by Robin Harford
| There’s a difference between living what you believe and needing others to believe it too. Not all belief becomes ideology. But sometimes, a truth that once felt soft can start to harden. A belief is personal. It forms over time. Through observation, experience, encounter. It grows like a plant: rooted in place, responsive to change. It doesn’t need to persuade. It doesn’t demand agreement. It simply guides how you move through the world. Ideology is something else. It’s a belief that’s been sharpened. Organised. Turned into a framework. It seeks loyalty. It seeks certainty. It wants others to live by what you’ve come to believe. Sometimes this is well-meaning. Sometimes it’s protective. But when belief hardens into ideology, it clenches. It begins to close around others. It silences difference. It flattens subtlety into slogans. It rewards performance. It punishes deviation. It uses guilt, shame, or exclusion to hold the line. We all do this sometimes. We want to protect what changed us. But the moment we turn a lived truth into a rulebook, something narrows. Where belief is an open hand, ideology becomes a fist. Still, they are not always separate. A belief can drift toward ideology. A truth that once felt soft can start to harden. It’s something to notice, not to shame. Because belief born from deep attention stays open. It adapts. It humbles. It softens you over time. You don’t come to it by force. You come by noticing. By staying with something long enough. A plant, a place, a person, a question, that it begins to show you who it is. And in doing so, shows you who you are. This is the path of Domei. Not a doctrine. Not a movement. A practice of attention. A way of meeting the more-than-human world without needing to turn it into a mirror for your ideas about how life should be. It doesn’t offer certainty. It offers presence. And if belief grows from that presence, it grows loosely. Held gently. Able to change. Because the world is not tidy. It doesn’t fit our frameworks. It doesn’t belong to our causes. It belongs to itself. So start there. With the land. With the leaves. With your breath. Let the world shape your understanding, not the other way around. Because attention is how we choose to live. And sometimes, the most courageous thing you can do is notice, and stay open. © 2025 Robin Harford Old Abbey Court, Salmon Pool Lane, Exeter EX2 |