Challenge Your Beliefs

DO YOU CONTROL YOUR BELIEFS OR DO YOUR BELIEFS CONTROL YOU?

What do you believe? Does it really matter? After all, beliefs are just a feeling of certainty about what something means, right? Beliefs, however, can be powerful little devils that may either support your way of being in the world and your quality of life, or harm it. So it’s a good idea to periodically scrutinize your beliefs and determine whether they should stay or go.

Types of Beliefs:

1) Core beliefs that have been with you since you can remember. Core beliefs have adhered themselves to your psyche. They have a significant impact on your quality of life. Core beliefs shape your values. They comprise your reality. Core beliefs include what you believe about yourself, as well as your general or global beliefs about the world and people;

2) New beliefs crop up as you experience new things. You play around with new beliefs for awhile before deciding whether they either support or tear down your current beliefs. Solidifying new beliefs generally happens subconsciously—something an alert, present and happy person should avoid.

The point is to bring awareness to what input you accept and what beliefs you choose to adopt, in order to increase your spiritual growth and your appreciation of daily life.

I Believe…

Where did your core beliefs originate? Were you born with them? Let’s hope not. Your core beliefs took root in childhood and developed through the feedback you got from those you encountered, especially: parents, relatives, teachers, school, church and friends. In other words, your beliefs manifested from your environment. Such a supposition grants validity to the old adage, you are who your friends are. That’s why your mother told you to choose your friends carefully!

Luckily, you are not stuck with your beliefs for life. It may seem like they are just part of you, like your genetic makeup, but they are not. You have the power to change your beliefs as you see fit.

Challenging a General Belief that Genes Control Life

Because I am completely unqualified to tackle scientific stuff, I thought it would be interesting to use a scientific example.

Take this example that:  genes manage our physical makeup, control proclivities for disease or health, and thus direct our destiny. Left unquestioned, we tend to believe that the gene-control theory is “the truth.” But the assertion that genes control life is false, according to Bruce Lipton, former medical school professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Stanford University and author of The Biology of Belief, Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter and Miracles.

In his book, Lipton says that our environment, not our genes, control cells and by extrapolation, life. Our cells turn out to be rather smart and can teach us how to live, according to Lipton. (The Biology of Belief p.153)

Cell Biology and Quantum Physics Unite and Spawn “Epigenetics”

How environmental signals select, modify and regulate gene activity is called “epigenetics.”“ Lipton describes genes as merely molecular blueprints used for constructing cells, tissues and organs. Physical and energetic environments control a cell’s life, states Lipton. “It is a single cells “awareness” of the environment that primarily sets into motion the mechanisms of life.” The implication: as a single cell goes, so goes the 50 trillion cells that make up a human being, i.e. “the character of our lives is determined not by our genes but by our responses to the environmental signals that propel life.” (The Biology of Belief, Prologue.)

What’s the Point?

Since thoughts, beliefs and matter (our bodies) are all forms of energy, then they all must work in concert to run this private little show called being an individual human. Since our cells adapt and change of their own accord in response to environmental influences, so too, must we adapt and change our beliefs to reflect the environment we wish to inhabit and control.

Now take a turn with your beliefs. Pick one and hold it up to the light. Do you believe it when you see it; or do you see it when you believe it?  (Dr. Wayne Dyer aphorism.)