Ask a few people on the street if there is a devil.  You’ll get different answers.   Ask the same person: “do you really believe in a devil” and you’ll often find two versions; an official and unofficial version that he doesn’t exist.

We all have thoughts we have decided we “believe” like the articles of faith authoritatively approved by our body of friends, club, class or church. Yet when we are in touch with our feelings, we know we often “believe” differently.

For many, the only way to truly know what we believe, is to look at the actions we take.  Actions always reveal what is believed. Unrestrained, we always act according to belief.  Some stated beliefs are so far from touching our daily lives that there is little action to show us one way or the other.  Belief in a devil or a Satan is one of those.  Long before we experience such an object, person, or thing, many of us were told he exists by someone we trusted and so believed it so.

In actuality, we’ve formed many beliefs based upon what others appeared to believe, based upon our trust of parents and authorities. Many of those simply accepted beliefs wait yet for sufficient supporting and collaborating evidence before we would call them convictions.

We form all beliefs by decision first. It can often be observed true, it isn’t until we decide we believe something, that we start finding the convincing evidences that gives support for our initial convictions. It idea of hypothesis and then finding proof is a well established path for forming beliefs.  In other words, most convicting evidence does NOT appear until after we give the assertion our attention and with a biased focus set out to confirm it.

The devil is alive and thrives

While most will honestly say they have NOT met the devil. The concept of a devil as a threatening force seeking to kill, steal and destroy is very much alive and real for most of us. We fear the thoughts of losing the things we feel are precious; family, homes, jobs, health, and liberty.  When we imagine losing our “precious“, we feel the painful emotions of rage, anger, fear, despair, hopelessness and depression.

As if our feelings weren’t bad enough, even worse, we attract more thoughts of these things unto ourselves by focusing on beliefs that loss is imminent.

On television and in the news, we’re often exposed to things that scare us.  We associate what happens to others as possibilities for ourselves and we experience fear. When completely careless, we imagine them happening to us. Foolishly, we reflect on how it would feel and what we would do.  In actuality, thinking ourselves caring and sensitive, we do this every time we form feelings of sympathy for a victim.  Those imaginations attract similar thoughts and soon we are have reoccurring painful thoughts occupying most of our days. Just in case we get some relief from sleep, we have the morning news to bring us back in line.

Forget the devil, we fear losing things that we value

The devil is a straw man, forget him!  Most believe a very real threat exists in the form of dis-honest politicians, thieves, perverts and economic conditions in general. We think we need to watch bad news so we can be prepared to avoid the same.   We watch because we believe we can take action to avoid the same thing happening to us;  maybe we can act to kick out the bad politician, lock our doors to the thief, stop the pervert from chatting with our children, move some assets or save some money for bad times.

When we believe actions of avoidance are appropriate means to affect a joyous experience, we logically conclude the pain is worth the gain and we begin a cycle of pain that innocently gets started then goes on and on even while we recognize we’re NOT learning anything new in the process.

Sadly, as we show our intense interest in the bad things we hear happening, all the energy and vitality of the universe is mustered by our inner consciousness to create what we found of such high preference and value. Our conscious waking selves are tasked with exploring our physical expressions and identifying which of them should be expanded upon according to our discerned preferences of value. So, in our valuing an early warning of the unwanted so we hope it can be avoided, in actuality, our inner command center only hears we value finding the evil unpleasant events to experience and more of that is expressed as reality.

Break the cycle

Only truth will make the difference.  Truth sets us free. Being physically focused, we’ve come to realize quick results from taking action. Our physical bodies are made to take action. They were created from a desire to enjoy the value derived from physical expression. These writings have NO other goal than that we learn how to bring about a more fulfilling physical experience through the joys of physical expression.   A fulfilling physical experience is the value fulfillment expected from the creation of our physical selves.  We truly were created that we might have joy.

Yet in all our physical realizations we have also learned some “quick fixes” that in the long run detract from our enjoying all that we would.  We have learned that we can take action to avoid things we consider threatening to our joy.  Certainly we should take immediate fight or flight action when a clear and certain pending threat is eminent.  But we often take this too far.

Our rational reasoning logical mind is very good at discerning preferences. This skill has come from our focus and bias toward using it toward this end.  We are very good at it. Yet because of this bias, we mistakenly try to use it for everything. The creation of our realities is NOT the task of our waking consciousness. Our task is to set the course for the creative expressions that will follow our identification of what is to be believed and those aspects we prefer as a direction for more expression. Instead of reporting and waiting for creative imaginations toward receiving our identified preferences, in our thinking it our task to react to uncertain threats, we ask for creative imaginations of possible threats so we can use our reasoning logical minds to identify the prefered path of escape. When we can not logically identify the escape path, we feel dispair or even depression.  Whether the threats are imagined or real we feel the pain associated with seeing ourselves losing the precious things we value. We do this all painfully and unnecessarily. Our inner higher expanded conscious selves know how to change the image that is reflectively expressed in physical reality. The best our waking conscious selves can true do to change our reality is paint a smile on the frowning image in the mirror.

Like other decided beliefs,  we formed this belief and gave it a biased focus toward confirming it true.  Today, most of us have a firm conviction that we should give as much attention to avoiding loss as we give to obtaining gain. We bring unnecessary imagined pain into our lives and suffer in bondage to it. We think we have proven it many times; a penny saved is as valuable as a penny earned.   Most of us however, gave no thought to the damage such focus brings to our self, our psyche and the human spirit in general.   Focus on avoiding pain is still a focus on pain; a disposition to find painful potentials around us.  In truth, it is much wiser to focus on what we want. “To gain” is irrefutably better.  Use your creativity to discover your desires rather than potential threats.

A better way

If you’re going to believe action is the primary determinant of physical influence, let your action be to focus on upon GAIN, not an attitude of looking for LOSS.  If you believe your thoughts also affect  your physical experience, then give your focus to taking GAIN oriented actions.  Add your focus to finding your prefered GAINS rather than the threats to your joy.

Decide and realize, The devil doesn’t matter, if you ignore him.   Believe it! Realize It!