Belief and the Gods: Is belief in the divine a fantasy?

Belief and the Gods: Is belief in the divine a fantasy?

The above discussion at IAI.tv prompted my response:

Underneath all of this is simply the nature of belief. There are those who believe their reality is NOT belief but provable. The dominant reality paradigm operates invisibly at a level that is simply assumed and acted out from as if self-evident. Where is this self?
Self-definition is the act through which all else follows - and is not the superstructure of personality identity strategy, but the template out of which the experience of a self-and-world arises to the focus within its theme ideas.
Conscious beliefs may be easily shown to be incongruent with actual behaviour. This indicates the juggling in consciousness of conflicting beliefs, and this in turn indicates conditionings by which who one feels to be and who one embodies as a relational presence are split or held apart.
This core split is deep in the human conditioning of all of us and so is 'invisible' - whilst being the most fundamental act from which all else cascades as ways to self-validate or self-justify - indeed prevail and persist or survive within the terms set by the original trauma or imprint by which consciousness 'split' as a result of a sense of overwhelm and inadequacy, into conflicted parts that play out at a shadow level or unconsciously - as well as on a surface level as presentation and domination of narrative - ie: judgement and the power to assert it.
Before one can begin, one needs perspective of free curiosity. Beliefs that block or deny such curiosity are indicative of the controlling denial aspect of the survival sense. To open these to transformation or evolving to less and less obstructive beliefs is not the realm of assertive and controlling judgement - but of honest insight free of the shaming blaming 'righteousness' of self-superior belief grown off of invalidating the other.
To try to communicate idea as a battle - no matter how intellectually posed - is a nonsense. Though a willingness for relationship can cut through any nonsense. A genuine relationship is not a set of rules that one imposes on another by which to be acceptable or valid. Such beliefs operate to make sure intimacy of Idea does not occur! For true Consciousness is Divinely and Already Presence - and we let into such a Living Fact in willingness or persist in the belief in a self that determines what definitions of reality-testing-experiencing are real and enforces them as a private mind.
The belief in a private mind is shared by all excepting lovers who feel and move within and as a wholeness of being - not split and not defined by symptoms of split. This is not a matter of belief - though belief can work against recognition. It is a matter of recognizing, owning and moving past belief to a quality of being that cannot be defined so as then to be an object of belief. But that the Ideas that are then called forth, accepted, and acted out or embodied, will be given full belief without making a private assertion of personal power from the movement. And so will not be in conflict with any other aspect of the whole. So there is no lack from which to seek proof or validation in order to get something - because one is fully engaged in embracing and embodying the life that is revealing or uncovering itself as you - with everyone.
This  - written out - seems whatever it seems - but the writing is a pointer to something that is discoverable beneath the appearances we take for real - for whatever reasons and without judgement or blame for those reasons - for they worked in bringing you here - to this appreciation.

Desire, Dreams and Happinness - can we ever arrive?

Desire, Dreams and Happinness - can we ever arrive?
An IAI debate

While seemingly open to a wider range of ideas, the IAI approach still operates from presumptions that then frame the question.
The presumption of lack, be it inadequacy, separation or incompletion, becomes the basis of a false sense of self that is no more true for being mutually reinforced. Happiness actually comes first and extends and expresses itself as desire that then unfolds as an experience or reflection of completion. One is always arising anew from wholeness. The identification within a belief in self lack is being chosen and enacted and experienced as part of a greater desire whose meaning is an unfolding human being - which is infinitely more than our self concepts. One can say that exploring what is NOT true of you and does NOT fulfil your innate desire for love and life and happiness is part of the journey you have chosen whereby to more clearly recognize and re-member who you truly are. There is no sense of lack in your true presence - unless of course you choose to be less than the wholeness of what is You right here and now. But then you are experiencing your wholeness in a fragmented and dissociative way and not recognizing your Self at all!
Love is the true joy and freedom of being yourself. In any situation or relationship where you feel and allow the permission to be all that you are in that moment - you will feel loved and loving. Fantasy relationships substitute for actually extending that acceptance and freedom to another - which is the only way to have it yourself. The substitution of fantasy associations for living presence is self-deprivation. Struggling to defend a fantasy that reflects only your own sense of lack is chasing an idol of power or completion from the conviction you do not already have it and so give your power away to external props that do not know or care for who you truly are.
In a sense EVERYTHING is Imagination - but some thoughts, definitions and beliefs are more in accord and alignment with the core signature vibration that you absolutely recognize as YOU, so to align with and follow your joy is to connect with your joy to the best of your ability in every moment when you are presented with a choice. This is simple embodying and expressing a genuinely felt or true sense of worth. Why would you NOT align with your joy? What are you believing about yourself that invalidates you? Is it true? Does it serve you? Do you want it? Act from your current knowing while staying in the willingness to know more. or you can just talk and think about everything and act as if nothing you say actually means you have allow the transforming of who you thought you were

