In our last article we began our discussion of limiting beliefs by looking at our minds and the subconscious.   We learned that our subconscious controls a large part of behavior and that this ‘control’ can be either a learned response (as in a fear of water) or a genetically coded response (one inherited). While the majority of these behaviors are beneficial to our daily lives (as you may have noticed while doing your homework assignment) these behaviors can also become detrimental to our well-being and happiness if they are ill-formed or simply outgrown. This is when these learned behaviors become limiting beliefs.

In this article, we continue our discussion by looking at learned behaviors and how they are formed.  Understanding this process is vital if we are to progress to a point where we can consciously alter, change and/or create new behaviors.

The Subconscious Mind

To best understand these learned behaviors, we need to understand where they come from.  These learned behaviors live within our subconscious mind.  But what is the subconscious mind?

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There’s been a lot of buzz lately in the Law of Attraction world about Limiting Beliefs, with everyone offering to expose, remove, re-program or otherwise eradicate them from your mind in order to allow you to have the life of your dreams.

But what are Limiting Beliefs?

Where did they come from?

Are they all bad?

Today we begin a multi-part series that delves into those questions in an attempt to provide you with a better understanding, not only of Limiting Beliefs, but of yourself.

To understand Limiting Beliefs, we first need to look at how our brain works.

The human brain is a complex organ, capable of performing multiple operations simultaneously. While you are reading this, your brain is processing the input from your eyes, converting the image into ‘language’, monitoring your heartbeat, regulating the chemistry of your blood, maintaining your breathing, keeping an ear out for the phone, and much more.  And all this is happening at the same time.

But consciously, you are only aware of the words you’re reading.  Everything else is happening in the background, without your conscious interaction.

But how does the brain know what to do when I’m ‘not there’?

This is where the subconscious comes in.  The vast portion of your mental activity is controlled by the subconscious part of your mind.  At birth, the subconscious mind basically functions based on genetic knowledge.  In other words, knowledge passed down genetically from your parents and their parents, and so on.

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This month, I’ve been bombarded by marketing promising to “fix”
my love life. Products to attract a soul mate, products to spice up
a relationship, products to get over a bad one… Quite an array.
Add to that the magazine headlines in the checkout lane, random
conversations with friends and strangers, and so on…

The message “I can fix your problem” sells. It sells products. It
sells magazines. It just plain sells. The problem is that it sells
the problem as well as it sells the solution.

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Did you ever notice that almost everything you’ve learned about money and finances, you learned from people without money?

If you’re like most people, then you’ve spent most of your life struggling with your finances.  Year by year you have built up a solid – unshakable belief structure around money, even without knowing it.  And guess what, these limiting beliefs about money are now responsible for keeping you exactly where you are right now, stuck in a constant struggle to make ends meet, barely making it from paycheck to paycheck.

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As I was standing in line to pay at the market, I noticed the
display of magazines. Nearly all of them were screaming about the
latest diet, losing weight, getting into a bikini by summer.

A bit later, I realized that I was feeling really lousy. And it
dawned on me that as I mindlessly read those headlines, my
subconscious mind had taken them all as truth. It dutifully
concluded that I was unworthy, not good enough, and unacceptable.

Wow. What an eye opener!

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(This was originally posted on the Universe of Power’s Discussion forum, in response to a member’s two part question: what about the overwhelming input we get from everything around us that getting what you want out of life is always hard, time-consuming and a struggle; and, why do any of us deserve to have happiness or prosperity when so many in the world are suffering from poverty, illness or war.)

It’s certainly true that we were raised and are now surrounded by messages about how hard everything is. I think this is based on the idea of an intact external reality moving along outside us like clockwork, a reality that doesn’t need us to exist, barely notices our existance and has no urge or tendency to provide us with what we need. That seems to be the “science” of the world view we’ve been living under. On the other hand there’s the traditional Christian view that most of us are exposed to in the western world (whether we are Christian or not our culture and social ideas are based on Christian beliefs) which says that there is a judgemental God, again external to us, who is intact, pre-existing and complete without us; a God we have to somehow please or cajole into providing something for us.

With this as our surroundings it’s no wonder everything seems so hard. How can our single psyche and our frail body make an impact on a huge pre-existant universe that has it’s reality so intact and complete that we are just a blip in the dark? Read the rest of this entry »

Lately there’s been some discussion about whether outside forces like astrology have an influence on our reality, and if so, how much. Does our “sign” dictate what our lives will be? Or can we choose what we want in spite of the stars? Does astrology and other forms of divination contradict our understanding of Law of Attraction?

Really what it comes down to is the basic question: do we have ultimate control over what happens in our lives, or is there some outside force (the stars, god, the numbers of our birthday) that can influence our experience regardless of what we do? That’s a question that’s been on the table for a really long time.

