Admit Wrong, then Imagine Better

“Every mile you go in the wrong direction is really a two mile error. Unlearning is twice as hard as learning.”
– Unknown


Unlearning and Admitting Wrong

Understanding who we are, what we are doing here, and what is taking place within and around us is restricted by the barriers of failing to admit we are wrong. Letting go of attachment to illusions and falsity is the way to learn who we truly are and what is happening.

Eventually we need to admit and accept we are wrong about many things. This may require experiencing the negative consequences of our actions by reaping what we sowed through the rhythm of natural law cause and effect. Sometimes we need to suffer and fall into chaos, before we can honestly face the mirror of our actions and rise above them.

I can personally attest to the self-realization of how wrong I was, to how much we are currently being tricked, conned, deceived, manipulated, lied to, bamboozled, hoodwinked, screwed and fooled. Admitting we are wrong is the first necessary step in a journey to resolving the problems before us.

We can then either choose to continue making the same mistakes and continue to be deceived through our ignorance, or we can recognize that we no longer want to be deceived, manipulated and lied to, and instead choose to reconstruct our erroneous perception of reality.

Once we can come to terms with accepting how wrong we are, we can choose a better way and path in life. This begins with choosing to care to seek the truth about reality, what ‘is’.

Only through admitting we are wrong, when we are wrong, can we learn what is right, and stop making the same mistakes.

“A man who has committed a mistake and doesn’t correct it, is committing another mistake.”
– Confucius

We don’t like to admit we are wrong because we mostly want to believe we are right. We are often not curious enough to doubt and question ourselves. Certainty needs to be verified with an accurate understanding of reality.

Tell me one person who wants to do the wrong thing? No one wants that truly. But how many people also want to seek out the truth, no matter what?

There is a problem here… of confusion, apathy, cowardice or fear of truth… We must face the horror, darkness, shadow, demon, falsity, wrong, immorality and evil within us that has us create falsity in the world. Life involves learning about ourselves and the programmed conditioned ways of falsity that we live by.

In general, we mostly all strive to do what is right, and we often fail. But we also don’t want to admit that we missed something simple or obvious that led us to make an error. It’s hard to accept we were fooled, tricked and bought into falsity. Our conditioned ways of thinking, our ego-defenses and cognitive biases prevent us from facing ourselves honestly.

Many people also think if something was true then more people would be talking about it, that they would already know, and therefore they can ignore new information and not inquire nor further investigate into how accurate it is or not.

We are unaware of many things, but to admit this seems like an embarrassment for many. We prefer to have misplaced certainty in our own abilities and overestimate ourselves. This is related to what is called the Dunning-Kruger effect where some overestimate their skills and abilities, and others underestimate their skills and abilities. Those who don’t know or understand something, think they do, and suffer from a form of illusory superiority. This can lead to rejection of new information that they think they already know or that they perceive is invalid.

It is important to want to know what is right from what is wrong, what is true from what is false, so that we can then express truth and what is right, as opposed to expressing what is false and wrong.

The environment we grow up in includes everything we see, hear, and experience from our own perception. If we are taught something is true when it is false, we will keep that false knowledge and hold onto it. Our constructed perception of reality is largely conditioned into us from our parents, mandatory “education”, and the media, which indoctrinates us into a false perception of reality. We aren’t curious enough, we don’t doubt or question enough. What we do is largely based on the views and beliefs that are conditioned into us without us questioning them to determine their veracity and validity.

Being right is not about wanting to be “right” even when we are wrong. Being right is wanting to really know what is right, real and true, and letting go of falsity by admitting wrong. This often requires a course correction, to change the path and way of life we lead. We must not maintain an adherence and belief in falsity just because they are what we currently believe to be “true”.

As Yoda says:

“You must unlearn what you have learned.”

“A man must first of all understand certain things. He has thousands of false ideas and false conceptions, chiefly about himself, and he must get rid of some of them before beginning to acquire anything new. Otherwise the new will be built on a wrong foundation and the result will be worse than before. To speak the truth is the most difficult thing in the world; one must study a great deal and for a long time in order to speak the truth. The wish alone is not enough. To speak the truth one must know what the truth is and what a lie is, and first of all in oneself. And this nobody wants to know.”
– G.I. Gurdjieff

I don’t want to live in my own make believe fantasy world. I want to live in the truth of what ‘is’ reality. Some people view “being right” as being arrogant or ego driven. As a result, they have an aversion to the philosophy of seeking out what is right and true. Philosophy is the love of wisdom, wisdom is right-action.

