Nowhere in history, at any time, has religion been recorded as having any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people who are not strong enough to stand up and face the unknown without help. But like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it, seemingly getting a fair amount of pleasure from tinkering with it. – ROBERT HEINLEIN

In this chapter, the word spirit refers to your set of beliefs about reality, including your understanding of how reality works and your personal role in the universe. Whether you join a popular religion or take an independent path, whether you believe in “creation” or are a “materialist,” your belief in reality defines the tone of your life. In this sense, all of us are spiritual beings because we all have certain beliefs about reality. Even believing in nothing can be considered part of spiritual belief.

Spiritual growth is part of the human development process. The principles of truth, love, and Power do not prescribe specific spiritual beliefs, so we are free to explore various beliefs. These principles do, however, establish that the highest ideal of the philosophy of mind is wisdom. If your beliefs do not even satisfy the demands of wisdom, they cannot be considered reasonable because they violate universal principles. If a philosophy of mind is subject to falsehood; If it takes you out of touch with life; If it weakens you, it violates core principles and will only lead you astray.

Social constraints teach us to have a strong attachment to our spiritual beliefs and to integrate them into our identity. We say, “I am a Christian” or “I am an agnostic,” as if this philosophy defines us as human beings and cannot be changed. In this chapter, I challenge you to examine your spiritual beliefs through the lens of truth, love, and power. My goal is not to persuade you to follow any particular course of action, but to help you bring greater consciousness into your spiritual life.

Spirit and Truth

A sound philosophy of mind must be firmly rooted in truth. This requires us to perceive reality as accurately as possible. How exactly can we be accurate when trying to perceive the nature of reality? We cannot search for the meaning of life only with our eyes and ears.

The solution to this conundrum is to look at reality through multiple belief systems to see the broader truth. Your beliefs are like lenses that focus your attention on different aspects of reality. A Muslim, a Buddhist and an agnostic may all see the world differently, but their views clearly overlap. When we eliminate those inconsistencies, we find some common ground. Most notably, these concurs include such universal principles as truth, love and strength. In the areas where the various spiritual philosophies identify with each other, they all encourage their practitioners to seek greater coherence with truth, love and power. Where they are not consistent, you will usually find a breakdown of falsehood, connection, and loss of strength. Although there is a wide range of spiritual belief systems, it is wonderful to see that they all intrinsically value these three basic principles.

Stereovision is one of the most fascinating human abilities. Our eyes capture two-dimensional snapshots of our environment, and our brains and visual circuits quickly assemble them into three-dimensional images. Although each eye perceives reality in two dimensions, by combining the data from both eyes in a particular way, we perceive the visual domain in a distinctly three dimensional way. This three-dimensional image is richer than any two-dimensional image. You could also say it’s a more useful representation of reality than the raw data our eyes receive. The combined input of all our senses creates a rich network of sensory information. So when we go out to dinner with friends, the sights, sounds, smells, tastes and touches of the evening create an experience that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Mentally, we also have the opportunity to get rich input. Unfortunately, most of us have been taught to pay attention to a small portion of these inputs and ignore the rest as irrelevant or misleading. This mental blindness gives us a functional problem. These problems can take many forms, including depression, loneliness, hopelessness and meaninglessness.

Just as you perceive different subsets of reality through different physical senses, your mental senses are also a cognitive filtering mechanism. These filters allow you to focus on pre-processed pieces of information that may or may not be useful to you. The more mental sensory data you can access and understand, the richer your mental life will be and the more accurate it will be to simulate reality.

Your mental sensory devices include:

  • First, second, third person opinions (I/we, you, it/they)
  • Subjective (consciousness is primary) and objective (the physical world is primary) views
  • Intuition and instinct
  • Feelings and emotions
  • Logic and reason
  • Dreams and visions
  • Religious and philosophical beliefs (Christianity, Buddhism, atheism, skepticism, Darwinism, Romanticism, etc.)
  • Cultural, social, political and economic beliefs (stereotypes, gender roles, fashion preferences, citizenship, etc.)
  • Functional beliefs (how to make a living, what to eat, how to communicate)
  • Personal beliefs (goals, values, expectations)

Suppose you’re cooking dinner. You can measure ingredients with your eyes, listen to timers with your ears, inhale fragrances with your nose, and taste flavors with your tongue. You can prepare a meal with just one or two senses if you want, but you may find it harder to make a good meal.

