Who you are is evidenced by how you behave, not what you say you believe in.

Your beliefs can further your growth as a soul if they help you to follow the Golden Rule by behaving in a loving manner.

The specific doctrines of your beliefs are not important, as long as they cause you to grow the love within you.

There are many paths that lead to God, and some of them do not require you believe anything if your behavior is genuinely loving, and it comes easily to you.

It is easy to say that you believe something, and it takes no effort. However, what you truly believe is made clear by your behavior. You do not have authentic beliefs if they are not reflected in your behavior. How you behave identifies or reflects the state of your soul.

Beliefs about God will help you to evolve if you believe only those things that you accept and put into practice as being kind, wholesome, wise and beneficial to all, while judging nobody. This is the essence of Buddha's Charter of Free Inquiry. (see quote)

You may not understand some religious doctrine, creeds, or other beliefs because they might not make sense.

Belief in yourself and your own abilities can help you to love yourself, God, and others. As you learn to love yourself you will grow the love within you, and become more able to love God and others. This will significantly help you to evolve as the soul that you are.

Belief in God is difficult. God knows that. A good start is to sincerely ask God to reveal Himself to you, and at the same time behave as if you believe in Him and his simple spiritual message of love.

All souls move on to the spiritual dimensions when their bodies die, regardless of their beliefs or lack of them.

No single belief system or religion is better than another, as long as they practice love and the Golden Rule. We are all at different stages of soul growth, and we have the freewill to make choices about our beliefs and religious affiliation.

If you truly believe God, you will do as He commands, and your beliefs will be consistent with the Golden Rule. Your beliefs are empty and worthless if they do not cause you to behave in accordance with the Golden Rule.

Nobody can tell you what to think or believe. You need to think for yourself in order to genuinely believe something, and for that belief to affect your behavior.

There is danger in believing something simply because someone in authority tells you that it is true. Do not subvert your freewill and reason to authority and blind faith.

Authentic faith is not blind, and if you do not take the time and trouble to reason for yourself, you risk being led away from God, rather than towards Him.

Beliefs inhibit soul growth if they result in selfish or egotistical behavior.

If you are not careful, beliefs can cause a destructive sense of separation between yourself and those who do not share your beliefs. This is because beliefs are often used to define and place ourselves into communities or cultures which we defend against outsiders.

A society or culture that is spiritually advanced will not try to interfere with, coerce, or destroy other cultures. In particular, a spiritually advanced society or culture will not interfere with or try to manipulate the belief systems of other cultures. A spiritually advanced society leads by example.

An authentic religion leads by loving example, not by the sword. Religions were originally created and organized as a way of structuring society around God (or Gods), but they are not synonymous with God. God and religions are independent of each other.

Beware of those who try to impose belief systems on others.

Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.

Henry David Thoreau

A man may be an heretic in the truth, and if he believes things only because his pastor says so, or the assembly so determines, without knowing other reasons, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy.

F.W. Farrar, History of Interpretation

Religion is doing . A man does not merely think his religion or feel it, he "lives" his religion as much as he is able, otherwise it is not religion but fantasy or philosophy.

George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.

Buddha's Charter of Free Inquiry from the The Kalama Sutta

Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief.

​Frantz Fanon

Every man prefers belief to the exercise of judgment.

Seneca

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.

Bertrand Russell

Heaven is about deeds, not creeds. Therefore, persons of many cultures and religions form the societies of heaven.

Emanuel Swedenborg

The best religion is the religion that brings you closest to God.

Rev. Howard Storm

You cannot believe in God until you believe in yourself.

Swami Vivekananda

You have to believe in yourself.

Sun Tzu

Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.

Norman Vincent Peale

Exercise of faith will be the safest where there is a clear determination summarily to reject all that is contrary to truth and love.

Ghandi

If one can only see things according to one's own belief system, one is destined to become virtually deaf, dumb, and blind.

Robert Anton Wilson

Everyone, religious or not, believing in God or not, transitions to the spirit world as part of the natural process of life. Just as one does not need to be religious to live in the physical world, one does not need to profess a particular faith to live in the spirit world.

Nora Spurgin

Heaven is about deeds, not creeds. Therefore, persons of many cultures and religions form the societies of heaven.

Emanuel Swedenborg

I asked the light, which I call Christ, how people from other religions get to heaven. I was shown that the group, or organization, we profess alliance to is inconsequential. What is important is how we show our love for God by the way we treat each other. This is because when we pass to the spiritual realm we will all be met by him, which substantiates the passage, 'No one comes to the Father, but by me.' The light showed me that what is important is that we love God and each other, and that it isn't what a person says, but the love in their being that is examined in the afterlife.

Sandra Rogers

Men often become what they believe themselves to be. If I believe I cannot do something, it makes me incapable of doing it. But when I believe I can, then I acquire the ability to do it even if I didn't have it in the beginning.

Gandhi

If you believe you can, you probably can. If you believe you won't, you most assuredly won't. Belief is the ignition switch that gets you off the launching pad.

Denis Waitley

The outer conditions of a person's life will always be found to reflect their inner beliefs.

James Allen

To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest.

Ghandi

My great religion is a belief in the blood, the flesh, as being wiser than the intellect. We can go wrong in our minds. But what our blood feels and believes and says, is always true. The intellect is only a bit and a bridle.

D.H. Lawrence

He does not believe who does not live according to his belief.

​Thomas Fuller