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“But the amazing thing, that you discover as you gradually find your way on this mysterious path, is that all beliefs ultimately change or disappear. Ideas about how long it will last, even the idea of enlightenment - at a certain point you realise that they are no longer there.

Ideas, ideals in which we believe or that we pursue, can of course be useful; they can motivate us and maybe create some hope or certainty. That's fine. But eventually they disappear. We usually don't have to consciously let go of our beliefs; at a certain point they dissolve more or less by themselves, and gradually we notice that there is actually nothing left in which we believe.”

— Jon Bernie

I like this. In my experience its a bit more like there is a separation between the ego and the ideas/ideals or they sort of fade out and take on a much less concrete substance. Perhaps as one progresses further than I they do disappear fully?

In my mind I separate spirituality with the everyday world. I think the everyday world needs them to function well and promote human flourishing, which I think the bolded stuff gets to.

@Jeroen said:
Take Graham Hancock, he is what you call an alternative archaeologist,

There's no such thing as an "Alternative Archaeologist". He doesn't have the academic standing to be called an archaeologist. At best, he is an amateur historian pedaling pseudoscience.

who believes in civilisation 10.000 years ago, which a lot of standard archaeologists have difficulty with.

That's because there's no real, solid, peer-reviewed evidence to prove what he says. He just says it and some people believe it. Like someone saying he'll lower the price of eggs and end the war in Ukraine in one day.

Yet Graham’s ideas have proved persuasive and popular with the public.

With uneducated and monumenta lly stupid people, yes, much like people who voted for Donald Trump.

I worked in the field of archaeology for years, during and after college. I was shoulder-to-shoulder with REAL archaeologists. Hancock does not qualify.

Listening to both Ed Barnhart and Graham Hancock. I think what is appealing about Hancock is that he talks about the cool, exciting stuff like ancient astronomy and the more mysterious stuff. Barnhart was really interesting too, but he stuck more to migration patterns and the social and political dynamics of the early Americas.

“Enlightenment is an accident, but through meditation it might happen to you sooner.”

— Aitken Roshi

I have noticed this, the disappearing of beliefs and emotions over time, that it happens with me. For example the anger I felt back in November at Osho and his communes and the abuse that happened there is now gone. It has taken 5 months or so. I think it is the spirit that inclines towards letting go.

It’s a question of whether you keep feeding these things. The more attention you give them, the more you keep bringing them back, the longer they last. I think that as you advance on the path, you stop feeding your beliefs and they begin to fade.

"Our original Buddha-Nature is, in highest truth, devoid of any trace of objectivity. It is void, omnipresent, silent, pure; it is glorious and mysterious peaceful joy-and that is all. Enter deeply in it by awakening to it yourself. That which is before you is it, in all its fullness, utterly complete. There is naught besides. Even if you go through all the stages of a Bodhisattva's progress toward Buddhahood, one by one, when at last, in a single flash, you attain to full realization, you will only be realizing the Buddha-Nature that has been with you all the time; and by all the foregoing stages you will have added to it nothing at all. You will come to look upon those aeons of work and achievement as no better than unreal actions performed in a dream. That is why the Tathagata [the Buddha] said: I truly attained nothing from complete, unexcelled Enlightenment."

• Huang Po

In secular Sufism Idries Shah talks a lot about unloading. Where we are so clever and already 'knowing' that we have to unload.

Zen explains it this way, in a story often repeated:

A professor went to visit Nan-in, a Zen master, to ask him about Zen. Nan-in kindly welcomed him and began to make tea. He filled the professor’s teacup full and then continued pouring the tea, overflowing the cup.

The professor exclaimed — “Stop! The cup is already full, no more will go in!”

Nan-in responded: “Like this cup, your mind is already full of ideas and opinions. There is no room for anything new. To understand Zen, you must first empty your cup — open your mind and free it from preconceived notions.”

As Epictetus once said,
“You can’t learn that which you think you already know.”

"More tea, Vicar?" - 'All Gas and Gaitors' TV series