Similarly, when faced with life’s key mental questions, such as who am I? What is my goal in life? We can consult all our senses available to us or limit our mental input to a small number of these channels. Generally, when we limit our input too tightly, we make things harder, like trying to prepare a meal with an eye patch and earplugs on. This is what happens when we say, “I only consider this spiritual point of view because it is the only truth.”

Perceptions are the lens through which we view reality, but they are not reality itself. What we perceive is always preprocessed in some way. We are not aware of single photons or oscillating atmospheric compression waves. We’re just looking at a picture or a song. Whenever such sensory compression occurs, a large amount of raw data is irrevocably lost. Each of our senses compresses and repackages perceived data in different ways, and this output, through a lot of “reprocessing”, is what ultimately reaches our consciousness.

Our beliefs and other cognitive filters give us similar glimpses of reality, but they also provide us with highly compressed and processed underlying data. For example, suppose you’re trying to sense non-physical objects. What would you consciously experience? Through the Christian perspective, you may connect with angels and saints through prayer; Through a Native American perspective, you might make visual explorations, consult with ancestral spiritual or animal guides; Through the lens of atheism or skepticism, you may perceive nothing at all, or it may be very vague and uncertain; Through the lens of a psychic or psychic, you might have a two-way conversation with a spiritual guide or a deceased person. However, these are not the things that actually exist. You don’t consciously perceive what reality really is because the raw data is beyond your cognitive ability. Instead, you have to focus on highly compressed versions.

Although each input channel has a limited expressability, if you have access to enough diverse channels, each compressed and filtered in a different way, you can get a more accurate and complete picture of reality. Each belief system you consider provides another way of looking at the same underlying data, which helps you get a better understanding of the whole.

Just as we can enhance our physical senses with technology such as night vision goggles or radio, we can greatly improve our mental senses. Exploring different belief systems and considering unfamiliar perspectives enables us to create new “data filters” that we then add to our set of cognitive tools. These filters deal with the same basic realities that our standard physical senses experience, but they present this information in different ways, often revealing important patterns that our previous filters ignored.

Our eyes may be able to see clearly, but with the aid of a microscope, telescope or oscilloscope, they can perceive much more information. In the same way, a single belief system, such as atheism or Christianity, can provide some insight into a greater reality beyond physics, but any single filter is full of information holes, gaps, and discordments that are a necessary problem with information compression. However, if you consider incorporating viewpoints from different belief systems, your big picture finally begins to form.

How do you know which particular lens will provide the most relevant information in a given situation? You figure it out in the same way you learned to use your body senses. Have you ever made the embarrassing mistake of trying to “taste” someone to get to know them? Maybe you made this mistake when you were a baby, but now you’re probably more partial to your eyes and ears. Through trial and error, you learn which senses are best for each situation.

However, we still make mistakes with our senses. Sometimes we get stuck in the wrong input. Have you ever found yourself staring at someone you were attracted to and not remembering a single word you said? Or have you ever overemphasized your taste buds, shoving food into your mouth, while your eyes couldn’t help but notice how fat you’ve become? Despite these occasional failures, however, life is richer with multiple sensory channels rather than just one.

By learning to consider reality from multiple perspectives, you will overcome many of the limitations of your personal belief system. You will gradually shed the false beliefs that distort your perception, you will fill in the gaps in your understanding, and you will become more in tune with the truth.

The spirit and love

Spiritual practice centered on love should help you connect more with yourself and others. While some spiritual seekers shun the modern world and retreat into solitude, there’s no reason you should adopt this lifestyle. It is possible to pursue spiritual development alone, but the principle of love suggests that it is at least as important to pursue spiritual development through interaction with other people. If we are spiritually connected anyway, then why not explore the spirit through direct interaction?

Quiet thinking and meditation can be powerful spiritual practices that help you connect with your own mind, but they are best combined with rich social interactions. Allow yourself to gain spiritual experience from within and outside the world. Sometimes your answers will come from silence, and sometimes they will come from direct communication. Listen carefully to both channels.

