Unless branded by religion we define ourselves by what happens in our lives. This means that our perception of reality influences who we define our self to be. If I am a child and I see something then I define myself and my experiences based upon how my perception defines my experience. My perception is totally prejudiced by my collective belief system acquired from previous experience. So if I see something that looks like a dog I may say that what I see looks like a dog. In this example my perception reveals the logic used by my mind.
If our previous experience and knowledge is what we refer to when seeking to define new experiences then we are limited in our understanding by our previous experiences. These previous experiences can exist as conditioning and education. Our individual understanding of our previous experiences can therefore prejudice our perception. Our perception is therefore subjective and limited by self-definition or self-identification. For all of mankind our self-identification is what we are told we are. So many of us accept beliefs about our self that are communicated to us from the mouths of others.
Those others may exist in religion, culture or education. Self-identification is sustained by beliefs that prejudice the perception of each individual perceiver. It is education, indoctrination or experience that determines how we each define our self. For one of us to separate our self-identification from another we need to fit within a separate category. So if I or my experiences conform to the appropriate criterion I may use ‘My Knowledge’ of these experiences define to myself as unworthy, worthy, criminal, innocent, victim, Democrat, Republican, Sunni, Shia or Jew.
A victim may not share the same perspective or beliefs of the victimiser. A Sunni Muslim will not perceive some issues in the same way that Shia Muslim would. These are archetypal identities. Unless you have converted into a faith the faith you belong to will have nothing to do with ‘your faith’. Without conversion the faith we belong to is enforced upon us by the family or jurisdiction into which we are born. So our faith is merely our brand and is not in truth our true faith. Like our nationality our faith merely reveals the race, family or jurisdiction in which we were born.
So our faith will have more to do with where we are born than any love of God. Adherence to an ‘archetypal’ religious identity ensures the mind must limit its creative expression if it is to sustain its loyalty to the defined identity. In some jurisdictions freedom of expression is attacked using heresy as the justification. In others freedom of expression is attacked using ‘patriotism’ as the justification. Heretic or traitor is a different tool used to achieve the same objective. The objective is to control individual expression by incarcerating it within what is appropriate.
What is appropriate in separate religious or political jurisdictions may be in conflict. The controllers of each competing paradigm know that our mind and body is controlled by what we worship as truth. This makes us a powerful resource for ‘good’ or ‘evil’. When we have defined the self to be ‘this’ then we have rejected ‘that’. So the choice or belief in a particular archetypal identity not only defines the self it programmes the mind to accept or reject specific beliefs. It is specific beliefs that an archetypal identity uses to prejudice its own mind to control its creator’s perception.
Self-perception ensures true vision is filtered through ‘predetermined’ projections. Generic beliefs create archetypal prejudices that sustain particular cultural, political and religious rhetoric. If we can define ourselves to be what we define our self to be according to our identity, we are in a trance. If we are one then we are not separate. If we know we have no need of beliefs then why believe? If the only thing that can make us kill or attack each other is what we believe then our collective beliefs are the real enemy. We can only believe what we do not know.
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