CREDOS RECEIVED since 2007

The power of believing is a tremendous motivating force in human experience, yet how often do we stop and look honestly at what we believe? So many of our beliefs are acquired without our evaluating them ­ that is, imposed on us by family, society, culture, nation, and race ­ and so we come to accept what we believe without actually owning it in a conscious way.

In Metahistory Quest we propose to share and state our beliefs. We realize that this proposal may be doomed to failure at the outset, because to expose our beliefs leaves us wide open to be judged for them ­ or so we imagine. Our intention here is not to judge but to compile an inventory of beliefs. Responses will be posted on the site with no comment or analysis.

RESPONSES:

May 18, 2008 - Jody Stone

1. I have always said, I do not believe in anything, because anything is a word . Besides that sarcastic humor though, I simply believe in You and I. I believe in the Love that travels through us to our family and friends and to all of the extraordinary things around us. Most importantly, I believe in the source of that Love. a source I am fine with leaving unnamed.

2. Though I never use the word believe loosely, and prefer to refer to God more along the lines of Spinoza or Nietzsche even, I due to my own experience, and despite my brothers am convinced that there is a current of adoration, concern, and intelligence running above, below, and through all that there is and that adoration, concern, and intelligence makes up Life s mysterious Love for Its children. and I do not limit children to Homo sapiens.

3. From my limited perspective I would have to say that there is a bit of an illusion within the reality of these terms. I could just say that I believe in the heartbeat, but for my face s sake I will simply say that I do not know what I believe about life and death.

4. I think that most negative things in this world are due to peoples inability to recognize, witness, and share in Life s Love for them. When generation after generation teaches their children to remain disconnected from that, or do not teach them about It at all, we end up with a scenario that prevents us from determining any one cause or set of causes that are responsible for their fall from grace. Ultimately, I feel that acting like we know what is going on in here has gotten us in a lot of trouble a branch of which is violence.

5. I believe that Love is the most important and powerful tool period. It is what initiates any and everything that can possibly save us from ourselves and one another.

Love,
Jody D. Stone

May 15, 2008 - MJ Louwrens

Comments: All responses are what I believe at only this given moment. Beliefs change like the wind. Tomorrow I may feel different!

1. Each human must walk his/her own path to enlightment.

2. "Each man and woman is a star." All matter exists within the same space, with no seperation on a quantum level. Looking at that, everything that exists within our universe, is ultimately part of the same thing. From that I believe that the universe itself is God, or the point from which existence springs, making everything God.

3. I believe that the soul continues on and evolves. But that is only hearsay. I have never been there to form my own opinion.

4. I believe violence is a natural occurence in nature. Just as an amoeba grows and expands by consuming its environment, the human species do the same. Violence is a natural outflow of species fighting for resources. The only way to stop it, in my opinion, is a one world goverment, where all resources belong to all peoples.

5. If you can truly love yourself, you can accept yourself. By doing that, you open the door to love not only other people, but everything in existence.

-- namaste

March 9, 2008 - Franz Kovacs

1.Fundamental: History is a lie. We are taught hooey.

2. "God" is a neologism; there were no "dieties" when human society worked. Nature triumphs no matter what so the "gods" (by whatever name we call them) are metaphors. With these metaphors we interface can with nature. If our metaphors are scrambled or DELIBERATELTY SABOTAGED, we deal with nature ineptly. This leads to extinction.

3. It is nature's plan that all living things die. Death of old living systems makes way for new living systems.

4. Violence, deceit and pain in the world are caused by ignorance of nature's laws, primarily the law that regulates territory. Exciting new research from the Germany even notes that the PRIMARY cause of cardiac arrest is being ejected from your space in the world. This is incredible, because the entire "global economy" was CREATED to destroy our relationship with the earth. The chief strategy of the real Archons is driving as many of us as possible into early death via displacement.

5. Love can be a strategy to combat the destruction of human rootedness and belonging. Love is the undifferentiated energy of the lower chakras BEFORE the emotional armoring process moves this energy into neurosis and voracious consumerism. Like all pagans I see the human body as a mirror of the cosmos: Just as aether can be mis-directed, human bio-energy can be channelled the wrong way too. Love, therefore, is a choice to apply the energy rightly. It may yet prove useful.

