Challenging our beliefs and positively shifting our reality
Whether you are aware of it or not, it is your subconscious mind that is responsible for your beliefs. All that you perceive – your reality then - is a result of what you accept as true in your subconscious mind.
While the conscious mind is the thinker, the subconscious mind is the absorber. Think of it another way, the conscious mind is the gardener and the subconscious mind is the soil which feeds the garden.
The subconscious mind doesn’t have the capacity to think and therefore can neither discern. As a result it has no control over whether negative or indeed positive seeds are planted in its soil and it simply absorbs whatever seeds are planted in it and from whatever source.
The seeds of limiting ‘ideas’ can be planted and take root and shape our beliefs, often in unhelpful ways.
Unfortunately negative seeds are frequently given to us by people who are limited in their own perception of reality and who therefore pass on their limitations to us – which then limit our reality without us being aware of it.
For example, growing up, I was frequently told that life is hard work. This was a seed that was planted in my sub-conscious, so I grew up thinking life is hard work and I made it so. Until I realised that it doesn’t have to be that way, that this is just a belief handed to me by someone who made life hard work, probably because that seed had been planted in their subconscious.
It took some time to become aware of this false belief. This is the nature of the subconscious – we are not conscious of it. That is until something happens, which helps to shine a light into our shadows and we realise that we have been buying into a false belief which has shaped our reality.
Once I had become aware that one of my limiting beliefs – one of the seeds planted – was ‘life is hard work’, I was then able to start to do something about it by establishing an antidote, a positive seed that I could plant in its place.
This is the basis upon which affirmations and Sankalpas (resolutions or intentions) work. They allow us to consciously plant a positive seed in the subconscious, so that we can positively change our belief system and in changing our belief system, we create a new, more positive, reality.
It’s all about consciousness. As the spiritual texts explain, our perception of reality is a reflection of our consciousness, so the more conscious we are of what underlies our choices and behaviours, the more we transform the negative into something more joyful so that our perception of reality can be more joyful too – what we put out is reflected back.
However not everyone will support us transforming our negative beliefs into something more positive, especially not those who may have planted the negative seeds in our subconscious in the first place. Of course they didn’t do this to be unkind or to make our experience of life negative; they were unconscious of their own subconscious belief in the first place.
Limited beliefs are being passed to us all the time, and often to play into our insecurity. The less secure we feel, the more easily we are controllable – just look at the pandemic to see an example of this. Our education system plants negative seeds associated with academic achievement – if we don’t achieve academically then we are somehow flawed.
Media, advertisers and marketeers are frequently planting seeds in our subconscious which essentially tell us that there is something wrong with us unless we buy their products. This is the reason we have trends, where people believe, for example, that unless they have lips that look a certain way, or use a certain make-up, or eat a certain food, that they will not be accepted by others – a belief has been planted in their subconscious.
Many people have been fed the belief that everyone is given a specific belief and we have no control over it whatsoever. For many years I believed this. I believed that I was someone with a cup half full, with depressive tendencies and that was that. I didn’t realise that I felt like that because of my belief system and the fact i didn’t know I had choice and felt trapped. I believed that some people are just born lucky and others not, some are born happy and some born like me, depressed, and we just have to accept it. For a good while I believed I had no power to change the course of my life - it just happened.
It's the same with how we live our life – we have all been fed a seed that tells us that it has to be lived a certain way – call it collective conditioning or the Toltec’s might call it the first attention For example, I grew up believing that I must work hard to get good grades, to get a good job which paid me well whether I enjoyed it or not (remember, life is hard work), meet the man of my dreams, get married, get a mortgage, have children, keep working hard, retire and live happily ever after.
My attempts at making it so were extremely depressing, as many of you know from having read my books, because this seed was not in alignment, this subconscious driver, with my heart and soul.
As I wrote earlier, when we become conscious of our subconscious limiting beliefs, not only does this shift our level of conscious because we have become conscious of something that was unconscious (a shadow), we can also then change our experience of reality into something more joyful.
