“We speak about losing our minds as if it is a bad thing. I say, lose your mind. Do it purposefully. Find out who you really are beyond your thoughts and beliefs. Lose your mind, find your soul.”
-Vironika Tugaleva
Arguing for limitations
As I was searching for quotes about limiting beliefs, I came upon this set of quotes called “Six Beliefs That Set the Course of Your Life,” by Shannon Alder, which sums up the matter of limiting beliefs quite beautifully:
1. If you don’t believe the impossible can happen, then you are right.
2. When you feel like you are less than others, then you are right.
3. When you believe what you have and how you were raised keeps you from having everything you ever dreamed of, you are right.
4. When you believe your mistakes can’t be undone, you are right.
5. When you feel this is the best it is going to get, you are right.
6. When you think someone will never change or rise above their brokenness, you are WRONG!”
I would beg to differ from the last one only, because people are always capable of proving other people wrong, and in fact, that is at times the motivation to do great things.
The other five statements sum up the effect that limiting beliefs have on us, and are a key to overcoming limiting beliefs. There is something about the survival part of the human brain that drives us to want to be right, in an attempt to be “safe,” even when we are arguing for our limitations. As irrational as that may be, one of the most important things you need to know if you want to become adept at overcoming limiting beliefs is that your ego doesn’t want to let your limiting beliefs go.
The creation of limiting beliefs is an unconscious process
If you think about the way children experience life, they don’t label these things. They simply experience them in their raw and unabridged and unedited form. There is not yet a cognitive process to construct beliefs and shoulds. If they are hungry, they cry, and then easily shift to contentment if they are fed. If they are frightened by a loud noise, they will startle and cry to release the stress, but as soon as they are comforted, they settle down again.
But as we become educated in the ways of the family and the culture and our personalities form around the need to be accepted, we stop crying when we are hungry or frightened, and the mind takes over to attempt to keep us safe. We ingest beliefs from parents, siblings, school, songs, and so on. When they crystallize and fuse together, we form an identity around them. The mind begins to comment constantly and to worry about the self. It attempts to be certain, get it right, and solve problems, and even becomes addicted to this task.
If a child has been starved of physical food or emotional comfort, the mind will take over to solve that problem, which may lead to issues with food or relationships. It seeks to create external changes that don’t get to the root of the problem, which is the fear in the mind itself—the fear of not having enough food or love. It is a pernicious form of suffering that begins to control and dull our lives. It creates massive anxiety, for the mind cannot figure it all out, let alone control it. It’s not the mind’s job, but it’s very hard to convince the mind of that!
Limiting beliefs lead to dis-ease
Thoughts are the mental labels, categories, and concepts with which we organize our experiences. We automatically label an emotion or feeling experience and store it somewhere in our mind. The stronger your experience of emotions and feelings, the more vivid your thoughts will be and thus the more space the emotions will take up in your short- and long-term memory, which then leads to the creation of beliefs. For many people, this then becomes their identity.
As previously noted, fear-induced emotions such as depression, anger, and worry cause the body to develop an addiction to the chemical being produced. When we add to these emotions beliefs such as “I am a loser,” “I am not worthy,” “I have been ripped off,” a powerful trance state is induced. We essentially forfeit our capacity for free choice, and begin to adhere to limiting beliefs that hold us back from our bigger longings.
Thoughts create emotions and emotions create thoughts. Chemicals create emotions and emotions create chemicals. Thoughts create emotions that create chemicals and negative thoughts completely change the processing of neurotransmitters in the body. Expressing emotion is an electro-chemical event that allows a system to remain healthy.
Emotions are magnetic, and thoughts/beliefs are electric.
Not only do old limiting beliefs exert their affect by creating an electromagnetic charge within the person, but it has been discovered that the charge can exist in the electromagnetic field around the body.
Limiting beliefs create “charges “in our vibrational field
The groundbreaking work of Eileen McKusick called Biofield Tuning has shown us that we may contain many “charged” vibrations from unexpressed emotion in the vibrational field around the body, in what is called plasma, which is the fourth state of matter (liquid, solid, gas, plasma), and which she calls the biofield. Eileen is a pioneer in a new understanding of the electric nature of the Universe.
Eileen has mapped out the biofield showing us that the many emotions and emotional states, as well as physical illnesses that we suffer from, are related to charges that are “stuck” in a person’s electromagnetic field, stemming from limiting beliefs. This causes us to attract the same challenges over and over. For example, the belief that one is unworthy of love can cause a person to attract one neglectful partner after the other.
