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Change your life, and your will change your mind...

~*~ Change a belief or..accept what is ~*~

~*~ The mind is its own place, and of itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. (Zen) ~*~

It seems that the whole world decided to get rid of the negative beliefs. What is a negative belief?

“A police officer will be substantially more safe if he or she can continue to believe that someone stopped for a traffic violation could be an armed psychopath with an impulse to kill even though they present a seemingly innocuous appearance.”

Is it a negative belief? Certainly not, at least not for a police officer, if he wants to survive.

We don't choose beliefs. We build them up, they grow out of life experiences. If we choose to think that we are smart, it doesn’t mean that we automatically believe in it. We need a feedback from the people and the world around us.

How accurate is the feedback depends on our perception of an experience. And our perception of the experience is based on what we believe in, which is something we previously experienced.

What comes first the egg or the chicken? How do we break in this circle of “beliefs out of experiences out of beliefs”?

Introducing a new way of thinking is a complex process. During the day we think about many different things, those thoughts are triggered by external sources, such as reading, watching, thus, using our five senses to receive an incoming information.

The information that we receive is tremendous, but what we allow to come through is limited to what we believe in, that is what we have already experienced, and what make sense to us.

If we decide to consciously think about something, we will not be able to hold on to that thought for a long time, daily activities take our attention away from the thought, and we are back to our accustomed way of thinking/believing. In order, for a thought to survive, to have our prolonged attention, we have to be passionate about it.

Where does passion come from? Passion is a strong belief in a subject that occupies our mind for the most of the time. Passion - another topic? :-)

Beliefs are not thoughts, if you are familiar with a programming, you can compare a belief with an executable program, which is  compiled code. The process of coding is creating statements that will perform a certain function, then the code is compiled into the executable and, basically, the code is separated, and even if it is lost or destroyed, the executable runs on its own. In order to update the executable, you have to retrieve the code.

The statements that we gather throughout our life and code them into beliefs are the experiences. Those experiences are thousands of emotional thoughts that we accumulate over the years. The attempt to retrieve those thoughts - is insane! We can logically arrive at the conclusion on how some events of our life affected our beliefs (subjective, approximate), but we can't retrieve every and each step of the process (accurate, objective)

I grew up in a somewhat hostile environment under such conditions, where I had to defend myself verbally and behaviorally. When I changed the environment (moved to another country), my old behavior and reactions to the world, and people around me, didn’t change right away, it took many years of adapting to and learning about a new environment; in the process of adaptation I created an appropriate set of beliefs, which allowed me to fit into society.

The old beliefs didn’t die, they are still there, dear neuron patterns in my brain :-), and if I go back to the old environment, the old beliefs are retrieved and acted upon.

Beliefs neither positive, nor negative, they are either appropriate for “the stage of action”, or not. We have to remember and understand, that at some point of our life the belief was exactly what we needed to survive. And it could also save our life at some point in the future.

“Darwin concluded that since not all survive, only those best adapted to their environment would survive to breed."

Adaptation - Acceptance of What is?

Steve Pavlina in his article 10 reasons You Should Never Have a Religion , condemns the years that he spent in a catholic school.

“ If I add up the time I attended mass and Sunday school, studied religion in school as if it were a serious subject, and memorized various prayers, I count thousands of hours of my life I’d love to have back. “

Ironically, those years are the years when he acquired a belief, a belief that practicing systematically any activity creates a desired outcome, a belief that made him who he is Today - a successful entrepreneur.

The theories and suggestions that he shares with people on the pages of his blog, just partially reflect the truth on how he achieves anything he puts his mind onto; it is years and years of a structured and systematic training of his nervous system, while he attended a catholic school, that created the belief - anything is doable, if practiced systematically. 

Sure, it wasn’t his choice, but this only confirms that we don’t choose our beliefs, we are not even aware of most of them, we acquire them through life experiences.

I admire Steve and think that he is a bright young men. The reason I brought him up as an example is to emphasize the complexity of the beliefs, how unattainable they are, even in intelligent people.

Most of us don't have that belief, because we never had the experience of organized, systematic training of the nervous system. We are the nervous system. Through organizations such as an army, military, sport, and religious schools people develop a greater command over self discipline. Self discipline is the trained nervous system. 

