Monday, December 01, 2008

Beliefs

According to some, I only ever choose to believe what I decide to believe.

I don't know if I do or not. Belief might be something as intransigent and fixed in a person as is the colour of their eyes or the shape of their feet! Belief is like a limb except its invisible to the eye until that person behaves, speaks, listens or does something to express that belief. Then it shows its stripes briefly.

Others translate the belief through the lens of their own beliefs.

It's a mixed up, convoluted soup of misconceptions most of the time. A thing of wondrous simpatico, when in tune with others albeit rarely.

I don't want beliefs. I want faith and understanding but not fixed beliefs. I want to find growing things on beliefs that beget new beliefs as new knowledge and understanding come into being in me. I want movement not cement shoes.

Each of us is made of beliefs, some from our past, some from what we think we're seeing now and some we project into what we think may become. Refusal to believe is as much belief as is blind obedience to a fixed belief with no room for the new.

What I intend doesn't always match with what I believe. What I believe isn't always obvious to that part of me that intends.

Nothing is ever how we think it is or wish it to be and that might be a belief or not. It depends.

1 comment:

fruitbat said...

"It's a mixed up, convoluted soup of misconceptions most of the time."

That would be because we tend to confuse our 'vocal values' - those that we state, decide, think - with our 'acted values' - those that are deeply intrinsic to our being, to who we are. Those that *show* through what we do and what we effectively decide. Not those that we 'believe'we hold and 'want/intend' to hold.