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Please note that the text below was written by the feeling-being ‘Peter’ while ‘he’ lived in a
pragmatic (methodological), still-in-control/same-way-of-being Virtual Freedom before becoming actually free.
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Belief
Belief: That which is believed, an
accepted opinion. Conviction of the truth or reality of a thing, based on insufficient grounds to afford positive knowledge.
Confidence, faith, trust. A Religious tenet or tenets. Oxford Dictionary
Peter: To believe means ‘fervently wish to be true’. The
action of believing is to emotionally imagine, or fervently wish, something to be real that is not actual – actual, as in
tangible, corporeal, material, definitive, present, obvious, evident, current, substantial, physical and palpable. A belief is an
assumption, a notion, a proposition, an idea that requires faith, trust or hope to sustain in the face of doubt, uncertainty and
lack of factual evidence. Whereas a fact is a fact, demonstratively evident to all that it is actual and/or that it works.
Many beliefs are masqueraded as ‘truths’ or are merely accepted as
facts in lieu of any serious scrutiny, or are protected by the blatant and stubborn refusal to question the facticity of that
which is ‘dearly held’ to be true. Simply because everybody believes something to be true doesn’t make it a fact. At some
stage in history everybody believed the sun went around the earth and that the earth was flat, but both notions, believed and
accepted as ‘true’ at the time, have turned out to be mere beliefs.
Indeed, what is esteemed as ‘Ancient Wisdom’ is a literal plethora
of beliefs, ‘truths’, superstitions, myths, opinions, assumptions, theories and misconceptions that require active scrutiny
and intelligent investigation by anyone who sincerely wants to become free of the Human Condition. After all, the very charter of
the Human Condition is firmly based on, and rooted in, this same ‘Ancient Wisdom’. It does take immense courage to stand on
one’s own two feet, to stop believing what others tell you are facts, ‘truths’ or the ‘Truth’ and start investigating
for yourself – to ascertain and distinguish between fact and belief.
A belief is an emotion-backed thought – made to appear real or true
only by ‘my’ emotional support for the belief, by ‘my’ passionate feelings, intuition and imagination. As such, ‘I’
fervently wish many beliefs to be true, none more so than the belief in a metaphysical world with its implied promise of an
after-life for ‘me’.
It is no wonder that all sorts of meta-physical beliefs permeate every
corner of human thinking and wisdom, and that these beliefs are so passionately defended. People actually kill each other and
sacrifice their lives for their beliefs. People kill and die for their God and their Country. We are instinctually programmed to
sacrifice ourselves for what we perceive to be the ‘good’ of the particular tribe we are in. One tribe’s God becomes another
tribe’s Devil and, as such, horrendous religious wars, conflicts, persecutions, repressions and tortures are fought over the
spreading or defending of particular beliefs.
Who ‘I’ think I am as a social being is nothing more than the
opinions, values and beliefs of others – my parents and those of my parent’s generation, which in turn came from their
parents, and so on and so-on, back into the dim dark ages of the cave-men and cave-women. These very beliefs are what ‘I’ am
made of – they form the very substance of ‘my’ social identity. The reluctance, fear and stubborn refusal to question and
investigate beliefs can be sheeted home to this crucial fact – to question one’s beliefs is to question one’s very
‘self’. To replace a belief with a fact is to eliminate a piece of one’s ‘self’.
The very act of believing supports and sustains ‘my’ very
existence for ‘I’ have no existence in actuality. ‘I’ am an impostor, an alien, a usurper and an illusion. However, the
effects of this psychological and psychic entity are very real in that it results in feelings of sadness, loneliness and despair,
not to mention anger, resentment and hate. Only by challenging the very act of believing itself, can one actively dismantle and
eliminate all of the beliefs that ‘I’ hold so dearly. It needs a full-blooded commitment to eliminate belief and acknowledge
fact in order to free oneself from malice and sorrow.
The physical universe simply is perfect, pristine, pure, infinite, and happening this
very moment – it requires no belief, faith, hope or trust that this is the case. Human beings have just been programmed into
believing that this is not so. This programming consists of the instincts of fear, aggression, nurture and desire that we are born
with, overlaid with the beliefs we have been indoctrinated with since birth – in total called the Human Condition. Further the
advice of parents, teachers, priests, gurus, philosophers – indeed all of the human Wisdom – is founded on the belief that you
can’t change Human Nature. Not only is life on earth a sick joke, but there is no cure possible – the Mother of all beliefs!
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