Wily Walnut's Blog

What is cognitive dissonance, and how do you learn to deal with it?

Cognitive dissonance is the internal state of conflict (disturbance) that arises when two opposing paradigms or beliefs collide in your consciousness.

Example of cognitive dissonance: Religion versus Science
You've been brought up in a particular religion and hold the notion of a personal God. You've become a 'seeker' and have explored other spiritual traditions, philosophies and ideas. You've broadened your concept of God but still retain some sense of God focused into a loving source that gives you personal comfort and hope.

But you are a seeker, you want 'the Truth', you want the real. So you are always exploring. And that exploration includes examining science and in doing so, you recognise that the majority of scientists are atheists, and that they have very different explanations and ideas about the creation of the Universe than your religion does.

In all honesty, you have to agree with the evidence of the scientists. You start to see how people habitually fill in the gaps in their knowledge with fable and fantasy. The ancients who wrote the various bibles of the world religions, knew nothing about electricity, about how weather is really created, and all the vast knowledge that we have today. They were so ignorant.

And so you start to examine your idea of God. You can see and sense how your 'need' for God is largely based on fear. You are frightened of being alone, frightened of meaninglessness, frightened of the apparent sterility of a world with no 'Godness' in it.

Now you have cognitive dissonance.

On the one hand, you have the need for God in your life and the comfort you derive from it, the sense of unfailing love and sweetness. On the other hand, you perceive the reality of facts -- and the genuine illumination of knowledge. Your desire for sweetness and comfort fights with your desire for the Truth and what is real. The two paradigms slug it out, fighting for dominance in your consciousness. It's a meme battle. And you are disturbed.

How do you cope with cognitive dissonance without retreating from it? The temptation is always to disgard the new knowledge, the new paradigm, and retreat to the familliarity of the old paradigm. But that is not progressive -- and sickens you at some level of your soul. The real never needs to be entrenched. It reveals itself for what it is.
There is no denying the level of inner discomfort that you get from cognitive dissonance. My personal formula for dealing with it is: time + awareness + persistence.

The longer you dwell with it the more used to it you become.

The more awareness you bring to it, the more you can see it for what it is... programs fighting to use the hardware of your brain.

The longer you stick in there, the more you will learn about yourself and your reality.

For increasing awareness, I recommend you sit down for ten minutes in the morning, and just become aware. Breathe in and out, and think... 'I am breathing in and I am breathing out.' Observe and note what you are observing and doing. 'I am aware that I am thinking about breakfast'...'I am aware of the sound of the hot water pipes' ... 'I am aware of the tension in my jaw'... and so on.

You can adapt this and continue it at odd moments through the day. As you do or notice something, just think to yourself... 'I am picking up the cup'...'I am writing on the paper'...'I see the bird flying across the sky' and so on.

You can apply this to your cognitive dissonance too: 'I am aware that I am feeling afraid right now' ... 'I am aware of the pull to retreat back to the comfortable old belief' ... 'I am aware that its normal for someone with this belief to feel challenged by this new knowledge'.

Leonardo da Vinci advised people who want to be more creative to embrace paradox (see Da Vinci Brain Bomb Number 4). Paradox occurs when you find yourself straddling two or more paradigms. Paradox is the old fashioned name for the confusion that we now label cognitive dissonance.

Labels: awareness, paradigms, self-help

If paradigm shifting is seen to be a beneficial exercise for those who wish to evolve and be more creative, how do you do it safely? How can you explore new paradigms without getting trapped within them? Obviously if you are 100% committed to a paradigm, then you are unwilling to entertain anything outside of that paradigm. You are going to argue for the inside of the box. None of your thinking will be outside of the box.

There is plenty of room within most paradigms for profitable creative thinking. In fact, all profitable thinking occurs within somebody’s box or paradigm. Creative thinking that occurs outside of the box, outside of the current paradigm is usually too revolutionary to make money from – at least in the beginning.

First is rarely first when it comes to making money from a new idea.