I’m not an astrologer by any means. My understanding of it can best be described as basic. I’ve read a few books, and had my chart done, but that’s all. Here’s an example of the way I look at this kind of thing: I do know that my sign is Libra, with Libra rising. To the best of my understanding, this means that not only was I born in the Libra weeks of the year, but Libra was the sign that the sun rose in on my birthday. This is sort of a double whammy of Libra qualities, one of which is a focus on or importance attached to the idea of “home”.

To me, this just gives a sort of coloration or cast to my experience; it isn’t an “assignment” or even a limitation. It doesn’t mean I have to “be” or “do” anything. Home is something that IS very important in my life–in the normal sense of valuing it, but also in the sense of having built with my husband several experimental houses, as well as lots of renovation projects. All we do, it seems, is build or move or buy or sell houses.

This kind of unsettled but home-focused lifestyle doesn’t feel like I was “destined” to it, though. I think that I could have gone in any number of directions with it. I could have been an architect; I could have been another Martha Stewart! I could have written about houses; I could have stayed in one house that I loved for my entire life. I could even have been homeless and had the focus be on the lack of the thing I was focused on. The astrological characteristics don’t seem to me to be dictates, but tendencies that we can play with any way we like. Read the rest of this entry »

The Secret seemed to trigger lots of resentment and anger in some people. It always makes me wonder what is going on there. If it were as inaccurate and unrealistic as they say, why not just dismiss it and move on? But those who are angered by it seem to give it more attention than those who believe in it!

Some people attack ‘The Secret’ for leaving out the ‘action’ part. But even though it was not overly emphasized, it was not left out of the movie–and is not left out of the teachings of those who were in the Secret. James Ray even says that if you expect to just sit on your couch and change your thoughts, without acting, they’ll come and repossess your furniture!

The Secret was a 90 minute movie. As I’ve said before, it was an introduction. How could they cover it all, in depth, in one movie?? It’s not possible. When I first learned about this information, long ago, I didn’t expect the first book I read to tell me the whole story. I read more and more and more, until I have a whole library of books on physics, metaphysics, religion, psychology as well as the more targetted “self-help” books that deal directly with this idea. I have to believe that the makers of The Secret intended people to follow this kind of process.

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Alignment is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. Several books and seminars have brought up the topic and it started me thinking. It’s almost like when we incarnate, our spirit imprints a particular shape on the universe, which is our shape. Like a cookie cutter image. If we live “lined up” with this shape then the universal energy stream can flow through that cutout to us unimpeded, and through us to our projects and creations.

It’s like a person-shaped window in a solid wall, that the sun can shine through. If we stand in front of it, the sun can warm every part of us and we’ll feel great. If we are not in alignment, however– either don’t feel we deserve to stand fully in the sun, or allow others to pull us away from the window, or think that it’s not the right thing to just stand there– then we may have to go through all kinds of contortions and try to invent devices that will get the sun to reflect over to where we are.

Abraham talks about this as the “stream” and that we are in a canoe either going with the flow of the current, or fighting our way upstream, or so crosswise of the stream that we get flung against the boulders. Our training says that the hard way is the most rewarding and meritable, that it’s “too easy” to just let go the oars and go with the flow.

Whatever analogy we use, it seems to say that being in alignment is easy. It’s the path of least resistance in a positive sense. It may not be easy to find that place, we are so programmed against it that it can be right under our noses and we don’t even see it. But once we do find it I think the promise of a creative satisfying life is limitless.

So much of our effort goes into trying to gain happiness! All the struggle after money, relationships, career, shopping and on and on is really a struggle after things that we think will lead to our happiness. Whether we are trying to reconcile an unhappy past, or achieve a distant happier future, our attempts to gain happiness influence all our activities and actions in the present moment where we really live.

Don’t you find that at the bottom of all your desires there is the belief that the thing you are striving for will make you happy? Isn’t that why all of us want what we want? We’ve constructed a sequence of reasoning that says things like: “I’m not happy; I don’t have money or a relationship. If I got them, then I’d be happy.” That’s the future oriented way of struggling for happiness.On the other hand, we sometimes say: “I’m not happy. I had a terrible childhood (or a bad first marriage, or got fired from my first job, or had a bad accident); if I could just reconcile THAT, then I’d be happy.” That’s the past oriented way of struggling for happiness.Both of these ways put our attention outside the Present Moment. We are either focused on something that happened in the past that we need years of therapy to “work through”, or we are focused on something in the future that we need to acquire. Either way, our focus is outside the Present, which is the only time we really ever have. Just think about it: can we ever go back and get into any past moment with our direct perceptions? Can we project ourselves ahead and experience something from the future? No. Our entire experience is contained in this single Present Moment, the only moment of true experience we ever have. We carry this Moment with us through our lives, like a bubble of reality surrounded by a constantly changing sea of Past and Future. Within this Present Moment is our only real experience. When we spend our lives longing for or regretting the past, or striving for a future that never comes, we ignore the one point of personal power that is all we ever have: Right Now.

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