-- F.P.Kovacs

One-line bio:
Steelworker, retired & working; husband to Polish goddess!

January 18, 2008 - J F

1.my fundamental belief is that every action of a person should be striving for strength. Imagine an acorn, and all that it is. any human who does not seek always to better themselves is like a rotten acorn. and good to no-one.

2. the gods are beings that walk among us. every time it rains, that is Taranis, every tree is the Daghda, every angry outburst is Nemain. It is clear that some people are more powerful than others. Gordon Brown is clearly more powerful than me. take this through to it's logical conclusion and you have the gods. (i also worship the sidhe (land spirits) and ancestors, by the way).

3. I believe that if we die a strong and conscious death (not necessarily in battle, that has always been exaggerated) then our after life will be that of a strong and conscious man (or woman). If we die in fear and self loathing, our after life will reflect that.

4. violence is caused by weakness, but a weakness that no human is truly without. a weak, pathetic person may use rape and torture to empower themselves, and a stronger man will cut them down. this is right and proper, however the strongest man in the world would not need to. the strongest man in the world will be so peacful that a child could punch them out unapposed. so you see, virtuous though they may be, they are relatively useless.

5. I'm a damn cynic. love is a bit of a weakness, but, like violence, a necessary one.

December 27, 2007 - Vipin Sharma
1.The most fundamental belief that I have now come to hold after reading the 'Holy Bible', 'The Holy Koran', 'The Bhagvad Gita', 'Works of Osho' of Plato, Socrates, Machiavelli, Hegel, Buddha, is that God is a single entity and Religion is creating dvisions in humanity rather than unity. Now I realize that it could be the influence of Archons who are deviating humanity from its path of natural spiritual evolution.

2. 'God' is the manifestation of the ultimate TRUTH and each individual is endowed with a part of GOD in the form of pure consciouness or subtle body or soul that resides within each individual.

3. Death is one of the stage in an eternal cycle of Birth-Life-Death-re-birth. The Liberation from this eternal cycle is possible only through the knowledge of TRUTH alone until such time each human shall be eternally entrapped in this eternal cycle. Each human has taken atleast 8.4 million life forms before being endowed with a human form. Only in the human birth can one strive for knowledge and liberation.

4. Causes for Violence in the world are rooted in the ignorance of man, this ignorance of the masses is exploited by the vested interests that can be religious, political, economic and social. The religious leaders are interested in division on religious lines, the politicians benefit from these differences, the arms manufacturers laugh all the way to their banks because they can sell their arms and ammunition to perpetuate violence in the world. Violence suits the vested interests better than peace, and there is no end in sight for this miserable state of affairs in the world.

5. It is only Love that has restored some sanity in an otherwise insane world. It is only the power of Love that is keeping humanity alive in this world, otherwise humanity is on a course of mutual annihilation.

July 02, 2007 - Larry Rowe
1. I no longer have any beliefs which I see as fundamental. I do have hunches, intuitions, feelings about those matters which are not yet empirical. If I could be said to have even one belief it is this: that there is not one thing which exists which is not natural, which is super or extra natural.

The cognitive division of reality into the natural and supernatural was likely a critical step in humanities development as a kind yet this division of reality has become a yoke around the neck of humanity. It has allowed humanity the vanity that it can use nature in any manner it sees fit. The chickens of this illusory division of reality into the natural and supernatural are now coming home to roost.

2. When we as human beings have experience of the Divine and attempt to put into words that experience there is the ever present danger that those words will be written in stone, fixed in amber and believed by some to be the immutable word of God Itself. This propensity has caused and continues to cause humanity more grief than any other single belief. I do not see any Divine apart from myself, neither do I see myself apart from any Divine. The Divine in my experience is wholly natural and any attempt to separate that Divine from nature or ourselves is counterproductive.

3. Hope for or fear of a hereafter is to my mind simply an unconscious wish to defer responsibility. If there is a hereafter I have no way of knowing for sure until I have died. If there is a hereafter fine, if there is no hereafter fine.