Desire for Safety

Your desire for safety touches me.
And speaks of a memory that isn't totally buried and forgot.
Under a seeming world of bodies with secret minds in a hostile universe.
All of which arises from a single act in thought-desire.
A contraction or collapse of self upon self in which almost all of what you are is denied - that your thought can continue as yours alone.

In ceasing to activate or reinforce the thinking-self protective contraction - a different experience is discovered. If you are ready to allow this then you do truly desire Safety, for the attempt to make yourself safe - by your own thinking - has not brought the answer.
You have but shafted yourself - not in truth - for truth remains available as it is if you welcome it - but in the conflicting and shifting attempts to fix down life and make it serve your thought.

You are the life that you neglect to love because your intent is elsewhere, set upon thought derived existence - which to the unawake is believed reality itself.
Life is already intent on serving you - as the unified expression of wholeness. But if you would know this, then there simply is no room for the intent that pulls the plug on life and drains it away for the hit of a self indulgence.

The last war I was in was a seeming battle between desire to survive and desire to love. There was in truth no battle but simply a play of dramatic experience arising from the attempt to keep both.

Dignity is not a right I demand from the world but the natural result of the honour I give.
By the grace of Spirit I have awakened enough to refuse the experience of hate as a definer of anything but a split mind - an ignorance. I can release the experience with my recognition of life giving as I have asked - and let it go. I can only fight the way Mind works, imaginatively.

For the movement of attention is the movement of desire - where value is given.
And if I invest in the experience of horror - then I validate it.
Even if this is done negatively - by an attempt to overcome it. For who would seek to overcome a  foe - whose ill intent is but one's own, enacted out in alternating roles?

The uncovering of the special hate relationship is that which would seem to damn. Its undoing requires that you do not damn yourself nor your brother or your world - but wait on a fresh perspective.

Love changes everything.

For love undoes or restores the original to its true appreciation from a mind that had become fascinated by an unlove as if it were a thing you made that then made you.

How does a Child of God fragment and forget its own light in a prodigal wasteland?
How does a wretch rediscover his divine inheritance?

As a man thinketh in his heart - so is he.
By the grace of being joined, I am saved from my own thinking.
All are joined to the Source without which nothing is.
In this world we have seemed to live as if we are actually independent and conflicting with everything. But look and see if this is not simply a game of thought.

There is a basis upon which to question every value this world has ever taught you.
It is the awakening relationship with your innate and inviolable safety - prior to the activity and identifications of mind.

When the definitions that bind, deplete and deprive are refused currency status - the truth is revealed of itself. There is no battle - but there is every reason to hold fast in receiving and therefore giving - from a fresh perspective. Despite every twist and turn of the ego's roller coaster ride which is but a persuasion speaking to an habit no longer truly desired.

Can I condemn a world that arose from acting out a fantasy of possession, loss and vengeance?
Can I condemn myself for the life that proceeded from an ignorance that is no more?
Can I accept forgiveness for myself and be undone of sin?

These are not for thought to answer - but are the heart's intimation - for we don't do truth, but are, by its giving.

In Peace

Brian