Essay for
Nov 2004

Belief can be the Final Barrier to Faith

This essay is the second of a series of articles on 'Why bad things happen to good people'. We all feel that we are good people, and yet 'bad things' appear to follow in our footsteps. This essay explores the constructive/destructive borders of personal and religious thought processes.

From day one you are learning patterns of living: at first through your parents which later extend into your immediate environment, and finally into the world. All these patterns of living are created and reinforced by family and friends, and by your religious, cultural, ethnic, educational, economic and political background. They all support and produce your adopted or created beliefs, constructs and patterns that can form into solid unchanging imprints.

Ultimately all those beliefs, constructs, patterns and imprints become self-reliant, and are what you take as who you are and what others relate to or reject. This conglomerate is one large pattern as 'I did that' or 'I want that'. Where 'I' is the subject, 'that' is the object, and 'did or want' is the linking energy that binds the subject and object together, creating the very knowable sensation of 'I am'. This is the foundation of 'I am smart, I am talented, I am good-looking, I am plain, I am religious, I am an atheist, I am happy, I am depressed, I care, I don't care etc. This is what you feel is the substance of your being. But that one large pattern of 'I did that or I want that' distills down to 'I am that', which is a belief. It is only real to you, and you believe it. The fact that you may indeed be all those listed things, and more, may well be true, but the simple fact that you believe them gives them absolute power over the very 'I am' that created them. Such is the power of a belief.

If taken as referencing, the 'I am that' is a created deception of who and what you really are, as it is not real. You make it real by your invested belief, which is deceitful, as it supports and maintains the deception. The 'I am that' deception appears to control everything that occurs in your life, but the reality is that it is the belief-deceit that controls the controlling deception. It is the belief-deceit that creates the power, maintaining the deception 'I am that' as real, and so controls its existence. It's an insidious circle of entrapment, creating endless forms of violence and destruction. Your 'I am that' is created out of a different substance from the 'I am that' of another. The substance of one ultimately runs into the substance of another, and the differences of each battle it out to discover the one true substance. It's self-sustaining entrapment, initiating a senseless waste of resources, transforming humans into expendable fodder of a belief.

The 'I am that' can be taken as referencing or alignment, and both can be used destructively or constructively. But if that phrase is enlarged to 'I am that, I am', it is pointing at the purity of amalgamated alignment with a statement of your existence.

The entrapment is self-created and so can be self-negated, which is negating the belief that supports and maintains the deception. If you remove the belief-deceit the 'I am that' deception has no support and ultimately its substance will face its own demise, as the deceit to maintain it is gone. This reduces the 'I am that' to 'I am', which is simply a statement of existence. This is not new information. If you care to examine the Book of Revelations from the Christian Bible you will discover the first beast is the deception and the second beast is the deceit. The first beast (the deception) passes its authority to the second beast (the deceit), allowing it to act on its behalf with its name and power 'and who can defeat such a beast?' If you read the Book of Revelations with the fear component removed it can indeed be very revealing.

The entrapment within the deception is belief maintained. Remove the belief and there is nothing to support the deception. This appears to be quite simple, but the belief-deceit is not a quitter. Its own survival depends upon the deception, and it will not allow the deception to be bypassed without a massive struggle. And that is the subtle nature of the deceit, as the struggle itself is the deceit in action. Indeed, who can defeat such a beast?

Finally, we get to the title of this little essay 'Belief can be the Final Barrier to Faith'. The foregoing was simply to demonstrate the controlling and self-sustaining power of a belief. But, and it's a big but, all those beliefs are equally beneficial and supportive. The non-beneficial and controlling side of the benefit and support is that the belief creates defined borders of learning, which can be used as both a weapon and a shield. The belief by itself is fine; it is the borders that cause problems.

Stating that the belief is fine by itself may appear contradictory to what was said previously, but it is not, as the belief on its own is fine. It is your own self-generated power of belief in the belief that maintains the borders created by the belief, making them real. And this is the deceit supporting itself, which in turn maintains the deception. It's a self-contained cunning system of self-maintenance that can be very destructive.

A belief does create borders, and that is a valid learning process. It is the belief the deception places upon the belief, which is the deceit, that causes all the destruction: the learning borders of a belief support that process. It is entrapment every which way one turns. And again, ' Who can defeat such a beast'?

But, and it's another one of those big buts, the creation of the original 'I am that' deception is a natural offshoot of how pure consciousness functions. Consciousness is one hundred percent self-referential, and so in turn you reference what you produce as who are. Then the production references the producer as the owner of the production, which supports and maintains the producer, and that is the great deception. It simply does not end.

