This article is a transcript from a talk given by Gary van Warmerdam on Belief Systems. The Youtube video from that talk is embedded below. 

What we’re talking about is this thing called the belief system. What we’re working to transform is this belief system and it is, at least in my experience, my personal process, something that was completely invisible to me. We operate with this belief system and it’s invisible to us. Someone tells a joke. One person is laughing at the joke and they think it’s a beautiful insight and a commentary about life, in a way that’s funny. They have a joyful experience. Someone else hears the same joke, same time, same comedian and they’re offended. One of them interprets it by whatever they interpreted by to get this experience of laughter, joy, and insight. Someone else has an experience of being offended. They feel hurt. They feel violated or whatever it is. The event was the same. What happened that one person has experience A and another person has experience B? The answer is the each person’s belief system about the meaning of that joke. The interpretation of that joke and their perspective of how they apply that to the world makes the experience.  Essentially their interpretation was different. But that interpretation happened very fast and we didn’t see it happen.

When we hear a joke, are we aware of how we interpret it? We hear a comment, we’re offended or hurt by, are we aware of our role in interpreting it in that moment? Then we have a reaction, get frustrated or mad.  They said something, we got frustrated. They said something and we laughed. We don’t notice that something happened within us first. That invisible, silent mechanism is where the belief system is. It produces in us responses. If I want to go live in the world, and I want to be happy but I have a belief system that’s producing angry, frustration, judgments, victimization, sadness, I don’t have much of a chance. I don’t even see the place that reactions are being created. All I see is that they said something, so it must have been them. This is because the belief system is very much invisible and silent, until we begin to look for it.

Until we really start to take time from a conscious point of view, and say ”What’s going on in that moment between something being said and my emotion or the responsive words in my mind? What happens in there?” That is important because that is what’s determining my experience of life. That’s what’s determining my emotional experience of the moment. This emotional experience of life, or misery, or suffering, is happening in part because of something invisible. I look in that overlooked space, at what appears to be invisible, process of a belief system, that’s interpreting life. This takes a conscious, willful commitment.

Without awareness Belief Systems operate in a way that is invisible to us.

Most people most of the time are looking outside themselves and go ”Oh, you tick me off” or ”That’s sad” or ”Okay, that’s really beautiful”, ”You’re great”. They think they’re just living in the response to something outside. They’re thinking that ”You made me feel that way. You did that, that’s why I feel this way.” This is the habit of a victim perspective of the mind, blaming other people, or events outside themselves for the emotions they feel inside.

This is surface level understanding, not noticing, the interpretation and meaning that the belief system is applying to experiences, and is what’s changing it all.. It takes 12-14 years before our body matures enough to reproduce. It’s going through a maturing process. That’s a dozen years to develop and mature by, and then it continues to develop into adulthood. Okay, now there’s an adult person. That’s just physically, and it takes 20 years. Our mind continues to grow and mature, but there’s another part of our being, that grows and mature over time. That’s consciousness. As we grow into adulthood we develop consciousness  It really starts to wake up, it varies for a person, but say roughly 20-30 years old. For some it may be way later or not at all.  Early in life the mind is growing faster. At say 30, to 50 years old, consciousness wakes up and says, ”Hey, what’s going on in my mind?”

The mind can’t perceive the mind clearly, but consciousness can.

As you start looking at yourself, and what’s going on in your mind from a consciousness’ point of view, you notice the mind making interpretations you didn’t see before. You begin to notice all these things going on in the mind, that it’s doing it automatically. These are things that we were programmed with. It’s making the interpretation, that’s applying meaning from a belief system. It’s automatically getting offended, or getting angry. You see that happening automatically. What’s that about? That’s nonsense. From a consciousness point of view all those uncontrolled, negative thoughts, or anxiety looks crazy. From a consciousness’ point of view, it’s out of place and unnecessary. But there was very little chance that you could notice it from point of view of the mind, which is where we were for many years. This is why people show up into this work in adulthood, because now their consciousness is going ”I got to look at this. This is the only way it’s going to make sense to me.”

