Post 8 - More on Belief

As mentioned in post 1 the major hindrances to understanding are belief and identity.  We spent some time on identity and the practice of non identity.  Now it's time to take on belief..  We all have a belief system as it is part of the human organism.  The problem is that we have not sufficiently identified beliefs capabilities in terms of what it can do and what it can not do.  So what do we mean by belief?  Fundamentally it is a system of  thought and ideas.  All religions are basically belief systems.  Most of what we think of  when we talk about belief is "content".  What do you believe about . . . .etc which gets people going on how they feel or think about a certain event or situation. Before we go further it should be noted that . . . . ..

Historically belief systems do not have a very good track record.  There was a time when the whole world believed the earth was flat.  But that didn't make it flat.  In the 17th century we believed that the earth was the center of the universe not withstanding evidence by Copernicus and Galileo to the contrary.  The Holy Office of the Inquisition however managed to persuaded Galileo to recant setting the world back at least 250 years.  So it seems belief doesn't make any difference in regard to effecting event level occurrences.  Belief doesn't make any difference to the outside world, but it does make a difference to the individual.

The purveyors of propaganda love our belief system because we are so easily manipulated.  TV, radio, the press, internet etc. publish all kinds of information some of it good and some of it not so good.  Semantically speaking we confuse belief with words like faith which many clergymen use interchangeably.  Faith and belief are two very different animals.  Due to the corruption of our language it is difficult to give a sound definition to either of these terms.  The dictionary definition of BELIEF is something believed.  This is hysterical.  As Alfred Korzybski [ Founder of the institute for General Semantics ] use to say " words defined in terms of other words ultimately leads to undefined terms".  I don't like the word define just because dictionaries tend to do this.  They define words in terms of other words.  Korzybski would say  "describe to me what you mean by such and such.  Much different.  Now you are using whole sentences  to paint a picture for the listener of what it is you are talking about.  So let's give it a shot. 

Belief - first of all we can't say belief IS because that is an equation of identity to start with.  We might say belief is not a well understood part of the human psyche but has to do with confidence in the truth of some statement or event that is not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof.  It is connected with language both verbal and non verbal cues and influences our behavior to the degree and strength of our conviction.  Example:  Sports is probably a good analogy.  Coaches love belief as that faculty is so manipulated for the individual to believe in himself to perform in a certain way.  Nothing wrong with that.  If you don't believe that you can play and win don't even bother walking on the field.  However, everybody who plays a sport believes that he or she will win or they would not even try.  But we all know that there is only one winner.  So 50% of the individuals who play lose.  What can we say about that.  Belief is a necessary but not sufficient condition for determining an outcome.  You must have the skill, training, the techniques and belief but that does not guarantee a win.  Finally it should be said that winning is not properly portrayed as well.  Winning is not in the 'now'.  Winning is the result of action in the now.  At the termination of the action the compiling of a score based on certain criteria determines the winner.  If a player is constantly worried about winning then his consciousness is not in the 'now' which is where it has to be in order to properly execute a play.  Coaches often misunderstand this subtle difference in mind set.  We don't have to try to win we have to play hard and focused and then that effort will make us competitive and perhaps a win.  If we don't win it's not the end of the world.  Knowing this relaxes our minds and allows our nervous system to perform at it's best.  When our minds get in the way thinking about winning we tighten up and lose our momentum.  We need to enjoy the now.  Belief should be thought of as a type of random access memory similar to a computer.  Information stored in the RAM memory resides there until some other information comes along that more nearly fits the facts of any situation.  Then discard the old.  Those who have a vested interest in a particular belief system however will fight the new ideas because of monetary interests or other reasons. 

OK how about faith.  This is a little dicie in that everyone probably has his/her own definition.  Esoterically faith has to do with fundamental vibrations of the universe.  To be precise it is the 1st harmonic of a vibration that many call knowledge.  Knowledge is not information which is what we mostly deal with everyday.  Knowledge is of a higher order which we as humans are not able to perceive.  So failing our ability to perceive knowledge we live by faith which is the 1st harmonic of the vibration labeled knowledge.  The ability to tune to this vibration called faith represents your state of consciousness.  Faith and belief are different orders altogether.  Don't confuse one for the other.  It's sloppy thinking.

Summary:

Belief - Ascertain the facts.  Decide from there. 

Faith:  Sense/feel this vibration.  Be aware and get familiar with it.  Sharply differentiate between belief and faith.

I am going to let everyone digest this post as there is a lot to be digested. 

Till next post . . . John