WHY DO YOU BELIEVE ?

WHY DO YOU BELIEVE WHAT YOU BELIEVE?

Is what you believe your chosen belief?

WHY DO YOU BELIEVE WHAT YOU BELIEVE?

Beliefs are our most important human commodity. They shape our morals and ethics, enhance our relationships, and deepen our spiritual connections; however, they can also be used to manipulate and control. Beliefs are responsible for the rise and fall of civilizations, the creation of music and art, the formation of religious groups, and whether we are led to fall in love or driven to hate. According to neuroscientist Andrew Newberg, M.D., the single most important question to answer-both scientifically and spiritually-is, “Why do we believe what we believe?” Newberg and co-author Mark Robert Waldman present groundbreaking research that shows that we are biologically driven to create meaning and beliefs throughout our lives.

We form beliefs through a combination of what our senses perceive, how our brain organizes and makes sense of those perceptions, the emotional intensity of those perceptions and thoughts, and the input we receive from members of the community. Our beliefs depend largely upon how we process the information we perceive, since the reality we sense is extraordinarily different from what actually exists in the world "out there." Emotions then bind our perceptions to conscious beliefs-if an idea doesn't have emotional appeal, the belief will not register deeply our minds.

Once we have formed a strong belief, it becomes difficult for us to separate from it, even when we are presented with evidence to the contrary. Because of this, we cling tightly to false memories that are repeated and reinforced over many years, and we tend to reject the beliefs of those who differ from us.

According to Dr. Newberg, our moral development is actually embedded in our genes. Unfortunately, it doesn't take much to evoke hostile, prejudicial, and destructive acts in people who would normally be considered good citizens. Dr. Newberg also says that we can identify and change belief systems that are socially destructive and self-negating into constructive, positive beliefs, so that we can become better believers, guarding against mental traps, falsity, and prejudicial thinking.

Dr. Newberg also reveals how we our brains are designed to perceive and construct spiritual realities. In this book he presents the first brain scan research ever conducted showing what happens in the brains of Pentecostalists as they engage in the practice of speaking in tongues, nuns as they pray, and an atheist who focuses on an image of God. These practices appear to permanently alter important structures in the brain, and this is what causes people to completely trust, or distrust, religious concepts and beliefs. Dr. Newberg and Mark Waldman reveal how the brain constructs beliefs about reality and the world around us that help us deal with nearly every aspect of life.

How Are We Influenced?
First of all it must be realized that the sleep in which Man exists is not normal but hypnotic sleep…. One would think that there are forces for whom it is useful and profitable to keep man in a hypnotic state and prevent him from seeing the truth and understanding his position. There is an Eastern tale, which speaks about a very rich magician who had a great many sheep… He did not want to hire shepherds, nor did he want to erect a fence about the pasture where his sheep were grazing. The sheep consequently often…ran away, for they knew that the magician wanted their flesh and skins and this they did not like. At last the magician found a remedy. He hypnotized his sheep and suggested to them that they were immortal and that no harm was being done to them when they were skinned, that, on the contrary, it would be very good for them and even pleasant; secondly he suggested that the magician was a good master who loved his flock so much that he was ready to do anything in the world for them; and in the third place he suggested to them that if anything at all were going to happen to them it was not going to happen just then, at any rate not that day, and therefore they had no need to think about it. Further the magician suggested to his sheep that they were not sheep at all; to some of them he suggested that they were lions, to others that they were eagles, to others that they were men, and to others that they were magicians. And after this all his cares and worries about the sheep came to an end. They never ran away again but quietly awaited the time when the magician would require their flesh and skins. This tale is a very good illustration of man's position.

In Search of the Miraculous, P.D. Ouspensky

Perception VS. Reality...
Is it really possible that illusion and overt manipulation can be used to control some aspect of the lives of almost everyone on earth at some level? Science has revealed one of the answers in a recent article published by Reuters on 6-22-05 entitled “Brain sees violent video games as real life” in which a study reveals how the brains of players of violent video games react as if the violence were real. Klaus Mathiak at the University of Aachen in

Germany

studied the brain patterns of 13 men aged 18 to 26 who, on average, played video games for two hours a day. Wired up to a scanner, they were asked to play a game involving navigating through a complicated bunker, killing attackers and rescuing hostages. Mathiak found that as violence became imminent, the cognitive parts of the brain became active and that during a fight, emotional parts of the brain were shut down. The pattern was the same as that seen in subjects who have had brain scans during other simulated violent situations. It suggests that video games are a "training for the brain to react with this pattern," Mathiak says.

Scientifically defined, reality is that which is true independent of our beliefs or knowledge (or lack thereof). Either illusion or appearance is the window through which most people experience reality. How clearly we see through this window is determined not only by the limitations of our thoughts and perceptions, but also by the inate ability of each peson to deeply desire to cleanse the window of our mental/emotional programing, denial, and delusion so as to see the truth.

Surely you have questioned: what is "it" that makes us who and what we are? What is realty? Is it memory, knowledge, experience, or a combination of all these? Surly you have asked yourself the question: Why am I the way I am? Doesn’t the answer have everything to do with your perception of reality?

Imbedded beliefs, ideas, emotions, fears and lies have a life all their own which exist from the substance of habitual feeding of them. What is wrong with all of us at some level, is not that we have flawed and delusional beliefs, rather that many cling to them because we believe that this is who we are. And this is where everything connected to the challenge of seeing reality becomes clear. Thought itself is the ultimate enemy of our ability to see reality. Not that thought itself is bad or wrong or evil. It is our psycho/spiritual investment in thoughts that give them life, and at the same time drains our essential life-force, or consciousness. Why? Because humans were primarily designed to live intuitively, not from thought. Jesus said: "So be it, according to what you believe." Thinking is dangerous because of what is born form our thoughts. Thought on the most primitive level precedes action. But on the other end of the scale where the conscious mind goes to the highest source for understanding and insight, intuition precedes action.

Intuition has many meanings across many cultures, including: quick and ready insight seemingly independent of previous experiences and empirical knowledge immediate apprehension or cognitionknowledge or conviction gained by intuition, the power or faculty of attaining to direct knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought and inference called also an ability to grok, the perceiving of unconsciousness.

A person who has an intuitive understanding can not fully explain why he or she holds that view. Intuition is an unconscious form of knowledge. It is immediate and not open to rational/analyticalthought processes. It differs from instinct, which does not have the experience element. Intuition has advantages in solving complex problems and finding new results. Intuition is the source of common sense. Sources of intuition are feeling, experiences and knowledge. But intuition is literally free of thought.

Thought, for the most part, is more often than not a decoy designed to keep our minds from being freed by intuition. Much of our thinking is the enemy of reality because many of our thoughts are not originally ours

Thoughts are projected into us from the world and our environment from the moment we are born. If you watch children they have a special way of looking at the world, different than adults. They observe, they wonder and this is how they learn. But as time passes they are systematically drawn literally head-first into the corrupt ways of thinking adults who have been lured away from innocence into the underworld of thought based existence. We can be like children again.