Walking the Wall

I have for the past many years been on a journey to redefine what I believe, a step at a time, with some measure of choice and thought instead of reactionary, unconscious beliefs. For some time now my reaction to sorting out my beliefs have been to simply not think about it at all. When questioned about my beliefs, I have mostly said I knew more about what I didn’t believe than what I did. This is, in a sense, a reverse belief–a negative belief, this focusing on what I don’t believe rather on what I do believe so I have started to think about what it is that I do believe in.

My personal quote for some time has been one by Robert Fulghum:

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge - that myth is more potent than history. I believe that dreams are more powerful than facts - that hope always triumphs over experience - that laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death.

• I believe that there is more to life than the physical world, that people are more than simply flesh and blood, but also have spirit. As Joseph Campbell wrote, "The inner world is the world of your requirements and your energies and your structure and your possiblities that meets the outer world. And the outer world is the field of your incarnation. That’s where you are. You’ve got to keep both going. "As Novalis said, ‘The seat of the soul is there where the inner and outer worlds meet."
• I believe that every living thing comes from and is part of that which is divine.

   

• I believe that the world is made up of and constantly interacts with energy, and that we attract what we put out–so if we are putting out negative energy, we attract negative energy, conversely, if we are putting out positive energy, we attract positive energy.

   

• I believe that most religions have cores of truth, that they are all metaphors attempting to explain what is divine and what is unexplainable.
• I believe that because religions are made up of human beings, they are all flawed.
• I believe that spirituality is not synonymous with religious–that one can be spiritual and religious, religious without being spiritual, but can also be spiritual without being religious.
     

    

• I believe that compassion is the beginning of, and the best of what is humanity and that compassion in oneself and in others should be nurtured.
• I believe that living only for the end results or "what comes next" is short sighted, and that eternity isn’t only a length of time, but a place of being and that eternity can be found in every moment–and those moments shouldn’t be wasted.

   

• I believe that we are not responsible for or defined what other people say or do (even if it is about or to us), but that we are only responsible with what we say, or how we act and/or react.

      

• I believe that life is in the journey, that life is a continual process of growth, that if you aren’t growing and learning–then you aren’t living.

   

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Progress

Let there be many windows to your soul,
That all the glory of the universe
May beautify it. Not the narrow pane
Of one poor creed can catch the radiant rays
That shine from countless sources. Tear away
The blinds of superstition; let the light
Pour through fair windows broad as truth itself
And high as God.

Why should the spirit peer
Through some priest-curtained orifice, and grope
Along dim corridors of doubt, when all
The splendor from unfathomed seas of space
Might bathe it with the golden waves of Love?
Sweep up the debris of decaying faiths;
Sweep down the cobwebs of worn-out beliefs,
And throw your soul wide open to the light
Of Reason and of Knowledge. Tune your ear
To all the wordless music of the stars
And to the voice of Nature, and your heart
Shall turn to truth and goodness as the plant
Turns to the sun. A thousand unseen hands
Reach down to help you to their peace-crowned heights,
And all the forces of the firmament
Shall fortify your strength. Be not afraid
To thrust aside half-truths and grasp the whole.

~Ella Wheeler Wilcox