It is hu­mil­i­at­ing to hear the of­ten re­peat­ed metaphor, ‘You at­tract your life’s circum­stances ac­cord­ing to your be­liefs.’

There are many ways to ob­serve the truth of this state­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly when we watch oth­er peo­ple. A bit trick­i­er when we turn our gaze to­ward our­selves. It’s healthy to find sim­ple ex­am­ples of where we mis­guide our­selves with our beliefs. For ex­am­ple, I have a be­lief that digi­tal tech should be sim­pler. And as a re­sult, I of­ten strug­gle with on­line tasks that are no is­sue for oth­er peo­ple. I waste my time and en­er­gy strug­gling with digi­tal tasks that don’t war­rant my stress. It may be ‘true’ that tech­nol­o­gy should be sim­pler, will even­tu­al­ly be sim­pler, that it doesn’t need to be more com­pli­cat­ed each year, how­ev­er that tru­ism doesn’t help me when it comes to com­plet­ing tasks. In fact, the emo­tion­al charge that I car­ry jus­ti­fying this be­lief is ex­act­ly the thing that gets in the way. I men­tion this be­cause it’s an is­sue most peo­ple can re­late to. You may find some per­son­al ex­am­ples for your­self.

There is a dif­fer­ence be­tween­ know­ing­ some­thing, and hav­ing a neg­a­tive emo­tional charge re­gard­ing that be­lief. For ex­am­ple, I know that in some point in the fu­ture, hu­man­i­ty will use tech­nol­o­gy as away to sup­port sus­tain­able use of re­sources, and I know that cur­rent­ly tech is of­ten used to jus­ti­fy it’s ex­is­tence, to mag­ni­fy il­lu­sions, decep­tions and ven­ture cap­i­tal agen­das. How­ev­er my know­ing­ness has noth­ing to do achiev­ing tasks at hand. The feel­ings I have about such are ac­tu­al­ly not rel­e­vant to deal­ing with the present. Some peo­ple are able to bridge the gap be­tween what doesn’t work now, and what may work in the near fu­ture, by be­ing digi­tal vi­sion­ar­ies and that’s their task to do so. For most of us, we sim­ply deal with the cor­ti­sol stress of digi­tal life and car­ry on as if that’s nor­mal and some­how right.

Of­ten we think of be­lief sys­tems in these terms of deal­ing with our abil­i­ty to man­ifest the life we want. How­ev­er there are many sit­u­a­tions in which our per­son­al be­lief sys­tem has noth­ing to do with cir­cum­stances of the cul­ture we find our­selves in. For ex­am­ple, we all have ex­pe­ri­ences of pros­per­i­ty and the lack of pros­per­i­ty. Some of this has to do with what be­lief sys­tems we align our­selves with. Some of it has noth­ing to do with that. There are oth­er fac­tors such as class and race priv­i­lege, childhood cir­cum­stances, brain and body type, ge­net­ic pre­dis­po­si­tion, de­sign, past life karmas, and yes, luck. Our be­lief sys­tems can help us deal with those cards that have been dealt to us, and per­haps not com­plete­ly over­come those chal­lenges. I no­ticed liv­ing in Cal­i­for­nia many years, that there was a new age at­ti­tude to­ward pros­per­i­ty that ar­ro­gant­ly takes a very in­di­vid­ual rather than col­lec­tive ap­proach to well-be­ing. It’s not that the prin­ci­ples of “think and grow rich” aren’t ap­plic­a­ble, (es­pecial­ly for man­i­festors and man­i­fest­ing gen­er­a­tors) to peo­ple who have an ob­ses­sion with ma­te­r­i­al gain. One can ob­serve that mod­ern cul­ture has been mold­ed on striv­ing for suc­cess. To align one­self with those prin­ci­ples may be ap­pro­pri­ate or not ac­cording to one’s life path.

What in­ter­ests me more are the deep­er be­lief sys­tems that af­fect our re­la­tion­ship to life, to the uni­verse, and to our­selves. These be­liefs are of­ten hid­den in our sub­con­scious un­til the rub­ber meets the road, so to speak. For ex­am­ple, at the mo­ment the plane is crash­ing to­ward the sea, are we re­laxed or pan­ick­ing? We may not know un­til that mo­ment comes. There are mo­ments where these be­liefs sur­face. Dur­ing child­birth, death, sex, in­tima­cy, un­ex­pect­ed crises, or when we are sick, men­tal­ly un­sta­ble, frag­ile. In those moments do we trust the uni­verse, do we sur­ren­der or re­sist, do we feel in­ad­e­quate or con­fi­dent, do we feel se­cure or in dan­ger? There is no cor­rect an­swer, be­cause these be­liefs aren’t men­tal, they are pro­grammed or cho­sen at pri­mal, sub­con­scious lev­els of our psy­che.

