Believing is intertwined with the fabric of our life experience. It is not optional. The question is not whether we believe, but what we believe. All our actions, thoughts and emotions are predicated on one belief or another.
For example, we plan what we will be doing tomorrow because we believe that we will actually wake up in the morning of the following day. We get in our car and drive to a shop because we believe that that shop will be open. We experience joy and anger because we believe in a culture that provides that which we find joyful or hateful.
We value, or should value, logical thinking as we believe that it is a better use of our intellect as it produces useful questions and answers. A good way to see our beliefs is to view them in the form of a hierarchy shaped as a pyramid. The apex of the pyramid would be the highest principality. That belief from which all other lower, subsidiary beliefs emanate.
Some people may say that they do not believe in anything. However a belief in nothing is still a belief. More importantly, a well thought out belief creates order. Persons who do not spend time to articulate what it is that they actually believe and then proceed to base their actions, thoughts and emotions on the whim of the moment are really expressing a belief in hedonic self-gratification.
This is the landscape of believing. The subsidiary beliefs are more numerous the lower one goes down the pyramid of beliefs. For example, if we believe that we are not participants in that which happens to us, then we may believe that we are victims and that life is predestined or that we are powerless to forge our own future. The ranking of beliefs may also be a matter of perspective that may vary from person to person or culture to culture.
A characteristic of beliefs is that they have the proclivity to become real, and therefore true. By real and true I mean as experienced through our physical senses of sight, touch, smell, taste and hearing and our intangible senses of thought, emotions and intuition. Beliefs can be equated with predictions. The more discernment, validation and thought we put into our predictions the greater the probability that our predictions will become reality. It would appear that life functions in this way. Some proof of this is that, as we grow older, we become more successful with our predictions. One could say that practice makes perfect.
Believing is Seeing
One important point to note about believing is that we should not believe falsehoods and that we should be on our guard against half-truths. For example, there is usually public consensus on the fact that politicians are not truthful and that they are, more often than not, captured by corporate interests. There is no basis to believe that such puppet politicians could be trusted blindly.
Another point to note is that we should listen, consider and research all sides of any argument before forming an opinion on what we should believe or not. Believing is a choice, as is what we pay attention to, and it should be well made. People mostly believe what main stream media puts out as news and the bias it is given. There is nothing wrong with bias per se as it is normal for bias to be inherent in any expression. It cannot be otherwise. For this reason it is incumbent on press and media organisations to be the bastions of free speech and to provide their readers with a wide variety of differing points of view that will assist their followers to have well-informed opinions and beliefs.
Religions are often criticised as being based on blind faith. With all religions there are two elements, the message and the establishment. In my opinion it is wrong to throw away the ‘message’ with the ‘establishment’. Also when it comes to the message, we need to look far and wide in order to find its purest form.
Christ’s message is essentially one of honouring and loving creation. Creation is a word that is equivalent to other words such as cosmos, universe, reality and truth. It is a message of unity. We live in a state of separation and fragmentation. This is the story of our lives and is the reason why we have pain and suffering. The message of unity is also one that shows creation to be intended and having a meaning and purpose that are highly beneficial to us. We should chose to believe this as our highest principality. We then should endeavour to formulate all the subsidiary beliefs to be consistent with this highest one. Creation is the greatest act of generosity ever conceived.
Believing is Seeing
Believing is like opening a door. Once one opens the door to allow what is on the other side into one’s life, then, that gradually becomes one’s experience of life, for better or for worse. There is quite a varied menu of non-spiritual, non-goodness-based belief alternatives available to us, such as power, chaos, hedonism, eugenics, genocide, tyranny, narcissism, anarchy, amorality, forever wars, evil, ecocide, dystopia and dehumanising technologies.
Each one of us needs to very carefully consider which belief doors to open. Do we want to allow in demons or angels. Evil may be the absence of good but that does not make it any less real.
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Also published on Substack.com