Session 622

Personal Reality, Session 622

You also communicate your beliefs to others, of course.  When visitors enter your home, they do not see it exactly as you do because they also view it through the screen of their beliefs.  In your own environment however your personal beliefs will usually predominate.

People with like ideas reinforce each other’s beliefs.  You may meet with some misunderstanding when you suddenly decide to change your reality by changing your beliefs – according to the circumstances, you may be going in a completely different direction than the group to which you belong.  The others may feel it necessary to defend ideas that all of you previously took for granted.  In such cases your beliefs merged.  Each individual has his or her own ideas about reality for reasons that seem valid.  Needs are met.  When you abruptly change your beliefs, then in the group you no longer have the same position – you are not playing that game any longer.

In the group, you may suddenly cease to provide for the others a need that you satisfied earlier.  This affects both intimate behavior and, say, social interactions.

For a time then you may experience a feeling of loss as you move from one group of beliefs to another.  However, others, sharing your new beliefs, will gravitate toward you and you to them.  I will say more about this later in the book, but it explains for example why a diet-watcher, suddenly determined to lose weight, may meet with veiled or even open resistance from family or friends; why the person who makes new resolutions may find himself baffled by associate’s ridicule; why the alcoholic trying not to drink finds others tempting him quite openly, or teasing him into indulgence by hidden tactics.

When someone who has been ill starts on the road to recovery through changing his beliefs, he may be quite surprised to find even his dearest allies suddenly upset, reminding him of the “reality” of his dire state for the same reasons.

Because beliefs form reality – the structure of experience – any change in beliefs altering that structure initiates change to some extent, of course.  The status quo which served a certain purpose is gone, new elements are introduced, another creative process begins.  Because your private beliefs are shared with others, because there is interaction, then any determined change of direction on your part is felt by others, and they will react in their own fashion.

You are setting out to experience the most fulfilled reality that you can.  To do this you have, hopefully, begun to examine your beliefs.  You may want others to change.  In doing so you begin with yourself.  I told you (in the 619^th session) to imagine a game in which you see yourself acting in line with the new desired belief.  As you do so, see yourself affecting others in the new fashion.

See them reacting to you in the new way.  This is highly important because telepathically you are sending them interior messages.  You are telling them that you are changing the conditions and behavior of your relationship.  You are broadcasting your altered position.

Some will be quite able to understand you at that level.  There may be those who need the old framework, and someone, if not you, to play the part you played before.  Those people will either drop out of your experience or you must drop them from yours.

Once more, if you think of daily life as an ever-moving three-dimensional painting with you as the artist, then you will realize that as your beliefs change so will your experience.  You must accept the idea completely, however, that your beliefs form your experience.  Discard those beliefs that are not bringing you those effects you want.  In the meantime you will often be in the position of telling yourself that something is true in the face of physical data that seems completely contradictory.  You may say, “I live amid abundance and am free from want,” while your eyes tell you that the desk is piled with bills.  You must realize that you are the one who produced that “physical evidence” that still faces you, and you did so through your beliefs.

So as you alter the belief, the physical evidence will gradually begin to “prove” your new belief as faithfully as it did your old one.  You must work with your own ideas.  While there are general categories of beliefs, and general reasons for them, you must become personally aware of your own, for no one person is completely like any other.  The old beliefs served a purpose and fulfilled a need.

As mentioned earlier you may have believed that of itself poverty was more spiritual than abundance, or that you were basically unworthy and should therefore punish yourself by being poor.  (See the 614^th session in Chapter Two, for instance.)

According to your energy, power and intensity, you can help change the beliefs of many people, of course.

In your daily physical life you are usually concerned simply with changing your beliefs about yourself, and then changing the beliefs others hold about you.  You will find conflicting beliefs within yourself and you must become aware of these.  As an example, you may believe that you want to understand the nature of your inner self – you may tell yourself you want to remember your dreams, but at the same time still hold a belief in the basic unworthiness of the self, and be quite frightened of remembering your dreams because of what you might find there.

It does no good in such a case to bemoan the situation and say, “I want to understand myself but I’m frightened that I will not like what I find.”  You yourself must change your beliefs.  You must stop believing that the inner self is a dungeon of unsavory repressed emotion.  It does contain some repressed emotion.  It also contains great intuition, knowledge, and the answers to all of your questions.

Listen to your own conversation as you speak with friends, and to theirs.  See how you reinforce each other’s beliefs.  See how your imaginations often follow the same lines.  All of this is quite out in the open if you realize that it is.

Almost everyone in this society is acquainted with the old suggestion, “Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.”  Now that is an excellent suggestion, given by the conscious self to other portions of your being.  The results of such a suggestion would also follow your conscious beliefs, however.

Earlier I used, “I am a dependable parent”, as an example of a belief.  (see the 618^th session in Chapter Three.)  If to you this means, “I give great attention to seeing that my children brush their teeth, eat enough, and perform properly,” then you will interpret the “better and better” suggestion in that light.

If the belief means to you that love for children is best expressed in those terms, if you feel that there is something embarrassing about expressing affection directly, then the “better and better” suggestion may only reinforce that belief.

You may become more and more efficient in that manner.  This is why it is vital that you examine your beliefs for yourself and understand what they mean to you personally.  If, using that example, you suddenly begin to realize your position and begin to express your love to your children directly, you may find them quite surprised, delighted but confused.  It may take them a while to understand your reactions, but as the old reality had a cohesiveness so will the new.

You must therefore understand and examine your beliefs, realize that they form your experience, and consciously change those that do not give the effects you want.  In such an examination you will be aware of many excellent beliefs that work for you.  Trace these through.  See how they were followed by your imagination and emotions.  If possible, look in your own past for points where recognizable new ideas came to you and beneficially changed your experience.

Ideas not only alter the world constantly, the make it constantly.