Relationships are a great source of spiritual growth. If we spend too much time alone, we run the risk of losing touch with reality, but if there are rich interactions, such problems are less likely to arise. If our thoughts become too unrealistic, people around us will remind us that we have reached an abyss. The pursuit of the spirit is really the pursuit of accuracy, our goal is to build the most accurate model of reality. If we don’t include other humans in the model, we lose so much potentially useful information that our model is doomed to be inaccurate.

Spiritual development requires the freedom to connect with different parts of reality in order to understand them more fully. The more you can explore, the more connections you can form, and the greater your spiritual growth. When you feel a strong desire to connect with something in reality, listen to your intuition and build a connection.

For example, I really don’t know why I felt such a strong affinity for the city of Las Vegas when I was in my 20s. I drove 300 miles from Los Angeles to Las Vegas dozens of times, sometimes with friends, sometimes with Erin, sometimes just by myself. Despite the city’s reputation as a one-stop shop for human vices, I have a deep affection for this oasis in the desert. In January 2004, my family and I moved from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. In retrospect, it was one of the best decisions we ever made. Psychologically, I had my doubts about the move, but I could feel in my heart that it was meant to be. Now that I’ve lived here for a few years, I love it even more. I feel more centered and at home here than anywhere else, and I’m especially grateful for all the wonderful friends I’ve made here. I even wrote an article about what it’s like to live in Las Vegas and why I love the city so much.

It turned out that moving to Las Vegas was a big boost to my spiritual development. On the one hand, the people I meet here help facilitate some important new experiences. On the other hand, by living in a city full of free drinks, gambling, strip clubs and mouth-watering buffet-style meals, I became better at getting rid of distractions on my spiritual path. By following my heart, I was guided to the experiences I needed to grow up.

In the past, I chose to associate myself with shoplifting, drinking, gambling and many other vices. Although these activities have been condemned by the society, I must admit that all these activities have contributed a lot to my spiritual growth. They all provided me with valuable new perspectives. Sometimes we are drawn to paths that seem to take us away from truth, love, and power, but in the long run, these paths actually strengthen our princip-centered nature. If I had never explored these vices, a very valuable part of my life would have been lost. A big reason I can honestly share myself today is that I know what it feels like to be dishonest. I can also accept the conscious life because I know what the unconscious life is like.

Am I suggesting that you should deliberately explore vices? I can’t tell you what to do, because it’s against the rules of power. This is a decision you have to make for yourself. But what I’m saying is, whatever you decide, I’m not in a position to judge you. The best advice I can give here is ** follow your heart and see where it is going. 台湾国

Spirit and strength

One of the most powerful choices you can make is to decouple your spiritual beliefs from your identity. However strong your beliefs may be, they never define you. If you change your faith, you are still you. A fixed belief system can only inhibit your ability to grow. It’s like permanently closing one eye and denying yourself natural stereoscopic vision.

Unfortunately, personal attachment to faith, especially cultural and spiritual beliefs, is very common. While it is often a wise choice to experience belief systems from the inside, equating your identity with any fixed concept is a disempowering mistake. As the truth principle reveals, beliefs are the lens through which you view reality. Each lens reveals some aspects of reality while hiding others. The more lenses you have, the more complete your understanding of the whole. Even if you develop an incredible attachment to a particular shot, it’s still just one shot and doesn’t define you. Attachment to a particular view of reality limits your power and limits your ability to connect with people who hold different lenses.

This is a difficult concept for many people to accept as we become accustomed to identifying with our beliefs. It can be unsettling to stop identifying with any fixed ideology and realize that all beliefs are lenses that don’t define us. Social constraints tell us that we must turn a particular set of ideas into our personal identity.

Are you a capitalist? Is it a Christian? A skeptic? These questions are asked in a way that assumes you have to answer with a yes or no. But that’s like asking if you’re the eyes, the ears or the nose. It is wiser to ask questions such as “Do you understand the Christian point of view” rather than trying to equate it with your identity. When you start associating certain beliefs with who you are, you artificially limit your sense of self. This violates the principle of force.

