BELIEF IS A CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY

When we invest in the idea of belief, we engage in the fantasy of what ‘should be’. Believing begets an Immediacy where things take a turn towards ‘shouldyness’. Believing creates a departure from “What Is” and the no-limit and timelessness of Self. It gives an artificial feeling of self-satisfaction and false identity.

The case of mistaken identity is often exacerbated or liberated through the touchstone of relationship with others. In spirituality, the advance course is relationships. This is where the rubber hits the road. If we don’t do it here then are we really walking The Path? In any type of relationship, we have to make some type of contribution to the immediacy of the other person, albeit a coworker, subordinate, or a boss called your spouse. We define ourselves, who we are and who we aren’t with the choices that are made. Perfect? What relationship is truly perfect all the time? How we deal with the imperfection of whom we are vis-a-vis the presumed other party, is pivotal in gaining more clarity about Self and the connection to everyone called the Formless.

When we believe, for example,that our relationship should be like this and that, instead of ‘the current undesired reality,’ we push when we should ’see’. Pushing obviates seeing. This is not to say that we accept destructive behavior. Having said that, the first thing is to see is that we want it our way. This is not Burger King. Wanting it our way, is leaving and ignoring all the messaging that the Universe (through the other party) is giving us relative to the particular role we are playing. If we can’t get ‘that’, then we cannot unhinge ourselves from over-developing our own ego plot line and running our own story, apart from the Director.

Again, if there is an untenable situation that is dangerous or harmful to well-being, then there should be rapid movement toward a more peaceful direction. Accepting and staying in a destructive relationship would be enabling it.

Relationships work best when the ‘I’ and the ‘you’ are merged into the open-hearted ‘we’. Hunkering down in any direction can be disabling and toxic over any stretch of time. The freezing of our assets, that is, to believe in certain non-negotiable outcomes, limits and polarizes our freedom to Be. Openness and not-knowing is not usually considered. We often feel we need to commit to one specific hard path that has to go a very prescribed route. This then, is not a state of fluidity and suppleness that can turn in any direction. It is an attempt to force the ‘us’ to go ‘our’ way or bust. Damn the others! Full steam ahead!

Going in one direction is akin to digging one hole rather than 20 holes, when looking for water. Normally this is a desirable focus of energies. However, digging ourselves deeper in the quicksand of our own folly, is certainly misguided. Where and how we dig is elemental. We might try something different if our practice is not sustainable and not getting any water.

When despair hits for a drug addict/alcoholic, it is the bottom, where there is nowhere else to go. It is a clear rendering of failure on the path trod. This, however, reveals the opening that we may not have considered until we crashed and burned completely. It is there and then, that an alternate possibility, never considered previously, is heralded, finally. At this point, there is no thought to continue on the path that has ended in dire futility. The epiphany lights the way to move gainfully in a new direction, with a sustenance that renews commitment.

Identifying beliefs, is an internal struggle with external ramifications. Externally, something may have occurred that has sent us into a crisis point. Relationships certainly can leverage this change. Internally, our response may be to finally stop believing we can win by pushing our beliefs against reality. To dump the how and why we believed what we did is to ‘see’ life in a completely different perspective. Our vision changes. We see differently after visiting and accepting the abyss of nowhere. Coming through this gauntlet of hopelessness, liberates us from the dead-end beliefs of how things should be, how things should have worked out, how things wronged us, to an acceptance that we have given up ‘this thinking’. Unfortunately it is only when we feel the full futility of it all that we move off of our high horse and accept life where it stops being a concept that we like or don’t like with our ego.

We may feel that we did everything right. This too is a belief and it is staid. Staidness and steadiness in beliefs are freezing points and not a dance with Shiva and the Gods of the Universe. The dance is never the same no matter how much we want it to be. Being free is being supple with our perennial partner called ‘uncertainty’. Love this partner and we flow with the magic of the Moment and the freshness of creativity and deep intelligence.

Beliefs are mind-based. They are unsustainable as they are insufficient to draw the entire Universe. They are endpoints locked in time and place. The universe is beyond time and place.

We are ’That’. And that is not a belief because it is not mind-based. Awareness alone can take us on that ‘real’ trip. The ticket cannot be belief. Belief by it’s own nature, denies reality. The Yes, Yes, Yes that the Universe chants in It’s Silence and openness, is always there, eternally waiting for our acceptance. Belief is dross and confusion about “What Is”.

“Belief is the state of mind in which a person thinks something to be the case, with or without there being empirical evidence to prove that something is the case with factual certainty. In other words, belief is when someone thinks something is reality, true, when they have no absolute verified foundation for their certainty of the truth or realness of something.”- OXFORD DICTIONARIES 

What are our core beliefs that preclude fluid movement in the dance of life?
Is it the belief that we have to always react and that we need to always regulate our world, to include the rest of the world? Is it a belief that ‘I’ know better than others? Do we see we believe we are all ego ‘trying’ to survive as some form of ego? Must we have an identity (in the Formless)? Is belief driving us to control it all while eschewing ‘letting’ and the freedom of effortlessness?

Truth is that our identity has always been ‘this’ no-form and Everything. It is there right now in this Moment, abiding and thrilling our hearts only if we allow It. There is no pushing. Believing is dumbing down Everything for a little misguided idea . There is nothing to believe. Know thyself first. Belief is choosing to be limitation.

Relationships are central to facilitating ’seeing’ not ‘pushing’. The test of relationship with others is a test of brokering Self in others. Identifying the ego as superfluous to identity is essential. Other individuals in our life are to be welcomed in, so we may lose the dross of ego aggrandizement and the worship of deadend beliefs

Our identity is not a concept, idea, or belief. To disfigure eternal expansiveness with arbitrary limitations is a fool’s game. That is why it always ends badly, especially when we cling to the very last thread of our belief. It was going nowhere fast. When belief ends, we flow unabated. ‘Others’ can facilitate internal growth as they often point to where we are not.ID That man.

This iz Daddy’O -Happy New Moment!