We are developing our consciousness, what you can also call awareness, that’s been gestating here in this human form. That takes years. You can speed up development and actively practice it with exercises and willful commitment. If you practice being conscious, whether it’s meditation, or practices that I teach, or somebody else teaches you develop consciousness faster. You’re actually strengthening the muscles of your consciousness and your attention through exercises.

Who Can You Talk To About Belief Systems, and Who You Can’t

When you realize there is a belief system and it is doing all these things, you are now seeing something that was previously invisible. You can talk about what you realize with some people, but if they’re looking at it from their mind they can’t see belief systems. They think what you are talking about is nonsense. They think it is nonsense because it is still an invisible mechanism to them. They haven’t seen this mechanism operating in the silent realm, giving interpretations and automated responses. Even if they’re by themselves and they hear all that chatter in their head. They don’t realize that’s it. They think that’s them talking and thinking. From consciousness point of view you realize that just goes on by itself and operates independent from you. It’s coming from the belief system, or we could call mind, or unconscious mind, and it is generating stuff. You can mention this topic of what you’re looking at to someone, but if you talk about it from a consciousness’ point of view, not everybody is going to respond and look at it from their consciousness. They’ll look at it from their belief system and not know what you are talking about.

The belief system doesn’t recognize itself. The belief system doesn’t look at what it’s doing. It doesn’t have awareness and consciousness to self-reflect. This is sometimes called meta-thinking.  Meta-thinking is when you can observer and describe your own thinking process. You need consciousness as a perspective to self-reflect or reflect on what the mind and belief system are doing. Not everybody in adulthood will follow you as you talk about this. It depends on what point of view they are in. As you look at your own belief system there are methods to see what is going on, and to unravel the meanings and interpretations that were silent. Then you can say, Okay, I can see these layers now. You develop a kind of insight, self-reflection capability. From there you can dismantle it. But that’s skill and practice. That doesn’t happen because the mind says it should or wants to. If it is just the mind working the process you end up with a lot of, ”Why am I not getting this?” Or, “Why am I still thinking this way?”

You have to develop it as a willful conscious practice. Like reading music, or learning a new language, to see what happens in that instantaneous interpretation, to look and then closely slow it down in reflection. That wasn’t just a response, and it wasn’t that, “They made me feel that way”. That was my belief system making this interpretation which created the emotion. And my conscious mind ignored that part happened. My mind is just pointing to them and says they created that emotion in me. Noticing the mind says this is a development of skill. It takes time. This is what we’re doing. When we’re in the point of view of the mind, we’re blaming everybody else, we don’t have any issues. It’s all them. If they just stop doing that, I’m fine. If they did this instead of that, I’d be fine. We’re not at all responsible and in control of anything going on with us is the explanation of the mind. Everything happening to us is depending on the world. This is a victim paradigm of the belief system.

The Belief System is not reflective and so takes no responsibility for the emotions created within us.

I have no responsibility for how I feel, or how I react. The world has to change and then I’ll be fine. People can say this even in a righteous, moralistic way, about how they’re hurt. But it is a victim paradigm of powerlessness. It’s kind of common, when you’re looking at things from the point of view of the mind or the belief system. When you’re looking at from the point of view of consciousness, you look inward instead and say, that’s my creation, my automated interpretation, my responsibility, my issue. You know what? I’m the only one that can clean it up, because it’s all me. It’s all my doing. And that interestingly enough, can suck.

I’m creating that anger. I’m doing that. So there might be a layer of self-judgment when this happens. The mind might kick in and say ”You stupid idiot. Why the hell have you been doing this all these years and didn’t even notice?” There is a layer of that story and victimization. Now I feel like a stupid idiot. I should have known this before. The truth is that, No, you shouldn’t have.

