The Made Self: Beliefs and Perceptions
We often dismiss or excuse how we respond to life or how life treats us by saying, “Life’s just like that! or, “That’s just the way I am!”
Little do we realize that we hold within our mind, beliefs and assumptions (memorized perceptions) that are false and unsubstantiated.
They usually go undetected because they are hidden in the unconscious mind.
Nonetheless, it is the hidden nature of beliefs and assumptions that empowers them to control our choices:
what to think, what to feel, and how to behave; so seamlessly natural to us, we don’t consciously know we’re operating by them.
In other words, we live our lives unconscious of what motivates us.
We all need help to see what we are resonating within our minds, not doing in the world. It is only when we reach that first step and become a little bit willing to look at those life-depleting beliefs and negative assumptions, forgiving ourselves for not knowing of course, can we then feel free to choose beneficial change.
When things go well and we feel harmoniously in tune with our environment and ourselves then our beliefs and assumptions do serve us.
However, as we grow in life and experience, many of our beliefs and assumptions become outmoded, no longer positive guideposts for our behavior and interactions.
Beliefs and assumptions are innocently acquired, there is no doubt about that.
We automatically respond to what helps us survive in the physical world—from unmet basic needs to unresolved wounds and trauma.
We accept, accumulate, and assimilate them as ‘true’ through example, experience and repetition. We collect them in a flash. Unless we are paying attention we have no clue we are constantly using our senses to draw conclusions about life all the time.
So as we can see, beliefs that were good for us at four years old and stopped Mommy from getting mad at us, maybe a great nuisance of incoherent fear in our adult relationships and jobs.
The big push to look at what we believe comes, sadly, when we seem to get slapped in the face by life circumstances. The startling is good, we want the opportunity it brings if we can be willing. It wakes us up to what is happening in the present moment. Hopefully, we will seize that opportunity to take a that really good look at what is going on, beyond blaming and complaining about the world, and other people.
We cannot change our minds about what we think until we become conscious of the script in our minds playing out.
We will continue work as usual, consciously or unconsciously, in the old script based on unmet needs and woundings
until we recognize we are capable of choosing a new way of thinking to replace the old.
The first step is to find some form of help that will look with us at those unmet needs and painful stored perceptions in a gentle and kind way. Then we will see we don’t need a defense against life and people because what we are fighting to get through day by day in our mind is actually past. It’s not happening anymore. We only encounter the same now (a pattern) because the pattern was set long ago and we haven’t resolved it yet. But how could we since it was unconsciously done?
The second step is finding a true method or tool to get into our unconscious mind to get lasting help.
When a new light dawns, knowledge transforms, releasing what is hidden without suffering.