I will say that one of my beliefs is summed up in the first sentence of the following quote by Alan Watts. He says, ”If you really have faith, you don’t need belief because faith is an entirely different attitude from belief.” He continues, “Faith is a state of openness or trust. To have faith, is, for example, like when you swim, you trust yourself to the water. You don’t grab hold of the water when you swim. And if you go stiff and tight in the water and try to catch all of it, you’ll sink. You have to relax.”
The Falling Cat Relaxes
Watts continues, “So in the same way, when a cat falls off a tree, the cat doesn’t go stiff all over in a state of tension, that is to say, a state of holding on. The cat relaxes. It falls heavily, thumps the ground with its tail and isn’t hurt because it relaxed. So the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging, of holding on, so that you could say that a person who is a fanatic in religion, who simply has to believe certain propositions about the nature of God and the nature of the universe, is a person that has no faith at all because he’s holding on tight.”
A Season for Belief
Let me first say that I haven’t forgotten that to everything there is a season. And that means there is a season for belief. And besides, I wasn’t able to quantum leap from a place that was ruled by the rigid and fixed beliefs of the IFB to somewhere where belief is of little importance in comparison to faith. But I was able to start building the bridge from where I was towards where I wanted to be. And so my bridge building journey, as documented in these journal entries, is my account of moving away from a rigid belief system and towards a flexible faith system.
In-between those two points are beliefs, each of which is a little less rigid than the one that came before it. I’m constantly moving towards where I want to be through what Abraham Hicks calls the bridging of beliefs. But before I elaborate on my bridging process, let me define belief. According to Abraham Hicks, “A belief is only a thought you keep thinking.” When I first started listening to Abraham, I didn’t get that. Understanding happened in increments for me. Now I know that I create reality in part, with my beliefs, my thoughts.
The Biology of Belief
THANK YOU FOR USING MY LINK HERE TO PURCHASE DR. LIPTON’S BOOK.
I previously mentioned discovering Dr. Bruce Lipton’s book, The Biology of Belief, just before I left NC. I was so excited about Dr. Lipton’s teachings, that I offered a cash reward to my children, nieces and nephews if they would read the book and then give me either a verbal or written book report. In the below video, the TikTok user whose handle is @kennynormanshow, recommends starting with the third chapter, followed by chapters one and two and then three again when reading The Biology of Belief. He says it makes more sense that way.
Epigenetics
Dr. Lipton says, “Our beliefs control our bodies, our minds, and thus our lives.” In the video below, Billy Carson talks about how Dr. Lipton was almost ostracized for his discoveries which were initially thought of as pseudoscientific. Carson also says the author’s findings, which resulted from his epigenetic research, are now taught in universities.