PRINCIPLE THREE:   THE SPIRIT ALWAYS BELIEVES SOMETHING ABOUT EVERYTHING

     The human spirit cannot stand a vacuum of its sense of reality. It will immediately begin searching for something to believe when confronted with any new fact or any new experience. If there is only one fact available the spirit will begin to believe something about that fact. The human spirit thirsts for reality. It must believe something! The human spirit must have some sense of the reality surrounding it. When the spirit cannot come to a belief the state of anxiety will exist. Anxiety occurs when the spirit does not know what to believe. If we cannot come to a belief, then we have no concept of reality. Our eyes get larger and if we could see it our ears enlarge as well. We go into a hyper mode, trying to collect more facts so that we can believe SOMETHING! If we cannot come to a belief we either enter into a state of paralysis, or a state of fear which in turn creates the reactions of flight or fight.
     Let us imagine a little boy or a little girl going to a playground for the first time with his or her mother. The playground is unfamiliar at first with strange kids running all around. This child will predictably hide behind his mother’s skirt staying close to her side. Why? Simply because of the child’s innate belief that as long as he/she remains by the mother’s side there is safety. This is their reality—this is the world that they have known all of their short life. As the child gazes upon the playground his/her eyes will enlarge and the ears will become ultra sensitive collecting data at a hyper pace. With their eyes they begin seeing what appears to be enjoyable swings, slides and small merry-go-rounds. With their ears they hear these strange kids laughing. The child begins to look more closely at some of the kids to see if they appear friendly or not. All of this is occurring within the span of just a few seconds. The child’s spirit must believe something about this playground? Soon the child begins to relax from his/her state of anxiety as a personal belief about the playground develops. The playground looks fun! The child’s face reveals this change in his/her spirit through a smile and their small hands begin to release the mother’s skirt. Once this child comes to a favorable belief that this playground is safe and fun the child’s behavior will be predictable—he/she will leave their mother’s side and join into the fun looking activities. Perhaps all of us have been this little boy or girl at least once in life.
     I equate the human spirit to a compass. A compass floats and freely rotates to where it believes true north is located. The compass can never actually know where true north is located, it can only believe to know, but it will continually try with all its purpose and design. Most anything can throw off a compass. Any nearby metal will bend the magnetic lines of force to the left or to the right a few degrees. The compass will align itself with these distortions. These distortions of the magnetic lines are all the compass has to go by. It will predictably align itself with them in the hope of finding true north. Our spirit operates in much the same way. As events and facts change around us our spirits will always align itself with what it believes this reality might be. It will search for some understanding of the reality of true north. Our spirit cannot actually know what that reality is, but it will believe something about it. Our spirit simply MUST try to grab a hold of reality—therefore we create one within our spirit—our inner compass.
     Let us take this compass illustration yet a little further. The earth is a giant magnet caused by its massive central core of iron. As the earth rotates the iron core rotates as well generating an immense magnetic field. This field extends out from the earth’s northern axis to a distance of tens of thousands of miles and reenters the earth’s southern axis. Scientist state that this immense field that engulfs our globe is the earth’s primary protection from the sun’s large amount of charged particles that continuously are thrown our way, called the solar wind. When these particles interact with the earth’s magnetic field most of them are deflected away, while some enter the North Pole in the form of the beautiful Aurora Borealis. As stated previously nearby metal can distort the earth’s large magnetic field and fool the small compass as to the real position of true north. An interesting experiment to try at home is this: take a small compass and place a very small magnet next to the compass. The compass will follow the small magnet and act as if the earth’s much larger magnet does not exist.
     There is an interesting lesson to learn here as to how our spirit works. Our spirit constantly reacts to those things close in proximity to it just as our experiment reveals that the compass reacts to nearby smaller magnets. We lose sight of the greater reality and align our spirit’s reality with those things that are near us. We lose perspective. Other people influence us as well as life’s experiences. The closer these influences are the greater the pull, resulting in a greater change in our worldview. All of these influences have a way of suggesting realities to us that are not completely true, thereby introducing into our spirit’s reality some error or delusion. This writer calls this the “Proximity Effect.” Wisdom tells us that we should choose well with whom and with what we associate ourselves. Try as they might our spirits, like the little compass, can only believe they know where true north may actually be. We might be spot on North or we may be only a few degrees off, but we will never truly know for sure. This is the humble human predicament.
      Our spirits are voracious for belief. We despise the vacuum of a sense of reality and the anxiety that it produces. We must believe something about everything at all times!