4. Violence as it relates to the human condition is simply the reality of our animal condition. It comes about as a direct result of our territoriality as humans which is no different than the territoriality of other animals. We have attempted through conceptual constructs to raise ourselves above the animal kingdom yet our genome shows us that we are still, in reality, animals.

5. The role of love in it's most basic form is simply physical attraction, a means to propagate the species. We sometimes allow ourselves the vanity that we are alone in nature, in the animal kingdom, in the ability to love.

The instinct to nurture is where all forms of love originate. The instinct of the mother to nurture and protect her young. This is why a nurturing love is more difficult for men than it is for women. This is why I consider the fact that I was enabled to be my sons primary caregiver for the first six years of his life to be the greatest boon I could have ever wished for. I learned, first hand, the way of nurture, the way of natural love.

----- My life experiences have shown me that the limiting nature of our beliefs can be transcended. I have seen that there is legitimacy to all human spiritual endeavor but when that experience is used as an excuse and a means to divide instead of as a reason and a means to find common ground that experience is worse than useless.

Through the Abrahamic I have discovered that I am: Abdu'l-Nuri'ullah (A servant of the Light of the Divine); through Buddha: Vajratathagatagharba (Diamondhearted); through my Celtic roots: Cylenchar (The Greenman); but through them all I've discovered the most important thing of all: that I am a parent, the father of my son, simply one of the many billions of people who have graced and disgraced this earth.

June 04, 2007 - Wes Isley
1. I suppose I believe most strongly in the principle of "you reap what you sow," that whatever you send out into the world will return to you, whether it is love, hate, anger, peace and so on. We make these choices and these choices determine our path and circumstances in life.

2. At the moment, I don't believe there is a God or Spirit or Creator -- however, this is a recent development and very much in flux!

3. Now is all we have, so we'd best take it seriously.

4. The causes of violence of many, but I believe that a majority of violence is biologically based due to illness or injury to our bodies and minds. Violent tendencies can also be exacerbated under certain social/cultural conditions. I also believe acting out violently is innate.

5. The causes and purpose of love are mysterious, but I believe it certainly plays a role in helping us survive as a species and as individuals.

April 08, 2007 - Kathleen Sheffeld
1. I believe that the search for ultimate truth is what guides my life, and that the searching is as important as the discovery.

2. I believe nothing about God. I find the concept of ONE source of all things very comforting, but try to keep an open mind and prepare myself for the ultimate knowlege that everything I find comforting may be false. However, in saying this, I feel a connection between all things in physical realty, creating another reality called spirit, and this spirit is God.

3. Again, I am comforted by the thought of soul energy surviving the death of the body. I prefer to believe this, while attempting to stay aware that the reasons for this belief are based on my personal comfort level.

4. I believe all violence in the world is the result of our attachment to beliefs, whatever they are. The buddhist practice of non-attachment to all things is a move toward a less violent world.

5. The role of love in human experience is to touch the spirit that arises out of our physical existence, and thereby touch the ineffable. It's a way that we can enter the spirit of God in a conscious, physical form.

March 12, 2007 - RWG
1. I have made a point, the last 10 years or so, of turfing overboard those inherited beliefs that on examination fall short, and they continue to make quite a splash. I guess the belief that stacks up best for me now, and that keeps me on track, is the one that says that I can create anything I want, if I focus on it and empower it. I will need discipline, courage, and wisdom, and there is a rider that goes with it, that is that what I create is for the benefit of all mankind, and I am relaxed about that.

Not quite sure how I finished up in this pond, have a religious sister totally conditioned and I was looking for material. A little while back I recognised the controlling mechanisms in Christianity, and recall, while in that forum, the negative slant on the Gnostics. What I have read on your website sits well with my acquired understanding and where I am at, so, I'll prop a while.

2. The idea of 'dead man as God' leaks like a sieve, I reckon it is based on control. Constantine, 325AD, Nicea, the amBUSH continues. I conclude that there is a supreme something, maybe not in my form, but an energy, that is non judgemental, that allows me to be, that is loving, that sustains me if I seek help.

