What Is a Belief System?
Sep 28th
Simply stated, our belief systems are the cornerstone for our attitudes and ideas about everything in our lives. One example is a person’s religious affiliation. Based on religious convictions, an individual may wear a specific type of clothing, participate in certain rituals, or avoid particular behaviors. Their actions are governed by their ideals. Another example is one’s political affiliation. The ideals that people hold about social causes and government issues like immigration and taxes dictate the political party they gravitate towards. A person’s values shape the types of organizations and social groups they join. People tend to socialize with others who share their ideals. Church congregations are examples of people who share a belief system about a deity, gathering together to share thoughts and feelings.
Belief systems are built around morals and interpretations of right and wrong. If someone holds the idea that drinking alcohol is morally wrong, this idea is a cornerstone of their belief system, and it will directly impact their actions. If someone holds the belief that eating meat is wrong, this will affect their diet choices. The compilation of ideas create an overall belief system, and this impacts people’s behavior, affiliations, and social circles. If you want to explore this further, begin by evaluating your core values. What are the ideals and characteristics you hold most important in your life? A few examples might be:
- Helping others
- Integrity
- Transformation
- Community
- Leadership
Your core values are like the anchor of your inner self. Experiences can also shape belief systems. We use labels to describe our physical characteristics, intellectual acuity, socio-economic level, and so on. These combined labels create our belief systems about ourselves. We believe ourselves to be fat, tall, skinny, attractive, unattractive, smart, slow, high energy, low energy, poor, or rich. The beliefs color our feelings, and affect our behaviors and the ways we express ourselves. They can dictate our clothing choices, our hairstyles, where we live, and the cars we drive. All of our behaviors can be traced back to our beliefs.
No Joke, How to Think Better
Sep 28th
This is a health, fitness and meditation article, although it is a very unique one: This article is about how to be more focused, honest with yourself, and more direct in what you do. It is why I am using the title “No Joke, How to Think Better.” Sure, there are many other things I was thinking of calling this article. But this title fit, let me explain why in the next few sentences. In life, all focusing is meditation, not it seems like meditation when you are deeply focused, not it wants to be meditation when you are deeply focused and “in the flow,” but it is meditation, all of it. So, if you think I am going to take a not universal, only in an “Eastern Cult” approach to this subject, you are completely wrong. All we have to do to meditate in other words, is, without levity or joking on my part, is concentrate more and think better.
Sure, it sounds too simple, but that is how meditation starts in all senses. At least that is what I learned in all the simple and advanced meditation courses I have taken and seen, including Self Realization Fellowship and Roy Eugene Davis (Center For Spiritual Awareness), among many others I have taken and seen, including mental discipline courses and many hypnosis and self hypnosis courses. Indeed, meditation starts with concentrating and thinking better, the rest of the courses have their individual “spins,” but that is the basic logic behind them all: concentrate better and think better.
Sure, it is said that the most basic thing in the world can be hard to do at the highest levels of that basic thing for a person at basic levels or second nature to a person at high levels. That is the reality of advanced meditation. You are doing those two basic things, concentrating and thinking better at all levels, basic or advanced. If I could give it all a more complex and “interesting” meaning, I would, but, the principles are what it all comes down to, the function is secondary.
What I mean by the function is secondary is that the function emanates from the principles, and the principles of meditation are concentration and better thinking, not so much stopping or avoiding thought. For, even if you think you stop thought, you are still thinking that you have stopped it. So, the best you can do in meditation is think better, not stop thought as is said in Zen teachings. In fact, thought stoppage versus better thinking is the answer to the double bind. Better thinking is always going to win in that, no matter what the Zen parables say at times in a seemingly in-congruent and self contradictory way. In fact, that is the real goal, better thinking, not thought stoppage. In Zen the inversion paradigm is also used to show reality and honest truth in the form of the double bind.
But, back to our subject. Good concentration and good thinking are keys to good meditation and a good life caused, for when you see the effects of good habits you know this is the reality of the situation. When cause and effect are in harmony, everything is good, no matter what level or experience you are. That is reality, no matter what.
