Belief is Idolatry

And so I tell you, keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.
Jesus in the Gospel of Luke

Our Age of Anxiety is, in great part, the result of trying to do today's job with yesterday's tools and yesterday's concepts.
Marshall McLuhan

Religion is a defense against a religious experience
Carl G. Jung

I ask you to believe nothing that you cannot verify for yourself.
Gurdjeiff

What is Belief?

From Wikitionary the definition of belief is : Mental acceptance of a claim as truth.

To believe. Be alive. To be alive in one''s consciousness. An belief is held as truth, as a part of one's image of self truth, self identity. Now, are your ideas and beliefs who you really are? You are a human being. Born from genetic code, grown into a bio-electrical organism, conscious, and aware of being conscious. We are aware because our organism is equipped with the necessary tools. We hunger, so we strive to eat. We love so we strive to union. We sense and feel. Every moment of every day. Whether we believe or not our hearts continue to beat and and our hair to grow.

What purpose does belief serve? It provides security because we are afraid. Although we have made much progress in science and technology over the millenia, there are still many questions that remain unknown or unanswerable. When we confront situations that are unknown we feel afraid. To stop feeling this fear many people choose to accept an answer even though one has not sensed it oneself. The honest answer to many questions of significance is "I Don''t Know." Belief allows us to ignore our synthesense and focus on comforting illusions. We are afraid of death and therefore believe in life after death. No one has seen life after death. It is unprovable. Nonsensical.

A out of balance attention to belief allows a certain laziness of perception. No need to look about you to "know" about the situation. There''s a belief there to fall back on, right? Can the human being still carry on if there were no beliefs attended to in the mind? What if you had no past knowledge to fall back on?

Without belief we can still hunt and gather, sow and harvest , learn and grow. I gaze off from a cliff''s height and witness beauty. Our eyes give the glorious imagery whether what puff of thought is in mind. We see the suffering and sorrow in our homes and in our cities. Feelings arise naturally and compassion bubbles like the foam of ocean waves. The passions are aroused by sense. Belief serves to restrain passion, the synthesensactia.

Nature grows and ebbs and flows in silence. We too are nature, born out of energetic depths. Our silent nature springs in all directions triggered by awareness. I'd take natural spring water over bottled every time.

No matter what you believe the fact remains here we are and here is amazing.

See how all manner of belief is used to justify and promote all manner of violence and cruelty. Need I list the ever growing number of examples? Is it really necessary? The energy that is spent on conflict and argument,whether for profit or destruction, is tremendous and all could be used for growth and organization of the whole body of individuals on this planet.

Every system of belief has blind spots, areas which no guidance is given. Eventually such time has passed when almost all there is is blind spot, the situation having changed drastically since the original codification of the system. Believers, being blind, are therefore easily manipulated. Anything new can be a threat to the belief system. Religious "leaders" can therefore marshal significant followers to any crusade, religious or otherwise. Ultimately it appears the gravest danger from belief is its manipulation and use by religion''s own devil, nihilistic cruelty. Those individuals who, being extremely attentive to sense of physical reality and simultaneously ignorant of sense of feeling or compassion, will-to-control.

Part of how this happens is the continual abstraction of any belief set with reality over time. The evidence of this is potent when one observes the current Evangelistic Christianity movement in America. The entire sermon often consists of nothing more than emotional sensationalism and a few abstract phrases about which all kinds of mental junk can be piled. One of the best examples in my opinion is the teaching "Accept Jesus in you heart", or some variation there of. The teaching now goes that to gain your rightful place in heaven all one must do is accept Jesus into your heart and forgiveness of all your past,current, and future sins along with ticket to heaven are granted. What does it mean to let Jesus in your heart? Nothing that I can see. No mention of a study of Jesus''s words until understanding can come and practical application attempted. Perhaps the church uses such language to more easily reach the young minds of children, ages 3-105. "Seek and ye shall find," although general, is still practical advice. It can be physically acted out.

Soon using your senses and thinking about what one sees becomes a sin. One might even feel guilty for thinking about some minor difference in opinion with the pastors. In the end the abstraction process reaches its peak in the worship of a physical symbol, an idol. Christianity is in danger of going the way of the Greek gods, its followers worshiping the cross as Greeks did statues of Zeus.

Now I am not so naive to imagine that the optimal state of mind does not include any beliefs. We must treat belief (noun) as believe (verb). Believing must be an incredibly active process, in each moment, with all sensing allowed to adjust the belief set. This means what we see, how we feel, and what we think must be allowed to affect the set of ideas. We must not necessarily personally identify with a belief. I recommend instead objectification which can be defined here as being made a tool.

The action of believing, to make alive, to form reality using your attention according to a specific arranged pattern, can be an incredibly powerful tool. No longer are beliefs held in mind by outside compulsion. At any moment it may be useful to believe one thing, and the next moment, the opposite depending on the affect one desires on reality. One must get past a belief being some kind of contract, enforced by guilt, between one and God. Is God not great enough to create and love a human being which uses its tools most creatively?

To act is a total field enterprise, meaning all aspects of one self are necessary to create here, now. Any one aspect of the field which receives attention out of balance will cause dis-ease in the system. How? If you do not pay attention to an aspect, over time that aspect will atrophy. It still exists but is shriveled and weak. How can you act rightly and energetically if parts of yourself are literally retarded?

Seeing, feeling, thinking, any sense derivative, must be attended to as one. See, feel, think simultaneously with full attention! What is called belief no is often the inattention to some aspect. Would we ignore some senses to maintain a belief? Absolutely. Can one get on without attention to all our senses? Yes, but never as good as with all. The attention to the total field of existence is action, is being alive, believing.

See what one actually acts out would be what one has made alive. Do people even live out what they say they believe? Do they walk the walk? If not then there is no real believing going on. Its only a image, and obviously, that is what a belief is.

Your belief in God is merely an escape from your monotonous, stupid and cruel life.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Is there any better definition of ideology than to identify it as that rhetoric of high principle we use when we yield in our indignation to a murderous mood?
Theodore Roszak

Every church is a stone on the grave of a god-man: it does not want him to rise up again under any circumstances.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.
Friedrich Nietzsche

The mark of our time is its revulsion against imposed patterns.
Marshall McLuhan

Only puny secrets need protection. Big discoveries are protected by public incredulity.
Marshall McLuhan