We are not who we think we are. We are so much more.
THIS IS WHERE WE ALL START
We all start
From the ultimate
Life-giving source
Of love
Suckling at the breast
Of the Universe
Bathed in golden light
Eyes open
First glances at our world
New awareness
Never heard
Swirling thoughts
New emotions
Discovering yourself
The world you live in
And your place in it
Pressures and restrictions
Emerge
Learned from family
society and experiences
All part of the bigger picture
A stage in your growth
Now waiting
Wondering
Who you are
How you’ll be
Just stand up
Balance
Baby steps
Until you see
It's only the beginning
Trust and be
YOUR TRANSFORMATION
You are a butterfly
slowly coming out of your dark,
comfortable cocoon
and transforming
into who you’re meant to be
as you emerge as a beautiful being
and step into the light.
Our Dark and Our Light
We enter this world open, trusting and full of love. We are born a child of the Divine, filled with a warm glowing Light, our soul. Imagine in the very center of who we are right now is that bright, radiant, warm Light. It's there in each of us, even if we can’t see it or know that it is there. Our soul is our gift from the Divine, a part of the Divine within us. Our Light is the part of us that loves without the fear of being hurt and connects without the fear of being rejected. This is the part of us that feels great joy and the excitement of simply being alive. All of us have known and connected to this part of ourselves at various times in our lives but at other times we forget it is there.
As we live our lives, we have experiences that are both good and bad, loving and fearful, happy and sad. When we are small children, those painful moments are often overwhelming, especially as we don’t know how to cope with fear or make sense of pain or trauma. As a result, we create and take on beliefs to hide who we are and to become more like who we think we need to be in order to be loved, accepted and cared for by our caretakers. We can’t help it; we are hardwired to respond this way when we feel overwhelmed and vulnerable. Over time, one at a time, we create or accumulate beliefs to help us become someone we believe will be more acceptable, desirable, likable, and loveable. We let these fears of not being loved and accepted lead the way to who we become. It is fear that is the foundation of each of these protective beliefs. Over time as we spend more and more time within this cloud of beliefs and fear, we forget that deep inside of us is our Light, our Soul.
In order to learn how to reconnect with this brilliant Light within us, we need to understand these protective beliefs: where they come from and how they affect how we see ourselves, how we live our lives, how we behave in relationships and in the world. The beliefs I am referring to in these blogs are fear-based beliefs. Their role in our life is to restrict and limit us so that we are safe. These beliefs are stored down deep in our subconscious, a part of our mind that we don’t have easy access to, and as a result, we often aren't even aware of their existence. Although we are unaware of them, our protective beliefs are very powerful. Their effects are seen in all aspects of who we are and who we are not. They are seen in everything we do or don’t do, everything we choose or don’t choose, everything we believe or don’t believe, everything we feel or don’t feel. They affect how we make sense of life, how we respond and behave, and how we love.
To understand the effect of these subconscious beliefs on us, it can be helpful to compare the subconscious part of our mind to the hard drive of a computer, where all the programming and memory of the computer is stored. We can see the effects of the programming every moment we use our computer, in how our computer works or doesn’t work, what it allows us to do or not, how it responds or not. The programming directs the functioning of the computer. Our subconscious beliefs direct how we are allowed to live our lives.
So where do these protective beliefs come from? We accumulate them from three different places.
We inherit them from our parents or caretakers
We learn them from family and society
We create them in response to our traumas.
1. Our inherited beliefs have been created to ensure the survival of our family through the generations. These beliefs have a proven track record in that they have helped our caretakers to survive and become adults. We “inherit” these beliefs from our primary caretakers at a subconscious level, so we aren’t even aware that we are taking them on. All inherited beliefs start with: “to stay safe” and include the word “must”. Some examples are:
To stay safe, I must be adored, admired, the best.
To stay safe, I must be small, unseen, unheard.
To stay safe, I must know more than others
To stay safe, I must become the person others need, want and expect me to be.
