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.