The mind is making nonsense again. It’s blaming you for what it is doing.  There’s no way you could have known this before. Your consciousness hasn’t developed yet to step outside of it. But as soon as your consciousness goes ”Oh my God, it’s me” which is progress in the area of responsibitly, the mind wants to kick in and take control again, and go ”Yeah, you stupid idiot”. Very quickly we switch from consciousness perspective to the judgmental and blaming mind perspective.  Now you’re in a dream of judgment, victimization, comparison to some imagined reality, like you could have had realizations 5 years ago, had a conscious awakening 5 years ago. No, you couldn’t make puberty happen 5 years early. You couldn’t make conscious awakening happen 5 years early. It’s supposed to be that way. You wake up when you wake up.

Conscious awakening happens when your consciousness gets mature enough. You can begin to self-reflect at that time. Even when you begin to awaken consciously the mind will want to take over and do the judgment story and hold you back. When you have a consciousness moment the mind will try to reassert some kind of judgment or other story, and you have to say ” Wait.  No.  I wake up when I wake up. I realize when I realize.” Step outside of that story that you should have known this 5 years ago. No, you shouldn’t. That’s a lie. You go forward from there. That’s the game of self-realization, conscious awakening, with the mind trying to derail the process. That’s the path.

How Relationships Change as You Change Your Belief System

There’s a number of common barriers to cross as you see the belief system and begin to make changes. One of the things is you don’t relate with your friends and family and co-workers the same way. When they would do their victim story of poor me, and they would want to go on a rant about their partner and relationship, and how he’s not doing this or she’s not doing that, and you chime in and go ”Oh, that son of a gun.” You would all be together in the same story and that feels like togetherness. It looks like support, but you’re both really,… you’re intertwined in the same victim story. You’re not supporting them in their happiness. You are supporting them in their beliefs that perpetuate misery. When you see that, you don’t want to feel miserable anymore. You don’t want to support them in the misery of a victim story. They respond by saying things like, ”What’s wrong with you? You don’t care about me anymore.” They fight against your conscious awareness and your authentic compassion. They want their victim sympathy.

In a way, you love them more and you care about them more. But to a victim, love and caring looks like something else. Loving, caring looks like, “you have to do my victim story with me.” But consciousness knows it’s not helping them. It is only making you miserable and keeping them miserable long term. Sometimes you will feel the loss of a friend. Sometimes they’ll get so tired of you and say something like, “I don’t understand you anymore. Get out of my life.” Sometimes they try over and over to bring you into their story of misery, and you have to put a boundary like ”I love you and I know you don’t understand that. It seems in a way, that I’ve changed, and I love you differently. I’m interacting with you differently. I can’t spend time believing your stories the same way, because it’s just not getting us any happier, or any better this way. I got to spend less time with you, or no time with you for a while.” You put a boundary there. To them you look like you are acting strange, weird, and crazy to them. You’ve gone evil, because in their world, their belief system, each person that acts like them is normal. Because you act differently, the word they have for that is usually negative.

They believe they are living how they’re supposed to be. So once you individuate from the victim and judge suffering paradigm, you look different or they don’t understand you. Their belief system doesn’t look to themselves and go ”What am I doing differently?” or ”Should I be changing?” No. That never occurred to them within the belief system. The belief system, its own interpretation always concludes it is fine to itself. It’s the world that’s the problem. They look at you and then go ”You’re the problem. You’re different. You’re weird. You changed.” As if you should never change. No, you’re changing anyways. They have these justifications, even ”Something’s wrong with you now. I can’t talk to you anymore. I hope you get better.” Since they don’t see any other interpretations they could make from their world they don’t see the belief system choosing only one line of thinking. You seem nonsensical when you talk about belief system things. To them it sounds like you are seeing things that aren’t there.