2. Our learned beliefs come from our parents, our families and the societies we grew up in. These beliefs are designed to help us belong and to be accepted. They are learned at a very young age when we are dependent on both family and society for survival. We have both conscious learned beliefs (the ones we are aware of) as well as subconscious learned beliefs (the ones we aren’t aware of). Our conscious learned beliefs can change and evolve as we mature. Our subconscious beliefs, however, remain unchanged and are always a part of us. These subconscious beliefs define who we are allowed to be in our families, in our societies, and who others are allowed to be. These beliefs are culturally-based expectations and they might include:
A good woman is one who cares for others and puts their needs first
People who aren’t like us are a threat.
The more money you have the better a person you are.
3. Lastly, every time we experience a trauma, especially as a small child, we either create a new belief or add on to one we have already made. The purpose of these trauma-induced beliefs is to prevent re-experiencing that level of overwhelming pain ever again. These beliefs all follow the same trend of limiting who we are allowed to be so that we are less open, less available and less vulnerable to rejection, heartbreak and pain. They include beliefs such as:
I am stupid
I am unlovable
I am ugly
I am a failure
With each one of these trauma-induced beliefs, a person's expectation of themselves has been lowered so that if the trauma was repeated, the disappointment and pain also would be less.
This is an invitation to try to see our beliefs and to begin to understand all aspects of who we are. It's a chance to understand, accept and forgive ourselves for having these protective beliefs. After all, every belief we have created or acquired was for one single purpose - to protect us as a small dependent, vulnerable child, to keep us safe and to help us survive.
These 3 types of protective beliefs, inherited, learned and trauma-induced, were created in response to fear. Fear is dark and heavy and is the source of many other negative emotions. When we feel threatened, we feel anger, rage, frustration, resentful. When we are afraid of being deprived, we feel jealous, hurt, unloved, unimportant. When we feel we don’t matter, we feel judged, rejected, inadequate, not enough, and worthless. This is our Dark; the basis of the Dark is fear.
So what is our Light? Our Light is our soul, our gift from the Divine. The basis of Light is love. We feel our Light when we feel uplifted, inspired, joyful. We know our Light is there when we connect deeply with people we love, have compassion for others, or let ourselves just be present. We feel it when we are filled with the joy and excitement of being alive.
We have two parts, Dark and Light. The Dark is created by fear and by those subconscious beliefs that have helped us feel safe. The Light is the gift we were born with that is hidden deep inside, protected. The Light is us at our most loving, giving, connected, joyful, and inspired. The image of the Dark and the Light is one in which a strong, bright, Light is shining in the center of each of us and is encircled by a cloud of Dark beliefs sometimes so thick and dense we are unable to see the Light within.
So who are we? As a very small child, we still see our Light and embrace living in our Light because we have just begun to accumulate our protective beliefs. Can you remember what living in your Light looks like and feels like? Remember what it was like to draw and paint pictures just because it gave us joy and not caring what anyone else thought. Remember singing out loud without worrying about being judged for the quality of our voices. Remember running or swinging on a swing or whooshing down the slide with the wind in our hair, feeling so happy to be alive and not thinking about whether we were important enough. This is what we are like as small children living in our Light.
So who are we as adults? As an adult, we will most likely see the person that our protective beliefs have guided us to become, with glimpses of our Light when we forget fear and just feel love, joy, compassion and connection. As we learn to see the negative influence of these protective beliefs, we are also learning to see the beauty and intensity of our Light.
This is an invitation and a welcome, to join us on this journey to connect with your Light, your Soul, your piece of the Divine within you. Each step along the way is clearly explained and illustrated. It is our gift to you.
YOUR LIGHT
deep moments of connection
not where you forget yourself
in a state of passion
but where you remember yourself
in a bond of intimacy
as we move through life, we sometimes stagger and fall
we stand back up and learn
to walk, to let go and fly in our Light
Invitation to go deeper
It’s easier to see beliefs in other people than in ourselves. Look around at your family and friends. What protective beliefs can you see that they are surrounding themselves with?
Are they inherited beliefs? “To be safe, I must…….”
Are they learned beliefs? As a woman, I am expected to……. ; As a man, I am expected to…….; This list can then be expanded to include the 100’s, 1000’s of roles we all take on as we are defined by the societies we live in.
Are they trauma-induced beliefs? “ I am …….”
Once you can see beliefs in others, look at yourself. Where are you stuck? How do you limit yourself? How do you define who you are or who you need to be?