Thus my antidote to ‘life is hard work’, became ‘follow my joy’. Joy is high vibration and positively changes our consciousness.
However, this was difficult for those who are limited by their belief that life should be hard work, to understand. After all, I was challenging their conditioning and perception of reality and this is scary, especially for those who have been limited by their belief system their whole lives.
Many times I have been judged as selfish, and reminded that I should get a grip on reality.
In the earlier days this used to trigger me, because selfishness is viewed negatively by the mainstream and my mind felt threatened – did this make me bad – and I would doubt myself.
But on the other hand, spiritual practice has shown me that selfishness is a positive thing – why gives ourselves away to others and devalue ourselves to be perceived as selfless, ‘without self’, when spiritual practice is all about recognising more of the Self.
I am conscious too that our mentality forms our reality. So when people do tell us that we are being unrealistic about the way we are choosing to live our life, and to come back to reality, we have to keep in mind that it’s only their reality they are talking about, not ours.
This is the reason we have to be so careful to whom we talk to about our hopes and dreams. The heart, from which these usually arise, does not know the limitations of the mind, it has not been programmed with limited beliefs. But it might be met by the limiting beliefs of others, who do not believe that what we are proposing is possible. This because they can only base their opinion on their own reality, which is made up of their level of consciousness and conditioning in that moment.
They can easily tell us to get a grip on reality, simply because their reality couldn’t possibly accommodate our dreams, because our dreams challenge their belief system.
Furthermore, when we have goals we are working towards, to manifest our hopes and dreams, we need to become conscious of the undesirable subconscious beliefs that might be getting in our way.
This is where spiritual practice is so helpful, as it helps to shine a light into the shadows so that we can start to become more conscious of what is limiting us and creating an obstacle to our growth.
By studying ourselves and observing our behaviours and patterns and challenging negative thinking, we will become clearer about our limited belief system. Noticing when we are triggered can be extremely fruitful too if we are able to pause and observe rather than react unconsciously.
Much of the work I do with my spiritual life coaching clients, is about weeding out unhelpful beliefs that are getting in the way of them living more of their potential and thriving. It has given me a real insight into the way our subconscious beliefs and condition gets in the way of us living our best life.
It is scary, the extent to which negative seeds have been planted in our subconscious and the manner in which this affects our experience of reality, not just individually but collectively.
And yet, I also find it very exciting - if more people do the inner work to become increasingly conscious of their subconscious beliefs which limit them, and transform them into something more joyful, then this will have the knock on effect on our collective perception of reality.
This reminds me of one of my favourite quotes, courtesy of Gandhi, “Be the change that you wish to see in the world”.
Gandhi knew that our consciousness affects our perception of reality and thus to change our reality, we don’t change the outer world, we change our inner world. We literally need to be the change we wish to see in the world and it starts by going inwards and challenging our belief system and conditioning.
More on this next time, but until then, what limited beliefs do you have lurking in the shadows?
Do you believe yourself unlovable?
Do you feel that you are not good enough?
Do you fear change?
Do you feel unsafe?
Do you believe you will be alone your whole life?
Do you believe you have to give your Self away to others to be accepted?
Do you believe that you have to please others to stay safe?
Do you believe that you are not worthy of living your dreams?
Do you believe that the universe is limited?
Do you believe that you are not worthy of earning good money?
Do you think it is impossible to live your dreams?
Do you believe you are the way you are and that’s that?
Do you believe that you couldn’t possibly go it alone?
Do you believe that you have to stay in a relationship regardless of its toxicity?
Do you believe that you have to stay in your relationship for the sake of the children?
Do you believe you are selfish for putting your needs first?
Do you believe that you have to sell your soul to make money?
Do you believe that to be spiritual you have to be poor?
Do you believe that you have to look a certain way to practice yoga?
Do you believe that you couldn’t possibly have the power to channel Reiki?
Do you believe that you are rubbish at singing and couldn’t possibly try Vedic chanting?
Do you believe that you couldn’t live without alcohol?
Do you believe that you have to look a certain way to be accepted and loved?
Love Emma x
