WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE?
The first
step in furthering ones spiritual development is defining
the world in which one lives and all of ones spiritual
concepts. Since one often uses words to communicate ones
thoughts, each word one uses should have a clear
definition if it is to have a clear meaning. Many
religious and spiritual concepts are defined by words
which can mean different things to different people.
Thus, it is important to know, understand, and agree
upon, the meaning of these words before using them;
otherwise, there can be no true communication. Once one
has established and agreed upon definitions for spiritual
words, one can begin to use those words in a spiritual
context. If you are unsure of what is meant by a
spiritual word used herein, simply look it up in the
dictionary at the back of this book.
Ones search for answers may involve spiritual exercises
so that one may ready oneself for truth. Just as an
athlete stretches his or her body before engaging in
sport, the spiritual aspirant should prepare himself or
herself by religious devotion. Devotion may help humble a
person so that he or she may find God. Do not think of
ones search for enlightenment as unpleasant. Ones goal
after all, is to remove all unpleasantness from ones life
and find God, and in finding God, find joy and
contentment.
One does not learn to play the piano from watching others
play, one learns to play by practicing oneself. Just as a
musician improves with practice, as one pursues
enlightenment one becomes more and more illuminated. The
pursuit of truth can be likened to buying a car. Before
one purchases any particular vehicle, one examines many.
When one finds a particular car one likes, one checks it
out carefully and test drives it. Keep an open mind and
"test drive" the many ideas presented herein.
Without examining and trying out the ideas one is
presented, how can one be sure they don't work?
The ultimate state of spiritual awareness is called
enlightenment. This is the state of contentment and bliss
one attains when one finds and joins oneself to God. When
enlightened one is freed from all ignorance, pain, and
misinformation in the Universe.
What separates one from God are the delusionary beliefs
one has gathered since ones birth. To see the truth
clearly, remove the clouds of ignorance from ones eyes
which are the result of internalizing pain in ones
beliefs. Illumination brings peace, order, contentment,
and all the answers one seeks. Thus, if one seeks God,
one finds God. However, finding God does not mean one
becomes God, it means one becomes connected to God and
has identity in God.
There are innumerable ways to begin ones quest for
enlightenment. However, I believe the best way to
enlightenment is through illumination of each of ones
beliefs, particularly, ones beliefs regarding God. In
this way, one gradually becomes more and more illuminated
as one knows more and more truth. Once one has
illuminated, or aligned, any single belief all the way to
its source, which is God, ones other eccentric beliefs
actually begin to either fall away or align themselves
automatically with this one true core root belief.
Finally, when all areas of ones life are illuminated, one
becomes enlightened. The scales of ignorance drop away
from ones eyes and one finds joy and peace.
What do you believe? What separates the enlightened from
the ignorant is what they believe to be true. If
everything you believe is true, you would already be
enlightened. Thus, the search for enlightenment involves
examining ones beliefs to see if they are true. To
examine your beliefs, begin by examining the things you
do. Whatever you do is your behavior. You get up, you
eat, you go to work, you sleep. But, what exactly is it
that makes you do these things? The answer is simple, it
is your beliefs. All behaviors are the result of beliefs.
One believes one is supposed to do certain things, and so
one chooses to do them.
Now, what if some of the things you do are wrong?
Ignorant behavior is a symptom of an underlying aberrant
belief. Thus, if one finds oneself gambling ones life
savings away, there is an aberrant belief making one do
this. Each imperfection in ones life can be traced to an
imperfect belief that one is clinging onto.
All of ones beliefs are manifested in ones behaviors.
Whether good or bad everything one does is based on a
belief which one may have acquired long ago. One may not
even know exactly what one believes until one actually
questions ones beliefs themselves. If ones behaviors are
ones fruits, then ones beliefs are ones roots. Bad roots
make bad fruits.