Feeling Like You Don’t Fit In

So in this journey, we can feel a little alienated when we begin to become conscious and change our belief system. We can feel alone. We don’t connect with people the way we used to. We start to wonder ”What am I doing? Is this OK?” We have enough awareness hopefully, to kind of check in and go ”I could do their stories, but that’s misery. I can’t do that.” That’s the crazy thing, to go live in the mind or stories of suffering that say It’s somebody else doing it to me. We go forward, we trust going forward.  If we believe what our friends and family say, if we listen a lot and consider it, we will have fears and doubts about our progress.  We can even try to shut down our consciousness and try to make it go back to sleep.  This is like the scene in the movie the Matrix where the character Cypher wants to go back into the Matrix.

Sometimes the relationship doesn’t work itself out. Usually in that different state of consciousness, you eventually start seeking out new relationships, and you talk to people at a conscious level about this thing called the belief system, or mind, or whatever label you learn for it that you’re unraveling and it’s like discovery. You have a conscious conversation about what the mind does unconsciously, and that’s cool.

The Belief System is a Working Template of the World

What the belief system gives us in this invisible operating system, is a mental model of the world. In our young years, often through action-reaction just experienced relationship. We’ve experienced the world and other people. We draw assumptions, we build paradigms of identity. We build paradigms of how the world is and how other people are. If I do this, they will treat us this way. If I do that, they will treat us this way. If we’re 4 years old, and we’re loud and angry, we’re going to get hit. Now we’re afraid to get hit. So we interact in the world in certain ways and not other ways. We see responses. We operate from these paradigms that we’ve built going forward with past experiences creating the paradigm of expectations.

Sometimes we operate from paradigm of conscious word-based beliefs we’ve made in statements. I’m better than them. I’m worse than them. I’m a terrible person. I’m right. They’re a terrible person. Then we interact with the narrative we’ve built about them. That belief system can have a lot of language. That’s part of what makes up the structure. The agreements we make about ourselves, what our life would be like if we’d done this instead. Or I’m this way, because mom or dad did this to me. We live in that narrative. Often, it is really our commitment to be that way, based on what they said. At some point we build a construct in our beliefs that “we are this way.” We think it’s, mom and dad told me this, or didn’t let me do that. We continue to put responsibility on mom and dad even if they haven’t been in the picture for years. We continue to live in the narrative belief years later. But we fail to see our part ”Okay. We made a commitment about what that meant. We made a commitment to interpret that way and be that way.”  Our commitment, our response was what created us and our behavior afterwards. We operate in that paradigm.

Yes someone in our past may have mistreated, and even abused us.  But at a certain point they aren’t doing that anymore.  From then on we are the one that is continuing to abuse our self with our thoughts and beliefs about that past event.

Belief System as a Mental Model of Reality

The belief system gives us a mental model of the world. It is a template of expectation and assumption about how people will treat us, how they will react to us, and what we should do to get attention, and recognition, and what we should fear etc.  Sometimes it is accurate, sometimes inaccurate. If you could imagine, the way I see it is, you have this mental model of the world and it’s kind of like the Google Glass images projected on to your lenses. You get this see-through screen projection onto the world. Then there’s a real world behind it. We’ll look at it from somebody else’s point of view. Somebody else is living in their own mental model of the world and what they believe of you is on their lens, and you’re in the background behind it. They don’t see the real you. They see the template of what they believe you are on their projected glasses. They have this version in their mind and they think, “I know you this way”. It’s like our parents would say they know us. But we know they don’t know us. They don’t know everything about us. They have their version of us. They have their mental model of us, and then there’s how we really are. Well, we have our paradigm of what we know about our parents. That’s our mental model of them, and then there’s how they really are.

We’re not necessarily consciously aware of our belief system like this. We’re certainly not as aware that consciously it’s false. It’s not the real them. We usually don’t perceive our mental model side by side with reality and check for discrepancies. That’s the only time you would notice the belief system.

