Why Isn’t The Belief-Reality Connection Obvious?

The idea that we have the power to control every aspect of our lives simply by choosing what we believe is a very seductive concept.  However, this seems to fly in the face of common sense and traditional science.  And if it’s true, then why isn’t it obvious?

That’s certainly a reasonable question to ask.  After all, over the course of time, we’ve discovered how to do many different things, including how to harness the power of the atom for both destruction and electrical power, and how to create super-complex computer systems that can produce fantastically realistic special effects in movies and television commercials.

Although when we sit and think about it, how much of what we’ve learned over time was obvious?  For example, how obvious is it to mix flour, oil, eggs, milk, sugar, baking powder, and cocoa to make a chocolate cake?  Maybe we should ask any of the thousands who have trouble getting it right even with a recipe.

It has always amazed me to wonder how anyone thought to mix that combination of ingredients, and to keep trying the many possible combinations until they produced an edible result.  How many eggs should we put in, one, two, twenty?  How much flour this time, a handful or a pound?

Similarly, how obvious is it to turn grapes into wine?  As I understand it, the fermentation process involves a precise control of temperature, a mix of different kinds of yeast, a way to prevent oxygen from getting to the mixture, and then waiting for 10 to 30 days.  And then there’s an additional aging process after that!

Maybe we’ve been too busy discovering so many different things that we just haven’t come around to discovering the connection between beliefs and experience.

On the other hand, even though it may not be obvious that our beliefs directly affect the world around us, there have been people throughout history who have discovered the truth and tried to tell us how important our beliefs are.  It’s not exactly a new concept, but one that has been around for thousands of years.