3. We are pretty well totally conditioned to believe, there is another, that we get one shot at this, make it a good'un. I recall the story about the peasant and his family, in 15th century Britain. Mid winter, cold, hungry, kids are miserable, late in the evening, a light in the abbey on the hill, the building with the pointy bits. Says to his wife, 'I'm going to sort this out with the friar' and he walks up there and belts on the door. A large friar, goblet in one hand and a chicken leg in the other, opens up and says, 'what can I do for you my son?' The serf tells him, and it takes a while. The fat friar says, 'life was never meant to be easy, work hard, obey the laws, obey the church, teach your children likewise, and you will have everlasting glory. Don't play up, my son, or it gets worse'. He walks back down to his small, wet hovell, and she says to him, ' well, what did he say?'. Almost in tears he says to her, 'relax, we're on the right track'. Organised religions, all of them, are orchestrated control.

One shot at this life?, do as we say. Who says?. Look at the spectrum of human expression, the opportunities to experience, how can we possibly see it all with a one-day pass. The Taoist philosophy interests me, acquired wisdom, and we return with that increasing acquired wisdom until we finally get it, and perhaps then there may be other places we can go. This plan looks okay to me.

4. The planet seems to have been in the control of the same mob of bandits for a considerable time. Career politicians run the state machinery, this should never be. Politics equals divide and rule. Millenia ago they worked out that warfare is the best way to control society, and in case you didn't know, you can make a lot of money that way. Nothing has changed, there are no accidents.

5. An old teacher of mine used to say, in its' purest form, love is not an emotion, it is not a sentiment. Physical love can be beautiful, but the love that is important, where we find ourselves now, is the love that manifests as respect, for all living things.

No doubt I'll rudely awaken at 3am with a thousand things in my head that I should have said, but thought it better, certainly from my perspective, to be spontaneous.

Post this if you like, using my initials, RWG. Many thanks.

PS, I got tangled up in one of those forums 6 years ago, learned a lot and had a lot of fun.

February 24, 2007 - Peggy Goforth
I want to say how I appreciate John Lesh's scholarly work. I don't claim to have the educational background to understand everything he writes, but I can measure what I feel: I read and discover that his words somehow bring me an inner relaxing. The Divine "YES!" of the Cathars: OCK KNOWLEDGE. Fundamentalist writings on some websites, tend to make me almost physically ill. I heard his interview on DREAMLAND a few weeks ago and I really enjoyed it. I had already put his book NOT IN HIS IMAGE on my Must Acquire list.

Sincerly,
Peggy Goforth
Salem Oregon

February 24, 2007 - Lee Martin
Regarding #1, I believe that love is the point of the Universe and our existence in it. Without love, there is no point to it all. We are all evolving toward the point of perfect love, which may be called "God". Our lives are in effect experiments in learning love, in multitudinous aspects. We all fall short, but we must always strive to learn and experience more love. The more we do so, the better our world will become. I want to continue learning more and better ways to love, and how I can experience love and help others to do so in more and more aspects of our lives.

It's those times when I don't feel loving that I feel the most isolated from life and that life seems the most pointless. The times when I feel the most loving, especially unconditionally, are the times when I experience life the most robustly. The key question: How can we encourage the manifestation of love more fully in more and more aspects of our lives?

I've been a meditator and a student of metaphysics/spirituality for a few decades now; I'm also a linguist.

February 17, 2007 - Ruby
Q. What is the fundamental belief of your life, the single belief that you hold with the most passion?
A. that i don't need beliefs ... i can know.

Q. What do you believe about "God", according to your definition of that term?
A. Impersonal energy which can be tapped.

Q. What do you believe about life after death?
A. We are as dead now as we will ever be.

Q. What do you believe about the causes of violence in the world?
A. the same thing that causes sudo love. ignorance

Q. What do you believe about the role of love in human experience?
A. Love is a word and is so full of...? just like the word God.

February 10, 2007 - Ani Lee-Byrne
My beliefs:-

1. Reincarnation

2. Cosmic Inteligence/femanine principal

3. According to each individual's consciousness and emotional inteligence, they will gravitate towards an empathic set of sercumstances and experiences. Will have the opportunity to take stock of their lives while on Earth, to learn and carry on evolving as spiritually conscious individuals.

