We are a culture of labels.  Brand-names and Logos are long-established ways of representing and selling products, guarantees, ethos and, ultimately, Image.  They inform us of what we are consuming, and through them we advertise our social, economical or, more recently, ethical status.  Logos and slogans are our language.  But there comes a point where label and product blur, where language fails to communicate or becomes misconstrued.  An over-used example of this is the humble vacuum-cleaner; mass-marketed by the company Hoover, the brand-name soon replaced the product-name, the vacuum-cleaner became the hoover.  With recent innovations in vacuum-cleaners, does anyone consider it ironic that many of us hoover with a Dyson?  In extreme cases, label and product become so blurred that we confuse one for the other, we begin to choose certain products because of their brand-names rather than because of their attributes, function or our need.  This problem extends to anything we choose to name or define.  There comes a point when any static definition we rely upon becomes obsolete to varying degrees, due to ever-changing social conventions and practices.  This is just as true with ‘old’ definitions as with ‘new’ ones.  In my opinion it is just as unhelpful to cling to outmoded absolutes as it is to value only modern ideals;

There are people who feel that using old utensils for the Tea Ceremony is coarse, and that it is better to use new, clean utensils.  There are also people who are wont to use new materials because of their lack of authenticity.  Both are mistaken.

- Hagakure, Chapter 2

Whether we use ancient or modern references, perhaps the most difficult thing to define are the spiritual and religious.  Even our clearest definition of the Divine is something similar to a stereotype, in that we are attempting to quantify that which is outside of our physical frame of reference, while not necessarily beyond our experience.  Stereotypes are useful because they allow us the framework to relate to people and situations beyond our understanding.  But it is important to recognise that stereotypes exist because of our lack of knowledge.  This is not unlike belief.  Like stereotypes, beliefs allow us to address that lack, but they become a hindrance if we use them as a replacement for knowledge and experience.  Where stereotypes fail is when we fail to modify them according to our experience of the person or situation they relate to, resulting in prejudice and segregation, excuses for us to discriminate against one another.  Again, this is not unlike belief. 

Beliefs can be inherited, as with traditions, they can be created from our own interpretation of personal or shared experience, and they can simply be irrational, such as superstition or other means we use to explain the seemingly inexplicable.  Whatever the source, the problem with any belief is common to all aspects of life; certainty does not exist.  We can be certain of that!  So, any attempt to make something certain, to offer a definitive absolute, inevitably reduces our ability to relate to that which we are defining.  The Samurai refer to this as discrimination which inevitably leads to fear of other definitions; discrimination leads to cowardice:

The Chinese character for ''cowardice'' is made by adding the character for "meaning" to the character radical for "mind". Now "meaning" is "discrimination," and when a man attaches discrimination to his true mind, he becomes a coward. In the Way of the Samurai can a man be courageous when discrimination arises? I suppose you can get the idea from this."

- Hagakure, Chapter 10

The idea is that when we apply meaning to something, we discriminate.  Put simply, by labeling something “table” we fail to use it as a chair or a shelter when the need arises.  Discrimination through meaning limits our options, makes cowards of us all.  To put it another way, life is ever-changing and fluid, therefore any definition we wish to apply to our lives must also be fluid in order to grow with life rather than cause stagnation or strangulation.  Essentially, I am referring to a need to be more comfortable with ambiguity, while avoiding ambivalence or anarchy, but without living in fear of them, or other mistakes;

"One must also take errors for what they are. Without them, life wouldn't be complete. Nothing guaranties for us - at any given moment - that we won't fall into error, or that we won't come into mortal danger. We think there exists perhaps a sure and certain path. However this path is the path of dead people. Nothing happens, and definitely nothing can happen that is right."

- Jung’s Biography.

The life where everything is absolute and certain is a life where nothing can grow, a life that Jung refers to as death.  The life that embraces uncertainty can go both very wrong and very right.  I believe that uncertainty can be embraced without discrimination, without forcing it into terms that are absolute or endlessly categorised and therefore segregated.  Life, like faith, is found in the fluctuating cycle of definition/modification/redefinition, ad infinitum.  With no other subject is this more prolific than with the spiritual.

My spiritual rule-of-thumb is that beliefs must be allowed to change in proportion to our ever-deepening, ever-evolving faith.  I offer the truism that belief divides and faith unites.  It is over belief in things that we wage war, it is over faith in one another that we make peace.  My own beliefs have altered radically over my life and I fully anticipate them to continue to do so.  In no way is this more evident than in my views regarding what I tentatively refer to as the Divine.  My admittedly ambiguous definition of the Divine is the all-pervasive positive spiritual personality without whom there would be no existence – in its entirety from conception to ongoing experience.  As with any definition, the constant factor is what we are defining, rather than what definition we offer.  For example, most people believe the Divine to be perfect and therefore unchanging and constant.  This being in direct contrast to our very imperfect, changing and inconstant human nature.  It is the reconciliation of these two presumed opposite natures that belief aspires to make certain and explicit.  Just as the uncertain needs to be embraced, perhaps so too does the implicit.  Perhaps we all implicitly interact with the Divine and spirituality is intuitive, requiring fewer and fewer explicit references the more we mature in our faith.  But, it must be confessed, because of its ambiguous nature, intuition is vulnerable to being misconstrued or manipulated.  This is overcome by maturity, by growth.  Faith grows as we enlarge our beliefs.  But such growth must be a genuine reflection of our own personal spiritual experience.  For example, adopting universalism without revelation can be just as false and limiting as adopting the most restrictive religious ritual.  It is this honesty and self-awareness that is at the root of all belief structures and faiths, it is also the most difficult to discover and maintain because of its very dependency on growth and change.  Offering definition is our way of reflecting upon our experiences and such clarification allows a practical enlightenment that does not turn us into useless naval-gazing mystics.  But reliance upon our conclusions must be maintained only as far as those conclusions remain ‘true’.  And it is this tension of ducking and weaving with life that only experience and growth can ease.  I suppose that our beliefs are like directions on maps, allowing navigation through life.  But each destination does not look exactly like its representation on the map, our beliefs are simplifications created for our own ease rather than as an exact representation of what actually exists.  As Saint Paul said,

            “For now we see through a glass, darkly… I know in part;
            but (after death) shall I know in full.”

- 1 Corinthians 13:12

If beliefs are signposts and faith is the journey, the destination, it seems, will be ever-changing and possibly even ever-illusive.  The only way to feel certain of our destination is to die or to pay someone else to take us.  As they say, there are only two guarantees in life, Death and Taxis!