Suppose you are aware that one of your behaviors might be
considered deviant. You may say, "Well then, I won't
exhibit this behavior." You might also say, "I
know I love to gamble, but I just won't do it
anymore." However, self-restraint in acting on an
aberrant belief is not the same thing as believing what
is right. This is why people have a difficult time
dieting, quitting smoking, etc. Self-restraint causes
conflict, and thus, suffering. Restraining a behavior
caused by an aberrant belief will simply cause the belief
to manifest itself in some other way. For example, if you
block a stream with a boulder, the stream will simply
find a way around the boulder and continue to flow! If
you want to stop the stream, follow it to its source and
stop it there. As dieters know, as soon as they stop
dieting, they regain the weight they lost. This is
because nothing was done to change the underlying belief
which causes them to overeat in the first place.
Ignorant, or aberrant, beliefs are like bad seeds which
will bear diseased fruit sooner or later. Not doing evil
is not the same thing as doing good. Restraining an
aberrant behavior will result in the expression of
emotion or the manifestation of another deviant behavior.
Knowing truth and believing in truth are two separate
things. One may know what is right and yet still believe
in, and do, what is wrong. Even "behaving
right" is not enough to find enlightenment. One has
to let go of ones pain.
Examining one's behaviors is one way to ferret out one's
aberrant beliefs, but it does nothing to change them. Get
at the underlying belief. By utilizing the Process of
Illumination explained in this book, one may examine and
align ones underlying beliefs with truth. Examining one's
beliefs will enable one to illuminate the aberrations
ones beliefs contain. Aberrations are painful
associations one has made. Often, one may not even know
ones beliefs are aberrant until those beliefs are brought
into alignment with God. It is only when liberated that
one can look back and see ones former deviance.
Ignorance in ones beliefs is the cause of ones suffering
and the cause of the aberrant behavior one exhibits. The
seeds of evil take a long time to grow. One does not
become lost instantly, it takes years of believing
misinformation little by little and being ignorant of the
truth. Pain begets pain. The world is filled to the point
of breaking with ignorant people. Consider ones childhood
and even those childhoods of ones parents to see where
all ones misinformation and ignorance began. One has laid
bricks of ignorance which have become walls to truth.
Tear down these walls brick by brick or rip out the
foundations of these walls to uncover the truth which
explains ones behavior and sets one free.
Illumination of the truth is education in the truth.
Illumination of the truth regarding any of ones aberrant
beliefs frees one of the pain beliefs contain. The truth
brings great power, but this does not guarantee that one
will use ones illumination for good purpose. Be careful,
for illumination brings with it great responsibility.
Illumination gives one knowledge, and thus, power over
all of the ignorant who still believe what is not true.
Do not be tempted into using your new knowledge for
selfish gains. Selfish gain is a stumbling block to
enlightenment. On the contrary, the truth brings with it
great responsibility to bring the light of truth to all
those others who are still lost in darkness.
Each of us has acquired unique misinformation and so each
of us will become illuminated differently. This does not
mean that every illuminated person is different from
every other illuminated person, but that the order in
which their aberrant beliefs are discarded is different.
As Heraclitus said, "You can't step into the same
river twice." Each time you step into a river, it is
new water which surrounds your feet. Since no two people
or times are quite the same, no two paths are quite the
same, but all paths converge eventually as one comes
closer to God. Follow whatever river you step into down
to the ocean of the one enlightenment. Should a river you
choose run dry, or lead to a lake rather than to the
ocean, retrace ones steps and find where one has forked
away from the true stream.
Every way is the way in that every way leads to The Way.
All paths of righteousness lead eventually to the one
doorway of enlightenment. Even if you blindly begin your
journey to the sea of God by running up a mountain, you
will eventually find your way back down. You will come to
signs in your journey which will point the direction to
go. You will know truth, and thus, the right direction,
by the happiness, joy, peace, justice, gladness of heart,
and freedom it gives you.
The time to begin your quest is now. Prepare yourself to
begin your journey to enlightenment. Find a quiet place
where you are comfortable and free from distraction and
examine your behaviors and underlying beliefs.
