How your beliefs create the world

Believe it or not, the world is first created by beliefs. 

That skyscraper...like everything else you can see with your eyes, hear with your ears, and touch with your fingers, that skyscraper started as a belief. Someone believed it was possible. Believed that they, that human beings, have the capacity and the authority to create such a structure. You can be sure that without the fundamental beliefs that made the construction possible, it wouldn't have happened. How could anyone build a skyscraper that no one believed was possible? The same goes for the roads, for the schools, the grocery stores, the TV, the mobile phone, and even your friends and family. 

While the people in your life may not be created by a belief, the way they think and speak is dependent on what they believe. And the same goes for you...that's just how the human mind works. 

Every time a baby is born, the world is again blessed with a pure manifestation of consciousness. Babies are pristine, pure, innocent, and if you've ever had the pleasure of seeing her smile and hearing him giggle, then you know this to be true. You may feel that innocence calling from the misty halls of your memory.

The creation of belief systems begins even before birth. The intimate connection with the mother not only allows the fetus to hear what's going on, it can actually feel what's going on. If the mother is happy and safe, her biochemistry is going to have a certain chemical make-up and the baby will experience the same thing. If the mother is fearful and angry, her biochemistry is going to be different and the baby will experience that fear and anger. Now, what does that have to do with beliefs? 

Already at this very early moment, the child is learning, through this biochemical communication, what the world is like. Very simply, the child begins her education about the safety or danger of the world at this stage. I don't mean to say that this is THE defining moment in his definition of the world, but it is the first formations. After birth, this wide-open consciousness begins to absorb everything around it. Everything. Every. Thing. Without discretion. If the baby can sense it, she's going to accept it. She's going to use that sensory information to construct her belief system. If there's a loud, unexpected honk as the child is handed a stuffed teddy bear, she might learn that stuffed teddy bears are scary. 

As the baby grows into a child, as their belief system solidifies, he begins to filter the information that he receives. A 2 year old filters more than a newborn and a lot less than a 12 year-old, by which time the belief system is usually fully formed, and aside from the occasional rite-of-passage as the person matures or the rare seeker-of-knowledge, this belief system will stay intact until death. 

Throughout most of our lives, we retain the belief system that we inherited from the world around us, regardless of whether it's helpful or harmful. But there are some, the few who realize that the only way they can really change their lives is to change their beliefs.