How Beliefs Shape Our Lives?
1. They manage our perception and interpretation of environmental information in a manner that is consistent with what we believe.
2. They create our expectations. An expectation can be regarded as a belief projected into some future moment. Since we cannot expect something we are unaware about, we could say that an expectation is something we know projected into a future moment.
3. All the decisions & expressions will be consistent with what we believe.
4. Our beliefs mould how we feel about the results of our actions.
Keep in mind that feelings (the relative degree of positively or negatively charged energy flowing through our bodies and minds) are always the absolute truth (you feel confident you are confident). However, the beliefs that prompt any specific state of mind may not be the truth with respect to the possibilities from the environment's perspective.
If beliefs restrict our awareness of the information being generated by the physical environment, so that what we perceive subsequently becomes consistent with whatever we believe, then how do we know what the truth is?
Consider these ideas:
1. The environment can express itself in an infinite number of permutations and combinations. When you combine all the forces of nature interacting with everything created by humans and then top it with the forces generated by all the possible ways people can express themselves, the result is a number of possible versions of reality that would indisputably overwhelm even the most open-minded person.
2. Until we have fostered the ability to perceive every possible way in which the environment can express itself, our beliefs shall always represent a finite version of what is possible from the environment’s perspective, making our beliefs a statement about, but not consequently a definitive statement of reality.
3. If you find yourself to differ from the second statement, consider if your beliefs were true. If our beliefs were a 100% factual reflection of physical reality then our expectations would always be fulfilled. If our expectations were always fulfilled, we would be in a perennial state of satisfaction. How could it be otherwise if physical reality was consistently showing up exactly how we expected it to?
4. If this is true, then its corollary must also be true. If we are not experiencing satisfaction, then we must be functioning out of a belief or beliefs that don’t work very well corresponding to the environmental conditions.
Taking this into consideration, we can reasonably answer the question “what is the truth?”
The answer is whatever works. If beliefs impose boundaries on what we perceive as possible, and the environment can express itself in an infinite number of permutations and combinations, then beliefs can only be true relative to what we are attempting to attain at any given moment. In other words, the commensurate degree of truth inherent in our beliefs can be measured by how useful they are.
We all have internally generated forces (curiosity, needs, desires, and goals) that inspire us to interact with the physical environment. The specific steps we take to fulfill the object of our curiosity, needs, desires, goals are a function of what we believe to be true in any given circumstance or situation. The truth, whatever it is, shall determine: the possibilities we perceive in corresponding to what is available from the environment’s perspective, how we interpret what we perceive, the decisions we make, our expectations of the outcome, the actions we undertake, how we feel about the results of our efforts, among others.
