Not a day goes by that I don’t hear, “Help Cathy, I can’t find my fucking belief. I know it’s there because my life sucks or my body is screaming in pain. But I can’t find the belief.” There are many reasons why this happens. Shit, I sometimes say it to myself. Here are some of the most obvious and common reasons and fixes:
1) The belief is hiding under what I call a “protector” belief. Our false mind wants to live forever; it fears death and exposure. When the protector is on duty, our mind is generating thoughts like: “I can’t find the belief.” “This is too hard.” “I can’t do this.” Those are protector beliefs that guard the causal belief. Our false mind is trying to get us to stop letting go. If we let go of these distracting protective beliefs, the causal belief often can be seen.
2) The belief looks like it’s absolutely true. It could be a belief that we’ve had forever. It might be a collective belief that we know nearly everyone else believes. It might be a belief that has created in our reality many times. Remember, our reality up until this second was created by that causal belief. If we let it go completely, our reality will change. It has to. An example of such a belief is, “Dad will never change.” Yes, that has been true until now, but it’s a belief. Dad does have a True Self; and if we connect with that True Self, he can change. These beliefs tend to feel like walls that we can’t get around until we go through them.
3) We can’t bear to feel anymore emotion, so we keep distracting ourself. Beliefs generate emotion. Long standing beliefs are laced with lots of emotion. Our false mind will try to tell us that the emotion means the belief is true; it’s lying. That’s its job. Sometimes, we just have to face the belief and all that emotion with courage. We have to outlast it. We’re becoming masters of our minds. It isn’t the easiest thing we’ve ever done. It can be like a war; and we need to win every battle.
4) We’re still feminine to the person who inserted the belief into our mind. We have physical symptoms, and we can hear the doctor’s voice saying the diagnosis. We feel emotion when we hear his/her words, but we still view the doctor as powerful and knowing. We fear going to hell, and we know it’s false; but we still view our mother or the priest as our authority. To be free, we must have no masters other than our True Self. This is about letting go of false gods. Our True Self always has an answer and always knows what’s right for us. But if we’re listening to others, we won’t hear it. Often we hear religious voices saying listen to God. Our True Self is God. The voices we hear in our mind that sound like mom, dad, and the priest/preacher are false gods.
5) We’ve got a conditioned response that masks the belief. For example, we have a saying that we use to sooth ourself like, “Everything happens for a reason.” “God has a plan.” Or we do something conditioned like go for a run or kneel and pray. Our conditioned responses show us what we believe. We do them to ease the emotion (fix the effect) that the active belief is spewing. Get rid of the belief, and we no longer need to fix the effect.
6) We want to keep the belief. Often our belief has a payoff. We want to get rid of the pain, but we get a lot of attention for it. We don’t like drama, but it’s how we relate to our friends; and we want to star on a reality television show. I’ve worked with actors who believe they need their past emotions to act; they don’t, but try to tell them that. We can’t hold on and let go at the same time. Sometimes freedom is simply a choice.
7) We feel no emotion when thinking an unwanted thought. We’ve hit a psychological reversal. So switch directions. Think the opposite. For example, you keep thinking, “I don’t make enough money.” There’s no emotion. It just feels like harsh reality. So switch to the positive side of it. “I make all the money I need.” Ah, the emotion comes pouring out saying, “Good try. That was a false line if I ever heard one.” Many of us are painfully honest people. We speak about reality too much. My advice on that is to talk less, let go more. The reality will shift; then you can talk again.
8) We’re in other people’s minds. We’re looking at what another said or did and wondering about their thinking when what matters is our thinking. A man cuts us off in traffic. We wonder why he did that? That keeps us from watching our own mind. We don’t notice that we have fear of bad drivers or judge angry people because our energy and attention is devoted to the driver’s mind. Bring your attention back to your thinking. Western meditation is great for this. Their thinking is their own problem.
9) We’re reasoning. We don’t need a reason for why something happened. What we need is the causal belief. If we’re reasoning, we’re too much in our logical false masculine mind. If we drop into feeling, and just witness our emotions while listening to our thoughts, we’ll find the causal belief in our mind, which is the only reason we need.
The biggest trap is looking at what normal people do and thinking we can do that too and get free. Most people, regardless of what they say they want, are on the express train to hell. We have to remember that fitting in means riding the hell-bound train. Freedom means getting off at the next stop.
