>>12046479I think the ability to not believe in apparent truth would have developed later, alongside the ability to lie (theory of mind) and detect other illusions. I think you do need some number of components of a given sense of reality active at a given time just to function, however it's just one model. You become apart from "reality" and instead look at it through different lenses, an almost kaleidoscopic structure. They key is to hold a default and say "this is how it really is", then integrate it with your identity and sense of self.
I was always kind of like this, but I was basically mentally destroyed in my late teens. Total deconstruction. So I had to relearn how to think and understand that I and other things "exist". An example. I was just thinking about this the other day as a train went by, and I realized the way I used to think was "I am here. A train is approaching. The train is here. The train is leaving. The train is gone. There was a train here before." No notion of from whence it came, by what means, where it went, or for what purpose. I just didn't bother. The world ended at my perception. I think this is called object constancy, which implies trauma induced regression to an infantile state, as infant's also lack object constancy. I knew it still existed, but I did not realize.
I'm sure there are various avenues to arrive at this, but there is difference between knowing and realizing. I can tell you all day long that you don't have to live in belief, and you shouldn't become your belief, and you may think about it and agree and know it intellectually, but you have yet to realize it. Knowing is not realizing. You have to have a whole logical framework to truly know what elements you're moving around and basing your "reality" on, what assumptions, what axioms, and so on.
