Cracking The Code 6: Can You Become Aware Of Your Limiting Beliefs?

 

The next four Belief Codes from Gregg Braden’s The Spontaneous Healing of Belief: Shattering the Paradigm of False Limits begin to move us into the deep end of the emotional pool concerning our beliefs and how they play out in our life/stories. I’ll share some personal examples illustrating this. If you potentially wish to benefit, I suggest that if you feel any flashes of memory beginning to consciously bubble up, allow it to happen.

Belief Code 17: Many of our most deeply held beliefs are subconscious and begin when our brain state allows us to absorb the ideas of others before the age of seven.

I’m going to get a bit scientific with you to illustrate the common ground that the vast majority of human beings experience as part of the growth process. It concerns neuroplasticity.

“Neuroplasticity is the brain's ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections and pruning unused ones. While adults maintain plasticity throughout life, the young brain operates in a hyper-flexible state known as developmental plasticity.”

“During the early years, the brain is actively constructing its core architecture based on incoming experiences. At birth, a newborn's brain has roughly 86 billion neurons, but relatively few connections between them.

• Explosive Growth: Between birth and age 2 to 3, the brain creates over 1 million new neural connections every second.
• Peak Density: By age 2, a child's brain has nearly twice as many synapses as an adult brain. This dense network allows young children to absorb vast amounts of environmental information effortlessly.”

I’m aware that you might be somewhat familiar with this scientific concept, but I think that in spelling it out we will gain some insight into the mechanics of forming beliefs.

“The brain cannot efficiently run a massive, unorganized network indefinitely. Starting in early childhood and continuing through adolescence, the brain begins synaptic pruning:

‘Use it or lose it.’ Pathways that are frequently activated (like language, movement, or emotional response patterns) are reinforced with stronger insulation (myelination). Pathways that go unused are trimmed away to make processing faster and more energy-efficient.”

So how do we discover, or more precisely, uncover these foundational threads that were adapted, adopted, or forced upon us in our formative years?

Belief Code 18: In our greatest challenges of life we often find that our deeply hidden beliefs are exposed and available for healing.

"The dark night of the soul comes just before revelation. When everything is lost, and all seems darkness, then comes the new life and all that is needed."

— Joseph Campbell

Here’s a personal story that illustrates how a seemingly insignificant choice of behavior by a parent can alter the course of one’s life/story. My paternal grandparents emigrated to the United States from Italy. My father was the oldest male child in a family of four with all of the implications inherent for someone born in 1927. He married my mother in 1952, she was of mostly German descent. I was the first male grandchild born in the family with all of the implications that might hold in 1956.

My father was fluent in Italian, as was his entire family. Naturally, that meant that I was going to learn to speak the language, being around them often while being raised. Considering what we just covered concerning neuroplasticity, I do not doubt that my rapidly expanding brain would have taken to it quite naturally.

“Not so fast,” said my mother. I was an American, not an Italian! There would be no molding me to learn any foreign tongue, period. Other than picking up the Italian curse words on the sly, I did not learn to speak the language. The unconscious prejudice this formed in me would have dramatic consequences.

I was a top student through grammar school and high school… except for required foreign language courses. I “survived” the required two years of Spanish, getting the minimum passing grade mostly as an act of mercy by my teachers because they knew that I was trying. That cost me becoming valedictorian, much to the chagrin of my family.

It gets “better.” I was accepted into all three universities that I applied to, including Marquette, one of the foremost schools for journalism in the 1970s. That was absolutely what I wanted my career to encompass.

Instead, I chose my state university, Rutgers, a very good school. Why? They didn’t require taking any foreign language classes as a requirement. I’m not joking; that was the reason that I stayed home and went to Rutgers.

Being home, that put me into the emotional crosshairs of my parents’ failing marriage, which I was drawn into as deeply as could be, eventually leading to me threatening to kill my father and then remaining home to support my mother through her subsequent nervous breakdown. I never made the leap into journalism as I had hoped.

And the roots of this? My mother’s edict that I was an American and would not be taught Italian by my father’s family. That’s my personal illustration of the power of belief and the challenges faced in order to have its deep, hidden roots brought to light.

