At a recent conference, I found myself in conversation with a fellow participant. We were exchanging ideas when I saw his expression shift. He began to speak at length about what it meant to be human on the spiritual path. As he spoke, I started to feel less like a collaborator and more like a one-person audience.
About 10 minutes in, I drifted. I wondered what they would offer us for lunch and whether I would make it home on the train.
In the past, I might have berated myself for my lapse in attention, but something about the quality of the interaction stopped the usual self-flagellation. Perhaps, I thought, this was a very justifiable moment of countertransference, an unconscious response shaped partly by the other.
Later, a friend agreed this was a case of what we jokingly called “conference-splaining” – a phenomenon where conviction takes over and the conversation becomes unnervingly one-way. Of course, this is not limited to conference-goers – we are all guilty of it. I confess, I was probably waxing lyrical about an issue only a few days ago!
The irony is that the beliefs we find ourselves pontificating about are often very interesting, even resonant, to the listener. And yet, this isn’t a problem of content, but rather the way we relate to our beliefs – the way rigidity and indignation can shut down the relational field. In these moments, we find little room for surprise or joint discovery, the kind that makes a conversation alive and reciprocal: a kind of thinking together.
We often treat beliefs as if they are final, fixed and settled, not up for negotiation. It is far more difficult to allow them to be more open and responsive to other viewpoints.
Beliefs are better understood as constructions that work on us, and through us. As late Buddhist teacher Rob Burbea suggests, the views we are attached to shape what we notice, overlook and who we take ourselves to be – in other words, our perception. But when unchecked and calcified, they can do the very opposite: narrowing perception and eliciting an unproductive righteousness. Even the most skilful views can, when clung to, become limiting.
Seen this way – and in the spirit of cultural theorist Sara Ahmed, who asks this of emotions – it becomes interesting to ask what beliefs do exactly; how they circulate between us and shape our social realities.
Like many of us, I’ve moved through a range of belief systems with real commitment. At 14, I became a card-carrying communist. This centred less on politics and more about hope: I imagined a world with equal wealth, a utopia. Soon after, I became a Wiccan feminist, then a Buddhist. I won’t bore you with the rest of the list. Suffice to say, my poor mother.
Each time, I was trying something on, experimenting, and I see now that this was not trivial. As my beliefs changed – what I took to be true – so too did my values: what mattered to me and my sense of purpose. My imagination widened around who I might become and how I might get there. Beliefs shaped me, sometimes cajoling me into something better, more socially aware and responsive.
Beliefs are necessary. Without a working blueprint of the world and our place in it, it would be hard to function. And the Buddha suggests it is through skilful views (or “right view”) that we can deepen our direct insight into reality, thereby lessening suffering.
And yet, we rarely see beliefs as evolving or in service of a broader goal. We cling to them. The Buddha offers this metaphor: suppose an individual comes to a “large deluge”. There is no bridge or ferryboat. So, they gather grass, sticks, branches and leaves to construct a raft. They use it to cross safely to the other side. Once at the other side, do you carry your raft with you?
The answer, of course, is no.
The raft was indispensable – without it, you wouldn’t have crossed. But once you have, you don’t carry it with you out of misplaced identification, loyalty or fear. You put it down and carry on. And yet this is exactly what many of us do. We cling to the raft, unable to see that our conditions may have changed – or that the raft is obstructing our connection to the world around us. What began as a necessary structure becomes a burden we must carry at all costs.
Beliefs, like everything, are prone to death. What once felt alive and charged with possibility loses its pull. I think back to the intensity of debates in my 20s, about cosmology, whether there was something beyond the human realm. I was in my own way, stretching my imagination beyond what my culture allowed. Now, many of those questions have lost their grip, but I still marvel at the work they did on me.
The psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott spoke of play as therapeutic – a space where we can explore, try things on, revise our position and relate flexibly. What if we held our beliefs with such curiosity and delight? Could we admire their power to support us and stretch us, while also reanimating them through play and exchange?
When held with curiosity, beliefs can be productive, creative and alive, but they can also imprison us, closing down life itself. We risk this when we forget they were only ever a raft to be appreciated and then gently set down.
