Beliefs
By Ellen Merrit
December 2010

One basic teaching has made its way down through the centuries - through the ancient world through Egypt, through the Greek Oracles, through the Celtic Druids, through the medieval monks and nuns, and so on to the present. "Know thyself." And today, we find more and more people looking in the mirror and asking, "Who IS this person?" There are several factors, which make up a person, including physical appearance, physical, and mental abilities, strengths, weaknesses and beliefs. Beliefs are perhaps the most important part of starting to know who we are. They form our self-image, they boost or crash our level of self-esteem, and they manage to worm their way into every area of our daily lives.

It is well known in Psychology (see any Human Growth and Development or Personality textbook) that our personalities are formed within the first five years of life. But our beliefs are formed, changed, adopted, and discarded throughout our lives as we get new information through our senses, as we discover new things about the world and ourselves, and as we face the various challenges and problems life offers. Our beliefs, more than anything else, determine how we think about ourselves, others and the world around us. Our beliefs, more than anything else, determine our choice of friends. We generally choose friends who tend to think and believe similarly to us. Likewise, we tend to choose spouses who think and believe similarly to us. And our beliefs, more than anything else, determine our attitudes and actions.

Our beliefs are also the most flexible part of ourselves, and the most vulnerable. Times of challenge, of hardship, of pain, tend to either cement and confirm our beliefs or blow them out of the water entirely to where we have to start over. So what exactly ARE beliefs? A good place to start is the dictionary. Let’s look.

Belief (n) 1) The state or habit of mind of one who believes; faith, confidence, trust. 2) A conviction or persuasion of truth; intellectual assent. 3) The thing believed; specifically a tenet or body of tenets, doctrine, creed.

Believe (v) 1) To have faith or confidence in something. 2) To have convictions. 3) To think, to judge, …to hold as true, to have as one’s conviction or opinion.

(Source: Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Fifth edition. G & C Merriam Co., Publishers: Springfield, MA, 1947)

OK. Don’t get too confused. We will go into this in greater detail later. To summarize, a belief is basically something we think is true. And history has shown us that we will go to great lengths to defend our beliefs, often to the death. Never mind why. That is a complex topic - let’s just say that humanity as a whole has a stubborn tendency to want to prove that they are right. Again, a complex topic.

From prehistoric times, human beings have tried to explain various things in nature, tried to understand how and why everything came into being, tried to categorize others, tried to develop a system of acceptable and unacceptable behaviors for their society. They put these explanations into stories, which were then handed down from generation to generation. The generations that heard these stories regarded them as true, and passed them in turn to others in the form of myths and legends. Every culture has, or had, its own mythological system of explaining the universe, explaining human beings, and explaining nature. Over time, the principles in these stories were distilled into laws, creeds, and doctrines – prescribed rules for behavior.

We can see this in the Rosetta stone, which depicts Babylonian law in detail. Jewish law is set forth in the Old Testament (particularly the Torah, or the Pentateuch – the first five books of the Bible). Greek mythology gives us a good picture of Greek and Roman societal values. The Egyptians left a graphic depiction of their society structure, customs, values and functions in their elaborate tombs. Any interested person can research the picturesque stories of Native American tribes in a local library. The Norse myths are as stark and cold as the environment that spawned them, but they too define acceptable behavior to men and gods. Other ancient cultures, such as the Hittite, Abyssinian, Assyrian, Persian (now Iran), Philistine, and Hindu have either vanished or blended with others to such an extent that the original societal customs have been lost – yet records of their existence and influence still remain.

OK. Enough of that. These belief systems also were an effort for human beings to understand themselves, as individuals and as communities. We will get into this more in depth shortly. To summarize, though, people determined acceptable and unacceptable behaviors through observing the effects of these behaviors. In short, what benefited the society was seen as good. What brought harm to the community or nation was seen as bad. The good-bad thing has been muddled as the legal systems have gotten more complex (and the attorneys more numerous), but the principle remains the same. Murder, theft, greed (coveting) and adultery end up hurting all parties concerned – the negative effects outweigh the good for the individuals AND society. Therefore, they are seen as unacceptable by law and punishable under legal codes, either human or Divine. We can also look at these in terms of the ripple effect – but that is another lecture.

