How exactly do you examine your beliefs, what does examining beliefs entail?

[SamQ91]

@Christopher

What matters, the only thing that ever matters, is why you believe it in the present.

So going on from what I said above… I had a kind of spontaneous realisation yesterday while arguing with my partner over some fears I have which I realised was coming from certain beliefs that I used to exercise in my past in relation to an ex partner. I still have not quite worked out how the beliefs caused the event that took place yesterday but I can see how they cause me fear in the present. This kind of past ‘working out’ is quite different from sitting there and grilling into your past purposely looking for beliefs, right? (I hope this make sense)

[SamQ91]

@Christopher

You can deliberately, willfully think thoughts and generate emotion and imagine things to create something that you have conflicting beliefs about, but it will be really difficult, and seem like a chore all the time. You’ll be fighting it. An upstream battle. But if you change the belief the thoughts and emotions will flow naturally.

So (in my own words) what your saying is that constantly thinking positive thoughts and trying to be happy and positive all the time in general is exhausting (and I have attenpted this and it does feel like a chore after a while but I thought I must have been doing it wrong so I stopped)…but just simply
Noticing the thoughts/beliefs in the moment and changing them is easier, or less of a chore. Am I right?

[Christopher]

It is not exhausting with the proper beliefs, but effortless, because the beliefs generate the thoughts and emotions. Forcing them with detrimental beliefs in place is exhausting.

Yes I heartily recommend changing the belief instead. Many times I’ve tried to force the positive attitude about something, even for weeks on end, and in one short 15 minute or so really deliberate introspective session realized I believed a silly thing, and completely transformed how I felt from then on. Yes it is definitely worth it.

You have to remember the core steps: do not identify with your beliefs/thoughts/emotions, you have them but you are not them, you can change them to your liking. Your beliefs are available, in the present, in the conscious mind - that is, the waking part of your mind you use every day, even though you may have formulated the belief (think about it like a judgement if that helps) minutes ago and are no longer thinking about it, it’s still there and accessible. Some may be invisible to you because you are thinking of them as facts of reality. Be on guard. Anything you think of as a fact is a belief. Simply be on guard to this and you will be able to see what you often see through. Seth calls these invisible beliefs, accessible but not noticed. You only have to be on guard, and they will become visible. And of course, finally, you can change these beliefs.

Incidentally, you change those beliefs by applying the deliberately / willfully forced imagination, thought and emotion mentioned earlier, except now you are aware of the belief and you are telling yourself, “this is not necessarily true even though I believe it”. You move thought in this way, you propel ideas. Change beliefs.

This repeats what I just said above, but you may find this post I wrote with exact steps for changing a belief helpful: Child stuck on fearful, anxious thoughts

[SamQ91]

@Christopher

Incidentally, you change those beliefs by applying the deliberately / willfully forced imagination, thought and emotion mentioned earlier, except now you are aware of the belief and you are telling yourself, “this is not necessarily true even though I believe it”. You move thought in this way, you propel ideas. Change beliefs.

The trick in my experience is to remember to do this. I often get so caught up in physical events when I’m feeling blue that I forget all positive reinforcement. This frustrates me because I wish more than anything to be able to remember no matter what the mantras and exercises that would help free me every time! Thank you Chris, I have gotten a lot out of your words and will apply them as best I can. Also, sorry for confusing you with another earlier, at the time I did feel like something was not right in assuming that Chris was yourself

[Nickolai]

Well,

“Our external relationships mirror the relationship with our inner self”.
that is inetersting.

I used to be very communicative person and usually got well with others. Now due to some circumstances I am not. The question is then do I have problems with my inner self then? I ask because I find myself deep in trouble right now.

I guess I will write a separate message to discribe and ask for an advise.

Any thoughts?

Warm regards to everyone,

Nickolai

[Chriss]

using your own thinking, imagine what you would advise a friend in your situation. This is solution oriented and why we can quite often see a clearer path for others.
be objective.

[Mirajane]

Chris, This the clearest explanation I have ever read! I was actually able to access one of my long held beliefs (basically that if you go to the wrong kindergarten, grammar school, on up, you will not be able to get into the "“old boy network”, no matter how hard you work.) Just now examples of why this is not always true came into my mind. I had always qualified the exceptions before, but after reading your step by step method, I can see this belief melting. BIG thank you!

[Christopher]

Just quoting myself from that other topic.

@Christopher

First of all, thoughts cannot be “stopped”, that is impossible. And trying to do so would be extremely frustrating and panic inducing I would expect. You can however think opposite thoughts. You might already know this, but for the sake of anyone reading that might not.

Second, we only wage war against things that are strong and powerful and need to be fought. Thoughts don’t need to be fought. Fighting them only reinforces the belief that they are powerful and must be defeated.

I would tell your daughter that it is okay to have “bad” thoughts. My understanding is that a major reason we are on Earth is precisely so that we may have thoughts that work against our desires without any negative consequences of an immediate nature. We are given a large buffer of time to pivot back toward something more constructive.

Furthermore, reality is not “neutral”. It is naturally biased toward the constructive. Good things will happen completely without our intervention, and being calm also naturally leads us into positive areas.

I am talking about external reality but let’s also talk about internal reality for a moment. There are layers to the self (not truly, but for sake of explanation). Hopefully I don’t muddle terms too much here, but the inner self has an “ideal” blueprint of your body’s condition. This is built-in. Your conscious mind is the boss, as we know from Seth’s teachings, what it says goes. If it believes that the body is faulty in an area, that message is received by the inner self, which does the actual work of reality creation, but it takes that image the conscious mind is sending it “there is a fault”, and it compares it to its own knowledge of the ideal condition “there is no fault”, and it notices the discrepancy. It then sends this knowledge back to the conscious mind, in intuitions, and dream symbols - to correct the beliefs involved so that they once again match the inner self’s own depiction of itself. Now you must believe that this information is available to you (it is) in order to receive it, if we don’t then we will block it out, but it is there nonetheless.

And even on top of this the body consciousness is geared toward health, and robust. Our beliefs will indeed manifest reality - otherwise we would never learn, but we have designed ourselves such that the body will often retain its health regardless through many means. So you see even the inner self has built-in safety mechanisms that are naturally inclined toward goodness.

Steps to change a belief:

1. Know that we are not our beliefs, nor our thoughts, they are simply things we have.
2. Know that our beliefs are not necessarily facts just because we believe them, they are not reality, they are only our ideas about reality. Stay aware of this, what we think simply “is” is actually a belief. Pay attention to the things that are thought of as simply “true”, these are beliefs that aren’t recognized as beliefs.
3. Now that we’ve started to see these aspects of our experience not as facts but as beliefs, and we’ve begun to separate our identity from them, we can begin to call their authenticity into question, repeat “just because I believe this does not necessarily make it true”.
4. There are a lot of methods here, you can begin to critically break the belief apart, reasons why it might not be true, and have it fall to pieces under your analysis, or, you can forcibly imagine what you desire, and feel the positive emotions flowing from that imagining, and use these and thought to substitute the belief with the better one. Or, you could make a mantra out of the new belief, repeating a particular suggestion.

There is no need for this to be difficult, many issues are simply unexamined, you need only poke at them a little bit and they will fall apart and the entire emotional and imaginative environment around the issue will be changed. When the belief is altered, positive, constructive thoughts will begin flowing automatically, and these will manifest the desired reality.

[Whirled_Peas]

Late to this discussion but…for me, it is just an opportunity to get a clearer picture of “why” I am doing what I am doing. Seems just about everything is “belief” driven, and if everything is an illusion, then the engine to it all is ones “beliefs.”