What is belief? It is the acceptance and placing of trust in a particular action, object or person. It is, in essence, the basis for living. If we believe in something valuable, then even without understanding, our belief enables us to gain something. On the other hand our belief in something mistaken or bogus will cause us to suffer harm or loss.
As we live from day to day, we act with belief or confidence that our actions will benefit us in some way. When our actions do indeed bear fruit, we believe more strongly in that particular mode of action. On the other hand, if our actions lead to negative results, we believe less in whatever we based those actions on.
In a sense, life is a repeated cycle of trial and error: of believing, acting, observing the result of our actions, and thus either affirming or calling into question our original belief. We eat certain foods because we believe them to have nutritional value. If we were to always question whether the food we ate might be contaminated with poison, the simple act of choosing a meal would become an agonizing ordeal. We board a plane with the belief that it will take us to our desired destination. If we get on the wrong plane, however, then no matter how confident we may be that we will arrive at our destination, we will end up someplace else entirely. Many of us have experienced pouring a glass of milk from the refrigerator we believed to be fresh, only to find, unpleasantly, the milk has soured.
In life we act based on what we believe. After taking action, we can assess the value of our belief, like drinking a glass of water because we believe that it is water. We do not have to analyze it before drinking it. We could say that life is founded on belief. Nothing can be more unsettling than if this foundation of life is shaken. Therefore, the problem lies not in whether we believe, but in what we believe. We live our lives believing in or taking many things for granted, but in the final analysis, all we can really believe in or depend upon is ourselves.
To truly believe in oneself, however, is no easy matter. Our feelings and state of mind change from moment to moment. In reality, people often become frustrated when they are unable to make things go the way they wish. Such a condition is not conducive to belief or confidence in oneself.
How, then, can we develop a “self” that we can truly believe in? To do so, we must first know and understand the nature of our own life; then we must be able to control our life in the way we wish. If we believe in something that misinterprets the fundamental principles of life or is out of sync with life’s correct rhythm we can only become unhappy. But when we are awakened to and in sync, our life will be strengthened, purified and perfected, and we will come to gain control over ourselves.
“Life unlike a synchronous sine wave has variable and numerous phases with much larger deviations from the routine. Our body, though all flesh and bones, is composed of several vital disparate components, each with its own function, interlinked but affected in a different way by external situations. We as an entity are put through several different life phases responsible for altering the buffers from our life and adding high stress levels. These phases often affect us partly i.e. a particular part of us, or at times entirely. Sometimes we may breeze through but other times we may be left incapacitated, physically or/and mentally…”
