Dave Brisbin 8.17.25
Not long after we started our faith community based on understanding Jesus’ teaching from a first century, Eastern/Aramaic point of view, I received an email from a man on the east coast who told me about debates he was having with his 17-year-old son over Christian doctrine. The boy was increasingly challenging his beliefs, and at one point asked his father: is what you believe really true, or just what you believe? Exasperated, the man asked his son where he was getting all these ideas, and the boy handed him the address to our website. God bless the internet.

Is what you believe really true, or just what you believe? 

What a question. THE question we should all be asking continuously if we’re serious about meaning and purpose. We’ve been taught not to question by those who already have their answers. But any answers merely accepted as received, not the result of a perilous journey of questioning, not subject to the testing of continued life experience, will not be “true” very long. They won’t be able to describe the life and world we’ve lived long enough to see.

Aldous Huxley said that all new ideas begin as heresy, advance to orthodoxy, and end in superstition. Orthodox is that of which we believe we’re certain. It’s a perfect duality. This is right and all the rest is wrong. The only way to deal with a new idea is label it heresy. But if a heretical idea persists long enough, it becomes accepted, and if an accepted idea persists long enough without question, all meaning is lost, only the label remains to which we cling like a rabbit’s foot.

Our minds operate on two tracks, seeing everything as right or wrong, but if we’re serious about truth, we will move beyond those two tracks, beyond received concepts, to fully experience the moment we’re in, align with its flow to find meaning that may last only long as the moment itself, but gives principles for entering all moments. Real time, one track truth that can make us free. 

We’ll be called heretics for our trouble. But we’ll only know that what we believe is really true when we’re willing to let go of the rabbit’s foot, question, and embrace heretical.

Two Track Minds

Audio podcasts delivered at theeffect church in San Clemente, CA. theeffect is a community of imperfect people working together to find the emotional recovery and spiritual transformation that is theeffect of God’s love by unlearning limiting perceptions, beliefs, and compulsions, and engaging a first century Jesus in a non-religious and transforming way. See more at theeffect.org.

True North with Dave Brisbin is a podcast about the things that can bring you back to center, whether God, spirituality, community or family or all of them. Never esoteric or abstract for its own sake; always practical and full of common sense, we’re interested in exploring the effect of what we believe on our lives and questioning what we believe in light of the deep connection we’re meant to live. Dave Brisbin is an author, speaker, coach, and songwriter. He is the teaching pastor of theeffect, a faith community and recovery ministry in San Clemente, CA and executive director of Encompass Recovery, an addiction treatment center in San Juan Capistrano. For more on finding deeper spiritual expression free from limiting beliefs and behavior, go to davebrisbin.com.

New tracks tagged #what is a contemplative practice