I could write and discus this topic forever, and if I do, this article will turn into a monster. :-)

What is the point of this article? If you are one of those, who tried to change, bend, update yourself; find the inner child, inner mother, father etc… and still are struggling to make sense out of your life…. 

You are fine. Just the way you are… Even if we assume, that it is possible to hunt down undesirable belief and change it, replace with the new one, it would consume all of our life to do so, and at the end it might turn out to be a wrong one (the new belief).

We learn something every day, and lots of times it's that what we learned the day before was wrong.

Bill Vaughan

All your beliefs are not better or worse than any one else’s. As a matter of fact, most of them are the same. Becoming conscious of our mental process is what transforms our behavior and attitude, and gives us a realization to accept what is, which in turn creates an inner peace. Is not it what we are craving for?

 The only change we need is to start thinking on our own.

The idea of getting rid of your negative beliefs and replacing them with the beliefs that reinforce your behavior in a more productive pattern is the biggest contradiction.

If you initially think of yourself as not a valid one, the one with the wrong beliefs, or wrong anything for that matter, you already setting yourself up for a failure.

Those who succeed, strongly believe that they are right, they don't contemplate on either, the beliefs they hold are wrong, or right, and it doesn't matter to them what others think about their beliefs. Think about it!

Trying to retrieve the beliefs that fuel them up (successful people), and categorize them as positive or negative is a nonsense. Besides, what is a success? Next topic?

"It takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place," said the Red Queen to Alice.

Understanding a big picture of the creation is not transferable into words; undoubtedly, they will create a contradiction. Thought cannot reach the state of truth.

"If there's a trace of right and wrong, True-mind is lost, confused, and distraught." (Zen)

I suggest some points, and it is up to you how you connect them.

~*~ Passion ~*~

“We all need to look into the dark side of our nature - that's where the energy is, the passion. People are afraid of that because it holds pieces of us we're busy denying.”

Sue Grafton

“The will to overcome a passion is in the end merely the will of another or several other passions”

Friedrich Nietzsche

Passion is to be truly your self. Don’t confuse passion with “an absolute happiness”. We have a tendency to romanticize, idealize the meaning of such words as passion, success, and consciousness.

If we want to be happy all the time, we have to get rid of our mind, thus, be crazy. We are looking for a state of being where we don’t have to experience anything painful, or unpleasant – an absolute happiness. There is no such a state!

Initially, when we are after something different from what we have at the moment, we typically concentrate on getting more pleasure, less pain. That’s what propels us to be in a searching state. We think that more money will make our life better.

Even those among us who get the concept of “ money is not everything” still long for a life where they have more money. And nothing wrong with the desire to have a better life, after all we are fulfilling our needs, the needs that Abraham Maslow called deficit needs.

“In modern countries, most of us have what we need in regard to our physiological and safety needs. We, more often than not, have quite a bit of love and belonging, too. It’s a little respect that often seems so very hard to get! “

He wrote the above more then 60 years ago. I think that for the last 60 years, we managed to get “a little respect”. We have to take into account that people, at the time he wrote the paper, didn’t have the same freedom, we do now.

All of the preceding four levels he calls deficit needs, or D-needs. If you don’t have enough of something -- i.e. you have a deficit -- you feel the need. But if you get all you need, you feel nothing at all!

And this is exactly what is happening to many people, at this time of Evolution, they feel NOTHING! As a result, they look for more: more money, better job, better partner, better house, more and better sex.

What we need is a passion. If we are truly ourselfs, thus, passionate, we experience life more intensely. When we are passionate we are alive.

Being passionate doesn’t mean getting rid of unpleasant and painful moments; we might get even more of those moments. Being passionate doesn’t mean getting more and better of a material world, we might even lose everything.

Read the biography of famous people. Many of them gave up on everything they had just to pursue the subject of their passion, and many of them had a hard, complicated life, just because they were passionate.

"You have to be ready to give up everything, before you can be truly yourself." is equivalent to "You have to be ready to die, before you start living."

“The great things in life are what they seem to be. And for that reason, strange as it may sound to you, often are very difficult to interpret (understand). Great passion are for the great of souls. Great events can only be seen by people who are on a level with them. We think we can have our visions for nothing. We cannot. Even the finest and most self-sacrificing visions have to paid for. Strangely enough, that is what makes them fine.”