Tuning forks can be used to break up the charge and in essence, clear the person’s energy field that may have even held a charge passed down from one’s ancestors. I believe that tuning forks and other such “vibrational medicine” are the healing tools we need for the so-called “mental illness” of our times, far more than the endless variety of psycho-pharmaceuticals that offer the quick fix, yet always with side effects.
Becoming free of limiting beliefs is the work of our times
The great obstacle to transcendence are the beliefs based on fear that we have accumulated in the course of our lives and in the grand unfoldment of humanity. Beliefs can tie us up in knots and strip us of our humanity and our innocence. We were all human before we had a belief. When you have beliefs, you can let them go, but when they have you, it’s hard to escape.
The present chaos in humanity is needed in order to shake up old limiting beliefs and to release the illusions that go with them. Being alive today means you are witness to the death of an old paradigm of separateness and protection and the birth of an emerging paradigm of connection and sharing. You are either holding onto the old for dear life or opening to the new.
In truth, that which represents the biggest fear in you is the thing you must face in order to dissolve the old reality and the story you made up about what to be afraid of.
Those limits are your limits, and they are inside your physical body and you are within the larger gridwork, for as within, so without. It all has to go. There truly is a physical dimension waiting for you that does not hold those old limits anymore. Your physical body is trying to walk in an unlimited dimension and cannot bring the old programs and beliefs and energy with it, for they are too dense. It is important to pay attention to where you are allowing yourself to be “stuck” in an old, limiting reality.
Dismantling our counter intentions
Our negative thoughts are our counter intentions, the limiting beliefs of our shadow self. They are the fears we harbor inside that we don’t want to face. There was a time of innocence when we did not have them. We are often not aware of them, but if we consciously name and face them, we take away the power they have over us and we enter into a new state free from fear, returning us to the original state of innocence, this time with consciousness.
This alchemical work is based on the Universal Law of Polarity, which states that everything can be separated into two completely opposite parts and that within each of them the other is contained. This is another way of speaking about wave particle duality, which is part of the plan of Creation. In other words, particles have the potentiality of waves, waves have the potentiality of particles, white has black, yin has yang, low exists with high, slow is also fast, elation exists with depression, kindness exists with cruelty, generosity exists alongside greed, and on and on it goes on planet Earth.
For every reason that you feel sad, there is going to be a reason to also be happy, if you allow it. Every time you allow yourself to fully feel an emotion, you create the equal experience of the opposite. This allowing perspective opens the doorway to seeing the world as it truly is; the play of opposites in the ever-jiggling dance of life. As you allow yourself to perceive both sides simultaneously, you open yourself to the divine perfection of the Universe, whose purpose is equilibrium and synchronicity.
Let go of limiting beliefs and wait with expectancy
Have you ever been warned to “manage your expectations”? It’s a good idea when it comes to many things in the world of form, but it limits us in the realm of Spirit. The popular Christian preacher Joel Osteen reminds us to “wait with expectancy,” as the countless Old and New Testament teachings declare, and this thinking is aligned with the Universal Laws of Attraction.
In a sense, to “wait with expectancy” is a step beyond belief in the realm of knowing. That is the innocent mindset that guides you toward a dimension beyond doubt, in the realm of deep faith. It is what Rumi meant when he said, “Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.” It is what the great writer and philosopher Aldous Huxley meant when he said, “Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.”
What really helps is creative expression through movement, art, writing, poetry, music, and the countless other ways creativity longs to express itself. The creative part of us lives outside the belief-ridden matrix or gridwork, which is the same as the “dream” in indigenous cultures, where people are sleepwalking. The creative spark in us remains untouched by the influences from parents and culture, and, in fact, the more we go against the grain of the “norm,” the deeper and richer the creative part of us becomes.
The artistic impulse is the impulse to create and evolve and reach beyond. By connecting with this impulse, an artist can express the deepest longings of the collective, rather than the limiting beliefs that have locked in so much suffering. American bass singer and activist Paul Leroy Robeson said, “Artists are the gatekeepers of truth. We are civilization’s radical truth.”
In truth, we are all artists sculpting our lives either from our regrets or our dreams; our fears or our deep love; our shoulds or our felt desires. Each time we say YES to our felt desire, we harness the power of love, for desire is from our essence, our loveseed, which is more powerful than any belief.
