How many beliefs are really yours?

How do you know that a belief is your own?

Is it just because you hold it? Did you choose it, or was it accumulated unknowingly? Was it the result of the environment around you? Was it because of friends, family members or coworkers?

What does it mean for a belief to really be yours, if so many beliefs are collected by conditions?

If unexamined beliefs rule our lives, why don’t we examine them? Because we’re afraid to see that they may not be true. We’re afraid to see that perhaps belief itself is the problem. Without belief, our identity falls apart. Without belief, everything we believe ourselves to be collapses. Without belief, the story of a life collapses. The story of past and future disappears. Everything I’ve achieved, everything bad that happened to me, everything I’ve gained, everything I’ve lost, everything I’ve held on to, evaporates into a mere passing thought. All that remains is what we really are, standing right here, now, naked and free from any beliefs.

Free to engage in what’s immediately in front of us, and to let go of the heavy boulder of belief that pulls us away from life.

At the bottom of all beliefs is the belief that without my beliefs I won’t exist. Examine that belief and the others start falling into place.