The difference between believing and knowing.
Is there a difference?

 
Ok you don't know how old you are, you live in the middle of your head. You don't own anything.
Yes on paper you own many things car's, houses, businesses, etc. " In reality you don't.
You don't even own the paper the contract was written on!
Please re-read the football story above if you still don't understand.

Its not a comfortable thought to think or realize, you don't know how old you are,
you live in the middle of your head, and you don't really own anything.

We'll what do we really know about anything?
Very good question!
Very little from one point of view!

Let me expand on the concept of belief and knowing.
This is where things really start to get wacky!
I will explain to you how the mind has gathered all of it's information and formed your perception
(reality or viewpoint of life and how the world works as you know it) in simplistic terms.

A human learns from visual (seeing) , audio (hearing), emotional(feeling) and tactual (touching) association process,
there are other methods, these are the primary main ones.
Babies watch intensely as the world swirls around them. Attempting to recognize patterns,
familiarity and things that bring it comfort, weather it be physical comfort like food when hungry or emotional comfort,
like the warm glow of the mothers face and soft touch.
As we grow older we are taught to operate on associations.
This is that or this means that, or these series of things means another series of things.
For example a teacher in school points to a yellow skinny hard thing and says pencil.
over and over again, until every time you see it you think pencil.
They point to strange markings that you create by moving the pencil. A,B,C, etc.
They call them letters.
They repeat, you associate those markings with those words.
Basically every object in this world has a name for it and you must memorize and associate a word with it.
Not only objects though, objects are the easy part.
Movements, we must carefully study movements, movements of objects, people, animals and associate a name for the movements.
Then it gets harder.

We must figure out, actions and motives, based on movements, mixed with speech or sometimes not even speech, merely sounds or grunts.
We must know Identify what someone is doing or attempting to do or has done!
Sometimes the lack of movement or speech say's a lot.

Your mother points to clear liquid and says "water" then drinks some out of a glass or sometimes points to it in the bathtub,
and for years you have come to think of that clear liquid as water.

Association, get it? Visual, Audio, Emotional and Tactual. Seeing, hearing, feeling and touching.
Of course there is tasting and smelling. I wont forget that.

If you are in a science lab at school and you see a three glass tubes, each with a different colored liquid in them,
red, blue, and yellow sitting on a worktable. A fellow class-mate tells you to drink one of them. You respond "know way!".
You are probably refusing because you don't know what those colored liquids are.
You don't want to get hurt by drinking some unknown substance that may injure you.

One the other hand if you have been brought up from birth to recognize that when you see three glass tubes,
each with a different colored liquid in them, red, blue, and yellow sitting on a table, that they are safe to drink,
you would be more inclined to drink one or all of them.
You would be inclined to do so because you associated those with something you believed to be true and safe.
If you encounter something that you have little or no association for. You will not understand the object,
you might not be able to even see the object for what it really is. And you certainly are going to approach it with caution, if you approach it at all!
Therefore association represents familiarity not necessarily trust, but it represents some form of acceptance of what you think you are dealing with.

example: I see that you just had an abortion, I accept(realize or made aware of) that you had an abortion, but I disagree with it.
The acceptance was the realizing of the concept. Because if you didn't accept or understand the concept of an abortion,
you would not see it or be talking about it, you would be oblivious to the notion that abortions even exist.
The mere fact you know about abortions means you have accepted that idea into your association memory banks.

You must accept what you will allow into your association memory banks and what you will associate these,
events, movements, ideas, objects or concepts with.
Someone can say "that is a Ford car, that symbol means it's a Ford car."
You can reject that and say no that symbol means it's a Toyota, and forever more you can and will associate the Ford symbol with Toyota cars.
You can associate anything you want with whatever you want!

We have been taught to associate everything in our life with a certain concept.
We go to school so we can learn things, so we can graduate and get a good money paying job, so we can have financial security,
so we don't have to struggle financially, so we can then have the time and security to raise 2.4 children and purchase your cute dream home,
with a nice yard, fence and a cat and dog that love each other, etc.
We are taught to respect authority, obey laws, policies, pay taxes, trust your doctor, take pills for headaches,
colds are caught, crack your knuckles get arthritis, trust your government is looking out for your best interests, etc.

These things are all taught to us, by the use of association and repetition.
If you repeat things long enough, you will associate with it and most likely believe it.

Basically everything you think you know about the world has been taught to you, through the use of repetition and association.
You are literally taking someone else word for it that, things are the way, they have told you they are!
Obviously you are not forming your opinions from just one persons word, but your friends, your family,
your teachers, the media, religious institutions and scientists. You are constantly being exposed to different sources of information.

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