"A man whose desire is to be something separate from himself, to be a Member of Parliament, or a successful grocer, or a prominent solicitor, or a judge, or something equally tedious, invariably succeeds in being what he wants to be. That is his punishment. Those who want a mask have to wear it."

Oscar Wilde

Being passionate is taking off a mask. Few people dare to reveal their real self. The Pursuit of money is an obsession of a confused self. Evolution of a human being is an awakening of a confused self to a real self. Take Your time, we have an eternity!

~*~ Random Thoughts ~*~

"The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully have been Truth, Goodness, and Beauty . . . . The ordinary objects of human endeavor -- property, outward success, and luxury -- have always seemed to me contemptible." ALBERT EINSTEIN

What is truth? What is Goodness? What is Beauty? If self is a conditioned entity of society, where does it get the sense of truth, goodness, or beauty? Can you come up with any thought that you consider yours?

How can we separate the knowledge we get from outside and the knowledge that manifests from within? Is there any knowledge without the influence of outside?

"Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world." LILY TOMLIN

Mediocre world? This world is all we have. How do we know that it is mediocre? Do we know any other world that we can compare with? Or it is just a wishful thinking?

"Success is counted sweetest by those who ne'er succeed. To comprehend nectar requires sorest need." EMILY DICKINSON

If there is a need, it has to be fulfilled, only by experiencing something to the fullest we find out if it is real or not. Intellectual understanding (conceptual knowledge) will never replace the actual experience.

"What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great person is one who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." RALPH WALDO EMERSON

It must be easy to question something that has already been questioned by others. I wonder how many question something that has never been questioned.

We are familiar with the following expression, you hear it from your friends or family, who want to cheer you up, when you feel down. "Appreciate what you have and feel better, think about all those people around the world who are in much worse condition than you are."

It boggles my mind, why do I have to feel better on the account of those misfortunate. Knowing that there are so many people in distraught makes me sadder. Think about it, and next time you hear something similar, think again.

Love the moment. Flowers grow out of dark moments. Therefore, each moment is vital. It affects the whole. Life is a succession of such moments and to live each, is to succeed. CORITA KENT

~*~ Beliefs - Identity ~*~

As illogical as it may seem on the surface, the ambivalent wish to change and to say the same is pivotal in our understanding of why self-defeating, pain producing behaviors persist over time.

Psychological change implies the revision of personal identity. It is as if we were about to remodel a house from the basement up. A person's identity is the foundation of his personality. To remodel that identity is to shake the personality to its core. To carry the remodeling metaphor a bit further, most of us would prefer some simple cosmetic changes rather than a remodeling that would be costly, lengthy, and very disruptive to our lives.

Imagine how disruptive it must be to a person who has crystallized an identity as a "loser/victim" to begin to experience himself differently. This is a person whose deep self view portrays him as a "second class citizen."

He is entitled only to the crumbs that life has to offer, if he is entitled to anything at all. Disappointment is the cornerstone of his life. While painful, always getting less than what he hoped for feels internally correct. He may complain about his lot in life, but for the most part, he has adjusted to this self-view and has learned how to live within its limits.

Being a "loser" is a central construct to his personality organization. To change that view--no matter how desirable it might seem--would mean shaking every aspect of his personality that is built or dependent upon that central core view. While the long term goal of change would hopefully produce a modified personality with an increased capacity for self-fulfillment, the process leading to that goal would indeed be painful.

Understanding how disruptive and agonizing change can be helpful to us in understanding why real change takes such a long time. It can also help us understand why people say "I have finally gotten what I have always wanted and I don't know what to do with it" or "Having my needs met really scares me. I don't know how to handle being treated like a person." Becoming a "winner" after a lifetime as a "loser" may look like a story book fantasy come true. In reality, however, it is the product of an agonizing labor over a long period of time.

Perhaps it is human nature to become accustomed and comfortable with the well worn and the well known. Habit requires no special effort or special thought. It is there. Even when it is less than perfect it is more certain than some substitute might be. Change requires a period of adjustment, a break in period before this new thing feels like your own. And who knows if it will be as good as the ones you've thrown away. Something new always implies a gamble, a risk. Who knows if the new purchase or a new behavior will ever feel as familiar as what has been given up.

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