4. The main causes of violence in the world is fear. Fear of not having enough to survive, fear of the 'Other' fear of the 'Unknown'. Then to justify your Fear you have to make the 'other' responsible, and thereby justifying turning 'them'into figures of hate, That are to be Feared! Catch 22.

5. Generally the role of 'Love' in human experience is grossly distorted, perverted, missguided, selfish, overtly emotional, missrepresented, and the cause of much human missery.

February 10, 2007 - Meley Au
God bless me and all around

February 9, 2007 - Ani
A comment about Belief. Belief is something that you accept on an itellectual level. Something you have either read or been told of by others. Gnosis/Knowledge is a subjective experience, which creates a KNOWING. Belief within Gnosis is an oxymoron !

February 8, 2007 - Gladys Margarita Hernández de Montero
Hola! Espero recibir información de uds. Trabajamos en Vezla. en la Esc. Intercult.Bilingüe para las Artes Indígenas "Mag¨ela". Saludos y gracias por permitir agregarnos a su p&aaacute;gina.

February 7, 2007 - Jim "QuaRama" Marzano
Thanks for such an awesome endeaver into global belief systems. I'm really enjoying my adventures here & JL's 2012 series. At the tender age of 3 I had an audience with the Graet Spirit due to a Near Death Experience. As disappointed as I was to have to return, here I am. Relieved of all anxieties over the fear of death has enriched my life beyond measure. I disappointed my christian parents when I informed them there was no such thing as Hell & that "god" loved all his children, no matter what they called "him". By the time I was 7 I learned to fly in my dreams & had numerous precognitive dream experiences. For over 40yrs I have honed my skills as a flying lucid dream, astral projector. Between the ages of 7-24 I had a number of "alien abduction" experiences, until I demanded they stop & leave me alone. At 20 I began reading Carlos Castaneda, Jane Roberts & a host of other esoteric material. At around 30 I discovered the Senoi Indian dream culture of Malaysia. !Learning to develop allies & interact with entities on the otherside lead me to contact with extraterrestrials. In 1994 I took an extraterrestrial ambassador training with Dr. Steven Greers' Disclosure Project. I knew it was a mistake when I noticed a DOD parking sticker on the bumper of his assistents' car. I have since been shut out of the ethereal domains & been plagued with migraine headaches. I believe I have been identified & tagged as a "contactee" & subject to harrasment & monitoring by black op gov't "remote viewers". Although I now see UFO's on a regular basis, as they want me to know they're still here for me. Your probably wondering what all this might have to do with the spiritual belief systems surrounding your site. I still consider myself a highly spiritual person fully cognizant of my eternal personality. It has been no tragic accident that for the last 2000+ yrs that the powers of greed have demonized & murdered highly evolved individuals capable of telepathy, ESP, abilities far beyond our understanding & the social conscience that goes with it. What baffles me about all the intense study into ancient religious mythology is; how do we use it now? The ancients wrote at their level of understanding of the material world around them. They implored us to search within for the answers to our exsistence, but the division between spiritual & material, did not mean their references to the "gods in heaven" were metaphorical. These beings exsist, they are fully aware of the "life force" above & beyond what we think of as "god". All the ancient mythologies are about to materialize as Earth is about to enter another pole shift cleansing cycle that the bulk of humanity is being kept in the dark about. Salvation will come from above, but our extratereestrial brethren are only batting clean up, for it is up to us to save ourselves, from ourselves. The survivors are in for a rude awakening as we start over. ET will once again tweek our DNA to another level closer to their more enlightened level. Maybe this time we'll get it right & be welcomed into the galactic community where peace & harmony prevails. Thanks again for helping move us in that direction...QuaRama

December 10, 2006 - Melanie
Questions:

1. What is the fundamental belief of your life, the single belief that you hold with the most passion?
I prefer to never form attachments for my beliefs. Because they are subject to change for a higher more sensitive truth. So, we can say that the fundamental belief of my life, was the spiritual inheritance.