WHERE DO BEHAVIORS COME FROM?
Every movement of ones body is a behavior. When one wants
to make a change to ones environment, one applies a force
to it. This force, or behavior, either changes a portion
of ones environment, or moves oneself within ones
environment. However, one would not apply a force to ones
environment unless one was discontented with ones
environment in the first place. Thus, behavior is the
result of discontentment with ones environment or ones
place within ones environment. Even the enlightened still
exhibit behavior, so the contentment found through
enlightenment is not necessarily contentment with ones
environment. It doesn't take long to realize that many of
ones behaviors are vain attempts at permanence in an
impermanent world.
Every movement, or behavior, you make, has a
corresponding impact not only on your immediate
environment, but on the entire universe. Each movement
one makes is like throwing a stone into a lake. The
ripples are largest where the stone lands, but these same
ripples travel all the way to shore.
Where do behaviors come from? Behaviors are the final
result of the decision making process. One exhibits
behavior when one makes a choice to act on a belief. A
belief is a previous decision one has made based on the
knowledge one has obtained from what truth one was able
to perceive in reality. Truth is God inasmuch as God may
be perceived in life. God might be considered to be the
Great Architect which created the reality one may
perceive and the underlying reality one may not. God is
the Ultimate Truth- the truth regarding the truth.
God > Truth > Knowledge > Decision > Belief
> Choice > Behavior
While God is the Ultimate Truth, one cannot perceive God
in its entirety. To be able to do so would be to be equal
to, or greater than God itself. Instead, in reality, the
most one may know of God, is what is called "the
truth". In this world, the truth is God. This in
mind, be careful how you gather your knowledge of the
truth.
The knowledge one obtains will not be true unless it is
correctly gathered from the truth. If you gather water in
a bucket with holes in it, how can you then go about
measuring the water? Likewise, when gathering knowledge,
if you do not have access to the truth, or if ones senses
are distorted, how can any of ones decisions or beliefs
be truthful? Thus it is, that one acquires misinformation
and aberrant knowledge.
If there is any interruption or omission in the decision
making process, then any decision one makes will not be
totally right. How could it be? If you want to illuminate
your beliefs, illuminate the entire decision making
process you have used to make those beliefs. One of the
biggest reasons why one has pain in ones life (aberrant
beliefs) is that one doesn't make ones own decisions all
of the time. Out of fear, laziness, and trusting the
wrong people, one learns to believe many things people
say without checking out their validity. In this way, one
acquires aberrant knowledge (pain and failure) which will
haunt one until one discovers the truth for oneself.
FROM GOD TO KNOWLEDGE
God is the only true authority. God, inasmuch as God can
be perceived while one is alive, is the truth regarding
reality which can be found. Ones five senses gather,
through sensory reception, the truth in the form of raw
sensory data. This data is information picked up by ones
nerve receptors which travels up the roadway of nerves to
ones brain. Sensory data enters ones mind via the senses
of touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing. It is how one
misperceives truth which determines error. Error may
begin with ones senses themselves. If ones sensory organs
are faulty, one may not perceive truth in its entirety,
or one may perceive sensory data which is somehow altered
from its original form.
Once gathered through the senses, all data is stored as
knowledge in ones memory bank- the brain. Ones conscious
mind, or self, discriminates, or filters, all incoming
data into two groups: observation (which is taken to be
useful and truthful data), and noise (which as the name
implies, is taken to be meaningless). Although ones
conscious mind discriminates raw sensory reception, all
incoming data still goes into the subconscious memory
bank to be stored just as it was perceived. This includes
all of the "noise" data which is not used by
ones conscious mind for decision making. Herein, is the
root of much error. One errs if what one takes to be
"noise" is in fact meaningful and what one
takes to be meaningful is in fact noise.
Memory is knowledge stored in several ways. Ones memory
contains all of the raw sensory data which one has
perceived through ones senses and all of the groupings of
this data which are the result of ones observations such
as: decisions, beliefs, imaginations, ideas, concepts,
and expectations.
