Page 2
Modern materialism has exaggerated the importance and power of the
external universe over the inner universe of Man's mind. Behaviorism
talks ad naseam about the effect of the environment on people. The
environment (external reality) is placed in a superior position above
the individual person (mind). People involve themselves in and dissect
the physical universe in a futile attempt to gain "understanding".
They think the answers lie outside themselves. Again, all meaning,
purpose and value for anything, is determined by your mind and for
you, by your mind alone. You are the most truth you will ever know
about anything as you are the ONLY source of truth for everything you
experience. In the end, whatever you end up believing "in" or "about"
is fundamentally an action of your own mind to attach meaning and
significance to something. It's an action of an individual mind.
You are the complete source of meaning for you. You might explain, "I
believe this because it's so true, and it makes me feel good, and
blah-blah-blah...", and you may attribute your choice to all manner of
reasoning about ideas, external events and situations, but in the end
YOU SIMPLY DECIDE TO BELIEVE and EXPERIENCE MEANING solely by your own
mental actions. We all tend to take our cues from external events, and
our beliefs often follow reactions to events, but this isn't
necessary. The function of believing and developing conviction could
be separate from one's experiences of external reality, and if you
suddenly found yourself in some other reality, on some other world,
somewhere else, you would simply begin responding to the external
events there, and develop new beliefs accordingly. This is as true for
science as it is for religion. It is true for everything. Ultimately,
nothing is true unless you believe it to be so. And for you, it then
is. But you are the source of the meaning - the source is not anything
you conceive yourself to experience "out there", whether an observable
"thing" or an "idea".
The purpose of pointing this out is not to make you feel as if all is
useless and meaningless, although this will be the result as long as
you look for meaning outside yourself and fail to acknowledge your own
direct participation in the creation of belief, conviction and meaning
for your own personal experience. It's up to you to choose grand
beliefs, wondrous convictions, noble purposes and lofty ideals. Then
recognizing yourself as the final source of all your meaning, belief
and conviction will not degrade into apathy and lack of meaning. Most
people search "out there" to find something to "believe in", and to
give their life meaning, but in the end, it is your own action of
establishing belief which underlies any choice or decision. Again,what you accept to believe need not correspond to any pre-packaged
theory, concept or philosophy, whether scientific, philosophical or
religious, but we all tend to take for granted that the existing
options presented to us are the only possibilities available. But this
is difficult to do in a world where Man's inner world and all it does
is so casually and persistently denied. It is also difficult to do
when so many external forces attempt to sell you on their own specific
set of opinions and beliefs. Everybody is trying to get you to accept
their patterns of belief and systems of meaning.
