The Probabilist . com

A blog is a personal log so I don’t mind who reads this stuff. But yes, I’ve obviously been a handful. No parent should have to raise a child constantly incapable of automatically and spontaneously doing any work around the house. But I guess I turned out all right in the end (miraculously enough). Some say it’s part of becoming an adult that you stop doing what you love to do. My guess is still that I’ll never find a reason to apply that statement into my life.

So how does one make a living doing what they love to do? Heck, I’d be a very rich man if I knew the universally true answer to that question. But there is a distinction of mind-sets found within this issue as well. Some people, like Steve Pavlina go through the process of hating being an employee and that drives a person to become self-employed.

I’ve never had anything against being an employee.

But being a business owner and investor sounds way smarter than insecurely working and making somebody else rich. Still, happiness certainly doesn’t statistically follow one line of work more than another. That is in the mind of every individual person and goes beyond what kind of labour one performs. But everyone has to provide value in some way, whether we love doing it or not. That’s why I had to drop several of my previous interests and start to focus on matters that seriously and genuinely make a positive difference in others’ lives. The bonus of teaching personal development is that you get your own fair share of learning as well, both spiritually, mentally and bodily.

My father is a great role model both doing what he loves to do and always finishing the must-dos of life. And he has certainly shown me the benefit that comes from constantly shifting the focus of what you love to do - for getting the most experience and lessons out of life. In return I’ve been a role model of living without any kinds of worries. We all come with different sets of strengths and a unique list of interests and abilities that shape the way we are today. However, finding a balance both with what we love to do and have to do should be found. Currently, I’m at a great level of balance in this light as I have the pleasure that comes from combining them together.

If there’s only one thing in life that you can combine with both loving and having to do, then by all means do that for the rest of your life. If you can’t make a similar list of what you’ve done in the past 10-20 years then you’re most likely one of them. But make sure that you do find what it is and make sure it doesn’t completely blow your mind away, leaving your body without sufficient attention. It’s the only you’ve got so take good care of it too. This is one of the latest lessons I’ve had to learn and I hope it sounds meaningful for you to follow as well it has been for me. Remember that there are those of us who want to change the point of interest constantly and it’s just as natural as for those who find one true purpose that lasts a lifetime. Always having at least one thing in life that you love doing is a medicine for the soul that keeps you healthy, happy, fortunate, blessed and without worry.

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Faith and Belief January 23, 2007

Which one do you subscribe to? This is a question of either relying on rationality or spirituality when it comes to getting adequate explanations to matters in life that science can’t address. Some people may hold the initial perspective that men of faith are those too simple and deluded to understand that atheism, duality, the theory of evolution or the absence of afterlife is the correct way to explain the universe, and some people that men of reason are those missing out on what life (and death) has to offer since they work their brains off to show that there’s no proof behind theism, non-duality, theory of divine creation or afterlife/reincarnation.

Let’s take it from the top. Belief is the mind pattern saying that proof and belief go hand in hand. Without proof, you won’t believe. Alternatively, without belief, no proof will present itself. Faith, on the other hand is a form of belief without any sort of proof. One could also say that the way I delve into something new, as explained in the link above, is that faith gets transformed into belief. I think it’s a very powerful realization that you can start out with blind faith, see whether a proof appears to you and draw your conclusions from there, and only if you’ve personally conducted this experiment first-hand.

This doesn’t come without risk or peril though as hard-core rational thinkers like to express their view on the matter. They reason that if you would e.g. start to show faith in God, then your mind and senses will start to play tricks on you and you would end up deluding yourself into believing that God has spoken to you, showed his might and power somehow or proven His existence through any other imaginable way. How can you tell if that’s the correct interpretation or if a divine power truly does influence people’s lives once they start to show faith?

That is entirely for you to decide and hopefully it is or has been a conscious choice. I’d still like to explain how I view this issue and live by. Maybe it’s helpful, maybe it’s delusional. Whatever your opinion, it’s very closely linked to the views I’ve shared on other intangible issues in past entries. So here’s my take on it.

For starters, I’m currently quite centred on the Judging - Perceiving scale of the MBTI, the only one of the four I’ve been a mover and shaker in. I want things to be open-ended and myself to be open-minded. Yet, I also always want to strictly belong to a certain model of belief, reality, causality or understanding that is structured, easy to understand, fulfilling to follow and plays a role in my results and progress as a human being. I find utter indifference in that which I can’t influence.

I’m also a devoted spokesperson on helping people awaken to make choices in their lives. Choices not originating from others’ programming and force, but arising from within, making the most sense and delivering the greatest results and purpose to everyone on a personal level. Since I find so much power behind choices, my greatest weapon in fighting either/or-thinking has been to first ask the following question for myself whenever I encounter issues like this one. “Can I choose both?”

Intangible issues are infinite. My view is that you may be as greedy as you want when it comes to answering these questions, so ask first if two or several choices can co-exist in your mind at the same time. Long-time readers may have noticed that I’m prone to do this. However, sometimes I fight and-thinking by evaluating two concepts that are both accepted in general. I end up eliminating one of them as I’ve found the other one to be useless. When it comes to faith and belief I allow both to exist and I use whichever suits best when I encounter something new and exciting. There’s something good to be found in them both.

Belief is such a fundamental pattern for explaining causality that man simply couldn’t function properly if he didn’t believe in proof. However, the trick lies in not using it excessively, only believing that which already comes with a proof. I think every form of belief that you currently hold was originally a leap of faith. Everything is first faith and slowly more and more of it transforms into belief. As an “unconscious” baby you have faith that somebody will nurture and nourish you. As your senses evolve and you become conscious of being the master of your bodily movements, you have faith that you can stand, walk, talk, touch and do anything that everyone else is doing. Would you rather classify this as seeing proof and then believing? Maybe so, but the truth is that I can’t do and can’t learn to do exactly the same things as others can. We come with different characteristics and abilities, which means that some actions require faith and not belief - if not all, as I view it.

Take for instance the faith in sailing across the Atlantic, the faith in flying through the air, the faith in running a mile under four minutes and the faith in landing on the moon. None of those happened until somebody experimented and decided to make them provable. The proof then turned the faith into belief. Without faith, humanity would not evolve. We would all do only that which we have proof of us being able to do. What humanity is doing is that we constantly take things previously in the realm of faith and transform it into belief. The downside of this progress is that some people have become lost in only accepting belief as their mental model of explaining how the universe works. This is why I subscribe both to faith and belief in helping myself along with everyone else to awaken to their true potential of what they can accomplish.

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