If change is what is needed in my life, then I need to change. But how to change? Where to start?
Things do not need to be perfect to begin. In fact, if they were perfect, I would never need to change.
It reminds me of so many of the hindrances I put up in my life:
– I often postponed starting to read a book because I did not have a “good enough” bookmark.
– I avoided organizing my papers because I don’t have the perfect container to put my papers into.
– I postponed starting something because I don’t know “enough” about what I want do, or where I wanted to go, or how to get where I am going, even though I know I need to start.
All of these judgments that stop me, that block me, that hurt me… they are all embedded in my mind. All of them are habits of thought I have allowed myself to be brainwashed about. They are not real, but I have believed them to be real. And I deluded myself for so many years about what is real and what is not.
So determining what is real, and what is not, is a difficult endeavor. In fact, in my view, it is probably the hardest task most humans will even encounter. Because we are programmed to believe things that are not real.
From birth we are inculcated into believing certain things to be true when they are not. Think of the millions of people in the world who believe in some religious ideas that you find strange and bizarre. Think of the millions of people in the world who believe in various political constructions that you find weird and just wrong-headed. They all believe in what environment they were born into regardless of how others judge and reject their ways.
And so it is with us. Millions of people in the world perceive what we believe in… religious, political, social, cultural, or otherwise, to be just down-right off.
And with one’s beliefs, people build their own realities, their own justifications, their own excuses and rationalizations. And it is through these mechanisms that we hinder ourselves from living fully. We cannot see the reality of how things really are because we are already blinded by our belief systems.
So how would one break this cast iron hold on oneself? How can we see things as they are?
How would YOU break out of the stranglehold of beliefs so you can live a freer life? Send a comment at Contact.
The “A Chart of the World: exhibiting the prevailing religion and population of the present empires, kingdoms and states: also the principal missionary stations throughout the globe, 1842” was published in Hartford, Connecticut by H. Frederick Sumner. Coutesy New York Public Library.
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