Belief Code 19: Our beliefs about unresolved hurt can create physical effects with the power to damage or even kill us.

I’ve found that it is far easier to recognize the “faults and foibles” in other people’s lives and the effects that they spawn rather than to recognize those same faults and flaws in our own. I do my very best not to cast judgment on others because, as we’ll discuss further on in this series, that is an energetic invitation for similar judgment to be inflicted upon ourselves.

One of the most common observations that is generally accepted by society concerns what occurs when one spouse in a lengthy marriage dies and leaves their partner behind. If the surviving spouse is utterly distraught and cannot comprehend life without the deceased partner, does it shock anyone when they die of a “broken heart?” Even with a youngster losing a parent early in life, is it shocking to witness negative ramifications that result in the child’s life as it unfolds?

I believe in the power of beliefs spoken with conviction. When someone tells me, “Cancer runs in my family,” I see that as an almost expected result, proving them to be both “right” and also “loyal” to the family story. I know that some may find this statement controversial or even somewhat unfeeling, but I have seen this play out in many different forms over my lifetime. It has caused me to examine my own unresolved, unforgiven hurts, of which I have been less-than-conscious, to heal them.

The final Belief Code we’ll cover concerns the “language of the soul”:

Belief Code 20: When our soul hurts, the pain is transmitted into the body as the spiritual quality of the life force that we feed into each cell.

From Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (2005):

Before the labor begins, a medical droid reports her condition to Obi-Wan and Yoda:

Medical Droid: "Medically, she is completely healthy. For reasons we can't explain, we are losing her."

Obi-Wan Kenobi: "She's dying?"

Medical Droid: "We don't know why. She has lost the will to live. We must operate quickly if we are to save the babies."

Padmé is conscious but visibly fading as the medical droids assist her in labor. Obi-Wan holds her hand, offering comfort.

• The Boy: Padmé groans in pain and delivers a baby boy.

Padmé: (gasping) "Luke..."

The droid wipes the crying child and hands him briefly toward Padmé before Obi-Wan takes him.

• The Girl: Moments later, Padmé gives another push as a second child is born.

Padmé: "Leia..."

She touches her daughter briefly before the droid steps back to care for the newborn.

With her strength nearly gone, Padmé calls out to Obi-Wan. She reaches up, grabbing his hand and placing her japor snippet pendant into his palm (or holding his hand tightly in her final moments).

Padmé: "Obi-Wan... there's good in him. I know. I know there's... still..."

She passes away silently, her hand slipping from Obi-Wan's grasp as the heart monitor flatlines. Obi-Wan gently strokes her hair, mourning both her death and the total collapse of his brother, Anakin.

I know it’s “just a movie,” but the powerful context of watching a mother, although healthy, surrender life while giving birth due to the overwhelming pain in her soul illustrates this perfectly.

Would you rather consider numerous examples from the Bard, Shakespeare? Lady Macbeth’s unbearable guilt leading to her doctor’s conclusion, "More needs she the divine than the physician."

You can add Ophelia, King Lear, and Enobarbus for good measure.

See, we “know” this and always have. But do we wish to admit it?

The flip side is “What you don’t know won’t/can’t hurt you” but I also offer you the modern context on this: “While historically used to comfort someone or advise against worrying about hidden problems, today the phrase is often used with a touch of irony or cynicism—frequently cited as a justification for hiding uncomfortable truths or keeping someone in the dark.”

Many feel that the body is the mirror of the soul. Considering the exploration we’re doing of the all-inclusive quantum field and its language, my thought is that the soul will always be heard and expressed.

So now you know.

More to come; stay tuned.

Cracking The Code 5: Can You Become Aware Of Your Limiting Beliefs?

 

Welcome back! The next four Belief Codes from Gregg Braden’s The Spontaneous Healing of Belief: Shattering the Paradigm of False Limits will have you examining what you think, what you feel, what it “means,” and how that meaning is transmitted to the world. The “nitty” now begins to get “gritty” as we proceed.

Belief Code 13: Belief is defined as the certainty that comes from accepting what we think is true in our minds, coupled with what we feel is true in our hearts.

