The ‘Forget Me Knot’ Of Limiting Beliefs
A universal experiential truth shared by people the world over time is the experience of feeling at one with the world around them and, even if for just a moment, feeling boundaryless. This feeling of oneness is not something we need anyone or anything to achieve. It is as natural as falling off a log. It arises from the primal experience of being aware of our lives. As we consciously recognise that we are aware, we fuse with this background to all our experiences and naturally feel at peace. All we have to do is let go of the other experiences, such as thinking and bodily sensations, and sink back into it. This is the birthright of all human beings. It is the "throne "upon which all people's lives sit, whether or not they know it. All spiritual teachers have taught this. Much psychology is about helping return people to this sense of 'wholeness'.
Most of us are brought up to believe this and are consciously or subconsciously looking for this sense of happiness and wholeness outside. We will subtly find our minds experiencing thoughts that suggest "it will be alright when" such and such a thing happens. This can be some kind of event in the future or to try and find the cause of their current suffering in some sort of clear cause they can find in the past. "It will be alright when I get this money", "It will be alright when I have understood the events that have caused my current suffering", etc. In all such cases, although it appears the mind is being put to constructive use, in fact, it is being put to destructive use. This searching for happiness in the past or the future is a vain attempt to "fix" the perceived suffering of the present. It is, in reality, a vicious reinforcing circle that causes even more anxiety. Every time we focus our attention on such thoughts, we feel small, separate, vulnerable, and need to be fixed. This is one way to deal with the issue of survival in a body that we all have. It is the most common way, and in fact, our entire culture has reinforced this way as normal. Our economy is built upon this way of dealing with survival. It is a fix-it economy. We are constantly trying to fix the suffering of human beings. As mental rumination is exhausting our minds and bodies, so is the fix-it economy draining our planet. As we observe the characteristic of these "it will be alright when thoughts", they all suspiciously have one thing in common. They all personalise our existence and locate our personage in time.
I call this the "Spacetime Self".
This small "Spacetime Self" is in stark contrast to the peaceful, happy, boundless self that we experience when we become aware of our awareness that is the backdrop to all our lives.
I call this the "Natural Self".
As we wake each day, the primary question is, "do I believe I am body located in spacetime?" If we do, then we have the job of resolving the anxiety of existence this belief will give rise to. This anxiety is ultimately rooted in the fact that we are basing our whole notion of self on a small physical body that we know is vulnerable and will eventually die. Therefore, subconsciously, we are constantly battling the fear of our annihilation. Such daily fears that arise such as "Will I find someone to love me" "Am I loveable at all" "Will I lose my job and be broke and homeless and die alone" "Are my friends abandoning me, and will I die alone", "Is there something fundamentally wrong with me that prevents me from being happy" etc., are all just reflections of this fundamental existential fear. This is like living with a hole in the core of our being that we are constantly trying to fill either with the thought that we think will fix it or stuff that we think will fix it (such as food, sex, money, holidays, cars etc.). However, if we choose to believe these thoughts that the self is a small personalised body in space and time, this will be our task.
Another option is to see that the deeper purpose of these "spacetime thoughts" of a "Spacetime Self" that creates a lot of psychological suffering is not to send us on an endless drive to "fix it" but is to remind us to let go and fall back into the "Natural Self" we were all the time and is innately whole as it is and does not need fixing at all and never did. We can see these "spacetime thoughts" as a cosmic "forget me knot" that reminds us to let go and remember our Natural Self.
There is no limitation for the Natural Self, whereas there is only limitation for the Spacetime Self. For most of us, even though we may experience moments of this boundless Natural Self, we habitually find ourselves thinking small due to a lifetime of habitual spacetime thinking and believing to be a Spacetime Self. Therefore, we have a task to perform, which is to reinforce our understanding to be a Natural Self so that remembering this becomes our natural condition rather than an unusual state. (I will talk about this reinforcement process in later blogs). Of course, as a Natural Self, we still have the task to look after our body and mind. We will still have to take responsibility for doing this, but not identifying ourselves with the body (and therefore being a Spacetime Self) over time has a marked effect on the motivations for our actions. As the Natural Self, knowing and feeling ourselves to be inherently whole, we can choose those activities in freedom that support this innate wholeness. As a Spacetime Self, we are more like puppets on a string, constantly reacting to circumstances to try and fix our internal fear.
If we can see each morning that we are identifying as a body and let go of this identification, watch what happens to our fear. See how the mind clarifies and leaves us free to choose those activities that we desire to do responsibly and celebrate our creativity. Understanding this is the subject of my course, the Natural Self.
