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How to find answers to life's questions

By Kim Michaels

I am aware that some visitors to this site might feel overwhelmed or even disturbed. After all, Jesus presents a number of teachings that might be very different from (or in direct opposition to) your current view of Christianity. What can you do to resolve such conflicts? How can you determine what rings true to you?

Believe me, I can understand your reaction. If I had found this site 20 years ago, I too would have felt overwhelmed. I grew up with a certain view of Christianity, and the teachings on this site go far beyond that view (for more on this, see the About page). Yet, I also had an inner, intuitive sense that something was missing from my view of Christianity. Therefore, I would have been willing to look at the teachings on this site with an open mind.

I have been actively involved with personal growth and spirituality for more than 25 years. I have wrestled with every one of the fundamental questions of life, and I have developed a method for dealing with new ideas that go beyond my existing beliefs. I would like to offer my personal advice for how you can get the best results from the teachings on this site.

Let us begin by clarifying the situation. Because you are reading these words, you most likely fit the following description:
• You have an inner conflict or you have unanswered questions concerning Jesus and his teachings.
• You have a desire (perhaps an unrecognized desire) to resolve the conflict and find answers to your questions.

To effectively deal with any problem, you must begin by consciously recognizing that the problem exists. Therefore, let us recognize the problem, namely that you have unanswered questions about Jesus or his teachings. The question now becomes: “How far are you willing to go to find meaningful answers to your questions?”


Can you find answers inside or outside the box?

Once you regonize the desire for answers, you can begin to consider where such answers might come from? To be more specific: Can you find the answers inside or outside the box of your current knowledge and beliefs?

Let us use simple logic. If the answer to your question could be found within the context of your current knowledge and beliefs, you would already have found that answer and moved on with life. The very fact that your question is still unanswered demonstrates that the answer cannot be found inside the box of your current beliefs. Therefore, if you are serious about finding an answer to the question, you must be willing to look for that answer outside the box of your current knowledge and beliefs. You might even have to look outside the box of your current belief system.

Obviously, this is where we run into potential problems. It is a fact of life that human beings have a tendency to cling to familiar beliefs. If you read the New Testament, you will see that Jesus himself often challenged those who were not willing to look beyond their current beliefs. In fact, it was this type of people who plotted his death.

To overcome the human tendency to close our minds to new ideas, it might help you to understand why we so often cling to familiar beliefs.

The most basic human need

When people cling to their existing beliefs, they often prevent themselves from gaining the one insight that could help them improve their lives. Therefore, they effectively condemn themselves to an unpleasant and limiting situation.

Around 500 years ago, people in Europe were attached to the belief that the earth was flat. Therefore, they prevented themselves from discovering new land and new opportunities beyond the horizon. By clinging to this limiting idea, people condemned themselves to a situation with very limited economic opportunity. They made themselves the slaves of their present circumstances, thinking there was no way out.

What causes people to cling to their existing beliefs even to the point where doing so actually hurts themselves? To understand this attachment, you need to take a look at human needs. Unfortunately, most psychologists do not understand the most basic of all human needs. That need is the need for a sense of identity.

The world is a frightening place, and to cope with the world a person needs to have some kind of stable platform. That platform is the person’s sense of identity.

The question now becomes: How do people build their sense of identity? They usually take one of the following approaches:

• The inner approach. Some people have an inner sense of who they are, why they are here and how they fit into the larger context we call life. The only way to acquire this inner sense of identity is to answer the deeper or fundamental questions of life. In each generation and in each society, you can find a few people who have found answers to these questions and thereby built a timeless and unshakable sense of identity. These people are often considered to be more spiritual, and they are often looked upon as rare exceptions. However, such people do not have to be exceptions. Anyone can build a timeless and unshakable sense of personal identity by answering the fundamental questions of life. In fact, such a sense of identity could be considered your spiritual birthright.
  
• The outer approach. If you cannot answer the deeper questions of life, your only option is to build a sense of identity by using ideas and beliefs that come to you from outside yourself. The problem with this approach is that a sense of identity based on outer ideas is constantly under attack. It is a brutal fact that the only constant in this world is constant change. As humankind increases its understanding of life, older beliefs and ideas are likely to be questioned or challenged. For example, we live in a time when many people feel that their religious or spiritual beliefs are challenged by the advances in science.
  When your sense of identity is based on the outer approach, you do not have a stable platform for your journey through the world. Therefore, you inevitably end up feeling threatened, and this causes you to cling to your existing beliefs. If a new idea seems to question or challenge your existing beliefs, you will tend to ignore or deny that idea. Many people become so fearful of new ideas that they close their minds to anything that goes beyond the box of their existing beliefs. While this reaction is understandable, it is not very constructive, because it aborts your spiritual growth. If your mind is closed, you simply cannot grow.

Overcoming attachment

If you are serious about personal growth, you simply must overcome your attachment to your current beliefs (not all at once, but a little bit at a time). You cannot grow and remain the same, and you cannot have your cake and eat it too.

To overcome your attachment to your present beliefs, you need to understand that the human mind has two distinct elements. Psychologists have long been aware that the human psyche is very complex and that the mind has several layers or levels. In this context, we will consider the following elements:

• The lower mind. (What Jesus calls the carnal mind.) The lower mind is the seat of the lower human qualities. In this context, the most important of these lower qualities is fear. The lower mind causes people to be afraid of change. To the lower mind, any change is automatically seen as a threat. Therefore, the lower mind is very attached to your existing beliefs, and it will do almost anything to uphold those beliefs. This includes taking aggressive action against people or ideas who seem to threaten those beliefs. The lower mind looks at your existing beliefs as something that is final, something that should not be changed. Therefore, any change is a potential loss.
  
• The higher mind. (What Jesus calls the Christ mind.) The higher mind is the seat of the positive human qualities. In this context, the most important of these qualities is the desire to grow, including the desire to increase your understanding. The higher mind is not attached to your existing beliefs. To your higher mind, your existing beliefs are not final or absolute. They simply represent the highest understanding that you have grasped until this point. To the higher mind, an idea that goes beyond your existing beliefs is not seen as a threat. Instead, it is seen as an opportunity for growth.

We can now see why some people are open to new ideas and why others have closed their minds. The deciding factor is whether a person’s normal state of consciousness is dominated by the lower mind or the higher mind. If the person is dominated by the lower mind, the person fears that questioning an existing belief will threaten the stability and security which that belief has provided.

If a person is dominated by the higher mind, that person has no fear of loss. Instead, the person is continually looking to expand and refine his or her understanding of life. You can never lose by attaining a higher understanding than what you currently have. A higher understanding is not a loss, but a gain. A question is not a threat, but an opportunity for growth.

Developing growth-consciousness

If you are serious about healing your relationship to Jesus, you can make things much easier for yourself by developing an attitude or state of consciousness that is open to growth. You simply need to let go of the state of mind that is dominated by the fear of loss. You must realize and accept that replacing a limited belief with a higher understanding is never a loss, but the very key to growth.

One helpful way to do achieve growth-consciousness is to create a balance sheet listing the advantages and disadvantages of the two approaches to life, namely a closed mind and an open mind. Such a balance sheet might look like the following example:

The next step in developing growth consciousness is to discover the inner approach to knowledge.

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Copyright © Kim Michaels, 2003