How does faith fit into this entire self-contained system? Well, I'm glad you asked, because there is a way out of this self-maintaining jungle, and that is by alignment, which has an up and down side. A belief is always referencing, which is once removed from who you are. The belief is designed to support the emergence of a pure faith. But a belief always has borders and faith does not. Tragically, a belief can prevent the very thing it has been created to accomplish. A belief is maintained by borders, whilst a faith is borderless. Attempting to stimulate a faith by a belief limits the faith to the borders of that belief. The deceit will arise upon the border, controlling the belief-faith, potentially producing the exact opposite of what the belief was created to accomplish, That controlling process contains the potential to be self-destructive, as well as destroying many others along the way, which human history easily attests to.

Ultimately the belief is not the problem. The problem is the borders they create. Pure faith is always open-ended without borders of any description. The moment faith is restricted within borders, no matter how good the borders are, the deceit will arise upon the border to use the faith as both a weapon and a shield. The dilemma, of those supporting a belief-system, is how to present a belief without restricting a developing faith within the borders of the belief. The answer is simple but difficult to implement, as those who control the belief must be willing to let go of their control over individual developing faith. The answer is simply to prioritize unguarded faith leaving it free of attachment to a belief and the borders it creates. The faith will freely develop, having no borders to defend and so will not attack the borders of another. The deceit will then have nothing to grasp and hold onto, and so cannot arise to use the borders as a weapon or a shield. It's simple and it works, but very difficult to have those controlling a belief-system use it, as they lose their power and control.

Now enters the final component to this saga, trust. If you trust a belief, you equally trust the borders the belief creates. And all beliefs create borders. It is the nature of a belief. In the final analysis, a belief has restrictive borders and trust and faith are unrestrictedly borderless. Or, trust and faith resonate with each other as both have no defined borders. Consequently, if faith and trust are restricted or forced into the borders of a belief it limits the faith and trust to within those borders. This allows the deceit to arise upon the border, which can then be defended and used to attack, maintaining both the deceit and the deception. A trusting-faith can easily be twisted by a restricted belief into endless forms of recycling destructive violence. Any attempt to create a trusting-faith, maintained by a belief is doomed to failure, as the belief restricts that which cannot be restricted: faith and trust. The consequences are always destructive, causing endless forms of violence, pain and suffering, all of which is absolutely unnecessary. And so, everything distills down to choice. You trust your belief or you trust your faith. Attempting to combine both will only cause internal and external conflict, as they do not resonate together. If the faith has borders, it is not a pure faith, it is a belief-induced faith, that potentially creates border wars and humans become the fodder in that war.

The choice is referencing or alignment. If you reference a belief or faith, it is always once removed from who you are. It can be used when it pleases you and ignored when it does not. If you align with a belief or faith, you are that which it is. Referencing is alterable, alignment is not. The choice cements the course of your life, and the course establishes its own consequences. This creates mirrored resolution responses in your life that are the primary cause of the majority of your self-created unhappiness.

The experiential difference between referencing and alignment is enormous. With referencing both the deception and deceit are active. In alignment the deceit is missing, as you do not own the production: you are the production. The deception can still be active, so alignment can go both ways either as absolute good or absolute evil. And in both cases, if you know it, it is not alignment but referencing. It's a choice. Aligning with potential evil is alignment with a border, and the results are always destructive for everyone concerned. Aligning with absolute good can become a belief or moral and ethical issue, as what is good and what is not. But you really do not require a belief system to know that. You already know, you simply do not trust your own knowing, which is having faith in yourself. Aligning trust and faith with instinctual knowing is aligning with your own consciousness construction. Or, you are making personal what is impersonally embedded within consciousness. It's always a choice, creating a very interesting life.

Religion either supports the development of a pure unrestricted faith or it demands adherence to the borders of its beliefs, restricting faith to within those borders. Within unrestricted faith the fruits are abundant and nourishing and easily witnessed by all. Within restricted faith the same fruit shrivels and is uneatable, as the life has been sucked out of it. Or, it presents a husk as representing a seed that can mature. But the reality is the husk cannot grow, as it has been stripped of its growing essence. The remaining hull is stagnating within the prison walls of a non-evolutionary restrictive belief.

If the borders of a religion cannot flex to meet the constantly expanding evolutionary requirements of its adherents, the internal expansion can push that containment to its destruction. The pressure for evolutionary flexibility, within absolute restrictive containment, ultimately results in the borders imploding or exploding, destroying many along the way. Border stagnation does not create life; it destroys in the guise of supporting it, which is entrapment and the deceit in action. The results of any form of entrapment are always destructive. And such is the world we live in.

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