Nevertheless, if you are passionate about new discoveries, innovation and enlightenment, you will want to push and stretch the envelope. You will feel an inner compulsion to break out of the box and enter the chaos zone the other side. In that realm, which Deepak Chopra refers to as the ‘field of all possibilities’, you will get whipped into confusion but may emerge with a brand new insight, understanding or concept that will revolutionize your own paradigm… and maybe the world’s too.

The 3 Anchors For Safe Paradigm Exploration
You want to explore other paradigms. Stretching your mind to different parameters seems like a good idea. You expect it to open you up and make you a more creative person. It might even give you that mercurial brain you want. But you are hesitant. You know how sticky belief systems can be. Once you are in it, it’s hard to get out again. But here are 3 anchors you can use, so you can explore and remain free.

1. Define who you are.
Define who you are currently. Denis Waitley remarks that if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything. So define your current paradigm. List your values. List your strengths and weaknesses. Outline your current world view. People define themselves by the beliefs and paradigms they hold dear. You fear that you will lose yourself by exploring other paradigms, so this little exercise will act as a reminder of who you are. Just in case you get a lost along the way.

2. Create your best working paradigm.
In defining who you are, you should polish up your understanding of your current paradigm and give yourself the best working version that you can… for the purpose at hand. You are going exploring. So you want a paradigm in which you are ‘bigger’ than all that you will be exploring. You can twist that whichever way you want. But you need to have some way of maintaining the observer or witness role. Yours must be the big picture universal position – if you want to ensure that you don’t get lost in your explorations.

3. Carry your zero-the-hero explorer’s toolbox.
Indiana Jones never left home without his bullwhip and brown Fedora hat. So you should pack a toolbox too. And in that toolbox stuff stuff the 'Zero State' concept. This incorporates the idea that all paradigms require an investment of belief by you to give them life. This is like a projection in the Zero State, which is like the underlying field of all possibilities -- a blank slate if you will, on which you project your paradigm. Basically you are working with the idea that all paradigms exist within something larger and better.

In the School of Thinking, they offer a code called CVStoBVS which stands for Current View of Situation to Better View of Situation. If you remember that there is always a better view of the situation (a better paradigm) you’ll leave exit room from the paradigm you are currently exploring.

Think: “It’s just a paradigm. It’s not the Absolute Truth.”

Now you know how to explore a paradigm without getting trapped by it. You’ll probably get trapped or temporarily stuck anyway. But if you remember these tips, and remember you are an explorer of paradigms not a marketer or apostle of a particular paradigm, you will get free again. And in freedom, you’ll be more creative.

Labels: belief systems, change, paradigms

You’re an explorer. You’ve decided life is more than just the daily grind. You’re on a mission to find out what underlies it. Like the Scooby Doo team, you’re a mystery hunter. But not for you the spooky fairground or the haunted mansion. You’re investigating the mystery of Life itself.

You look around to see if anyone else has figured it out. Plenty claim to have worked it out. They package their ideas as beliefs. And they want you to join in and share their belief. People take comfort in having shared beliefs. The more people they can get to believe their idea also, the easier it becomes for them to believe in it totally themselves. Ideas are like that.

Beliefs are just packages of ideas orbiting around a particular theme. The theme is the big idea. The mothership idea. And it is hungry for your energy. It lives and thrives by accumulating believers to feed it with belief energy. An idea can only run and run when it has legs. Yours!

So here you are in a whole world of beliefs and paradigms. They are all jostling and fighting for your attention. You have the one thing they need to survive. Attention.

To really understand a belief, you have to experience it from the inside. But there is great danger because once you are inside a belief, it has your attention, and it doesn’t want to let it go. Beliefs are clever little things. Devious even. They are structured to make it hard for you to let the belief go. Stop believing and you’ll be an outcast, an outsider. Stop believing and you’ll be… damned! Fear is a useful weapon in sustaining beliefs and retaining people’s energy and attention.