When Our Belief System Doesn’t Map to Real Life

Everybody has their own belief system mental model. Most of the time that’s a totally fine way to operate in the world and life goes along okay. But there are certain things that happen when we’re operating according to our belief system of who they are. It misses the mark. Now we think ”They’re this way and they’re going to do this.” They don’t do it. Now there’s a disparity between reality and our assumptions or our unmet expectations, belief system of where we thought it would go. That disparity sets up an emotional reaction. This could be surprise, or could be disappointment. You didn’t fit what I thought would happen. Reality showed up quite a bit below and that’s disappointing. Or reality showed quite a bit high, Oh, that’s awesome.” Why is it awesome? Usually we weren’t even aware we had an expectation in our belief system to compare it to.  It was unconscious to us.

We Try to Make Reality Fit our Belief System

Much of our life we try and get reality to fit our mental model. Mental model of ourselves is like I think I can really go do this, in my life. And so we go and try. Sometimes we can make reality happen to that plan. Because we are the most changeable thing in our life, we can make ourselves into a doctor, an engineer, a manager, an athlete, or run a marathon. We can make that reality happen, but when it doesn’t happen, or it doesn’t happen the speed we would like it to happen, ”Oh, I want to be through all these emotional issues and clean up this whole belief system.” Our belief system is saying ”Yeah, let’s finish this. Let’s go read this book, that’ll get it done.” You read the book but you’re still doing the drama stuff. What’s the reaction to the belief system plan and disparity with reality? Frustration. Our belief system assumes transformation happens quickly, like in a weekend. Reality is ”No, you need to develop your consciousness’ skills and dismantle these beliefs.” But our belief system doesn’t see that development is required. Our belief system doesn’t believe it should have to dismantle its beliefs and actually develop skills.

When the reality of change doesn’t happen like that, there’s a reaction of frustration, and self-judgment. Our expectation of how fast change should happen doesn’t fit reality, and what is there? Emotional reactions. This is the silent interpretation system that’s falsely predicting what the world’s going to be like, or what we’re going to be like by the end of the book or weekend. This blinds us from seeing the world. It blinds us from seeing how the change process actually happens. It blinds us from seeing us the way we really are, and having patience with our self. It can also blind us from seeing our beauty. We miss it because all we have is images in our belief system to look at, as opposed to really experiencing ourselves and all those multi-dimensional levels.

When Other People Have Beliefs About Us that Aren’t Congruent

Where the loop can get really tricky is when there’s that disparity.  Like I mentioned earlier, for someone else, we’re now not acting according to the way we used to act. We’re not acting according to their version of us. We’ve changed. We’re not fitting in their belief system model of us and they have an emotional reaction to this disparity.

They’re having reactions. They don’t want to have reactions. They don’t want to be uncomfortable. It’s confusing when we’re not living according to their mental model belief system expectation. They’re confused and disappointed. They’re going to have emotional reactions. You know what? They don’t want to have emotional reactions. What’s their approach? Well, if they get us to change and go back to be the person of their model in their mind, they’ll be more comfortable, because they won’t have those reactions.

If we would just be what their belief system is predicting they would be more comfortable. They are completely unaware of this invisible belief system. They think the cause of their emotions is us. They believe that if we change they won’t have as much emotional reaction. Their belief system would be less confused, and more comfortable with us acting like it expects.  Do you see why they might want to get us to change back? Their belief system is having reactions to us.

Do you see how when other people change, we might want them to change back, because they don’t fit what we are used to? Some people say ”Oh well, we want to just go with what’s familiar or known.” No, this isn’t true. Our belief system wants to go with what our belief system has formulated.  Changes to this are confusing to the mental model the mind is trying to maintain.  It reacts with something like … “Things are not the way I thought. I’m not the way I thought. They’re not the way I thought.” That belief system goes… Sort of like a ripple in the matrix, and gives a little shake. That feels uncomfortable; to find out that something you believe is not true. We will, and other people will at times try to react to us in a kind of punishment. “Hey, get back to being who I expect you to be, and my belief system expects you to be.” Sometimes we will react to people when they’re different.

