March 9, 2026

DIVING INTO HABITS OF MIND AND HEART.

Each of us, it seems, drifts and bumps along all day with the jetsam and flotsam, inclinations and disinclinations, of the mind that, like driftwood, are cast and constantly cast again on the same inner shore by the same internal and infernal weather and winds, with occasional lulls. We live yet avoid real living with our preconceptions, our desires, and fears. Some view their private world from behind a heavy door, crafted and armored to keep the life they fear out and the pleasure they desire in. It’s a uniquely personal little world we each and all apparently live in. Habits and beliefs bind, crib, and confine us to the doldrums of repetition and confinement.

“Something there is about a wall that longs to tear it down”.

~ R Frost

Beliefs tell stories. They weave with their yarns of make-believe, of wishful thinking and devising; of pretending by contending, of defending while escaping whatever one dreads should, could, or would happen or not happen. Beliefs drive us crazy not by themselves but by our desperate craving, our need to believe, to know, to trust, to be secure.

Beliefs personalize experience; they seem to conjure a private ‘reality’ that conflicts with the ISness of nonpersonal reality.

So, what’s the answer? In four words: No belief, No believer. That recognition arises only from one’s own deep inner self-knowing; not in the ‘understanding’ of the mind via analysis, but in – for yourself – directly seeing what the mind is, how it functions, how it conjures its beliefs, its world of suffering, with its supposed ‘person’ who suffers from their personal beliefs. Relief from belief invites us to take a deep dive into our being-nature; to set aside beliefs as we stumble upon them here and now in favor of that which is authentic, true, restorative, and real. Love, actually.