Beliefs are often deep rooted notions that determine our perspective to everything in life. Whatever we perceive of our present is actually a derivative of the beliefs that we have formed over the course of life. Childhood and teen years are more responsible for belief systems because that period marks our first interaction with most experiences in the world. At that age, we don’t have the discerning ability to detach from the experience to form a more wise and informed belief.
This is the reason we end up with a belief system that we think defines our identity and any variance from the same seems too unfamiliar and we end up attracting and staying with people and experiences, desires, fears, insecurities, dreams, basically an entire personality based off beliefs that we never bother to re-evaluate.
Spiritual community often calls this as the Inner Work. Basically, that means getting a clearer understanding of your WHAT and then evaluating that in the light of your own truth. Which means you are not what Believe. These are just a set of beliefs what can be changed (in a good way or bad way) anytime. This entails being more conscious of your belief system, choosing to be more than what you consider normal, deciding your own WHAT and then acting accordingly. Easier said than done.
I feel we tend to move to FAMILIAR ways because of the already formed neural patterns. Its just that. A already formed neural pattern becomes your slippery slope. It feels so much easier to act as per an existing neural pattern. Not reacting on a neural pattern and instead trying to create a new one feels almost like getting over a drug addiction. In some ways it probably is like that. But being conscious of this struggle helps because unlike a drug rehabilitation program this struggle is all mental. Initially the effort is too much with no result. Your old coping mechanisms and belief systems have created a life for you with people and circumstances still in alignment with the older you and it takes all of your strength to keep forming new and falling down the slippery one.
Its along journey , one you should embark upon inly if you cant be any other way, precisely what your life will be before you start this journey, a phase often refereed to as the dark night of the soul.