Explorers seek to live above beliefs though. Explorers seek freedom and liberation and inifinite states of energy and understanding. Explorers seek to improve upon what is known. That is abhorrent to beliefs. A belief has to be static, fixed and limited. Only by its defintion can it have life. Beliefs are threatened by evolution. Some beliefs even ban the concept!

But there are some benefits to beliefs. And we explorers don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater do we? What’s the point of exploring anything if we don’t take what’s of value from it. (Gosh, listen to me, I would have made a great colonialist!)

We can derive comfort and confidence from certain beliefs. We can use certain beliefs to give us a mental structure (a navigational point) with which to explore this life.

Imagine if you found yourself in deep outer space, a zillion miles from Earth and everything you know. You’ve no body, just consciousness. How would you know which way was up, or down, left or right? You wouldn’t. You would have nothing to navigate by. No way of understanding or relating to where you are. You would have to start naming things, and forming a belief about where you are. It’s made up. It’s your best guess. But it gives you a basic framework to work with. And you derive some comfort from that.

It’s like when the first European settlers got to America or Australia. Everything was new and unknown to them. So they would set up a village and name it after some town that was familiar to them back in the mother country. That made them feel more secure.

So, beliefs can be useful.

But, as stated, beliefs don’t like to let go of you. Beliefs as memes want to infect other people. They want you to become converts and apostles. Beliefs need you to ‘spread the word’ and pass on the virus. Beliefs need fresh host minds to propogate in. So, beware! If you use a belief, keep your escape hatch open. Don’t lose yourself in a belief. If you do, you’ll stop being an explorer and will instead be a believer. And believers abuse beliefs by seeking to infect others (often against their will) with the belief meme.

At least, that’s my belief! ;-) .

And you’re welcome to share it! :-))

Labels: belief systems, beliefs, believers, paradigms

Creative thinking requires exposure to many ideas so you can formulate new connections. Confusion can arise when those ideas include beliefs or paradigms of ‘ultimate truth’. The degree to which you can be flexible enough to shift from paradigm to paradigm without going crazy-bonkers can be called your multiple paradigm tolerance factor.

You wear sunscreen or sunblock cream with a high Sun Protection Factor to protect you from the burning UV rays of the sun. When exploring multiple paradigms you’ll need some kind of protection too. Otherwise you’ll get mentally burned. I speak from experience.

If you are an explorer of big ideas, part of the new age, or what’s commonly called a ‘seeker’, you can probably resonate with this concept. You’ve got a bookcase full of eastern and western philosophies. You’ve got Yoga, Chi Kung, you’ve got channelled teachings, you’ve got ancient spiritual texts, you’ve got this guru, that philosopher, the success gurus spouting quantum physics, and the agnostic scientist presenting his or her grand theory of everything. You’re hungry for Truth. You’re on a path to enlightenment. But you’ve no map, no clue, and everyone else is trying to sell you on their particular meme. Couple that with the demands of daily life, your aging body, and the challenges of getting ahead in this world. You’ve got a recipe for some serious existential stress.

So how do you deal with it? First off, recognise that there will be stress from entertaining multiple paradigms or belief systems. Accept it. Leonard da Vinci talked about the creative importance of developing a tolerance for ambiguity and paradox. In the space between two conflicting beliefs, there is opportunity for innovation, insight and the new. I think of that space as a kind of chaos, like the primordial chaos out of which new worlds are born.

I think once you’ve established that the stress of paradigm shifting will occur, it becomes part of the known. You’ve outlined it, which puts you back in the big picture observer role. This gives you the tolerance factor. The confusion chaos can now occur within the space of your awareness. And becomes more bearable because you are bigger than it, and have a rationale for it.

The other way of dealing with it is the simple brain dump. Just dump everything you are exploring and get some rest. Be normal again. Wake up afresh the next day and start again. Meditate a little. This will give you insight and space. The more mental space you can create the greater will be your multiple paradigm tolerance factor.

Labels: belief systems, creative thinking, paradigms