Now this may surprise you, but belief systems are ALWAYS meant to help when they are formed. They are always intended to be a positive solution in the beginning. If they create a problem as an adult, it’s because they are (1) still in their childlike format and have not been upgraded and (2) not true to begin with.
Thus, our “problems” are actually solutions chosen by our subconscious mind according to our beliefs. Concerned about your safety, your mother may have constantly told you to “be careful crossing the street.” As an adult, you may continue to have trouble “crossing the street” in order to stay safe. You may have great anxiety taking a risk, such as changing a job, moving, travel, or making a decision. You may be a homebody, rarely traveling far from home, staying off highways, or having trouble driving in general. Even if you dislike your job, it’s what you know and fear of change will send you back “home” to your job where it’s safe.
These examples show that …
It looks to you like your belief systems are true, doesn’t it? You may believe it’s not safe to drive and, thus, you may very well experience feelings of panic or anxiety while you drive. You might say to me, “See, it’s not safe and I’m not confident. My anxiety shows this.”
My response would always be: “Yes, you experience the panic, not because in reality you’re not safe but because you have an underlying belief that you’re not safe.” So it will always appear to you that your beliefs are true and justified. In fact, all that is True in the real sense is that you have a belief that you’re not safe on the roads. It’s not necessarily true.
All that is really true is that you have a belief – and that belief happens to make you feel unsafe, anxious and panic.
You can think of your conscious mind as a train that can only go where the railroad tracks are laid down. The tracks are your subconscious mind, the rule book of how you are to live your life. It is these beliefs, these tracks, in the subconscious that determine where your life goes.
An event happens and the conscious mind immediately checks this “rule book” to see what that event means to you, how to respond, how to feel, how to interpret it. Thus, belief systems are simply strongly held opinions. They are not facts, although they appear to be real, true, and factual. Indeed, we have plenty of experiences that seem to prove they are real.
This is one of the most important points I can make: How we experience life is a result of our subconscious belief systems.
So even though we can point to our life experiences and say “this is true about me and my life,” the underlying basis of these experiences are the beliefs that say “that’s how life is for you.”
Here’s another example. Let’s say every boyfriend or girlfriend has left you for another person, and you can point out the numerous men/women who have all acted this way. These are real experiences! So you say to yourself – this proves what’s true! Here’s the other way to look at it: All this actually proves is that you have a subconscious belief that men/women leave you for another – and so they do.
I hope you’re beginning to see that the reason these bad things happen is because of the underlying belief. This is a hard concept to really grasp at its core level. You may not believe this yet for it’s a very different way of looking at life.
Our belief systems appear real because we believe in them as real. We can just as easily believe in the opposite experience and make it real in our lives. In fact, we often have opposite belief systems. There’s no law of the universe that says our beliefs have to be in alignment. We should be so lucky! Rather, we can have opposing beliefs, which is why we act one way sometimes and other ways other times. Or we can be capable of making decisions at work, and yet become subordinate and dominated at home. We simply have different beliefs about our roles as “workers” and “spouses.”
Another belief may be: “When I’m too happy, something bad will happen.” Once again, you can point to numerous happy times in your life that were followed by something bad happening. You can also point to many times when you were happy and nothing bad happened. We have conflicting beliefs and sometimes one will be expressed, sometimes another.
One way to learn whether or not an experience you have is based on a belief system or is True is to determine whether or not this experience is true for everybody. If it is true for everybody, then it is a Universal Truth and not just your own subconscious belief system. For instance, gravity is a Universal Truth since all of us on earth are bound by it. Cause and effect is another Truth. Our day-to-day experiences, however, are not based on Universal Truth but on our beliefs.
We actually make up all of our beliefs. Our subconscious mind doesn’t care if it’s “real” or not, or if the causative event happened the way we remember it. It just sends directions to the conscious mind and our life is lived out accordingly. You may have heard the numerous stories of athletes who have practiced their sport in their mind, over and over, and become better and better players even though they weren’t playing their game in actuality.