Last week I shared with you a section of the book, The Soul of a Pilgrim: Eight Practices for the Journey Within. It's a resource I'm using to prepare for my upcoming Camino journey, but on a broader level, one for looking at the internal journey that we're all walking. In the book, Christine Valters Paintner speaks to the spiritual practice of embracing doubt. She lists three gifts of this practice including 1) Resting in the Tensions of Life 2) Questioning Long-Held Assumptions 3) Plunging Myself More into Mystery.
Following last week's post, focusing on Resting in the Tensions of Life, this time I want to explore the value of questioning Long-Held Assumptions. In thinking about the meaning of the word assumptions, I found this one:
"An assumption is an unexamined belief: what we think without realizing we think it." https://library.louisville.edu/ekstrom/criticalthinking/assumptions
I especially liked that this definition noted that we had these assumptions "without realizing we think it." That sent me into a brainstorm of "What are my long-held assumptions?"; I can't question them if I don't know what they are. One way to uncover them is by thinking about decisions I made, values I have, and looking at the origin-- at the long-held assumption underneath.
I saw a quote by a really smart guy on this subject:
https://quotefancy.com/quote/764201/Albert-Einstein-Assumptions-are-made-and-most-assumptions-are-wrong
I think about the assumptions I've carried throughout my life. For all of us, we pick up our first ones in our family, the values that we were immersed in from our earliest memories. Growing up on a farm with parents born in the 1920s, some of those long-held assumptions, especially from my father, had to do with the value of hard work. At that time, it referred to physical labor which was what our family knew; mental labor, the toil of someone in an academic or professional position, wasn't something that counted when tilling the land. Our assumption became, "People who work hard are honorable and will prosper; those who don't are lazy and that's why they have little."
A long-held assumption that my mother passed on to us, was that "If you drink alcohol, at all, you will become an alcoholic and your life will be ruined." No doubt that belief, that worked its way into an assumption about all people, had taken root years before when a relative, I'd never known, had problems; that could have been due to over-consumption or to a genetic makeup that made them vulnerable to drinking.
Another assumption that I had as a woman in my early twenties, was if you married someone of the same faith--for me it was Christian faith, and you did everything you could to honor that commitment, that union would last "until death do us part."
For all three of those assumptions, I came to question their validity. While there was good in valuing hard, honest work it was also overvalued in our family and there wasn't enough of just being, resting. It didn't account for people who were unable to work because of physical or mental health reasons-- like clients I served in my nursing career.
While I agreed that over-consuming alcohol leads to health problems and life complications, I also discovered that moderate drink does make the heart glad. I also respected that some folks have made a conscious and wise decision not to drink at all.
And as to marriage, I, like many others, learned that just because you follow what you're taught in the faith about being "equally yoked" it doesn't guarantee you'll stay together. Life is filled with surprises, changes that you couldn't foresee, unfolding in ways that seem contradictory but may be for your highest good.
These are some of the assumptions from my life, and I'm sure you have ones that you recognize in yours. When we look at those things we've come to believe, it also reminds me of the value of looking at our thoughts--the errors we commonly have in thinking. Years ago, when I began working in mental health, I was introduced to Cognitive-Behavioral therapy. I realized, for the first time, how many mistakes I made in my thinking that were not good for my mental health.
I found a thorough article that gives clear examples of how our ways of thinking can mislead us: "Cognitive Distortions: 22 Examples & Worksheet Cognitive Distortions: 22 Examples & Worksheets (& PDF) by Courtney E. Ackerman, MA.. https://positivepsychology.com/cognitive-distortions/. In questioning long-held assumptions, Ackerman's description of how our mind works, how we develop distortions is helpful. She says, "there are some occasions when you may want to second guess what your brain is telling you. It's not that your brain is purposely lying to you, it's just that it may have developed some faulty or non-helpful connections over time."
Our parents and elders, the people around us, have these same vulnerabilities to developing ways of thinking that aren't accurate; they also impact the long-held assumptions they developed, and passed on.
Ackerman goes on to say, "It can be surprisingly easy to create faulty connections in the brain. Our brains are predisposed to making connections between thoughts, ideas, actions, and consequences, whether they are truly connected or not."
It's been helpful for me to look at the long-held assumptions that I've collected over my lifetime. No matter our age, it's never too late to change ways of thinking that are inaccurate and keep us from living our life fully. Sometimes when I see how my cognitive distortions are impacting me, I'm reminded of verses in the Bible that challenge me to take notice of how I'm thinking, like in Romans 12:2 where it says to "be transformed by the renewal of your mind" . . .
In going back to Paintner's spiritual practice of embracing doubt when it comes to pilgrimage that I referenced last week The Pilgrimage Within, I think of a Long-Held Assumption that my mother had which I encountered on my first solo journey. When she learned I was going to Sedona by myself, she responded, "A woman shouldn't travel alone." She maintained that belief every year when I told her my plan. I had to challenge that idea with the facts of how many women are traveling solo today and ways to do that safely.
My hope is that something in this post has resonated with your life. Whether we're going on a pilgrimage in a distant place or traveling to a new place internally, self-examination of our Long-Held Assumptions can help us. It's never too late to correct limiting ways of thinking and replace that with an enlarged view that opens up our internal and external worlds.
Best to you,
Connie
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