On any given day, on any given hour, you have a choice: to believe what you see, or to see what you believe.
The distinction between the two is subtle but Earth-shattering, namely because to move from one to the other requires a complete disintegration of your current understanding of Self and the world in which your Self moves. The golden thread uniting the two is one simple truth: that your beliefs, in fact, create your reality. What you believe, you see, and in turn, what you see, you believe. The choice, then, if both are saying the same thing – is to exercise your own free will and choose to overcome the beliefs which limit you instead of helping you to expand.
Limiting beliefs are the most prevalent type of belief in this reality. If you doubt this, look around for confirmation of this fact. Limiting beliefs do exactly what their name implies – they limit. They constrain. Restrain. Collapse. Destroy. Contract. Make small. Diminish. Sow fear, doubt, denial, greed, hatred, self-loathing, disease, conflict. These are extreme examples, but limiting beliefs generally exist on a spectrum. From the small – I’m not good at math – to the big – people can’t be trusted – and everywhere in between.
They show up for individuals, and for the collective. They show up in children, and the elderly. The accomplished and the floundering. Nations and companies and sports teams and brands and celebrities and influencers and everyone and everything in between is climbing a mountain with heavy weights attached to their ankles, and they probably don’t even realize it.
Limiting beliefs are what keep you and others from exercising your free will over yourself to do the things you want, to accomplish what you dream of, to reach for the stars and create a life you deserve. Limiting beliefs are what keep your feet stuck in the mud. In the Tree of Life, limiting beliefs are the poison that seeps into the soil and down into the roots. The message it carries? You don’t deserve to grow. You’re not even a nice tree.
Limiting beliefs sneak into the dreams of our world leaders. They whisper: War is peace. It’s self-defence. There isn’t another way. They show up in the minds of our children who look to the world to show them the way. The world says: Be like everyone else but…be better. Better yet, be better-looking. Limiting beliefs are all we see and hear when we look into the dark mirror of our egos and see a reflection staring back that we don’t recognize. Often this happens when we are very young, and still finding our way, and yet not; the Hero’s Journey has begun, but most of us never get started because we don’t believe in ourselves to begin with. Worse, we don’t believe the Call was truly for us anyway. It was obviously for someone else. And even if the call was heard, there are certainly a million reasons why it can’t be answered.
All limiting beliefs can be boiled down to one limiting belief: I’m not enough.
It is the human condition. Lack of self-love is the erosion of all things good created of human beings. While self-love is not the topic of this particular post, it is fundamental to our teachings.
All limiting beliefs arise from the primary limiting belief. I’m not enough shows up everywhere, at all times, in all places, and even in the unlikeliest of individuals. It shows up in the collective, in our consciousness, in our peacekeeping and diplomacy, and of course, in our conflicts. It isn’t just a belief in not being something. To be is also to have, and so this first limiting belief also applies in cases where resources seem to be creating the conflict. Where does greed stem from? The fear of not enough. Where does narcissism stem from? Fear of not being enough. All ego stems from not enough. Limiting beliefs are thus the way of the ego – the way of fear.
How they work
To better understand how limiting beliefs work, let’s picture them as they are – parasitic worms. All a limiting belief wants to do is maintain its residence in your consciousness, so that it can keep being fed by its host (you). Limiting beliefs are, in fact, rooted in the false sense of Self – aka, the Ego – and depend on your belief in them (and it) for their/its continued existence. The concept of the Ego/false Self is another story, but as we see with the concept of Self-Love and the human predilection for self-loathing, limiting beliefs would not exist if you had true knowledge of your true Self, because true knowledge of Self cannot but result in Self-Love which is the antithesis of both the Ego and the limiting beliefs that all Egos carry with them. True self-knowledge not only goes hand-in-hand with self-love, it eliminates the primary limiting belief and replaces it with its opposite (the Paradox Principle), which is of course, I am enough.
In this way, the Ego is the meta-parasite, the plague rat, and limiting beliefs - the fleas. The Ego carries the limiting beliefs which then feed on your energy, whispering foul nothings into your ears to keep you exactly where you must remain to prevent change from occurring. The Ego takes up residence in your human consciousness (mind), and lays claim to your body consciousness (aka your subconscious) as well. It then draws these two streams of consciousness toward itself like a black hole, and this is what makes change seem so difficult.
It's important to note that if ever in your life you have ever successfully changed something about yourself through sheer will alone, you have successfully overcome a limiting belief (likely without even realizing it). All habits that human beings would wish to overcome arise from a state of perceived lack (I am not enough) which has then given way to a behaviour to fill whatever need or hole that perceived lack has created.
