[Trina]

This question may sound naive, but it is an honest one. I see a lot of posts on here about the process for changing beliefs, and it has always got me thinking. When does changing your beliefs become an internal process that you have to consciously work on?

For me, my beliefs have always changed as my experience and awareness grew, and through logic and understanding they changed on their own. I have never had to consciously put my mind to changing something I believed in, or convince myself of something I didn't already know or figure out naturally. My beliefs have definitely changed as I have gotten older (I have gone from religious to atheist, and from Republican to Democrat, for example) and it did happen gradually, but it has never been a conscious process that I had to put time and effort into. It happened on it's own as my world grew.

So, at the risk of sounding naive, when does changing beliefs become something you have to work at? The way it is discussed on here sounds like programming yourself to believe something you don't actually believe, not discovering that something is true and believing it for that reason. Do I make sense? I can understand that something like that would be necessary for someone who was abused as a child to look at relationships in a healthy way, or maybe someone who was raised in a racist family to get over any automatic responses to people of different races that were instilled in them by their parents. But is that necessary for all beliefs? Or am I just not understanding the language you all use?