Provided one has not been brain damaged, it has been
shown that one can remember any and all of ones knowledge
through hypnosis, including knowledge one has never been
conscious of. i.e. the "noise" data. For
example, every phone number you've ever heard is stored
somewhere in your mind!
So why is it ones conscious mind has a difficult time
remembering? This is because one has created beliefs to
"forget" certain data in order to please
oneself. After "forgetting", the conscious mind
can no longer retrieve certain knowledge and remember it.
In this way, one has created a system whereby one
remembers only what one wants to remember. This knowledge
has not been erased, it has just been put out of reach.
Think of how many times you find yourself looking for
what you yourself have hidden. Much of psychotherapy
today is simply the remembering and dealing with of
painful memories which one has suppressed.
There are several ways we, as individual human beings,
"forget". For starters, one immediately
"forgets" what one takes to be
"noise". This is sensory discrimination. One
"forgets" what one fails to remember in the
first place. For example try to remember how many times
you used the phone yesterday. It is not something that
one "is usually conscious of".
Disturbingly, one often makes a point to
"forget" observations which contain pain. As
Barbra Streisand sang in the song "The Way We
Were", "What's too painful to remember, we
simply choose to forget." When one associates pain
to ones knowledge, it is not easily remembered. In fact,
it needs to be illuminated. Why does it need to be
illuminated? Because if one doesn't get rid of the pain,
the pain doesn't go away and affects ones behavior
whether one knows it or not. Ones conscious mind does not
like to remember painful observations. Until one deals
with those pains, they affect, and will continue to
affect, all of ones decisions subconsciously.
Another thing one "forgets" is what one keeps
in ones short term memory bank. For example, many people
cram for an examination and as soon as the examination is
over, they "forget" everything they learned. If
the data in ones short term memory bank does not seem
useful, one often simply "forgets" it. Often,
this data is indeed useful to remember, but one
"forgets" it anyway because one doesn't want to
remember the pain of studying!
"Forgetting" any memory that contains pain is a
coping mechanism that causes pain to be harbored inside
oneself, since one never really forgets anything. If one
can let go of pain and associate happiness with the
things one wants to remember, one will not forget things
so easily. If one finds studying pleasurable and
interesting rather than painful drudgery, one would
remember more of the subject one is studying. It has been
said that forgetfulness of self is rememberance of God.
FROM KNOWLEDGE TO BEHAVIOR
When one looks out of ones eyes, one is not only seeing,
but observing. But what are these observations one takes
to be meaningful? Observations are associations inferred
from ones sensory receptions. Observations are what one
takes to be meaningful with regards to ones sensory
receptions. One discriminates, or filters, ones sensory
receptions for meaning. One looks for, and identifies,
patterns in ones sensory receptions and tries to make
sense of them. Patterns are familiar shapes one has seen
before. Observation data is then sorted, compared,
examined, and manipulated to find or create additional
meaning.
During this examination process, one makes associations
which equate one set of observations with another. Groups
of these associations, or premises, are further organized
into postulates. Postulates are basically assumptions
about premises. One then uses logic, or the reasoning
portion of ones mind, when one has gathered enough
information regarding postulates, to infer conclusions,
or decisions. Decisions are part of ones knowledge,
resulting from logical reasoning, which are stored in
ones memory as beliefs. Every decision becomes a belief,
and every belief was once a decision.
Suppose a bird sees another bird fly. It says to itself,
"I look like that", "I too have
wings", "Let's see...yep...I can flap my wings
too!" The bird then decides that "I too can
fly."
Now lets say this bird makes a choice to fly. It flaps
its wings and sure enough the bird is flying. The bird
now has a belief that it can fly. It no longer decides
whether or not it can fly because it has done so already
before. Every time the bird exhibits the behavior of
flying, it is then based on this belief that it can fly.
Had the bird been told that it couldn't fly before it
tried, the bird might believe this and never even try.
