Actively Engaged or Passively Resigned

Everyone creates their own understanding about who they are and what is going on around them that becomes their personal reality.  This understanding is a combination of things that are known (are verifiable as true) and things that are believed (we have convinced ourselves or been convinced by others to accept them as very likely true).  

Everything that we each individually know about our reality is this intricate combination of things believed and known, and frequently, the line that distinguished between known and believed is blurred or even non-existent.  Anything in our personal reality that is based on incorrect belief creates gaps in our understanding of reality.  These gaps give rise to the illusions that generate our internal confusion and make us vulnerable to external manipulation. 

There are certainly similarities in everyone's concept of reality.  Differences exist in each individual conception of reality because there are innumerable subtle nuances of our respective interpretations of reality on top of the broad brush similarities making everyone's particular situation unique. Thus, there is no one size fits all solution for everyone's unique personal journey of self discovery. Everyone has to create their own personal reality perspective, and belief is an important part of that process.

Belief is one of the most important things that we have to do, and it is a relatively difficult undertaking for which no formal instructions exist describing how to do it correctly.  The consequences of poor choices can be dire, but when it comes to making belief choices, the burden of responsibility for that belief choice rests solely with the individual who made or accepted that choice. 

While it is true that there are many forces at play trying to manipulate what you believe, it is also true that everyone ultimately believes what they choose to believe.  As such, everyone bears the burden of responsibility for those things they have chosen to beliefs.  This simple matter of being honest about belief degree of certainty is very important.

Passive believers are those persons who just adopt notions as beliefs without adequate questioning or verification. These people are basically inclined to believe things they are told by persons they regard trustworthy, and their threshold for trustworthy can in some cases be quite low. Lower thresholds of trustworthiness tend to create a much greater risk of vulnerability.   

There are two huge problems with this passive approach.  First, manipulation of passive belief is the primary (perhaps only) mode of operation of external manipulation. Passive belief can render someone utterly defenseless against their assault. Secondly, it is also by far the least useful (as in not useful at all) in the process of evolving your understanding of anything.  Intellectual evolution requires the thinking and critical analysis that are not being used in passive belief.  Thinking and critical analysis are important steps in believing effectively, and believing effectively is required to ultimately discover the core truth of existence.

There is another approach to believing where the individual believer is actively involved in the process of deciding what to believe. Active believers are those persons who question everything to carefully and rigorously test the validity anything being consider for belief. Everything including input from highly trusted sources are subjected to rigorous scrutiny. Active believers expect every beliefs to ultimately become knowledge.  If it cannot stand the rigorous scrutiny, it is eventually discarded.

There are many advantages to the practice of active believing. Certainly, the chances of being manipulated by others are significantly reduced, and adoption of correct beliefs greatly increases the likelihood of happiness and success in life. It is also the only approach to believing that can be used to really understand the truth about anything and especially the ultimate truth about everything. 

The key to active believing is an approach that is structured around these guidelines:

1) Believe in your intuition:   Everyone has some intuitive ability.  Common phrases like ‘I had a hunch’ and ‘It just didn't feel right’ implies that intuition is a common human experience to some degree.  Be cautiously open to intuitive impulse, and believe with reservation what your intuition leads you to believe.   Just like muscle mass, if you don't use it, you lose it.  Just never forget that these things intuitively believed could be wrong.  Challenge them relentlessly to establish their validity, and always remember, the intuitive mind and rational mind are a team.

2) Don't be foolish:   Too many people are all too willing to accept baseless notions on a blind faith basis (belief without question).  Blind faith is foolish on so many levels, and by its very nature (the suspension of ongoing verification analysis), it incapacitates any possibility of forward progress which is not a good thing.   Consider whatever you think is inspired by your intuition, take ideas and recommendations from trusted others into consideration, but never accept anything on a blind faith basis.  If it is worth believing, it can withstand intellectual scrutiny.

3) Avoid Package Deals:  Be wary of collections of ideas that are taught as a package deal.  Frequently with package deals, you end up 'believing' in something that you didn't even really know because you didn't read the fine print in all the doctrine.  Large package deals are impossible to rationally consider and are rarely worthy of consideration.

4) Beware Threat and Intimidation:  Ideas that can’t stand on their own are frequently marketed under some threat of dire consequence if you fail to believe.  Any idea promoted based on fear typically has no merit. Pass it by.

