Don't Believe a Word I Say

“Do you really believe in this?” I get that question when I talk about the reality of the psychic world. My answer is always, “no, I don’t believe in this.”

I don’t mean to be cute. I really don’t believe in the intuitive. I don’t believe in the imagination or the creative sense. In fact, I try not to believe in anything.

Words have meaning. Merriam-Webster’s Third International Dictionary defines belief as “a state or habit of mind in which trust, confidence, or reliance is placed in some person or thing”. It comes from the Old English meaning “to have faith”.
Belief is about trusting some person or thing. Belief has to do with having faith in some person or thing. It is different from knowing. It is different from experiencing.

Do you believe that day follows night? Do you believe in food? How about love? Or fear? There are some things that we know. And that is different than belief.

We believe in those things that we have not experienced. Otherwise, why believe? We believe that which we do not know. We believe that which others teach us to believe. And others teach us to believe usually because they have been taught to believe.

Knowing is something else. Unlike belief, knowing comes from experience. Knowing comes from the heart. Belief comes from the head. That is not to say that people cannot feel passionately about their beliefs. It’s just that the beliefs do not come from individual experience.

Can you imagine asking Jesus, Buddha, Moses, Lao-Tzu or Mohammad whether they believe in the Divine? Prophets do not believe. They know.

Moses experienced the voice of the divine in a burning bush. The love felt by Jesus was not a creed. It was a part of him. Buddha experienced compassion. It was not a set of beliefs. The visions of Mohammad at the age of five were experiences not beliefs.

We all experience every day of our lives. It is part of being human. It is part of living. And knowing is very personal. Each of us has our own truths. Each of us has our own heart and soul.

Fact is that people can believe anything. The Nazi’s believed that all Jews, gypsies and others were inferior and needed to be exterminated. They really believed that. And those that believed that were not only the least educated people. A large part of the officer corps of the Nazi SS had Ph.D.’s After all, one of the functions of education has been to pass on beliefs.

Today, there are clouds of belief all over the world. In the Balkans, Serbs believe that Croats are inferior. Croats believe that Muslims are inferior. In Africa, Hutu’s believe that Tutsi’s should be destroyed. In the United States millions believe that entire countries are evil.

Here in the United States, the media has raised belief-making to the level of a mass industry. For example, the White House and the media tell us to believe that there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. We are told to believe that is the reason why the United Sates wages war. And, when no such weapons are found, the belief mills work up a new spin.

Belief manufacturing in politics is old as the hills. That was what Abraham Lincoln was talking about when he said, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”

So where do we go without beliefs? To ourselves. Every human being is endowed with the ability to experience and to perceive. Every human being is endowed with imagination, intuition and creativity. These abilities define us as humans.
Now intuition, imagination, creativity, and dreams have nothing to do with belief. They are the fountain of discovery and the source of knowledge. In fact, without them, knowledge would not exist.

One of our ancestors, way back in the dawn of human existence “dreamed up” the wheel. That was imagination. That was vision. That was creativity. Then the discovery was passed on to future generations so that they could build upon that. That’s when it became knowledge.

We humans simply would not have survived without our imagination and creativity. We would be extinct without our intuition and our dreams.

Intuition, imagination, creativity and reams all take us into places hitherto unknown. They lead us to discovery. They lead us beyond knowledge and belief into new lands.

We can’t brainwash the imagination. We can merely suppress it. We can’t standardize creativity. We can’t test intuition. We cannot control dreams. All of these are individual. And each of us has them all. We don’t believe in imagination, creativity, intuition and reams. What is to believe? We experience.

These are turbulent times. Once again, the words of Lincoln, uttered at another turbulent time, have meaning for us. “The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise -- with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”

These are times when we need to trust our own perceptions and not believe in somebody else’s beliefs. These are time when we need to look at the world and ourselves with new eyes. That’s the function of the imagination. And, as Albert Einstein once put it, “imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the globe.”

My experience has been that intuition has helped me see myself and other in new ways. Imagination has helped me go beyond the routine. Creativity has allowed to experience from time to time as a child. And my dreams have brought me wisdom I didn’t know I had.

We all have these tools. But don’t believe a word I say. Try it for yourself.

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