The Delusion of Belief and Non-Belief

As you progress down the spiritual path, it is of utmost importance to allow other people the freedom to have their beliefs, whatever they may be. Why? Because the quality of one’s life is not determined by the quality of one’s beliefs. If that were true, than simply believing or disbelieving in God would automatically give you peace and happiness, and if you look to your own experience as either a theist (believing in an objective God of Gods “out there” in the cosmos) or an atheist (disbelieving in an objective God or Gods “out there” in the cosmos), you can see for yourself that is not true. Your beliefs neither prevent you from suffering, nor do they impede your true happiness. And if you wish to find your true happiness, you must stop looking for it in your mind, in the realm of thinking and belief. That is a game that spiritual children play.

Spirituality has long been misunderstood as a process of uprooting “bad” beliefs and replacing them with “better” beliefs. It is not. Spirituality is the process of seeing, both instantaneously and gradually, that there is a deeper peaceful reality at play that no belief about life or yourself gives you access to. For this reason, it is utterly silly, trivial, and immature to hold a debate over the validity of theistic or atheistic beliefs. Christopher Hitchens and Ken Ham could argue about whether or not God exists until the end of time, and neither of them would even come close to piercing the veil of delusion that reveals the utter obviousness of God. (Which is a word I don’t love using because it’s so been so abused and misunderstood throughout human history, but I guess it’ll do for now.)

Beliefs for or against God are both filters that consciousness wears temporarily based on infinite factors of causality that no human mind could ever hope to understand. Neither belief is ultimately true. And to pretend that you know that one is more true than the other is the height of arrogance.

The New Atheists (Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Dan Dennett and company) are so hung up on trying to convince people that their belief in God is foolish that they miss the point entirely: All beliefs are ultimately foolish. There is no such thing as a belief that captures the essence of reality, no matter how beautiful or ugly that belief appears to be. 

“God” is just a word that points to the underlying peaceful background of reality. That’s it. You can replace that word with “consciousness” or “divinity” or “no-self” or “Terrence.” It doesn’t matter. Just as writing your given name or a made-up name on your name tag at a party neither prevents or abnormally assists your friends from recognizing your face, whatever you call the underlying reality of life is not altered by the label you imbue it with. The label is utterly irrelevant. If it helps you find peace, it is the right label for you, and if it doesn’t, discard it. All that matters is that you don’t confuse the label for the experiential obviousness of inner peace. If you have not found that, you really don’t have any business arguing for or against it.

Theism is a philosophy that says “I am out of touch with the underlying peaceful reality of consciousness. My belief in God is more important.” Atheism is a philosophy that says “I am out of touch with the underlying peaceful reality of consciousness. My disbelief in God is more important.” They are equally delusional. Neither is required for a happy life. Unless you hold these philosophies very lightly (meaning, you don’t pretend that you know that they are absolutely true), they will obscure your true nature, and suffering will inevitably follow, because being out of touch with our true nature IS the cause of suffering, not this or that belief.

Beyond all belief and non-belief, may you taste, know, and embody your true nature. Now, Now, always only Now.