4.2 Foundational Beliefs And Big Picture Belief Criteria
I good way to approach time of great uncertainty is to set some criteria for selecting what we are going to choose to believe.  Remember that we may never know what is really true, but that what we choose to believe is what will affect how we make decisions, how we will feel in our life, how we treat others, where we choose to head in our life and basically affect everything about us.  We’re taking major stuff here.  This is very important to consider, especially if we are not accustomed to thinking in this way. 
We all realize that as children we held beliefs that seemed to be true and worked for us at the time.  As we grew up, we became aware that there was a world out there that functioned very differently than the world we knew in terms of our neighborhood, friends and family.  Our awareness expanded and a different picture emerged.  The beliefs we held changed as our awareness of a bigger picture developed. 
Likewise, when we are seeking to understand our lives by evaluating the world as it appears before us, we would be wise to remind ourselves that there are even larger perspectives we will likely experience.  Beliefs shape how we interpret these new vistas.  Understanding our own values gives us a means of shaping our own beliefs in a way that will serve ourselves and others.  Living in harmony with the true nature of reality is living with the flow of the current versus against it. 
Creeks flow into rivers, which flow into lakes, which flow again into creeks and rivers, and ultimately flow into the ocean.  Though each creek, river and lake and ocean has its own qualities.  They all exist because of the existence of water. They have their own ways of behaving and yet that behavior is greatly affected by the behavior of water.  They cannot defy the nature of water because water is what gives them life.  If we misunderstand water, we will not understand creeks, rivers, lakes or oceans.
The same holds true for regarding our understanding the nature of life. Misunderstand that nature and we will misunderstand life in all its forms.  Since the nature of life is infinite, understanding it all would be a rather big challenge. Yet if we have some understanding of that infinite nature of life, we will be better equipped to understand the creeks, rivers, lakes and oceans of our own lives.
I have developed what I consider to be my own fundamental guidelines of assessing the ideas that come to mind that might later become beliefs.  I believe that for existence itself to continue, existence must be supportive of itself.  As an individual, if we are not being supportive of ourselves, then we are self destructive.  I see the universe under one guiding umbrella.  Each bit of that is in existence is part of that umbrella.  That which supports the umbrella is supporting its own nature.  That which goes against the nature of that umbrella is therefore not supportive of the structure of its own existence.  Cancerous cells lead to the death of the body that gives them life and therefore to their own destruction.
How we approach life is a direct reflection of our beliefs.  If our beliefs support life, then we are supporting what is eternal and in so doing, we are supporting ourselves.  Now as I see it, this umbrella, this source of all existence, understands this very well.  After all, one can see by the complexity of the universe, from the micro to the macro.  This source has been around for a long, long time.  So if we want to understand life we need to form our beliefs so that they are consistent with a larger view of life. 
My foundational belief is that there is one source behind all life.  This source loves itself and therefore loves all life.  This is clear to me.  It’s purely logical, is consistent with my personal experience, and matches what I feel in my heart.  From this premise I’ve come up with what we can call “Big Picture Belief Criteria”.  These are challenges to any belief that I may find myself looking into, talking about, or find already hidden within me that I’ve noticed.  Any belief that I want to hold has to fit within the big picture as I currently see it.  Here are my Big Picture Belief Criteria:
  • Is the belief supportive of all life?  Does the belief respect life?  Does it respect others? Does it respect me?  If all other life be to have this belief, would that life want to exist?  Would it elevate each aspect of life that believed it too?
  • Would it be a good thing as I see it? If each bit of life had this belief, and allowing for the diversity of wants and needs that is so clearly a part of life, would I still be supportive of this belief?  If this belief were to be applied to me by someone else who I could consider a threat, would I still be supportive of this belief?
  • Do I want this to be true?  Why? Why believe in something that you can’t yet prove that you don’t want to be true?  Why form an interpretation that you don’t want to be true?  This is not avoidance.  This is thoughtfulness.  Too often we believe in things that we don’t’ want to be true but we fear are true.  We can’t prove it, yet we’ve all seen people defending ideas that they don’t like even though they cannot be certain about it.  That is just a foolish waste of one’s ability to think.
Ask yourself “Do I want this to be true?”  If not, then why am I choosing to believe it?  If fear is part of the reason, then why trust it?  Remember, fear is a coercive motivator whose force that is that of your own self.  You decide what you will choose to let motivate you.  Just remember that coercion is not a very respectful approach.  Learn to trust those beautiful heartfelt dreams and aspirations.  Learn to understand when fear is what is motivating you and ask yourself just how long you are willing to live taking directions from fear.  A day?  Week?  Month?  Year? 5 years? 25 years?  50 years?  A lifetime?  It’s up to you to live as you choose.  Choose to life conscious of you.  That is the greatest of all gifts and yet one of the most underappreciated. 
Remember to look for new ways of seeing life so that when your own beliefs lead you into personal conflicts, you can resolve them without ignoring them.  You can’t make a “bad” choice, but you can repeat choices that have not gotten you what you really wanted in the past.  Eventually these repeated habitual choices will wear you out until making the same choice again will just be unacceptable and previously unacceptable choices will be more palatable. 
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