Consciousness Perspective is Different

What we could do instead from a conscious perspective go ”Wow, why is my belief system having such a response to this?  I’m uncomfortable with them not fitting my expectations.” Which is more accurately my belief system is having a reaction to reality. My belief system is having a reaction to reality, which means my belief system is holding some false belief in conflict with reality.

If your belief system is in alignment with reality, you don’t notice it. Because it’s giving you a good map of reality and so everything is congruent. Reality matches expectation and the response is, ”OK, that’s predictable.” If you’re in this part of the world, the power stays on regularly. If the power goes off, you’re like ”What’s going on?” If you’re in another part of the world, the power goes off regularly. You don’t have any response about it, it’s just the way it is. You know that’s normal. This is where the belief system tries to push us and other people back to normal for the belief system, or what we would call belief system model of it. Not that it’s normal, not that it’s healthy, and not that it’s really going to help make you happy. It is doing what is emotionally comfortable to the belief system, so it doesn’t have to change.

Conscious Awakening from a Belief System

If you want your personal freedom and you want to awaken the consciousness, you have to dissolve this belief system. So when you notice an emotional reaction you can go ”Cool.” Then ”Oh, I had an emotional reaction. Cool. My belief system is exposed now.” There’s a chance to see that it’s got something false going on. When you become more consciously aware and have an emotional reaction ”OK, that’s not a big deal.” They actually become fun like ”Now I can find something false that my belief system is doing.” It’s a totally different attitude about emotional reactions from a consciousness’ point of view. You’re like, this is a beneficial thing having emotional reaction, but from the point of view of the mind it’s a problem.

Let me give you the case where this world we live in, dictates decisions that are detriment to a process. Just following along with the belief system, we’ll try to do what’s comfortable to the belief system. This means keeping patterns and habits and emotional cycles in place.

We’ll take a belief system, kind of an extreme case, that’s easier to see this way. A woman who has really low self-esteem, feels worthlessness, has a belief paradigm she doesn’t deserve to be happy or treated well. She’s in an abusive relationship. She has a really low self-image, doesn’t deserve to be happy, and punishment is regular in her life. This isn’t who she is but it fits her belief system image of herself. She’s always doing things wrong, messing things up. Punishment, being mistreated fits her belief system of herself, her mental model of herself, and that image is she deserves to be hit, because she’s doing things wrong.

Her partner, as an abusive partner, says she deserves to be hit, ”You deserve that.” That fits with her story about herself. There is a congruency. There are cultures in the world where this is accepted by men and women as appropriate.  For instance, both the man and the woman believe that it is appropriate to beat the woman if she burns dinner. The inside belief system and the outside reality match up. This is familiar and congruent, so while the emotional experience may be painful, it’s not confusing. Everyone is living according to the same expectations. In a way it makes sense to that mind. Then why is she still there? ”Oh, you know, I should have done this, I should have done that. It’s my fault he is that way. I did this to tick him off, it’s totally understandably he got angry about that.”  You can hear many justifications, which is a clue that the belief system is busy reinforcing itself.

There’s nothing that appears wrong with this situation to these two people so there’s nothing to change. There is congruency between the belief system model and reality. Now take that woman and you put her in a relationship with a man, who just loves her unconditionally, is kind and sweet. She is still the same person, but he treats her very respectfully. All this love and acceptance and adores her. She’s going to be confused. It might feel good emotionally, but her mind will be in conflict.  She might think, “He doesn’t really understand me. He doesn’t know what I’m like. If he really knew me he wouldn’t want to be with me. This won’t last. Or maybe she thinks, “He doesn’t know how to be a man. He doesn’t know how to be in charge. Who is he really? He must be crazy. It doesn’t make any sense. I don’t deserve this.” That’s her narrative response. What does she do? She’s uncomfortable. Her belief system is uncomfortable. This doesn’t make any sense because it doesn’t fit with her mental model.

