This is not only evidence of the power of belief. It is also evidence that as beliefs evolve and change, so do the subsequent decisions.
The beliefs that governed my life a few decades ago are largely not the beliefs that govern my life today. That is because for me many beliefs become like shoes that are too tight. If I really like the shoes, I may still wear them for a while. I may choose situations of short duration to sport them. I may need to wear band aids on my heels. But eventually the pain becomes too great and I change what shoes I am choosing to wear.
Many of the beliefs that I was programmed with by family, church, and culture began to feel too tight and too ill fitting for me as the years rolled by. As I grew in Spirit and in awareness the old beliefs and perceptions began to cause me pain. They were too small for my expanding consciousness. They no longer fit who I was becoming.
But as those perceptions were familiar, I continued to keep them as a lens even after they began to cause me pain. I defended the beliefs because they were bonds to my tribal system. I walked through my life in and from those beliefs. They fed the way I thought. They framed my experience of who and what I thought I was. They kept me fitting in. And fitting in is encoded as survival. If I took off those beliefs and went out on my own, what would happen to me?
Slowly and often not so gently I began to free myself from my own painful perceptions and erroneous beliefs. I learned that doing so was not a simple mental process. I needed to go down into my emotional body, and address what underlie the beliefs. Relationships began to change and, in some cases, become turbulent, as our perceptual systems were no longer resonant. I had to move through the discomfort of supreme not knowing. Releasing one thought system, and not yet forming a new perceptual matrix, I floundered in the in-between.
I began to find evidence that indeed my beliefs were faulty. Many things I believed I could never do I found myself freely engaged in. Many perceptions that kept me defended against others crumbled and I found myself in a greater degree of connection and union. The world I thought was flat was indeed round. I wasn’t who I thought I was, and the world was not as I had framed it.
The evolution of my consciousness has blessed me with increasing internal space. An expansion is happening, and I relish it. So when it begins to feel cramped in here, I question how I am thinking and what I am believing. I ask myself “but is it true?” That simple question brings me back to center and gives me the opportunity to take off the cramping shoes. Then I can walk about freely and with clarity. And gratefully. Oh, so gratefully.
And for you, dear reader; are there any tight-fitting beliefs in need of release? Any perception you may question in the name of freedom? “But, is it true?”
