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Most religions claim that we must “believe” in
something, usually something unseen or something that religions cannot
put into words in a satisfying way. This belief is supposed to be the
foundation of our relationship with the universe and with God. We are
told to believe that Jesus, Buddha, and others performed these
miraculous deeds that the rest of us can’t quite get a handle on yet.
There are religions built around these people just because they seem to
have done things that others could not, and it is suggested that we
should worship these people for this very fact, while insisting that we
could do the same if we only truly “believed”.
Life in general and society in particular builds
our belief systems by many forms of feedback, reward and punishment, and
outright misinformation. It is much too obvious there is no truth in
advertising or politics. Unfortunately all religions are political
organizations, thus giving rise to the New Age preference for
spirituality over religion. But is our good intentioned spirituality
just another not so perfect belief system.
Even if we were able to withdraw from the distorted
influences that bombard our senses from all these outer sources, would
we be free from the dangers of misguided belief systems. Could we
objectively observe our own inner beliefs and ferret out the distortions
and misperceptions, to arrive at a clear view of ourselves, the
universe, and God. Perhaps we would still only be wearing the cleanest
dirty shirt, and would still fall short of clear perception. Perhaps
“beliefs” themselves are the problem.
Belief systems are the filters through which we
view the world. They are also the filters with which we color, taint,
and distort our perceptions. They are the vehicles that carry us through
our limited experiences. But if we insist on riding horse, it surly
means that we can only go where a horse can take us. If we believe
something is less or different than it is in reality we limit our
perception and experience of that something.
Do you believe in God? Does that belief contain a
definition of what it is that you do or do not believe in? Does that
definition limit your experience of and relationship to God? Would it be
possible to approach our life experience without these beliefs and
definitions that carry us to our limited experience? Is it possible that
religions are wrong about needing to believe in order to perform
miracles? Perhaps our belief creates that separation between us and
something we must believe in, and the very thing that obscures the
miraculous and perpetuates our insistence that we are separate from
others, the universe and God.
Is it possible to look by simply looking, without
pre-belief (memory), judgment (belief in good and bad) or attachment
(belief in separation)? What might we see if we looked in this way, just
observing?
Well, let’s have a look; let’s go into this. We are
looking, observing, experiencing. We seem to see that all is different
now, all is new rather than the usual rerun of our memory patterns.
Everything is now alive and changing, so we continue to look without
memory or beliefs as to how these things should be or used to be, or we
may miss the next change and the newness of life around us. Today
everything is different from how it was yesterday, and will be different
again tomorrow. Each thing is born anew in each moment, blossoming from
the void in this very moment as we witness creation. Do you now see the
hand of God bringing forth these miracles and living within creation?
Only if we are reminded, do we remember the past separation we once felt.
Now we are more pleased to realize that in the act of observing we have
participated in creation. This new and true observation has become
Creation itself, as the distance between the observed and the observer
disappears. As separation melts into ancient memory, we begin to see the
Christ Self in the eyes of each person who arrives on our path, and nod
to the Buddhas who walk our streets. |
