There's not much difference between being opinionated and being addicted to toxic beliefs and values, except our mind. Whether we like it or not, our mind is the source of the beliefs and values we use to determine what's true, bad, sinful, good, and sacred.
Some of us go through life without ever questioning our beliefs and values, because we are too afraid. Unfortunately, most of us have been taught to believe that it's sacrilege, or something bad will happen to us if we question what we've been taught.
Our fears keep us blinded by our illusions. This is the darkness responsible for the distortions we have about the outside world.
Unfortunately, we respond to our illusions as realities or universal truths. We tend to forget that our faith in God, at least the one we have been taught by others, comes from our beliefs and values. And so does our religion; even our social and political affiliations come from others.
Most of us are defensive about our faith in God and religion. We are too afraid to even ask questions. We're afraid to examine why we became a Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, and so on. And in our disquietude, we rationalize our faith -- belief in something -- as the source of our power.
At this level of understanding, it's difficult to understand, or even accept, that faith exists only in our individual mind. And unfortunately, for many of us, sagacity died a long time ago. That's when our mind became a cesspool of illusions.
Nonetheless, from the darkness of our mind, we seek succor in careers, education, history, religion, and other things outside of our mind. This means we are guided by our illusions in our search for clarity.
It's during our search for clarity that our illusions cause us to have a blackout, a sort of memory loss. We temporarily forget that our beliefs and values caused us to perceive ourselves as Christian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu, and so on, come from our minds.
Similarly, our forgetfulness keeps us searching for answers in the illusions outside our mind. And whenever we discover what we believe is new information, we immediately manipulate it to fit comfortably with our existing beliefs and values.
When we try to manipulate new information, we become active players in the illusion game. We become so blinded by our beliefs and values that we believe sin and righteousness actually exist in time and space according to our beliefs.
In other words, we believe things happening outside of our mind are godly (good) or sinful (bad)based entirely on our beliefs and values.This type of reasoning makes it easier for us to hate people or dislike them simply because of our beliefs and values.
As active players in the illusion game, we manipulate our beliefs to fool or deceive others. Unfortunately, when we manipulate our minds to deceive others, we only create more illusions and suffering in our own lives.
To manipulate our minds requires a lot of energy and self-deception. And after playing this game for long periods of time, our minds become feeble, powerless, and disinterested in understanding the illusions.
We must constantly practice mindfulness so that we know our minds are responsible for the thoughts killing our essence. And unless we are committed to understanding the origins of our beliefs and values, we will remain victimized by the illusions.
Meanwhile, for those of us living outside of our minds, we believe enlightenment is another mind game. It's another form of something to give us relief from our out-of-control mind. We expect it to come from another person., one who we believe has already achieved it.
We must reach the point of clarity in our mind to know that enlightenment is arduous, time consuming, and not born of this illusory world. Enlightenment is more than a word confined to a specific language.
Enlightenment is the not-yet-discovered power in our minds. It's our inner power, our unconditioned consciousness, awaiting to be discovered by those who seek its power.
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