Faith identity is also a source of social conflict. Disagreements, arguments, and even wars are caused by a rigid attachment to fixed ideas. It’s more productive for us to learn to look at reality through multiple perspectives and seek a higher reality together, rather than bicker over who has the most popular perspective. Spiritual shots are essentially value-based, so they do not represent reality in themselves, although they can reveal different aspects of reality.

When people ask me what religion I believe in, I tell them the question doesn’t make any sense. I am a conscious person, not a religion. While I understand the views of many popular belief systems and have experienced several of them personally, I do not agree with any of them. I think of my beliefs as a toolbox of choices. They’re an extension of my senses. When WORKING on a computer, I pay attention to what my eyes see; When I’m on the phone, I shift my attention to listening. When I do my taxes, I may take a very earthy atheist view; When I discuss the life of Jesus with others, I consider reality through a Christian lens; When I meditate, I might adopt Buddhism or New Age philosophy. I choose each shot based on how much it helps me in the moment.

The first time you try to perceive reality through multiple lenses, especially ones that seem inherently contradictory, you feel like you’re trying to do the impossible. Like a newborn baby, you try to make sense of the chaos of light, noise and stress. You may feel overwhelmed and frustrated, as if you are flooding your mind with completely useless information.

Be patient with yourself. With practice, you will gradually learn to combine data from multiple perspectives to form a unified picture. At first, it takes quite a conscious effort, shifting your mind between different perspectives, asking questions like, “How does the Buddhist see this situation? “Or” How would Christians solve this problem? “

Eventually, your subconscious will learn to do this for you, and you will begin to feel the “big picture” emerging from multiple angles. When this starts to happen, you unlock a new level of consciousness, like when a baby first realizes that the floating orb is its own hand. It won’t be perfect, but you may find that some of the problems that previously bothered you become easier to solve.

In order to align yourself with the principle of power, you must get rid of the limiting views that deprive you of power. Imagine trying to understand the intricate connections between your financial situation, your religious or spiritual beliefs, and your emotional state. Ordinary cultural belief systems provide only a very dysfunctional understanding of these connections, which helps explain why so many people struggle financially and emotionally despite the enormous effort they put into spiritual practices. But when you look at the connection from multiple angles, it’s easier to see the big picture. This panoramic view allows you to find a practical solution that allows you to enjoy positive emotional stability, financial abundance, and deep spiritual development without so much struggle and conflict. By looking at your problems from a different philosophical point of view, you can empower yourself. A holistic solution is finally beginning to emerge. You gain the ability to solve problems you couldn’t solve before.

For example, one way to balance yourself financially, emotionally, and spiritually is to revolve your life around serving others. If you focus your efforts on true value creation and contribution, you will eventually be able to experience happiness, wealth and a sense of meaning. Financially, this solution makes sense; It’s also emotionally feasible; Mentally, it works, too. The effectiveness of this solution is obvious from several vantage points. However, most of us lose sight of the simplicity of comprehensive, high-level solutions under social constraints because we cling to fixed belief systems that keep us from seeing the big picture. The way we live our lives actually prevents us from solving our most challenging problems.

Healthy spiritual practice should allow enough flexibility to help you deal with the mundane parts of your life without having to think about them in comparison. Your spiritual beliefs should enable you to maintain your life, work through relationships, and feel good emotionally. A piecemeal approach cannot achieve this effect. The multi-perspective approach works best because it aligns you with truth, love, and strength. At the end of the day, the general way to solve all your problems is to find consistency with these principles, and a multi-perspective approach will help you achieve consistency better than a fixed perspective.

Identifying your identity with a spiritual point of view (e.g., “I am A Christian”) is like covering your eyes and ears. This is a very bad way to grow spiritually. Let go of this limitation and free yourself from fixed opinions. Be open and use all your spiritual senses, especially if you start to gather information that doesn’t match what you’ve been taught to believe.

How can you effectively train your mental depth perception? Look for people who have different belief systems that seem to empower them in a particular way and learn from them. Study people from other cultures. Find out why a Buddhist seems so calm; Why an athlete can maintain such a high level of fitness; Or why a billionaire can enjoy so much economic wealth. Read books written by these people and, if you can, meet them in person and find out what makes them tick.