There are oth­er hid­den be­liefs that aren’t re­lat­ed to an im­me­di­ate cri­sis but are re­lat­ed to our as­sump­tions about our­selves and our re­la­tion­ship to the life force. I’ve no­ticed for ex­am­ple, that when un­der con­tin­u­al stress, my re­sponse of­ten is ‘life is hard’. The weird thing, I don’t re­al­ly ex­pe­ri­ence life as hard, nor do I think it’s hard, but I do be­lieve life is hard. When look­ing out upon the world, I see beau­ty and in­spi­ra­tion, and I also see the hard­ship. It’s a point of view, just a slice of re­al­i­ty, not the whole pic­ture. Like many of us, I had pro­longed child­hood ex­pe­ri­ences of aban­don­ment, alienation, ex­treme fear and anx­i­ety. And also mo­ments of the op­po­site. So there was condi­tion­ing to safe­guard, pro­tect, and avoid cer­tain per­son­al­i­ties and sit­u­a­tions. Mak­ing me shy, so­cial­ly awk­ward, and feel­ing painful­ly alien.

I am of­ten in amaze­ment and awe watch­ing chil­dren of young adults who feel com­fort­able in their skin, se­cure, safe to ex­press them­selves emo­tion­al­ly, to be ful­ly them­selves. It’s a dif­fer­ent re­al­i­ty, and yet that re­al­i­ty is present in my re­al­i­ty, something that I at­tract and en­joy and am part of. So does it re­al­ly mat­ter that my ex­pe­rience was dif­fer­ent? Not re­al­ly. To feel lim­it­ed, to feel lack, to feel loss, those are also based upon out­mod­ed be­liefs. When it comes to our ex­is­ten­tial re­la­tion­ship with the uni­verse, what do we feel and be­lieve about that? Usu­al­ly these be­liefs are un­con­scious un­til the mo­ment our soul is test­ed. When we are to­tal­ly re­laxed, in si­lence or med­i­ta­tion, in na­ture, do we feel connect­ed, at peace, safe, joy­ful? Or what? Dis­tract­ed, alone, sep­a­rate, anx­ious, or worse? When we are con­nect­ed to our source con­scious­ly, hu­mans tend to feel merg­ing, emer­gence, union, ac­cep­tance, love. And I sus­pect that for each of us, unique frac­tals of that whole­ness, we each have our own re­la­tion­ship to that larg­er sense of self. Thefeel­ing of ‘heav­en’ has been pre­scribed by oth­ers, and what do you feel your­self?

These feel­ings range from the awe of every­thing to the empti­ness of noth­ing­ness to the mys­tery of the un­known. Though I sus­pect the mys­tery is an emo­tion, and the un­known is as­cribed to our men­tal aware­ness. I would sus­pect that our deep­er be­liefs are based upon our feel­ing state, our state of whole­ness or fear, not upon our thoughts. So if our deep­est be­liefs are based upon feel­ing states, what do you feel when every­thing else comes to rest? Do we ex­pe­ri­ence life as soft and yield­ing or as hard and sharp or as??? These deep­er feel­ing states will tend to di­rect our un­con­scious to re­pro­duce them­selves. In oth­er words, what we be­lieve about our feel­ings, we will attract cir­cum­stances to re­in­force. And with re­in­force­ment, those be­liefs only be­come more cor­rect and jus­ti­fy them­selves!

I per­son­al­ly sus­pect that the uni­verse doesn’t have any predilec­tion to­ward any par­tic­u­lar be­lief. It may al­low all be­liefs to un­fold to their nat­ur­al con­clu­sion. Some believe that the uni­verse is love, and that could be true for you. But it doesn’t mat­ter what you be­lieve, what mat­ters is how you ex­pe­ri­ence it. Don’t let your un­con­scious be­liefs rule your life, un­less you want them to. Be wil­ing to be in­cor­rect and some­thing new re­vealed.

Sto­ry: Your be­lief in weath­er!

Sto­ry: about fre­quen­cy align­ments in tech.

Sto­ry: re­al­tors, mort­gage bro­kers, etc