The Birth of a Life Experience: What Are Beliefs?

Yesterday, I posted about my concept of the Birth Cycle of a Life Experience and explained how Conscious Thoughts become Beliefs. I think it's important to examine what beliefs are because we can get really hung up on what we believe. Throughout history crusades have been fought based on someone's beliefs. People have been persecuted because another person held different beliefs, and we don't have to look very far to see it continuing in the world today.

Bruce DiMarsico, the creator of The Option Method, explains beliefs beautifully, “A belief is assuming something to be true, to be a fact. A belief is not caused, it is created by choice. A belief about a thing’s existence is not the same as its existence.” Beliefs are, in fact, totally subjective depending on the life experiences of the believer.

For argument's sake, take a boy who grows up in a home where the father believes all Italians are lazy. (This is just an example so please don't get upset if you're Italian.) What do you think are the chances that the child will believe the same thing? It's simply  belief that the father held: something that he was probably exposed to at some point in his life. Maybe HIS father thought all Italians were lazy. Maybe he met an Italian who WAS lazy and he detemined that ALL Italians are that way and tarred them with the same brush. Hopefully, the child will get to know Italians at some point in his life and change that belief, but until then, he's stuck with that beleif.

Having a thought doesn't make a beleif true. As Bruce DoMarsico says, it's a choice. We can choose to change a belief by changing our thoughts. Not That's where the problem lies. I'll get to that tomorrow. In the meantime, contemplate the following: "...all problems are beliefs, and in reality exist only in the mind of the person." - Walter C. Lanyon in London Notes and Lectures.