Really, I should probably call this section mysticism, since that's really what I mean. I get into my "beliefs" in my philosophical rantings. This section is really about what I have seen and felt, and what completely unsubstantiated truths I hold. In other words, this is me sounding completely ridiculous, bat-shit crazy, and talking about weird shit. These beliefs are really unimportant and irrelevant. They are strictly weaker than things I KNOW to be true, and so have little bearing on my actions. In other words, knowledge of this system is not necessary for an extremely accurate and complete model of my actions. On the other hand, if you've seen things while meditating, you might be interested.
My beliefs are due to personal experiences that I can in now way produce real evidence of, in combination with logical deductions involving large assumptions. Some of these experiences are purely internal experience, some are events.
I meditate every so often. When I do I often see things. Often I see a river of energy normally in chromatics. I feel that this river is connected to natural forces, I can't say why.
Another thing I see are people's protective auras (while meditating not overlayed like some people), and I feel that I can manipulate them to some extent. Manipulating someone else's aura seems a horrible invasion of privacy, but I have done it on a few occasions, usually with express permission (They looked at me strangely). I feel these aura's are of a similar nature as the river of power.
I believe that I can act as a funnel for this power, I can purify it and move it around. I have a well of it inside myself as well. I can draw from the river, but I feel this is sort-of a draw on the world. I can also feed the river, or draw from the surroundings and actively purify, adding that energy back to the river. I believe that I can also fortify another's protective aura, as well as manipulating my own. Protective aura's seem to have a "knob" allowing one to turn it up or down. Turning it up is a drain on energy, this energy is connected to sort of... a spiritual energy I guess, which influences other things like awareness and physical energy.
I have talked to other people who independently mentioned the river of power. This was after I'd seen it. So apparently this is a common delusion at least :D.
I occasionally get strange feelings. Sometimes I feel I know exactly what will happen in the next few minutes. When I was little I noticed this happen, but generally without enough time to actually do anything about it, to change it. Later on the premonitions came earlier. It's as if I dreamed it, and forgot the dream,and being in the situation has reminded me. I feel that I've avoided some bad situations this way.
Multiple times I've gotten bad feelings just before something bad happened, or almost happened. One time I got a really bad feeling while going to a friends house to go mountain biking, I felt like one of us might get hurt. I decided that this was stupid and ignored it. On our way out from his house we were going fast down a hill on the street on the way to the trail. He hit his rear brake a little too hard going around a corner and fell. He took most the skin off his left side. He was fine, but it was not a happy experience. Another time I got a weird feeling while coming home from taking care of a friends rabbits. While crossing a road I was almost hit by a car that I somehow had not seen (I was nervous, so I'd looked closely, no clue where it came from), and later I nearly fell over on a curb. This second experience is of course easily explained by some malady, since it's only me that was affected, but it still spooked me quite a bit.
Several times while walking I've suddenly nearly fallen over. Each time it's turned out I was underneath high tension lines or a large transformer. I really don't think this is chance, and feel like there MUST be some connection. Brains are primarily electrochemical, but a strong enough field could theoretically affect a neuron by actually moving the 3 major ions used for firing. I don't know what it is, but it's weird.
Science recognizes that we do not understand the world completely, and in fact most modern science recognizes that we probably never will (and even if we do we won't know it). There are many strange happenings that are hard to explain. This is not to say that they never will be, but they have not. Heck, recently they finally explained why bumblebees can fly.
With that in mind I feel it's not completely unfounded to believe in things that you might have some minor (possibly non-transferable) evidence for. Belief does not mean unshakable belief. I'm happy to accept contrary evidence, but where evidence is lacking and experimentation difficult we go on gut instinct. What I believe in these cases is what my gut tells me.
I wouldn't call it a soul, but I believe living things are embed with something extra, likely it's merely a result of that type of self-propagating pattern, but there is a continuum of life'ness. I don't necessarily feel that we are at the top either. Trees have an enormous amount of life'ness to, much greater than ours actually. I have great respect for trees, they are powerful and see a lot over the years. When I talk to them I don't think they hear the words, but they hear none the less. Heck, that's even been "proven" in studies (admittedly not in any really rigorous studies that I know of) where plants that were talked too were more healthy. So I talk to trees occasionally. No, they have never talked back, not as such anyway. I think I can feel their "emotions" though a little. Trees are a major purifier of power. The power is everywhere, all of the time, but trees suck it up and purify it and leave pools of it. Sometimes I dip into these pools if I need too, and draw a little energy. I try and add more than I take though overall.
I mentioned life, and sort of the essence of what some people might call a soul. The world in general does not throw things away, everything is conserved energy, matter, momentum. It may be converted, we can change matter to energy and back, but it remains. Intelligence, conscience, thought, all these abstract things cannot possibly just disappear when we die. It makes no sense. This is not to say that they must stay intact either though. I suspect they just change and disperse, that conscience as we call it is just a focusing of something that is always around. Call it the Gaia, call it the ethereal cloud, call it purgatory, or the ladder, whatever.
The question "do you believe in God" is, in net, only slightly above meaningless. The only thing this tells you is athiest vs. not, other than that it's all down to semantics. So, I hate answering this question, because it's not a yes/no question. If I say "yes" people will presume I mean a christian God, or something close. If I say "no" people will presume I'm athiest.
What I do believe in, as I mentioned, is the power of self organization. I believe that the universe is built of self-organizing patterns, and that so are we. The "Gaia" type concept can easilly viewed as a "God" of sorts, especially once I roll in my personal acceptance of lack of understanding of the conciousness or spirit or whatever you'd like to call it. So, in sum... do I believe in God? Ummmm, 'ish.