5) Challenge Your Beliefs:  Always have a clear understanding of those things you believe and distinguish them at all times from the things that you definitely know.  The inability to distinguish between belief and proven fact is the root cause of so many hurtful things.   As beliefs are successfully challenged over the course of time, it will become more and more trusted, perhaps even to the point of clearly being known to be true.  Never rush that process of verification.

Belief is the only starting point mechanism available to get to the truth about our reality, but done incorrectly, it is also the mechanism that can cloud our perception of reality to create the various illusions that impede our progress. 

It is one matter to intellectually understand this concept of the nature of belief, but it is quite another to actually experience and know it.  It is only by actually knowing and experiencing the truth of this concept that we are freed from the illusions and bondage that results from these gaps in our understanding.

Don’t be afraid to believe incredible things, but don’t be foolish.  It is fine line to be tread between the liberation of truth and the bondage of illusion. 

The Myth of a Chosen People

Around the world there exists various groups of people who believe they in some way are chosen to be more worthy of favor than others.  All too frequently, this chosen people notion is a religious belief wherein the members of that particular religious group believe they have greater or even exclusive favor of the Creator by virtue of their affiliation with that  religion.    

In other cases, this privileged status of a chosen people is consider to be deserved by virtue of some perceived special accomplishments that particular group feel sets them apart from all others and makes them superior.  These chosen people expect special favor and special treatment from the laws and privileges of society.  A classic example of this type of particular chosen people syndrome is the White Supremacist movement that believes white people are superior to other races and therefore should be dominant over them.  

In the view of these people who believe they are chosen, those others who are not in the select group are deemed inferior and unworthy of favor by the self-proclaimed chosen ones.  More importantly, those considered to be unworthy are conveniently used as a scapegoat for all the problems that exist in the otherwise perfect society the chosen people feel they alone have created.  The net result of these chosen people delusions is the oppression that it generates around the world in the form of racism, bigotry, and hatred.

Sometimes membership in the chosen people group is considered a birth right for those born into the tradition as with White Supremacists, and sometimes it is granted to those who accept the terms and conditions to be adopted into the fold in many religious groups. Not surprisingly, these beliefs of privileged status for the chosen group are typically only held by people who consider themselves to be included in this special group.  Everyone else simply sees them as deluded and deranged.

All three of the major Western religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) embrace this chosen people concept. With each thinking, their religious traditions are superior to all the others even though each of their religious traditions share some of the same scriptures and revere some of the same religious figures (all hold Abraham as their patriarch).  Further divisions occur within each of these religions when sects develop and believe their own particular practices and interpretations are superior to other sects in the same religious.

All three traditions believe there is only one Creator for which each has their own name.  They even have some scripture in common, but still they individually believe, their particular interpretation of these scriptures and understanding of the Creator's intent is more correct and proper than those outside their chosen group. 

It is little surprise that the three have shared contentious relationships which frequently flare-up into wars for centuries. While there are various political and land rights issues cited as the basis in some of these problems, the root cause seems to be this difference of religious opinion and each group's belief they are the chosen ones.  

Historically, the most glaring example of the dangers of the chosen people syndrome was the rise of the Nazis in 1930's Germany.  The German Nazis believed and taught the German people to believe they were directly descended from the mythical Aryans who were favored by the pagan gods and better than the rest of humanity. They committed terrible atrocities on a scale that has never before been known. They were able to convince their solders to commit these atrocities because they had been conditioned to think these targeted people were somehow sub-human. 

More currently, the self-proclaimed Islamic state ISIS very recently has been guilty of murder, enslavement, rape, and pedophilia using the excuse of being the chosen people dealing with infidels. The atrocities are not on the scale of the Nazis, but then neither is the scale of their successes.  The recent incidents in Charlottesville USA and Barcelona Spain are simply further examples of this chronic and pervasive chosen people problem.

The root cause of these chosen people myths is the very human weaknesses of vain pride, envy, and hatred being cloaked as the will of the Divine.  The truth is that everyone on this Earth has a right to be here.  This chosen people myth is not of god.  It is very dangerous, and there is no place for it in our civilized society.  

There are no chosen people. There is no superior race.  Only a multitude of people who are simply trying to survive and be happy, and each and everyone of them deserves an equal opportunity to that end.