Her belief system wants congruency. Her emotional and physical body might prefer this way of living, but her belief system is confused and uncomfortable so there is an internal conflict.  Part of her mind wants somebody that’s going to mistreat her according to what her belief system says she deserves. Her unconscious belief system is going to try and sabotage the relationship. She is going to unconsciously try and get that guy to treat her poorly. She may give a little jab verbally. She’ll forget to do things. She’ll break promises. She’ll cheat on him. Unconsciously all this love and affection is uncomfortable, because her model of the world, is shaking. This doesn’t fit. It’s so incongruent. It’s uncomfortable, and getting back to comfortable means getting back to what the belief system says is congruent. Unfortunately what is congruent is abuse. It’s painful, but it doesn’t have this disparity. It’s congruent. Not comfortable but congruent.

So she will poke at him, and she will jab verbally. She’ll get angry. She’ll do things, try to create emotional reactions to sabotage that relationship. Either so he becomes mad at her, or ”I can’t connect with you.” Or she’ll run, she’ll go leave and say ”You know, you don’t make any sense to me anymore. I can’t do this anymore.” And the guy wonders ”What’s going on?” He’ll be confused. Or, she can change her beliefs and give up the false beliefs of the mental model and enjoy her relationship.

The same can happen with a man, who’s really loved by a woman. Understand what the belief system is doing, is trying to create not what’s comfortable, as we often use the term, but is trying to create congruency. So we don’t feel confused about the world and our role in it. Then the belief system can go… situation normal. Situation is congruent. Nothing to figure out now so beliefs can all stay intact.

In this way, we talk about people creating their own reality. I see it more as people often creating the world, or making the world fit the non-reality of their belief system model.

Becoming Conscious of the Belief System

Sometimes you look at what’s going on in the world, in your life and you go ”What’s in my belief system that I would be doing this? What is going on in my belief system that would have me behaving this way or living this way?” Sometimes you change your belief system and yet the outside behavior hasn’t gotten around to changing yet. This thing in the external world, this friend that does drama or lousy job, you see that it’s got to go now. You have changed the internal world of your belief system and it is better. Now you want an external world that matches. You treat your self better internally and now you want that matched in the world.

I want a life that reflects how I feel about myself in this way, which is with more love and respect and acceptance. So we decide we need to lose some relationships that are abusive. As you change your inside belief system, then you have to change your outside world to be congruent with that.

Sometimes you realize you don’t know what the belief is, but this thing in the external world that I’m doing, it’s not working for me. I’m just going to change it and let my belief system catch up. So you go through with something comfortable, with a job or relationship that isn’t working and change it. The belief system of the mind will resist as it has to go through confusion.  “Did I do the right thing?”, or “Do I really deserver to be happy?”  comments of doubt comes along that show up from your belief system. You continue with your external changes with resolve not to fall into that doubt. You let your belief system change to catch up because that’s what you want the external world to be.

It’s not necessarily one or the other. You can do it either way. You can change your beliefs, and let the external world follow, or you can make changes and let your belief system struggle and break until it follows.  But there will be a seeking of congruency from the belief system that resists it either way. Not that it is seeking something comfortable or familiar, but congruency that makes the belief system comfortable. The belief system then has less emotional reaction to it.

The most comfortable way to be in the world, is to have a belief system that is without false beliefs so you just see reality as it is. Then you don’t have this invisible layer mental model reacting when things don’t fit, because you just see it as is. It is the way it is and you are not surprised or disappointed. Emotions are easy, because you don’t have this separation layer of beliefs that you have to look through. Is that a little clearer how our mental model, or someone else’s mental model react, and how our mental model of belief system fits with the world? Is it clear how we try to make it fit or not fit with all our justifications?

You can find a step by step practical method for identifying and changing your belief in the Self Mastery Course.  The first four lessons are free as a trial and no credit card is required to check them out.

This is a transcript from this video.

 

 

Youtube available here: Audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U1zmGtYTxU