Is Your Belief System Personal and Unique?

How important is a belief system?

I'd say quite important, but in a different way than you might think. Most people live according to a belief system that really isn't theirs. At least they didn't give it much thought or question anything about it.

Most of us are products of whatever type of religious home we happened to be born into. We follow the spiritual or religious practices our families show us. If you're not careful, you spend a lifetime living by a spiritual compass that you may not agree with or feel comfortable with.

There are an unlimited number of belief systems you could subscribe to. Even for people who follow one of the "normal" religious beliefs, there are countless interpretations of scripture.
My point here, is that you have to develop your own belief system that allows you to live your life in peace and contentment.

Myself, I grew up in a Christian household. While I "believe" much of what I was taught, I had too many questions about what I was being told was absolute truth. Some of the stories, to me, seemed too "man-made" - attempts at explaining things humans can't explain in a nice, cute story.

As I began to read about some of the Eastern religions or New Age ideas, I began to form an entirely unique belief system that works for me. If someone asks me what my religion is, I have none!

Religion is an attempt to fit my higher spiritual self into a box of rules and conformities that, in my honest opinion, have nothing to do with the growth of my soul.

I also have a problem with the wars, death and destruction caused by religious, "peaceful" people. Peaceful?

You have every right to believe what you want. Just as I do. Just as the guy down the street has the right to believe something entirely different from the differing views you and I may have.

To create bad blood, anger and judgment against another group of people because that group believes in the "wrong" God, is insane to me. It's further insanity to go kill those people in the name of the "right" God.

More insanity is involved, again, in my honest and humble opinion, when so-called religious "leaders" abuse their power to take advantage of others in the form of money gathering or outright physical abuse.

My Religion Is Spirituality

Spirituality is a personal journey I experience. My religion is simply spirituality. Understanding my inner feelings and what provides me inner peace or what causes me inner anxiety.

This learning process you go through provides you a compass, or belief system by which to live by. As long as our belief systems include treating people fairly and with respect, I think we'll be just fine.

On the other hand, if there's a current religion that fits your needs to a "t", that sounds great to me, also.

For me, though, I just can't subscribe to beliefs that put so much weight on specific rules and procedures rather than helping you look within for the answers.

It wasn't until after my Eastern religion study that I finally understood the true meaning of the Christian statement by Jesus, "I Am".

I find it astonishing that not once during all those Sundays that I sat in my family's church as a child and teenager was one person able to provide the answer to the "I am" riddle. Consistently, we were "taught" to look for God and your salvation "out there".

Yet, the person we were ultimately supposed to be learning from gave the answer to spirituality and inner understanding with two simple words.

Instead of practicing the art of looking within to find our inner selves, we were taught to repeat memorized words while alternately standing and sitting over the course of an hour.

My personal belief system is one that overrides all the religious rules and regulations and focuses on treating others respectfully as I spend my "worship" time reflecting on the vastness within my soul.

And I've barely touched the surface of what I sense there is to my inner soul. How exciting it feels to know how much I still have to spiritually discover within myself.

You know, all the conflict between people of various religions would be brought to a halt if everyone questioned the rigidity of each religion, opened their minds to studying the philosophies of the West, East, Native Americans, etc, and discovered that they all boil down to very similar belief systems.

The secret lies within. You'll find your true God within yourself if you make the time and effort to look. The secret also lies in the fact that every being, human and non-human, on this planet is part of the same energy and force.

God is this energy, this force that connects us all.

If more people learned and lived this philosophy, many of our social ills would disappear in understanding. A belief system of true outer and inner peace would emerge.

Change your life,

Matt


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