^8.18.1 Whatever feelings and thoughts you have about the past
are not facts but points of view, beliefs, and are, therefore, not facts
– nor the Reality behind them.

^8.18.2 This applies to every facet of your existence.

8.19 The Truth is you live in a worldly dimension composed entirely of your beliefs arising from your responses to what happened a hundred, thousand or ten thousand years ago.

^8.20 At one time, people believed the world was flat.
^8.20.1 Therefore, for them, they lived in a flat world
and were afraid to sail the seas too far in one direction,
because they were in danger of falling off the edge of the world.
^8.20.2 For the people, a mere 400 hundred years ago, their world was flat.
^8.20.3 Today, with knowledge, your world is accessible in every direction.
^8.21 People, in the past, and also in the present time, directed their lives
according to old wives’ tales, the power of the ancestors and other legends.
^8.21.1 They believed in them so implicitly, the limitations imposed
by these beliefs restricted people’s actions and activities.
^8.21.2 Dancing was believed to be sinful and wicked
by certain Christian sects for instance.
^8.21.2.1 Therefore, many people who would have derived great happiness
and release from stress when dancing, were wrongfully denied this pleasure.
^8.21.3 Religion comes under the same heading.
^8.21.4 Beliefs are the very substance of religion.
^8.21.4.1 They are founded on age-old happenings which are nothing but belief.
^8.21.4.2 The beliefs may have been relevant to the general mindset
of those times, but they have long since become irrelevant
in a constantly changing world, yet they are strictly adhered to
and become the focus of worship, festivities, celebrations, mourning
– and more destructively – they become the reason for men
killing one another and causing horrific misery to women and children.
^8.22 Certain religions claim that “God is everywhere and in all things”
but also affirm dogmatically, that no one knows the mind of God,
or the reasons why people kill one another
– it may be in God’s plan, they say.
^8.23 With mindsets composed of a conglomeration of illogical beliefs,
where can mankind, at this present time, find any certainty of beauty,
joy, health, well-being, love?