What is a belief but a practiced thought? It is an idea you picked up some time ago, and accepted. Once you accept an idea, your mind, your vision, your physical eyes, all are now primed to find confirmation of the belief.  So primed, you see it everywhere. This makes it seem even more true to you, since it is constantly confirmed.

 

 

Did you ever have the experience of learning about a new concept, such as “cognitive dissonance”, or “survival of the fittest”, or “magical realism”, and then see examples of it everywhere?  Friend, these examples were there all the time. Remember that everything exists all at once but you choose what you see.

 

 

You didn’t see them before because you didn’t have a name for them.  Now that you know what to call them, you will see them. This is how ideas are formed, and given birth into conscious recognition. You name something, you frame it, define it as you wish. Secondly, you practice it in your consciousness. It takes only seventeen seconds for a new connection to form.

 

 

Of course you choose your beliefs.  If you didn’t choose them, it would not be possible for people to have differing beliefs. You have to assent to them before you can start giving them form and repetition. The longer you have held a belief, the more obvious and irrefutable it will seem to you. You will wonder how any reasonable person could disagree with you. You will find many opportunities to reaffirm your beliefs. Most of you will do this for a long time.

You can challenge any belief

The problem is that you often choose your beliefs in a very flimsy, haphazard way. Some other person may say or act out fearful thoughts: one race is better than another, violence can be used in the service of peace, compromise is weak.  Very often, without one second of conscious examination,  without holding them up to the light, you accept these ideas.  After that, it is all about the polishing of them into firm beliefs.

 

 

We all think our beliefs are right and true, and that the one who disagrees with us is wrong.

 

How dangerous it can be to pick up an unexamined belief! It’s like eating any old piece of garbage you found on the ground. You don’t know where it came from.

 

 

What if you picked up, “All men are cheats”, or, “I can’t do anything right”? You would be programmed to see evidence of those beliefs everywhere you looked. How chaotic and upsetting life would be. If you have a belief that is not serving you well, hold it up now to examination for seventeen seconds, or even longer.  All questions are good, because they all enable consciousness.

 

Take the belief, “I never have anything to say.” Have you always thought this? Can you remember a time when you didn’t know this? Have you heard any other person voice this belief about you? In what situations do you notice this belief?  Perhaps at gatherings where there are people you don’t know. How do you appear to others at those gatherings?  What are you thinking in those moments?  Do you have fearful, paralyzing thoughts? Could you see yourself without this belief?

 

 

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could see it as something separate from yourself, a piece of ragged, useless clothing that you could easily discard? You could be free of this thought, if all you do is invite it out into the light and examine it every time it occurs to you.

Apply the same examination to every new belief that suggests itself to you. Ask yourself: will this belief serve me well? Take only the beliefs that will serve you and your brothers well. “Together we can do anything.” “Inclusion is always better than exclusion.”   “Peace in the world will come when we have inner peace.”

And polish them.

 

I want to be different