Insight

The speaker discusses the idea of starting one's own belief system as we grow older. They mention that insight or experiences can lead to the formation of these belief systems, whether religious or secular. They emphasize the importance of verifying and making sense of these beliefs through journals, blogs, or discussions with like-minded individuals. However, they also acknowledge that some people may spread nonsense beliefs. The speaker mentions the transmission of ideas and the desire for recognition as part of the process. They stress that the effect of one's beliefs is more important than recognition. The speaker concludes by stating that how individuals go about creating useful beliefs will differ for everyone. Hi everyone, I thought I'd talk today about starting one's own belief system. Now this is an interesting subject because we all as we get older do this to one degree or another. It may happen through some major insight, life insight, it could be just a nihilistic, there's no point to anything, atheistic or secular type of insight where nothing magical or nothing supernatural exists and so that is the insight that you have and you then look around for creating something positive or useful for yourself. If you are religious and that is my particular thing if you like, you will express some form of insight if you have any form of insight. A lot of people talk about religion or they say it means this or it means that but they haven't gone very deeply into it, it's just opinions that they're repeating. If you're going into it in an insightful way or a way where it has actually transformed something within you then that is completely different, that is a mystical thing if you like. But people do have life experiences that are important, they may see something or experience something and it transforms them in some way, it gives them some insight and then from that they will look for verification of that. So for example if they feel the most important thing is to transform themselves in some way or to transform society through politics or through art or whatever it is because as I say people's experience is different and so it's important to in some way verify that and this is why we have journals or blogs or we talk with people with similar ideas and we make some kind of sense of them. Now you have a negative side of that obviously that some people are just completely confused about what is happening and there's other people who are confused in a slightly similar way and they find some consolidation around that. So there's people spreading nonsense just as vehemently. And if you look at something like science, I mean people will say well science is true, maths is true, so they will find, or programming is an absolute, you're dealing with absolutes which make sense, or engineering, whatever it is, it doesn't matter, they will find that they are looking for people with similar ideas or employment or whatever it is so they will be verifying or consolidating or creating an experience around that which is useful to them. And then maybe later on they will transmit what they've experienced, what they know in some form. So you get transmission as well, the transmission of ideas, the transmission and the spread of your particular belief system. And they may get recognition for that. In mystical terms recognition is not important, it's not even primary at all, it's the effect that is important. But for most people transmission of one's ideas and recognition of one's ideas, in other words that you're recognised as being somebody who's an expert or able to engender or create or develop similar understanding and wisdom within other people is part of the process. The important thing for me is the effect. What is the effect of what you're doing? Is the effect to create more confusion and more nonsense and more anti... it's like making people more unhappy or trying to find some way of making them happy, more able and more content and more at peace with themselves. So that to me is the important thing, is the effect of what you're doing. And how you do that and how you go about that process is going to be different for everyone. So that's just a little bit about the possibilities of going through life, finding something that is useful and finding some way of doing something useful with that. I hope it's of use to people. OK, that's all from me. Bye now.