Through this kind of research, you learn that certain ideas are more likely to produce positive results than others. For example, if you can’t bring yourself to meditate regularly, then obviously you have a different perception of reality than someone who meditates every day. But if you can understand how such people see the world, you can mimic their beliefs to improve your outcomes. How do these people see things, and how can you use their perspective to improve your meditation practice? What did they see that you missed? What senses are they using that you’re ignoring?

The multi-perspective philosophy of life combines inputs from multiple dimensions and is closely linked to what is considered common sense. When you find that your beliefs are at odds with what your common sense is telling you, maybe you just need to look at the situation in another way. This is more effective than sticking to limiting thoughts that get in your way. Your common sense may be correct.

We all have a tendency to fear and resist the unknown, so the idea of giving your beliefs so much flexibility may give you pause. Do you lose your sense of self? Are you going to be completely unethical and have no boundaries? In my experience, these fears are unfounded. Allowing yourself richer channels of perception will only increase your ability to make decisions that are consistent with your most sacred values and morals.

The point of spiritual exploration is to help you make conscious, competent choices. Cloudy or incomplete perception reduces your ability to do so. The richer your input, the better your decisions will be, which in turn benefits all the lives you touch. In order to bring more power to your spiritual path, you must remain open to all points of view. Every time you close your mind to new ideas, you miss out on power and your spiritual work suffers.

Spirit and oneness

Because we are all intrinsically connected, our spiritual choices affect others. Therefore, our spiritual practice is not only a personal matter, but also has a collective impact.

When I was about 12, I met another boy who was an atheist. I thought that meant he must be misguided or evil in some way, because that’s how I was taught to look at non-Catholics. He didn’t believe in God, so I concluded that there must be something terribly wrong with him. Why else would he be doomed to eternity in hell? However, as I got to know him, I was surprised to find that he was actually a very nice person, and he stayed friends with me for many years. Try as I might, I could find no evidence that he was evil. This confused me because it conflicted with my lifelong education. My faith encouraged me to disown this boy, but I chose to align myself with love and bond with him, thus taking an important step in my spiritual growth.

Many serious conflicts in the world are caused by the transmission of bad beliefs to others, which label others as unworthy, damaged or evil. If we are to live consciously, such beliefs must be abandoned because they are incompatible with truth, love and power. When cells choose to fight each other, the body cannot maintain health.

Your personal spiritual responsibility is to ensure that the beliefs you hold are consistent with the principle of unity. If you neglect this responsibility, you will do others a disservice by teaching them to separate instead of unite. Only when we all learn to be aligned with truth, love and strength on a personal level can we achieve peace on a global level.

Spirit and power

The principles of power make it clear that it is wrong to give control of your spiritual life to someone else. The ultimate authority in your life must be you, not God, not some master, master or teacher. Your spiritual practice is yours to guide. Feel free to consult whomever you want, but don’t forget that you are in charge. You can’t delegate your spiritual power to someone else. At the end of the day, that’s what you have to pursue for yourself.

In order for your beliefs to be consistent with the principles of power, they must be valid. This means that they must ultimately meet the following eight criteria:

  1. Accurate. Valid beliefs must be consistent with your observations of reality. Your beliefs must not contradict any of the facts you know.

  2. Everything. For your beliefs to be effective, they must account for all of your experiences. If you experience something that goes beyond your belief in reality, then your belief is incomplete, and an incomplete belief can never be fully trusted.

  3. Flexible. Effective beliefs can adapt well to new circumstances. They provide appropriate guidance, regardless of your career, income level, relationship status, lifestyle, etc.

  4. Morality. It is ineffective to adopt beliefs that lead you to harm yourself or others. Such thinking is rooted in fear and ignorance. Effective beliefs do not encourage violence or dishonesty.

  5. Consistency. Your beliefs must be internally consistent, or you must have a clear way to resolve inconsistencies.

  6. Choose consciously. You inherit your original set of beliefs from your upbringing and social conditions. However, as a fully conscious adult, these beliefs should be identified, examined, and then consciously changed or reintegrated. It’s an ongoing process that can take years, or even your entire life.

