A Group of Believers

It was an informal meeting of people who came together to share experiences and to encourage each other in spiritual awakening and awareness. Many of those who attended belonged to organizations, churches and temples of various systems of belief. All seemed to have icons that they followed as a sort of guide through their search for deeper understanding. Some of the people present new of my writings and wanted to question me regarding my "beliefs".

M said; "L, I have read and talked to you on occasion about what you write about and am not sure that I understand some of what you say about belief". "I think that a person must have some kind of belief that gives them direction and helps guide them on their journey to higher understanding." She went on to say, "How can a person get from point A to point B if they do not have a belief about the possibility of B".

The reply, We all have beliefs because that is the nature of thought. It is a survival mechanism that is ingrained in the species. It is what makes it possible for us to imagine the possibility of something that is not a reality. It is part of our exceptional ability to be creative, artistic and altruistic. Belief is an extension of desire, so its base nature is to want or create what is not. If reality is the true nature of what is then belief is the illusion of what it could be or should be. It is illusion because mind believes that it can create reality simply through imagination. But the actual is never the imagined, because thought is limited and reality is unlimited. So belief is the illusion of the imagined and is limited by the content of a consciousness that is conditioned and defined by ones accumulated experience. A belief limits a persons ability to realize the truth of the moment. A believer is constantly projecting what should be instead of understanding what is. One is always looking ahead to an "ideal conformity". To have everyone believe as they do. It is to live in the illusion of a self created state of idealism whether religious or political in nature. A belief does not allow for the possibility of the unimagined. The actual reality of the moment is the unimagined, because it never conforms, it only seems to conform as a result of ones ability to reconcile in order to justify the illusion. A person simply expands the parameters of ones belief to include the perceived reality of the moment. This activity is the believers clever way of escaping the truth of the moment. Since we are all in various states of belief, we are all constantly blind to the truth to one degree or another.

Belief creates non-belief, its opposite. It is positional thought which is the beginning of the conflict of opposition. Belief and non-belief are two sides of the same coin, which is the duality of thoughts illusion of the me and the not me. But the reality is they are one in the same. They emanate from the mind that is caught in the separation of the one who thinks and what he thinks of or about. Thinker and thought are not separate they are one in the same, so what is projected is the self as an entity that is conditioned by what it "knows". Your belief or position and non-belief or opposition are both created by you, they do not exist as separate from you, they are you. The conflict and fear you experience as a result of belief is self created.

So to be totally sane one must neither believe nor not believe. It is the freedom of the moment which is absent the self that knows, a persons conditioned state of fear and conflict. When you are free of the minds self imposed limitations then something is possible that is beyond what the mind can fathom. When you project the self as belief or non-belief you are engaging thoughts movement as time/space, escaping into the illusion of the known. Time/space does not exist except through the illusion of a projected self that knows. The dimension of time as a conceptual ideal exist only as long as there is a separation of thinker and thought. The gap or space between thinker and thought is the illusion of the movement of time. It is the division of a conditioned mind that believes in the conceptual and buys into the self created illusion of what should be.

M said, "I am somewhat bewildered by what you have said". "I see the point but am not sure that I can wrap my brain around not believing in something". "Its as if you are saying give up, its useless to try and believe because what ever you believe is going to be false." The reply, yes that's exactly it you give up because you have exhausted trying to believe. It has got you no where, you are still the same, in the same conflict, repeating the past as if there is no out. One comes to a point where there is nothing left except that awareness that sees the folly of it all. Now seeing the truth of this in the moment what do you do? I cannot answer this question for you, it is yours to discover as an original in the moment truth. It is the new and for you the never before in which you are experiencing the true self, the unconditioned.