This life challenges us to learn many lessons, and far and away, the most important of these lessons is to learn how to embrace the many faces of humanity's diversity because collectively this diversity is the true and complete face of our creator.

We are all the same in spirit.

Understanding Our Vulnerabilities

The matter of belief is an important process that needs to be done with care and rigor.  The consequences of poor belief choices can be dire, but when it comes to making these choices, the burden of responsibility for that belief ultimately lies solely with the individual who made that choice.  There are many people who are actively trying to convince us to make certain personal belief choices, but they bear no responsibility for poor choice even if they did suggest them (perhaps even persuaded us).  In truth, everyone ultimately believes what they choose to believe, and in making that choice, they bear the full burden of responsibility for those things they have accepted to believe.

Good life choices depend on high quality beliefs that contribute to choice consideration.  To ensure high integrity of our beliefs, it is important to understand the things that can cloud our thinking with respect to forming those beliefs. There are some key human vulnerabilities that can very adversely impact correct belief creation. These vulnerabilities can be grouped into the three major categories of self-deception, fear, and laziness. Collectively, these three things are responsible for most of our inclination to believe things that are not true.

Self-Deception

It is commonly understood that the easiest person to deceive is the person who wants to be deceived.  Everyone has an inclination to want to believe things that are favorable to them.  If someone is in love, they want to believe the person they love, loves them in return, but this wishful thinking is not always true.  It would be very easy for the object of this person’s love take advantage of their belief to manipulate and exploit them.

There are other more selfishly motivated self-deception factors operating inside us that can cloud our thinking that also need to be considered.  These selfish motivations can induce self-deception when we manufacture reasons to justify these selfish indulgences.  Humanity has long been known to be vulnerable to a variety of selfish indulgences such as those listed below.

Ego Afflictions
Lust	Desire for physical and emotional gratification.
Greed	Desire for wealth and power.
Wrath	Feelings of hatred and anger
Envy	Preoccupation with what others have.
Vain Pride	Belief you are better and more deserving than others.

These ego afflictions can have a corrupting influence on belief development by creating an inclination in the individual to accept untrue notions as fact if they help them to rationalize their own unreasonable behavior.  The danger posed by these ego afflictions is twofold. First, the behavior they encourage in us is potentially hurtful to the other people, and second, the illusions these beliefs inspire prevent us from seeing the truth about our flawed rationalization thus bonding us to this unhealthy behavior. 

Curiously, the same selfish motivations that inspires humans to conspire to manipulate and exploit others can also be the root cause of the weakness in their victims to submit to this type of abuse.

Fear

By far, the most common means of propagating a belief in someone else is fear mongering because it is easy and effective.  It is easy because it can be based on assertions without any supporting evidence, and it is effective because most people are easy to scare.  This scare tactic is widely used in interpersonal relationships, and it is also a common factor in the broader approaches of religion, marketing, and politics.

Whenever someone is trying to sell their beliefs through the use of fear and intimidation, it is typically a sign of weakness in the belief being proposed.  It is also a strong indication that the promoter of the belief has an ulterior motive.  Never let your decision to believe be based on or swayed in any way by fear. Any idea that is being promoted with threat and intimidation is weak at best and likely not even worthy of consideration.  At the worst, it is outright dangerous. 

Spiritual Laziness

Sadly, most people only want to be told what to believe because they suffer from the malady of spiritual laziness. This attitude dooms them to an existence of illusion and bondage because life is a journey of discovery, and you are not going to discover anything unless you are actively looking. There can be no help for those who take these passive positions until they assume a more assertive position about the things they believe and become able to help themselves.

This lazy approach requires no critical thinking. As matter of fact, critical thinking probably needs to be suspended because it is just going to get in the way. It is certainly easier to just have someone else tell you what to believe, but if you want to get anywhere, you have to be willing to expend effort posing honest questions and accepting equally honest answers.

This passive approach is problematic for two reasons. 

First, manipulation of passive belief (just believing something you told without question) is the primary (perhaps only) mode of operation of those who want to manipulate us. Passive belief can render someone utterly defenseless against their assault. 

Secondly, it is also by far the least useful (as in not useful at all) in the process of evolving your understanding of anything. Intellectual evolution requires the thinking and critical analysis that are not being used in passive belief. 

Thinking and critical analysis are critical steps in believing effectively, and believing effectively is required to ultimately discover the core truth of existence.