What do you believe? That the earth is round, there is a God, this is the twenty-first century? Have you ever examined your beliefs and how you have become married to them? Most people never question their beliefs. They simply accept them as truth, as matter of fact. We also assume our beliefs are universal and innate. This lack of perspective fuels ignorance which breeds conflict. We cannot change other people so let us examine belief in an attempt to be a better version of ourselves.

Believing in something lends energy to it. Belief is the substance of our experience. What we perceive is the product of what we believe. To expound upon this I will examine some ideas commonly associated in our western culture. Notice how this first statement sets off a chain of ideas. While a person may not be mindfully aware of this domino effect, they certainly believe it subconsciously: I must remain faithful to my chosen partner because the priest and society tells me it is so. I want to follow this rule because it is important to be seen as a good person and also, I desire to go to Heaven when I die. If my reputation is tarnished I will be an outcast in my community. People will not spend time with me and I may struggle at work. If I cannot work, I will not be successful. Then I will have limited funds with which to buy material things to make me happy. Lack of happiness leads to misery and maybe despair. I will get depressed and perhaps suicidal, wishing for my life to be over. When illustrated like this it seems blatantly absurd. Yet, millions upon millions of people behave as if it is so. This is the power of belief.

Belief is at the core of the human experience originating with the most prolific belief, that we can die. Fear of death has shaped humanity profoundly. We have used the threat of death to control people in countless ways. People endure and suffer because they believe it better than the final alternative. The other principal belief we hang on to is our birth. No one experiences their birth firsthand and yet we all believe that it happened to us. We watch a birthing and this leads us to assume that it happened to us. The two experiences are not the same.

Humans rely heavily on their basic beliefs because they are the roots needed for every other belief to blossom. Politics, religion, and family are some hot topics that come to mind. How much violence and suffering has humanity initiated and endured from these three pillars alone?  Think about the countless debates humans have had and will continue to have in the spirit of God, morals, values, laws, progressives, conservatives, and responsibilities. What is right for one person most certainly will be wrong for another. Bad and good are values assigned by cultures. Nature does not believe in anything. It just is. When winter arrives and kills off much of the living, do the plants whine and shake a fist at the heavens? Yet, when humans encounter other humans with radically different views they lash out with judgement and in some cases violence. The next time someone says or does something that you vehemently disagree with think of yourself as a stout sunflower staring down a flurry of snowflakes. Everything will be alright.

Belief starts in early childhood when we learn to communicate with other humans. The messages our caretakers shower upon us are loving and nurturing, but they also plant the seed of belief. It starts with language. Parents usually begin identifying objects and people. By labeling things, the mind starts to believe. This is the formation of the ego. It believes it exists because people communicate with it as well as nurture it. If someone perpetually spoke in your direction, gestured at you, and gave you food, you would come to a stark conclusion; you exist. Among the first identities we believe in is whether we are a boy or a girl. Indeed, we only believe we are male or female because our parents tell us it is so. Then it is solidified and perpetuated by peers and society because they too were told at a young age what it means to be a man or a woman. For those few people who might have been raised by wolves rather than other humans, they too are not immune to the power of belief. It is only that their belief systems will be wildly different than that of common society and communities of people. Beliefs become a self-reinforcing web beautifully woven, that no ego can escape. This is why it works so well.

Collective belief describes how groups of people agree upon and manifest their reality. Evangelism is a prime example of this. When people become filled with the Holy Spirit and pass out , that experience was created by not only the person touched, but by the entire congregation. If the room were filled with skeptics, it would be less likely to happen. Another great example is media. People watch their favorite news program such as Fox News or CNBC because it reinforces their belief system. They hear the side of the story that most aligns with their perspective and often it is delivered with such passion and gusto that it becomes difficult not to identify emotionally.

The key to dispersing the web is to stop blindly believing something if it is not in your experience. In fact, one should not indiscriminately believe unless it is directly experienced by them. This is the trap of spirituality. Seekers will hang on every word of a guru, mystic, or spiritual teacher in the hopes of gleaning some nugget of truth. This forms the basis of dogma and spreads like wildfire. The egoic mind clings to belief, literally, for dear life. So many traps lay bare for seekers to stumble into. For example: there are gurus who will take your money with promises of special powers. Some teachers will impress upon their students rules and steps with which to attain enlightenment. The irony here is that these pitfalls only snare us if we have something we need to learn by them. So, in a twisted way, these teachers are helping us along our path.

When one starts down the rabbit hole of spirituality, little do they know, their reality has begun to unravel. This is usually done slowly so as to not unsettle the mind. If the illusion were to disappear abruptly, the mind would struggle to process the new perspective. In other words, the truth is so radical, it is a medicine best taken in small doses. This is the purpose of awakenings. Each one reveals a perspective that subsequent awakenings can expand upon. What we consider real is a beautiful illusion. It is a network of beliefs layered and tightly woven such that each belief is predicated upon another. This intricate weave forms our experience, our reality. To examine each belief on its own is the only way to unwind the tapestry. Thread by thread it comes undone until there is nothing left. It is inevitable that the illusion will fail and the truth will be known. Reality is born of belief.