Beliefs are the root of all suffering!

Imagine you want to go from one place to another. You have a car and you get into the driver’s seat for your journey. You key in the ignition and start the car. But just as you start to drive you realize the steering wheel is broken and hence you cannot go forward!

Now imagine the car is the physical body. You, the driver, are the soul that incarnates into the body with a purpose and destiny. And the steering wheel is the mind that you use as the bridge between the physical body and you, to steer your vehicle in whichever direction you please. The body, the mind, the soul each has its own language of expression. Words and actions are the language of the body. Beliefs and thoughts are the language of the mind. Feelings and emotions are the language of the soul.

A belief is a deep-rooted thought, held as truth by a section of humanity for so long that it becomes automatic; people don’t even think twice when acting or behaving from their ingrained belief systems. Now imagine how life would be when these deep beliefs held as truths are dysfunctional? Meaning, instead of serving us, they actually do us a disservice. Of course, your car will not go anywhere. It will stay stagnant, mired in your beliefs, diseased and dysfunctional, unless you find a way to repair the steering wheel and get out of your despair. In other words, purge, cleanse, question your beliefs to look them in the eye and really see them, so they can hold no power over you anymore.

The mind is a powerful tool of creation. In fact all creation begins in the mind. Diseases are also manifestations of a mind that is not at ease. The mind is so powerful that whatever thought it holds at any given moment, becomes our truth in that moment and the body acts according to it. If you think someone is hurting you, you may detach from that person or try to hurt them back. Both actions propel from a thought that someone outside of you has hurt you, a thought that occurs in the mind.

Similarly, every action that humanity has ever taken is based on the thoughts they have. This includes people who think the mind is a garbage bin and try to get rid of their thoughts through meditation or whatever other means, those actions also stem from a thought to be more enlightened, to suffer less, to eliminate pain etc. Thoughts have many hues; desires, dreams, fears, anxiety, worry, anger, grief… each produces a distinct feeling and vice versa. A particular thought might produce a certain feeling, which may then create a sensation in the body; you see it is all interlinked, mind, spirit and body: thought, feeling and action.

Any belief good or bad, is either forwarding humanity on its evolution, or keeping it stagnant. Nothing operates outside of the human belief system. Be it our education system, medical system, political system, matrimonial system, financial system, etc. all function under certain beliefs and presumptions held by large sections of humanity to be true. Some beliefs are good and serve us. So we should keep them but others are equally harmful and disserve us. Those we must eradicate. But how to know, which is which? Question everything! Look deeply to see if it serves or disserves you! That is how you will know if it is a functional or dysfunctional belief.

Our society even has a sophisticated way of name-calling for such people. If you start questioning everything, especially the dysfunction that you see everywhere, you will be called a rebel. It is like putting people into boxes, under definitions and categories. We do that all the time with diseases, personalities, characters, but in essence we are all of it and none of it at the same time!  A “rebel” can be a great cleanser of society’s dysfunction, bringing about much needed revolution.

We must understand the mechanisms of creation and how life works at a deeper level than what meets the eye. This has huge implications on the realities we encounter. We are constantly creating our realities by dint of our beliefs and the thoughts we are thinking. When we believe something to be true, we act on it, make choices in accordance with it, build relationships based on it, exercise our will to validate it, all on the basis of that belief we hold so dearly in our hearts. But what if that belief itself is wrong, unhealthy or dysfunctional and incapable of leading us to our truths? Needless to say it here, this is in fact the cause of all the conflicts, wars, racism, bigotry, discrimination and unrest in our world today, because of the beliefs we are operating from. No one is wrong, given their perception of the world, given their perspective of life. But that perception stems from their belief systems, the beliefs ingrained in them since childhood, brainwashed by the society they grew up in. Nonetheless, different societies in the world have different beliefs, and every society perceives their beliefs to be correct and hence get into conflict with others who hold a dissimilar belief system than them. What constitutes a society? Its people. Everyone is acting according to what they think is right and what they think is true, given their model of the world. When women sacrificed their lives in the burning pyres of their husbands in India, that society held the belief that without her husband a woman is nothing, her life invalid, void. Until someone came and pointed out the obvious; well it was not obvious at that time when a huge section of humanity were acting in accordance with that belief system. But the courage of one man who called it wrong, changed the entire mechanism of the society. Sati is now a crime! Why? It is because eventually that section of society evolved as a whole to hold a larger belief and higher understanding that it is not necessary for a woman to die at the pyre of her husband. But it took the tenacity and audacity of one individual to fight against it and eradicate such a dysfunctional belief system. The rest of humanity was just waiting in misery until that one rebel, one revolutionary being saw the truth for what it was, refused to be dictated by it, and spent his life fighting for others.

What was held to be true some hundred years ago by a huge section of our society, is viewed as wrong and inhuman today. And perhaps what is held as true and dear today by humanity will be laughed at by our future generations. That’s how it works with beliefs. We have to be willing to see what is working and what is not, what serves us and what does not. It should not take so much time to make changes, costing the lives of thousands in the process. Entire lifetimes are wasted in suffering and battling these belief systems, when our energies could be channeled toward higher pursuits, more creative and intuitive progress of our civilization here on earth. The moment you change your perception is the moment you rewrite the history of humanity’s future! 

We have a lot of inherent beliefs mired in our human consciousness that are the hardest to work with. Religious beliefs or relationship dynamics are for example the most ingrained, automatic and dysfunctional in our society at large. Every religion proclaims theirs is the right way, the righteous path and all others are wrong; wars have been fought in the name of religion, blood has been shed in the name of god, numerous lives sacrificed in the name of heresy. So much abuse and domestic violence happens under the umbrella of marriage, genital mutilations in the name of tradition, and I can go on and on, citing examples of destructive actions that stem from dysfunctional belief systems and limiting thought patterns in our society.

Every interaction, every situation, every circumstance, every setting stems from our belief systems, because the individuals at play in any game, are bringing to plate their own beliefs and acting from that space. So then the question remains, how those beliefs should be shaped! Just a question?!

I invite you to reassess your beliefs and look deeply at what is happening in lieu of what you think is happening! Is there a difference, by the way?!

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