Since they don’t value what is right, what is correct, what is accurate, what is true, then they don’t really have any issue with maintaining false ideologies and conceptions of being lied to, manipulated and deceived. If you don’t care about the correctness, accuracy, rightness and truthfulness of the things that you currently accept to represent the reality you live in, then you are quite content to continue to believe the fantasy fairy-tale of deception and lies that keeps you enslaved and attached to falsity.

We have to want to become more correct, more accurate, more right, and more true. We are where we are collectively, as a society and as a species, because we choose to take the easy road of abdicating our personal responsibility to care for, seek and accept what is right, real and true.

As each individual develops willpower and changes, the reality we co-create through our actions as we interact with the pre-existing reality, is also changed. The whole is a reflection of the smaller units. We are all interconnect in the aggregate way of life that we all live by.

“What will bring peace is inward transformation, which will lead to outward action. Inward transformation is not isolation, is not withdrawal from outward action. On the contrary, there can be right action only when there is right thinking and there is no right thinking when there is no self-knowledge. Without knowing yourself, there is no peace. An Ideal is merely an escape, an avoidance of what is, a contradiction of what is. An ideal prevents direct action upon what is. To have peace, we will have to love, we will have to begin not to live an ideal life but to see things as they are and act upon them, transform them.”
– Krishnamurti


Imagine Better

“To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.”
– Joseph Chilton Pearce

Everyone must be shown their wrongs and ignorance. Remaining unaware of exactly what we are doing will only serve to perpetuate the current condition of falsity. Knowledge and awareness is required for change to occur. Not wishful thinking. Not placating to people’s sensibilities and false worldview. The only way for people to realize the need to learn, educate and raise themselves out of the darkness of ignorance and wrongdoing, is for them to become aware of how wrong and ignorant they are.

If someone is unaware of their ignorance, and overestimates their false certainty, they can won’t be choosing to learn and inform themselves. The only way for people to become aware of the darkness of falsity they’re immersed into, is through the light of truth shining upon them and forcing them out of the dark comfort of ignorance.

Some people have the hardest time admitting that they have accepted, bought into, and identified with a deceptive belief for much of their lives. Belief is more powerful than knowledge, because people become very attached to what they think they know. Taking a belief away can be like taking a part of someone’s identity. As a result, many of us do not want to recognize and acknowledge the darkness in who we are or what we have become.

“The essence of propaganda consists in winning people over to an idea so sincerely, so vitally, that in the end they succumb to it utterly and can never escape from it.”
– Paul Joseph Goebbels

We currently have a false reality based in deception and lies being propagated by other minds for us to accept and buy into. It’s what currently exists in reality, but only because we are running someone else’s program of life. Mind control over our lives is being implemented in the form of chemicals in our food and water, information through what we spend time on and pay attention to, and our belief in false concepts. These false concepts become part of who we currently are, as part of our ego-personality-identity construct. We are attached to them, and they are hard to face, let alone let go of.

To realize the falsity around and within us, is to have the real eyes to realize real lies.

Accurately perceiving the truth is the solution to our self-inflicted suffering by providing us with the imagination to envision another way. We need to clean up the confused, clouded and darkened lenses of perceiving reality, and instead see reality with clarity and light of truth.

We can’t fight the acceptance of who we currently are, because that prevents us from envisioning and imagining a better way to live. The attachment to our programmed and conditioned worldivew of falsity needs to be let go of, not fought against. Then we can create a more accurate, correct, right and better worldview based in the truth of reality, and create a better world.

The desire to learn, especially about our mistakes and wrongs, to Care for Truth, can only be awakened or kindled once we realize how wrong we are. This awareness allows us to to seek to know. If no one speaks the truth about what is wrong, this process may never happen for many people.

Until this is recognized, we will be perpetuating a hamster wheel of existence that will progressively increment more external control, enslavement and suffering upon our lives. We are creating this condition in reality because our societies are in degrees of confusion, apathy, cowardice and fear of facing the mirror and doing the hard work to change.

It is impossible to fix the current condition of wrong ways if people are not honestly looking at the current condition. Most people are ultimately afraid of looking at reality and seeing it as it currently is, and certainly in fear of looking at the mirror and seeing themselves for what they currently are.