Beyond Belief
Humans have managed to convince themselves of some highly incredulous ideas. We have records of societies murdering innocents, virgins and captives to appease some concept of a god or demon.
Sacrifices have been offered to local landscape features such as volcanoes, rivers, deep pits and caves. Weather occurrences, rain, lack of rain, floods and seasonal changes inspired the creation of gods, goddesses and attending invisible entourages’ world wide.
Highly detailed religions were developed; we now call them ‘mythologies’.
People were ritualistically murdered with great regularity to feed the appetites of these mythological gods, goddesses and demons.
People were convinced that transgressing against whatever imaginary laws the imaginary gods decreed would lead to imaginary ‘afterlife’ consequences and often very real consequences delivered by other ‘believers’ here and now.
Blood of humans and animals has been sprinkled over farm fields to improve the harvest.
Humans and animals have been slaughtered atop mountain peaks to appease the sun and moon.
Hundreds of creation stories about how humans got here and each more fantastic than the last.
Priesthoods were formed to administrate these religious constructions. ‘Common’ people could no longer directly commune with the deities but for a price the priests would do it for you.
Anyone not practicing the popular religion was persecuted.
People laugh at the idea of Zeus, Jupiter and Odin these days but would have made careful ritualistic offerings to them at another time in history.
Roman emperors were declared gods.
Egyptian kings were declared gods.
Wars have been waged and countless millions of lives destroyed over some mistaken concept of ‘god’.

Of course in the dawning of the second millenium, a measurement system based on a religious concept, humans feel decidedly more clever than their ancestors and have far more sophisticated belief systems about ‘God’.
Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, all have highly detailed and extremely imaginative doctrines and dogmas. Creation stories recycled for thousands of years and improbable if not impossible events set in the past and the future define these modern mythologies.
The major religions spawn thousands of offshoots, similar stories tailored to fit the sensibilities of the rebels in the flock.
I’ve met a man that belonged to a church that split into two separate churches because half the membership believed god wanted them to sing his praises with musical accompaniment, perhaps a piano, the other half were certain god wanted them to sing his praises accapella, without any instruments.
Whichever half of the congregation is right, the other half goes to hell.
Until that happens each half of the congregation will feel pretty smug in their decision being the correct one.
Perhaps you or someone you know belongs to a cult that symbolically breaks the body of its Deity eats Its flesh and symbolically drinks Its blood.
It sounds primitive to me but has gained some popularity.
Maybe you are involved with some group that thinks God wants you to suffer, sacrifice and abstain from just about anything enjoyable.
Now, there’s a winner of an idea.
Of course each religion and belief system takes pity on anyone that is not an official believer since all others are doomed to an eternity of hell. Many religions encourage their members to hasten the process for non-believers and offer prizes for participating in the program.
I’m not certain there were bombs mentioned in the original texts but I have heard you can get seventy-two virgin women if you blow yourself up under the right circumstances.
God is merciful.
Well, you may not feel god is merciful if you’re a virgin girl being raped in Africa because the popular belief says you can cure yourself of AIDS if you have sex with a virgin.
Seems people will believe just about anything.
Some better-educated folks have shunned the ideas of churches and priesthoods and developed the ‘New Wage’.
No more priests to pay for connecting you with god.
Now someone will channel information from an extra-terrestrial or ‘ascended master’ or anyone else dead or some ill-defined notion called ‘spirit’ and you pay them.
Go ahead – ascend – I’ll watch.

People are capable of believing anything.

People are capable of believing ANYTHING.

Believing something makes it appear as truth for the believer.

Upon a little self-examination the balance between what you know to be TRUTH compared with what you know you BELIEVE weighs quite heavily to the beliefs side.
Expectedly, religions require ‘faith’ in lieu of any sort of proof.
Political parties require faith these days instead of any history of beneficial service to the people they govern.
Faith is non-experiential.
Someone has ‘faith’ because they don’t ‘know’.

Beyond belief is, ‘knowing’.
Beyond knowing is ‘intention’.

Unassailable ‘truths’ have fallen away at an alarming rate. These ‘truths’ were beliefs so strong that they became accepted facts.
The sun orbits the earth.
The earth is flat.
People made plans accordingly.
A planned housing development in Scotland was moved because the local people were concerned the builders would disturb the fairies, 2005.
When Marconi told his friends and family that he invented radio and could send messages through the air without wires they had him committed to an insane asylum. They KNEW that was impossible and he must be crazy, or, possessed by demons.

Margarine is good for you.
Margarine is bad for you.

People have been lied to for so long they can’t tell the difference between truth and a lie any longer. This is a basic mechanism of the human body. ‘Muscle Testing’ shows that the body knows things that the ego-mind ignores its’ knowledge of.
Many things generally accepted as true are true only under certain conditions.
Physicists have learned that observing an experiment often changes the outcome. That revelation should have changed the world and yet so few understand what this means.
‘Truth’ is not absolute.
Intention, Will, Purpose – these things are beyond belief. These things can Become and are then called Truth.

Beyond belief is knowing and knowing is the application of intention or the submission to anothers.