“Although they’re rooted in the past, our core beliefs feel current and true. The thoughts and feelings associated with them filter our experience of what is happening right now, and they prime us to respond in a certain way.
The Buddha taught that if your mind is captured by the fear and misunderstanding of limiting beliefs, ‘trouble will follow you as the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart.’ Traditional translations of Buddhist texts speak of the mind as ‘impure,’ but this can be understood as ‘distorted,’ ‘colored,’ or ‘tainted.’ As the Buddha put it, ‘With our thoughts we make the world.’
If we pay close attention, we can see how our beliefs about ourselves and the world give rise to the very behaviors and events that confirm them. If you believe that nobody will like you, you’ll behave in ways that broadcast your insecurities. When people pull away, your sense of rejection will confirm your belief. If you believe that others are waiting to attack or criticize you, you’ll probably act defensive or aggressive. Then when people push back, your fears will be justified.
We loosen the grip of these beliefs by training ourselves to recognize the fear-thinking in our minds. In the moments of mindfully noting fear thoughts (you can mentally whisper ‘fear-thinking’) there is a little space between us and our beliefs. This space gives us the opportunity to discover that the thoughts and underlying beliefs are ‘real but not true.’ They are real– they are appearing. They come with a very real and painful experience of fear or hurt or shame in our bodies. But they are interpretations of reality, mental images, and soundbites we have produced that represent the world and entrap us in a confining trance. They are not truth, itself.
If, rather than subscribing to beliefs as truth we can connect with the actuality of our present moment experience, we directly weaken this trance. We take refuge in presence by moving our attention from thoughts to the felt sense of our body’s experience. As we rest our attention in our moment-to-moment experience, our aliveness, intelligence, and innate compassion naturally shine through. Each time we move in this way from fear thoughts to our embodied experience, we are increasingly able to see past the confining stories we tell ourselves about our own unworthiness, badness, and unloveableness.
They are real but not true. With practice, the veil of beliefs that has confined our lives dissolves and our trust in our true nature guides us in living and loving fully.”
True Refuge: Finding Peace And Freedom In Your Own Awakened Heart, Tara Brach, pgs. 11 – 14.