  7. Increases pleasure and/or reduces pain. Effective beliefs make you feel good, either by boosting your emotional state or as a side effect of producing your desired results. Effective beliefs also reduce fear by bringing truth to the unknown.

  8. Empower. Your beliefs should allow you to experience anything that is technically impossible. They should not mislabel “possible” as “impossible.” Of course, for ethical and moral reasons, your beliefs should not unduly limit your abilities. If you think something is impossible for you, no matter what you think, it must be true impossible. If a mental shift changes your abilities through a placebo effect, then your beliefs are both powerless and inaccurate.

Take a moment to write down some of your current beliefs about reality. What do you believe is true about your health, career, relationships, finances, spirituality, etc.? Then review the eight criteria above to see how your beliefs are measured. If you don’t like what you see, replace the old creed with a more effective one. Again, your beliefs aren’t just observations of reality; they shape and define your experience of reality. Once you’ve had a chance to consider other options, many of your most sacred ideas may reveal hidden errors.

Spirit and courage

In today’s world, it takes courage to think for yourself instead of blindly swallowing what someone tells you to believe. It depends on whether you have the heart to stick to your path and follow it wherever possible, regardless of what others may say about you. Ultimately, your spiritual practice must be a hugely personal and conscious choice.

As you progress on your unique spiritual path, you may experience periods of confusion that last for weeks or longer. At times like this, you may feel alienated and disconnected from the world. Reality suddenly makes no sense to you, and you’re uncertain about everything.

This dark night of the soul is a period of massive reorganization of your cognition. Your mind is rethinking its previous perception of reality in order to jump to a new level of understanding. Unfortunately, sometimes your old patterns are disrupted beyond repair, but the new ones haven’t taken shape yet. When that happens, it’s very disconcerting. There’s not much you can do but get through the time. Fortunately, once you’ve made these jumps, you’re in an incredible period of clarity. It’s like your whole mind is being readjusted to a new level of reality.

I went through such a period a few years ago. I am trying to reconcile my high level personal spiritual path with the realities of running a business. On the one hand, I’m very committed to helping people grow. On the other hand, I am a successful entrepreneur and am running a business. However, I lack a holistic spiritual philosophy that brings these two parts of my life together in a way that makes me feel good. I’m experiencing the conflict between running a business to generate income and wanting to help people as selflessly as possible. For many weeks I had been wandering in this dark and uncertain place. Finally, my mind was able to sense a new basic order, and that made a lot of sense to me. I realized that we are all cells of the same body, and the health of the body depends on the health of the cells. It made it clear to me that if I wanted to serve others effectively, I had to make sure I was meeting my own needs as well, or my job wouldn’t be sustainable.

Spirit and Wisdom

In order for your spiritual practice to be truly real, you cannot separate it. You can’t do an hour of spirituality every weekend and then put that part of yourself on hold when you go to work on Monday. Wise spiritual practice is holistic practice. It works with all parts of your life, including your career, finances, health, and relationships.

According to the principles of truth, love and strength, the highest level of spiritual practice is complete conformity with these principles, which means perfect wisdom. The ultimate ideal of any healthy spiritual path is infinite truth, infinite love, and infinite power. By extension, it also requires unlimited oneness, unlimited power and unlimited courage. The ultimate spiritual pursuit is to strive to live in accord with all these.

Since the principles of truth, love and power are universal, appropriate spiritual practice must also be universal. That means that even if you’re filing your taxes, your spiritual beliefs must apply to the job at hand. If your ideas cannot be applied to any situation you face in life, then they are not universal, which means they cannot be aligned with truth, love and strength. Even if you do something as mundane as mowing the lawn, you can use the values of truth, love and strength to help guide you. Any other universal spiritual principle must meet the same criteria.

The last

When you use the power of conscious choice to make your life more aligned with truth, love and power, the long-term result is spiritual wisdom and peace. Your life has reached a new level where all the parts are starting to work together in harmony.

Our collective spiritual development is rooted in our shared interest in authenticity, love and strength. These are our guides through all the challenges of human life. If it were possible for everyone on earth to come together and agree on a single spiritual philosophy, it would be a philosophy containing universal principles such as truth, love and strength. These are ideals that guide our lives, not just as human beings, but as spiritual beings.