Limiting Beliefs Are Available To Your Conscious Mind

Sometimes it seems like no matter how hard we try, we just can’t create what we want. What is it that is holding us back? If you’ve read the article on Limiting Beliefs (which I really recommend before you read this one) then you will understand that our beliefs, thoughts, words and actions lead to our reality. Mahatma Ghandi said:

Your beliefs become your thoughts

Your thoughts become your words

Your words become your actions

Your actions become your habits

Your habits become your values

Your values become your destiny

Does It Feel Like A Mystery With No Solution?

Often, though, it seems impossible to find out what those beliefs are. Why can’t I manifest a lot of money, or a loving relationship or a new car or a vacation? I do all the right things, say all the affirmations and it still doesn’t happen. It begins to seem like there must be some limiting beliefs there that are so buried in my past or in my subconscious that it will take a lot of work to find them. We tend to think that whatever structures our thinking and motivates our creating about the really important stuff has to be buried deep within our psyches, and that we will need a psychic or a healer or a lot of therapy to find out what those limiting things are.

This idea makes it almost impossible to make progress; it impedes our success, adds to our doubts and confirms the fear that we just can’t do it. Labeling those beliefs “subconscious” takes away our power. We end up feeling like we are at the mercy of some game with rules we don’t understand. We scramble to sort out the thoughts and feelings we already know we have, and try to align them with the manifestations we have created. When those two things don't entirely match, we feel that we have to come up with a way to get what we want, without having all the clues.

But what if it’s easier than we think?

Look around you at the room you are in: what do you see? I see books, bookcases, computer, telephone, lamps, desk, speakers, plants, photographs, rock collection and stacks of papers. Do you see something equivalent, or some other arrangement of objects? Most likely you do. But look again. What do you see that is the most basic structuring element of the room you are in? There are walls, a floor and a ceiling. These elements aren’t hidden (depending on your clutter level!). They are right there in plain sight. They determine the size and shape of the room, and so ultimately dictate what can fit in it. They just are so obvious, so much a part of our assumption about “room” that they become in a way transparent. We don’t “see” them, though they are the most significant boundaries of what goes on in that room.

Beliefs work the same way.

“…beliefs of course will be accepted by you not as beliefs, but as reality. Once you understand that you form your reality, then you must begin to examine these beliefs by letting the conscious mind freely examine its own contents…[you] cannot shut out information from your conscious mind, however—but [you] can refuse to pay attention to it. This does not mean that the information becomes unconscious. It is simply thrown into a corner of your mind… It is there if you look at it.”
~ Jane Roberts, The Nature of Personal Reality

All our beliefs are right there in our conscious minds. They aren’t hidden or suppressed or buried by the years. The events or statements that created them may be now beyond our conscious recall, but the beliefs themselves are right there available to us. They are just either ignored, or so much a part of our world view that we don’t see them as beliefs; they look like facts of life. Quite often we make statements of those beliefs right out loud.

Here Are Some Limiting Beliefs:

Life is hard.

Everything (bad stuff) happens at once.

I can’t change (or change is hard, or change takes time, or change upsets the apple cart).

I was born that way.

It takes time (more time for big things).

The bigger it is, the harder it is to get.

There’s always something to deal with.

What will I have to give up to get what I want?

Be careful what you ask for, you might get it. (This one reveals a lack of trust in the very process of desiring something, and in the self, as if you are going to sabotage yourself by your very desires.)

There’s not enough. (This one is global.)

It doesn’t work for me. (I’m different, less than, flawed, powerless, damaged—or special.)

These are examples that I jotted down during just one week of watching my own life and monitoring the discussion forum. As you can see, these are not subconscious ideas. They are foresquare, front and center, in-your-face statements that we all make all the time about how reality works. They aren’t a surprise to hear; it’s more like a confirmation. Of course, we say when we hear them, of course that’s true.

These are the very beliefs that inhibit our creativity, the ones that need changing. Once we know what we’re “supposed” to think, that we need to be positive and keep our vibrations up and not indulge in negativity, it can be hard to admit to any of those limiting beliefs; and hard sometimes to know if we still believe them or not.

To find out, try turning those statements around and see how the positive side of it feels. The ones that feel the most ridiculous are the very ones you know you need to work with!

Life is easy.

All good things happen at the right time.

I change easily.

I was born full of possibilities and I can choose any option.

I can create instantly.

There is no difference to the universe between a dollar and a million—it’s all easy.

There’s never anything to deal with that I can’t handle easily.

I can have all that I want, no strings attached.

My desires are the things that are the best for me and everyone else.

There is plenty of everything for everyone.

I am as powerful and deserving as anyone who exists.

How challenging is it to say these new versions? Your discomfort level will tell you the ones you need to work on, and perhaps you will see which ones of these or many others are inhibiting your creativity. Spend some time just noticing these ideas and writing them down when you hear yourself or others say them. Once you realize these ideas aren’t subconscious, you’ll begin to see them everywhere, and once you see them, you can change them. Just like painting the walls of your room a different color or adding on a new addition, changing these fundamental ideas about the nature of reality will make more difference than all the rearranging of furniture we could possibly do within the room itself.

