I was doing my morning run in which I try keep my eyes close a lot of the time and my mind quiet so I can really focus on my breathing and putting myself in a spiritual state, but since this is very difficult and important spiritual thoughts about beliefs I need to improve on will tend to be forced to the surface while in this intense spiritual state, I did spend a good portion of the run and the slow meditative run afterwards in deep thought. Interesting enough I was thinking about the importance of questioning and thinking about ways to improve on ones beliefs.

Everyone has some type of spiritual programming/beliefs that guides their spirit. Some people will choose not to disturb what ever spiritual programming/beliefs they already have. Some will tend to be overly tolerant and will accept all sorts of spiritual beliefs/information no matter how wild or impractical with out needing good evidence of some kind for their validity or effectiveness. People will often only accept spiritual information that resonate with them, which means they will usually accept only that which is in harmony with the spiritual programming/beliefs they already have, unless they have been questioning the validity of some of their beliefs and are looking for better answers as a result. Often when people accept spiritual beliefs/information that is new to them it will take a little time to adjust to and will take some getting use to. They will have to in a sense try them out and see how well they work in improving how they are doing spiritually in their life.

Those who choose to not allow their mind to be actively exploring ways to improve on their spiritual beliefs, will be stuck with the spiritual beliefs they have already programmed into them. There are a lot of spiritual ideologies that have a lot of adherents on this Earth that are well programmed usually at a very young age into their belief system. Often these spiritual ideologies have a very authoritarian flavor to them and discourage any questioning of them. They often believe that they already have the perfect spiritual truth or that the perfect spiritual truth is readily accessible within people without any need to question or think deeply about. Spiritual beliefs that can not be questioned so that they can be changed in a way to improve on them will be “addictive” in nature. Often these addictive type spiritual ideologies will represent their beliefs as being the only ones that represent “the truth” and this will give them a sort of drug like high, that is not the same as how one tends to feel good as a result of having spiritual beliefs that are actually helping them make a positive spiritual difference in this world. . Often people will project their “ego” energy into their spiritual ideology and the group associated with it. When one is constantly working hard to improve on ones spiritual beliefs/programming by constantly questioning it, thinking deeply about it, and trying to find/develop better spiritual beliefs, and then testing them out in ones life, one will be working hard not to keep from being “addicted” to the type of “authoritarian” type spiritual beliefs that tend to be quite prevalent on this Earth at this time.

I have not ever found that I have come up with better spiritual beliefs or did productive deep spiritual thinking using a form of stationary meditation, although I do stationary type meditation for other spiritual reasons. One often will find thinking works better when walking or even running. I find that it is very important to do forms of active meditation that will have a tendency to make the mind more active. One does have to shut down the mind in order to focus hard enough on the form of meditation(meditative exercise)one is doing so as to deepen the meditative/spiritual state one is in. But, one will find that if ones spiritual beliefs are not good enough to help one to handle the really intense meditative state one is in, that they will surface and disturb ones concentration and ability to maintain as deep/intense a spiritual state. Also, one often needs to do the required thinking to process some of the spiritual ideas one has recently dealt with often through interactions with others. But, luckily, one can still stay in a meditative state that is not so demanding that the mind needs to shut down, and then do quite a bit of deep productive spiritual thinking geared to improve ones spiritual beliefs or sorting them out while in that meditative state. The mind can better stay quiet for extended periods while in a very difficult/challenging meditative/spiritual state(that active type meditation creates) when it has spiritual beliefs that can help one to handle these spiritual states. Life’s challenges will often put one in very challenging spiritual/emotional states that will be similar to those one can get into through intense meditative exercises. Spiritual training should be geared to helping one perform better in this very challenging physical world we exist in right now with all of the serious problems it can present for us to try to effectively deal with.

I understand we live in a world in which a lot of people have gotten use to a lot of permissiveness and tend to desire instant gratification. That hard spiritual work and really deep thinking may not appeal to them. But we are not going to transform this Earth into a lot better place to exist in spiritually, if we do not develop more spiritual backbone. Spiritual training takes time to get good at. One can not instantly become really strong and aware spiritually. Spiritual will power will get stronger as one keeps using it with more and more intensity.