Beliefs: Friends or Foes?
Beliefs, defined as “a state or habit of mind,” have been proposed by many as a single-handed determining factor of the quality of most…
Beliefs, defined as “a state or habit of mind,” have been proposed by many as a single-handed determining factor of the quality of most life experiences. Accordingly, nearly every human-generated emotion, action, choice, behavior, subjective interpretation of an experience, and outcome is predicated upon one’s beliefs.
Beliefs are mentally sustained guiding principles that we adopt throughout the human journey. Many of them develop primarily from our familial, social, cultural, religious, and educational influences. Our beliefs can be beneficial or detrimental, but they are quite often subconscious, and therefore unrecognized for the magnitude of their influence on our behaviors and choices. In my ongoing quest to find a liberated version of myself, a little light has been shined on this word recently as the next suspect behind many of my mental, relational, and spiritual limitations.
A quote from the ancient Kybalion hermetic text says, “”The All is Mind; the Universe is Mental.” It appears that our state of mind, our beliefs and what we dwell upon and therefore feel, is how our entire reality is created. Beliefs can be our wonderful friends, or, they they can be our horrid opponents. They are either paving the way on our seemingly effortless quest toward our goals and dreams, or they are the unmoving sentries blocking our path.
This year, in the wake of a dark night of the soul, I’ve been devoting a lot of time and attention to how powerful the mind is for creating my experiential reality. In some circles the saying goes, “what you think about, you bring about.” I think this adage or “law” applies to more significant attention than fleeting thoughts. It appears that the recurrent or persistent thoughts we dwell upon with felt emotion (positive or negative) are fueled by our underlying beliefs and often birth many of our experiences, successes, failures, and maybe even our developing personality traits.
As noted, we spend a lifetime developing beliefs about things. Many we choose for ourselves, while many are enforced upon our open, vulnerable minds during formative years — especially by parental, religious and educational influences. It makes me ponder: How have my beliefs shaped my life? How are they now shaping my future? More importantly how have they limited my opportunities or held me captive to errant ideas and false concepts that do not serve me along my lifelong journey toward happiness, success, liberation, and transformation?
When our beliefs constrain or confine us in any way from revealing and empowering the unlimited divine spark within us, they are called “limiting beliefs.” Motivational speaker Tony Robbins says, “Limiting beliefs are the stories we tell ourselves about who we are that hold us back from becoming who we are meant to be. These beliefs limit us from reaching our full potential.”
Subconscious beliefs, if limiting or negative, can be very problematic. Quantum science expert and author Bruce Lipton says that our subconscious programming, much of which is acquired between the ages of 0–7 when we are in a theta brainwave state (hypnotic or programming state), dictate about 95% of our adult daily functioning if we have not intentionally become aware of them. That means that your efforts at directing yourself with any success on any given day is only about 5% of the time, and that is usually taking place when you are encountering something new — driving an unknown route to work, trying a new restaurant, creating something for work or pleasure, etc. In a sense, we are all a bit like pre-programmed robots if we are not squarely being present in our day and identifying limiting beliefs! Isn’t it fascinating that we come into this earth plane in a hypnotic state where we basically have no control over the scripted beliefs we are handed for life to “help” us navigate this complicated experience? It feels as if we are here exactly to figure out how to escape the programming and learn how to design, rewrite, and execute our own operating system against the expected flow. Some people call this, “waking up.”
The sad fact is that most of us revel in comfort, certainty, and complacency. We don’t want to confront our limiting beliefs because we might be forced to adjust or change too much, outgrow our old skin, and become an unrecognizable form from what we have come to know and rely upon — even if that vessel containing our disguised spark of the Divine is not all that pleasant to be trapped within. We like our routines, our comfort zones, and even our expected outcomes. Even though most of us would say we want better, more exciting lives and we want to be better than what we are, we don’t actually mean it when it comes to our over-reliance on the comfort provided by certainty and routine.
For me, tenacious, limiting beliefs that are not my friends come into my awareness almost daily. Perhaps if they weren’t rigidly immobilizing me, I could more easily apprehend my goals and dreams toward being more joyful, more loving, more capable, more creative, more competent, more generous, more empowered, more liberated, more fearless…more vulnerable… The list goes on.
What are some examples of these limiting beliefs? There are perhaps dozens that come up during the course of any week, but I think there are some root limiting beliefs that were handed to me in childhood (and therefore have dictated the course of my life until I was able to see them). The rest I gathered along the way through negative self-talk and painful experiences. A few of the more recognizable, root limiting beliefs:
*I am not safe; it is not a safe universe
*It is not safe to love or be completely vulnerable with another
*I am not lovable
*I am not good enough
*I am not enough
*“God” (Source) is not enough
*I am not significant in the grand scheme
*I am not smart enough
*I am too (fill in the blank — old, young, busy, tired, selfish, etc.) to change or work on myself
*I don’t have enough time for (fill in the blank — creative goals, taking time for myself)
*I don’t deserve to be (fill in the blank — happy, healthy, wealthy, etc.)
*I don’t have what it takes to be those same things
Can you relate to any of these core limiting beliefs? If not, perhaps some of them are subversively acting upon your subconscious mind, which could be apparent by looking at the obstacles you encounter when trying to make changes, or when looking at your current life circumstances. When any of these have been subconsciously programmed into us, it’s like a groove that causes us to think and make the decisions that we do as if we are in a zombie, catatonic, disempowered, victim state!
I know. This sounds a bit fatalistic. But really, it’s not! There is hope. There is a technique whereby we can rewrite our subconscious programming so that our mind works for us even when we’re not consciously aware of it. Just think, if we could rewrite our underlying program, 95% of our unconscious decisions throughout the day could be working for us, not against us!
I recently heard a very empowering youtube about how to change one’s subconscious tapes from Dr. Bruce Lipton (or here) . There are different ways you can do it, but the most simple is to approach your mind with new “tapes” when it is languishing back into the programmable (theta) stage, which is when you are getting into a relaxed, sleepy state (and maybe even when you are sleeping)! If you correctly write out and record empowering affirmations, ones that you desire to be running your life, and then play them while you are drifting off to sleep, over the course of a few weeks, your brain can rewrite your tapes!
If it sounds too easy, it’s not. I have been doing this for the past two months, and I have truly been reversing a 3–4 year dark, depressed, disempowered mindset. I have begun to feel empowered, whole, and inspired again!
Your beliefs either serve your happiness and empowerment, or they don’t. Are you willing to let go of the ones that don’t?
If you set your mind on nothing else, set it on this: Believe in yourself. Believe in the spark of Divine essence that is replicated within your very foundation stones — in your very DNA. You are created in the image of the God, a partaker of the Divine Nature. This is the most important belief you could ever start with!