The third main reason beliefs were developed was as a way for human beings to explain their place in the Universe. They did this largely through the influence of holy men and women in the culture, who were seen to be spokes people for the gods, oracles if you will.  Primitive cultures lived in complete harmony with their environment – as part of all that is. Human beings were to use their resources wisely and well. And every primitive culture had some form of deity, which its members see as part of their duty to please. We see the values of stewardship and righteousness (pleasing the Divine) throughout every culture. These have remained constant threads in whatever rope cultures wove through time. In ancient cultures, what was approved by the gods was seen as good. OR taken the other way around, a victory in battle could be (and often was) interpreted as a sign of Divine approval. Likewise, what was denied by the gods was seen as bad, and a defeat in battle could be (and often was) interpreted as a sign that the people had lost Divine favor. Life today is less cut and dried, on the whole. We are our own oracles, and often our own divinity, thanks to the humanistic movement of the last half of the 20th century. Our battles are less bloody, but no less devastating for that. We interpret success as a sign of favor, and failure as a sign of disfavor. And our self-image, our self-esteem, shifts accordingly.

Regardless of WHAT our beliefs may be, we develop them in the same basic ways. The first way we develop our belief systems is through what others tell us. A young child may determine what is "right" and "wrong" by what Mommy and Daddy tell him or her. Older children attend school and listen to their teacher (hopefully) to learn things that they will accept as fact. Teenagers may define their beliefs by what "the gang" thinks is cool (or whatever word you all use these days). Adults have their own mentors and role models who help mold, form and refine their beliefs.

Another way we develop our beliefs is through what we observe and experience. We observe and experience things every day, in the world around us. We observe and experience through TV, movies, radio, magazines, books and newspapers. And we observe other people, and experience interaction with them. We observe cause and effect. It is a law of physics that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. It is a law of Spirit that every choice we make results in an action, and each action has a consequence. And we observe this from infancy. This takes some deduction on our part – it may not take a ton of bricks for Johnny to learn that if he scribbles all over his bedroom wall in crayon, his parents will punish him. However, it does take some logic for Johnny to make the connection between his action (scribbling on the wall) and the consequence (punishment – let’s say Time Out). Once Johnny makes this connection, he has developed a belief that scribbling on the wall is a "bad" thing to do. It does not produce a consequence he likes, and therefore he is not likely to repeat this behavior. But beyond not repeating the behavior, Johnny has developed a belief – scribbling on the wall is "bad". This belief may expand to include other beliefs: perhaps untidiness is "bad", creativity belongs only on paper, Mom is mean and so forth. Depends. Cause and effect is external – that is to say, we observe it through its effects on us and draw conclusions. Internally, we may develop our beliefs through meditation – through being silent, focused and listening to an "inner voice" which guides us.

The third way we develop our beliefs is through study. Let’s say someone wants to know if the sky is blue. That statement will start out as a theory, or hypothesis. The next step is to look up information about the sky. This leads to other questions. How have other people described the sky? What exactly is the color "blue" made of? How is light refracted and how does the refraction differ by the angle of the planet? After the information is gathered, and studied, the person draws conclusions based on what he or she found out. If 50 million accounts exist that the sky is blue, that is a pretty fair bet for it being a true statement if a majority vote means anything. If we find that the color blue is only found at a certain wave frequency of light, and that this frequency is generated when light is refracted at a certain angle, we can make a good scientific case for the sky’s being blue. The important thing to remember in developing beliefs is that the main person you have to prove their truth (or lack thereof) to is YOU. And construct your belief system accordingly.

The last part of this lecture will be short, as it addresses the different types of beliefs we develop. The first type is non-negotiable beliefs. These are principles and statements, creeds and doctrines, codes of behavior and so forth that we hold to be true. Period. And no amount of "proof" or documentation is going to change our minds. The second type is negotiable beliefs. These are things which we think MAY be true, but we aren’t really sure. If we get enough proof or documentation to indicate that these beliefs are actually not true, we are somewhat open to change – and we can either adapt them or throw them out, depending on the evidence we find. The third type of beliefs are open beliefs – the things we don’t know about yet. The more we grow and develop, the more we find there is to learn, and the circle is far bigger on the inside than it is outside.

May the Force be with you, and may you rest in the love and care of the Divine.