Where they come from
As briefly mentioned above, limiting beliefs exist in two different aspects of your consciousness – your human consciousness (mind), and your body consciousness (aka your subconscious). The third aspect of your total consciousness is of course your super consciousness, aka ‘higher’ consciousness, and the source of your divine being. Your super consciousness is the sum total of your True Self’s entire existence, the finger of light that connects directly to and is an extension of Source/God/the Creator. It is your very spirit, your soul, and one-third and yet 100% of the Holy Trinity upon this Earth. In Biblical terms, it is the Father. The body is the Son. and the mind – the Holy Spirit. There are many interpretations of the trinity, but one thing is clear – that which makes YOU includes three aspects of consciousness, two of which are susceptible to Ego and thus, limiting beliefs, during incarnation. There are many reasons for this (which are not the topic of this workbook), but rest assured this, like the self-love/self-loathing problem, is as much a part of the human condition (by design) as death and conflict.
So let us return to the two aspects of your consciousness that are susceptible to being driven by the Ego. We’ll start with the body.
The body is your physical vessel upon this Earth for the short period of time called your life. It contains not only the blueprints for your life via your DNA, but it also holds the vast human history that was required over millennia to create the unique, living, breathing specimen that is you. You have never existed as you do now on this Earth, and you never shall again. There are many like you, but none quite the same. Additionally, your body holds a living memory of every moment lived in your present incarnation. Where the mind does not have total recall owing to bandwidth issues over the 38 million seconds that are lived and experienced in a human lifetime, the body remembers – just differently. Certain events, usually those which have elicited certain emotions, live in the tissues and muscles and systems of our fragile yet astounding bodily structures. Our bodies are of Earth itself, of dirt and clay, of minerals and air and blood and of ancient stardust and chemicals and water. They are driven toward life and survival and equally to death and decay. Our bodies are extensions of this planet and as we are mostly of water we are equally as turbulent in the ebbs and flows of our emotions.
It is part of this life as human beings to learn to accept our bodily memories and emotions but also learn to overcome those which may lead to self-destruction. I am speaking now primarily of trauma. While it is healing and redemptive to reverse-engineer our suffering back to the point where we understand where the undesired habits or behaviours or states of being arose, there is a risk for some to become trapped in identification with victimhood. Victimhood is an alluring and powerful Ego that comes with many confounding limiting beliefs, chief among them being either what’s been done to me shall be done to others, or what’s been done to me prevents me from ever getting past what’s been done to me. Both limiting beliefs assure continued suffering on both the parts of those who have suffered in the past, and those with whom they interact on this plane. In my case, everything changed the instant I stopped identifying with what happened to me. For years, I considered myself to be a victim, identifying myself with the thing that happened. But I am not now nor was I ever the thing that happened to me. Rather, remaining identified with the thing itself is what kept me stuck in repeating cycles which ensured that not only was my abuser still hurting me, but I had taken their place and was hurting myself. The moment I saw the difference, was the moment I freed myself.
Looking at the mind now, it is easier to understand where the Ego takes hold. After all, it is the mind which is most closely associated with this concept. But what is the Ego? There are numerous interpretations and definitions, but as it has been made known to me via channeling, the Ego is defined as “that which makes up the false sense of Self which is rooted in lack – I am not enough. It is our desire to be loved, and our perception that we are separate from our True Selves, God, and each other.”
Your mind is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. It is a tool through which you manifest your reality on this Earth. The problem is, when the Ego and its limiting beliefs are in charge, that reality becomes warped. Where the body is concerned with bodily memories, the mind is of the mind, and what is the mind good at? Thinking. But not just any kind of thinking.
Overthinking. Over-analyzing. Judgement. Critique. Comparison. Doubt. Denial. The problem isn’t so much that we have too many thoughts (though that, too, poses its own challenges), the problem is the identification with those thoughts – many of which are horribly self-destructive, disturbing, and susceptible to the external conditions over which the mind has no control. Many beings are constantly at the mercy of their racing minds, and in our present time with its endless distractions and ever-shortening attention spans, the challenge to be mindful and present is ever-present. The sum total of the Egoic mind then, the one which identifies with the thoughts, is always the same: fear.
Most beings on Earth aren’t asleep at the wheel; no, they’re unconscious, curled up in fetal position in the passenger seat while a deranged version of themselves is pedal-to-the-metal and hurtling toward chaos and destruction. And guess what? That is perfectly okay. Each one of us is on a particular journey, and we only have infinity to figure it out. However, if you are reading this, it means that you have arrived at a place in your journey where you are ready to boot the dark passenger out of the driver’s seat so that you can take your rightful place. And it starts with overturning those limiting beliefs.