If you’ve experienced enough living here on planet Earth, I’d bet that you’ve had occasions when you were supposed to do something that just didn’t feel “right.” It was even hard to define exactly why this was because the odds were probably great that it was something that you had done before, something that was commonly accepted as “truth” or “fact,” but it wasn’t consciously flowing this time.

Your brain and heart were not in agreement. Something in your “gut” was causing a hesitation, a questioning. And if you had experienced this previously and you decided to push on through that initial hesitation, how did it work out?

Moving forward, you’ll see the actual importance that mind and heart alignment plays in facilitating powerful belief, the kind that registers as “When you know, you know.” That is what certainty is, and it can move mountains.

Belief Code 14: Belief is expressed in the heart, where our experiences are translated into the electrical and magnetic waves that interact with the physical world.

When I asked about the specifics of the forces produced in and around the human heart, this is what I received: “The human heart is the strongest generator of bioelectricity and biomagnetism in the human body. Every heartbeat is driven by a coordinated electrical signal, and like any electrical current in physics, that movement of charge generates an accompanying magnetic field.”

If you’ve ever taken an electrocardiogram, it’s measuring the electrical activity that travels through the body's conductive tissues and fluids. This is standard stuff.

The cardiac magnetic field is relatively weak, about 100,000 times weaker than the Earth’s geomagnetic field. Extremely sensitive sensors (like SQUID magnetometers inside magnetically shielded rooms) can detect the heart's magnetic signal a few feet away from the chest but it drops off dramatically beyond that short distance.

The important thing is to absolutely know that these fields do exist in and around you. If you’ve ever had events occur that are joyous, have you noticed the expanded, high-energy feeling in your chest?

And on the opposite end, in very sad or tragic times, have you uttered the words, “My heart hurts”?

I watched many emotional reactions to anthems and patriotic displays from around the world during the recently completed World Cup. The belief in their respective teams was evident in people’s faces as they wore their “hearts on their sleeves.” This is an example of powerful, emotional beliefs, translated into the physical world. They truly are “heartfelt,” indeed.

Belief Code 15: Beliefs, and the feelings that we have about them, are the language that “speaks” to the quantum stuff that makes our reality.

The very first Belief Code we covered discussed experiments proving that the focus of attention changes reality itself. Belief Code 4 told of the particles that all things (ourselves included) are made of, and can be in instantaneous communication with one another, in two places at once, and change the past via present choices.

Isn’t a belief, especially a powerfully held one felt and accepted in mind and heart, an observation about something or someone? And what then is the power of observation, of focused attention, “speaking” to?

I will let you ponder that question. Your consideration may illuminate some new avenues of thought about life in general, and your life in particular.

Belief Code 16: The subconscious mind is larger and faster than the conscious mind, and can account for as much as 90 percent of our activity each day.

"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate." — Carl Jung

"The subconscious mind works day and night, by a method of procedure unknown to the conscious mind." — Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich

"The law of your mind is this: You will tend to get the reaction or response from your subconscious mind corresponding to the nature of the thought or belief you hold in your conscious mind." — Joseph Murphy, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind

"Your subconscious doesn't argue with you. It accepts what your conscious mind decrees. If you say, 'I can't afford it,' your subconscious mind works to make sure it remains true." — Joseph Murphy

"The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude." — William James

"Whatever your conscious mind assumes and believes to be true, your subconscious will accept and bring to pass." — E. Stewart Wilde

By and large, we tend to live our lives on cruise control. Watch the oversized reaction when a normal, habitual routine such as commuting to work gets interrupted by some event that seems to be out of one’s control. You can envision a person’s circuits being blown, mental synapses frying before your eyes. The unconscious program that the subconscious mind was in charge of running has gone temporarily haywire.

It’s a good thing that we don’t often think about needing to control our breathing! That going offline would not be pleasant.

I’ve added the quotes above to highlight the power and importance of harnessing one’s subconscious mind, to think about what we’re thinking about more consciously. This is not a new subject, but it is one that not too many people make an effort to attend to for a plethora of reasons, many of which are associated with beliefs that are not serving us well.

We’ll dive deeper into this in our next installment.