Believing, Becoming, Being: Preview

We begin by believing what we are told by parents, teachers, pastors, and our culture. And in our innocence, we believe completely. But there comes a time when belief must ripen into understanding, and understanding must stretch into embodiment. That’s when the real journey begins.

I often wonder about my own spiritual foundation. I had taken so many beliefs at face value—not out of laziness, but from a deep desire to belong, to be good, to be safe. I followed the rules of a spiritual system that I thought would bring me peace. But peace didn’t come, at least not the kind that endures.

What I found instead was that belief alone, especially belief that comes from someone else’s understanding, will eventually ask to be questioned. And that question—“Do I really believe this?”—isn’t an act of betrayal. It’s an act of awakening.

The moment I started asking that question was the moment I began to return to myself.

It was scary at first. There’s grief in outgrowing the old stories, even when they no longer fit. But there’s also freedom—a breathless, sacred kind of freedom in realizing that Truth doesn’t need to be handed to you. It already lives inside of you, quietly waiting for your attention.

And so I began to believe differently. Not in doctrine, but in Divinity itself. Not in external salvation, but in inner knowing. I started believing that God could be discovered in silence, in nature, in breath, in the voice that speaks when I am still. That belief—that God is within and all around—became the root system for everything else that followed.

My beliefs are my own! They have been formulated over years of critical thinking brought about by doubts regarding the validity of religious dogma and tenets. A Deity expecting to be worshipped and exalted flew diametrically opposed to one filled with unconditional Love. A Deity filled with judgment and wrath, as depicted in the Old Testament, was, to me, a less realistic deity than the loving Father Jesus brought to the masses in the New Testament. It left me asking, "What happened to Jesus' Gospel of Love for everyone, regardless of gender, age, nationality, etc.? What happened to Jesus' message of kindness and acceptance for all people? How did Jesus' unconditional Love become conditional? How did Jesus' unconditional kindness become lost in religious dogma?"

And, therefore, I began to search.