2. What do you believe about "God", according to your definition of that term?
God is for me, a unknow energy that frequently called the source. I believe its a Grail.

3. What do you believe about life after death?
I believe that you can be "trap" by your own beliefs after the dead, look like lymb. And I believe that the reincarnation is not a punishment, but a "gift" and privilege.

4. What do you believe about the causes of violence in the world?
Attachments for beliefs was for me, the most important cause of violence in the world.

5. What do you believe about the role of love in human experience?
I dislike to talk about Love, because its a "demean word". I prefer to talk about seduction, sensuality, and of course erotism. In the human experience, I think it is one of multiple way, to experiment the connection with the source.

December 7, 2006 - Ras Lowe
Short and sweet to the wave point, Q 1. Freedom 2. LOVE IS GOD. Q 3.There is no death........ Q 4.Much confusion-and distaction-fear ect. Q 5. Explore and experience the positive vibration ,with knowledge and wisdom,right-now is forever, add a little courage and your're on your way. Ras.

September 11, 2006 - Jessica Asplund
When I was younger, I would consider god and the very fabric of all existance in the bodily relm as an unaproachable paradox, filled with questions, and yet no complete answeres from point a to z. Now through experience i think of infinite layers, all prime for probing and rationalization. We are all layed in eternal physical existances in which all possibilities are explored (R.E. quantum physics and the 'theory' of paralel universes). I feel that every moment is a gathering of a radom thought of conciousness that is blooming somewhere in time, against all odds. Continuing in quantum physics, we are all below an atomic level to the very minuteness of mass, exploding in the cosmos and penetrateing mind and mater.My awe is to the radical thinking that we are all conected in the smallest way, our existance of mass conect us, and yet evey atom radiates vibrations that never touch another atom. that we never feel our environment fully, only processed by our sensors.! So my question is do we fully experience realitie as others do? or is it merely the way our minds process incoming signals from our five senses? Do we see with our MINDS some what mechanicly, or is it with our Eyes? I the realitie we see actually the result of infinite systems?( ex. the human body can be broken down into DNA CODE, and all plant matter into compounds and all life into elemnts.)What Is our Fabric that BInds us to this 'reality'? Is it our bodilie existance? or the hab of the creator?

thank you for letting me share.

June 6, 2006 - Dom E
A:
1. All is one. This 'One' is ultimately playing with the apparently infinite variety of subjective experience. One cannot be destroyed. Everything is poetry.

2. There is that which exists 'prior' to ANY manifestation of ANY form. We experience this now, as simple awareness. It is from this that all of the Gods and worlds exist.

3. Awareness cannot be destroyed. When you die you go through something like an intense dream, and then get stuck for a while in a new body again. AKA reincarnation. Or if you can control your dreams you might be able to do something else...?!

4. Violence comes from the biological imperative of an organism to survive. Eat or be eaten. Until the consciousness of an organism understands that it is beyond all forms (including ideas), present form included, it will fervently try to achieve 'infinity' through time, via reproduction. Once you realise you are already infinite, death isn't such a big deal.

If you identify with a meme (an idea/belief etc.) more powerfully than a gene (a body), then you will probably go to great lengths, perhaps even kill your own body, to aid that ideas survival. There is probably some psychological term for this, like 'value transference'.

A secondary level of the survival instinct leading to violence is the apparent inequality of organisms and circumstances. 'Haves' and 'have-nots' is a biological/environmental fact. Add this to an individuals need to survive, and you get jealousy and bitterness based on a sense of injustice. However, this is on a purely 'biological' level. If you believe in reincarnation, then perhaps everyone earns what they have.

All organisms know on some deep, subtle level, that they are infinite. That the exact opposite is what appears to be true to most humans is a cause of great distress. If you tricked the ocean into believing that it was a single drop of water, it would know something wasn't right.

5. Love is the expansion of the intuition that all is one thing. That seems to be why romantic love has such a strong force - it is the instinct towards unity, expressed on a biological level. Love guides life towards knowing this unity and expressing the infinite creativity and joy of existing with this knowledge. Love determines the movement of every particle in existence, for love is the fact of the unity of existence, and nothing can be outside of this.