. The conscious mind must chose the discomfort of the unknown, if growth is to be achieved by the spirit. How do you get the conscious mind to choose vulnerability?

We must allow the right questions and focus upon growth at the cost of structure and safety. This can be a scary proposition for the self that prizes its collection of beliefs and opinions. Much like the caterpillar’s structure must breakdown into a gooey mass to recombine into a butterfly, we must be willing to release the filter we view the world through and remake our perception of reality and of ourselves.

Letting go, of the word-filled structure we use to confine and define reality, can take place one piece at a time, or in large chunks all at once. The power of the right question must be used to expand into doubt and discomfort. Choose carefully, for it is up to you how fast you go, and that should depend on how ready for change you are.

The Pitfalls of Restructuring

The saying God never gives you more than you can handle is not true. It tries to hide the harshness of the reality we live every day, hiding behind soundbites. If God were in charge, we would have Eden, a utopian cooperative, without judgment or malice. There would be no hospitals, no mental or emotional breakdowns, and no one falling apart from the pressure of living, but God isn’t in charge of distributing suffering. Pain is a given, but suffering is optional.

Remember, you need to question everything, but how much you try to handle and how fast you move is up to you. It is possible, like a jenga tower, to move too fast or try to do too much. Do the best you can each day, try to replace at least one incorrect opinion, and be kind to yourself. You must learn to doubt without blame or guilt.

Don’t judge yourself harshly for believing what others taught you, and don’t judge others for passing on what they were taught. Everyone, from their point on the path, is doing what they can. Measure your progress against where you were yesterday and don’t push past your best. Trying too hard or measuring your self against others leads to confusion, madness, and death. A dramatic statement, but utter collapse isn’t what we seek. An understanding and acceptance of our potential is the goal.

The pursuit of cleaning your filter is not the safe bet. It is a personal and bold step into the unknown. You are attempting to see the world with new vision, leaping into the void, and admitting you don’t know. It involves trusting a part of yourself the world of things has told you is scary and illogical. And the world of things is correct about the scary. There are few rules to govern doubt, and words will only take you into the edge of this unknown.