A Helpful Analogy

Sometimes the looking requires a contrasting idea to bring them into focus. Here’s an analogy to make this clear: Suppose there was an isolated group of people who lived without contact of any kind with the outside world. Generation after generation of these people interacted only with each other and never even knew that any other people existed. Imagine that all of these people had black hair and blue eyes. There had never been a one of them born any other way. Hundreds of years of black haired, blue eyed people had come to believe that this was what humans looked like.

Then imagine that one day an explorer showed up—and she had blonde hair and brown eyes! Think what this would do. Aside from the fascination that this stranger would have for the people there, it would throw a light on their understanding of their own looks that hadn’t been there before. They would “see” themselves in the light of this contrast in a way that they hadn’t seen themselves before the stranger arrived. But this doesn’t mean that their understanding of their own hair and eye color had been “subconscious”; of course it wasn’t. If anyone had asked them what color their hair was, they’d have answered perfectly accurately. But the idea was unexamined. It was a structuring point of their reality, resting in the background of awareness and needing only contrast to make it stand out.

Our limiting beliefs are the same. As long as they are unchallenged, they blend into the background of our awareness; they are like the framework of our reality. We accept them as “the way it is” as long as we don’t examine them. But when we introduce some contrast—an opposite belief—then these pop right out into our conscious awareness and we can see them.

In order to change them, we have to first look at them. This can be scary. Sometimes when we get close to a belief like this, it seems that admitting that we hold that belief will be the final straw, the thing that will give it the ultimate final hold on us. It can feel threatening to look at ideas about money, health or relationships and admit what we really believe. If I have a belief that I don’t deserve to be wealthy, and I begin to learn about the power of beliefs, it can be very threatening to approach that idea. It will seem that if I say, Yes, I believe that, then it will become hopeless. It feels like only by resisting the idea can I avoid the reality that goes with it.

But we aren’t trying to accept the truth of these statements; I am not trying to say, Yes, it is true that I don’t deserve to be wealthy. All I’m doing is examining what I have believed. Only by doing this can I hope to change. If I can sit back and look at my ideas and say, Oh look, I have truly believed that I don’t deserve lots of money, only then can I say—But of course that isn’t true, everyone deserves wealth and prosperity, even me!

Looking at the belief and admitting that it’s there, and seeing the ways it has impacted your life doesn’t mean you will somehow give up power to it, though on a gut level it can feel this way. Looking at the belief and admitting it’s there is the way to releasing it. You can’t get rid of something you are avoiding admitting is there!

More from Jane Roberts:

"All you have to do is decide to examine the contents of your conscious mind, realizing that it contains treasures that you have overlooked.

"Another way to do this is to recognize through examination that the physical effects you meet exist as data in your conscious mind--and the information that formerly seemed unavailable will be obvious. The seemingly invisible ideas that cause your difficulties have quite obvious visible physical effects, and these will lead you automatically to the conscious area in which the intiating beliefs or ideas reside.

"Once more, if you become aware of your own conscious thoughts, these themselves will give you clues for they clearly speak your beliefs. If, for example, you have scarcely enough money on which to live, and you examine your thoughts, you may find yourself constantly thinking, 'I can never pay this bill, I never have any luck, I'll always be poor.' Or you will find yourself envying those who have more, degrading the value of money perhaps...

"When you find these thoughts in yourself you may say, and rather indignantly: 'But those things are all true. I am poor. I cannot meet my bills.' and so forth. In so doing, you see, you accept your belief about reality as a characteristic of reality itself, and so the belief is transparent or invisible to you. But it causes your physical experience."
~ Jane Roberts, The Nature of Personal Reality.

Here’s a paradoxical recommendation. Read Bruce Lipton’s The Biology Of Belief: Unleashing The Power Of Consciousness, Matter And Miracles. This book discusses the “new biology”, emerging ideas that restructure science’s understanding of how our lives work. Lipton describes his process of discovering that our genes are not the ironclad determinants of behavior and experience that science once thought. Input from the environment—that is, what we experience, perceive, think and feel—is the determining factor in how our lives proceed. This book is quite technical in the early chapters, with lots of discussion about cellular structures, receptors and so on. It’s not heavy going but there’s a lot to think about. It’s worth pursuing to get to the later chapters, which discuss how beliefs that we learn in childhood can dictate our experiences. It really is worth reading this. However, the paradox in my recommending this comes in that he is very insistent that these beliefs are subconscious. So why would I suggest you read it?

It will go a long way towards convincing you of the idea that beliefs create reality. It will give some science to what can seem a very “new age” idea. And it’s human science; though he talks about quantum physics and it is the basis of his understanding of cellular mechanisms, this book is about how our actual human bodies function. It’s more personal and familiar than reading about the zero-point field and quarks and so on. It will give you a way to look at this that feels grounded in reality.

After that, we can disagree with him to a certain extent! Because these ideas are not subconscious. We state them all the time. We confirm them all the time. The various events and circumstances in which we learned them may now be subconscious, but the beliefs themselves are right on the surface, though, like Poe’s Purloined Letter, positioned so craftily that we look right past them. We have access to them if we’ll just look.

Click for TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (0)

Show/Hide comments

Show/Hide comment form

---