That you're overthinking. Try feeling what rings true for you, and let that be your truth, regardless of whether it's someone elses. And by feeling I do not mean emotions. Emotions are feelings corrupted by thoughts. I credit White Feather here. Here's one piece of mine that cites and discusses his views on such matters. https://marcus17043.medium.com/of-feelings-and-knowledge-580fed0d092a

Back to beliefs and truths, I have an essay percolating for a couple of weeks, and part of my INTP Meyers Briggs personality type, which system is based on Jung's somewhat flawed view of archetypes, yet as flawed intution often still is a yellow brick on a path to knowledge, I use comments to bounce ideas/outline my thoughts:

I've been leaving several comments lately based on connections I see in people's stories to Alan Arkin's, Out of My Mind (Not Quite a Memoir) that I felt pulled to read all 100 not-long pages of a couple of weeks ago, as soon as it arrived, in one sitting under the apricot tree, whereas most books I purchase land in my ever growing unread book pile. I will soon write my best essay ever about my experience with and takeaways from the book.

In the first chapter, he talks about several transitions from belief set to belief set over the course of his life and how with respect to each one he would have vigorously or comfortably tried to change the whole rest of the world to his way of thinking. He writes, "After a few years of this, it occurred to me that it might be a good idea to stop believing in so many things. I looked back and realized that for the first half of my life I'd been ready to change the world three times with three sets of beliefs, each one of which I'd outgrown and discarded, so it seemed a better idea to just shut up. I started to slowly let go of my needs for the rest of the world and began living more and more in my feelings and my intuitions and concentrating on the enormous faults within myself that needed addressing and correcting. As I did so, and it was a slow and painful process, I could see that whatever work I did on the inside was slowly taking root, making me saner, more patient, somewhat more compassionate and all of this began to effect a new view of the world which I tried hard not to concretize and make rules for. As a result, everything started to become more fiuid, less frightening, and more surprising, both inside me and around me, and I started thinking maybe that was enough for a while. Belief systems, I started to realize, were wish lists. Things you'd like to be true. They were not immutable laws."

He then says "what follows is not a manifesto, not a prescription for the world--instead it's just a few descriptions of some of what I've experienced, seen, and heard that have moved me to continue in a path of what will hopefully be less and less dogma and greater flexibility and surprise....I'm sure these stories like the ones that follow occur more frequently than we know, but I think most people relegate them to an overactive fantasy life, or a momentary hallucination or simply dismiss them because they don't fit into a mundane and comfortable conception of 'the way things are. For me, they represent a handhold into a connection we have with a reality that is deeper, broader, and more inspiring than anything we can possibly conceive." [emphasis added]

PS: Natasha, I am so pleased that you are engaging me in conversation. I adore you.