So I started doing “observer drills” – watching the mind pick up on a negative thought strand — sometimes there is a choosing to “up” the frequency … other times, not. Either way, there is intense learning. It's been amazing to watch the mind's incredible ability to weave dramatic and intensely believable and distracting stories within which to get lost. And talk about resistance … Whew! When I get to going on one of these made up versions of reality inside my own head … watch out! And what's makes it even more powerful is to watch “awareness of self” increase as I identify what stories I project out. What freedom to understand that every SINGLE thing I see “out there” is a reflection of me! The outside world shows me, through my judgments about what I'm seeing, where I'm still stuck in some limited idea of who Lynne is. When seen for what it is, the Universe is marvelous in the way it is set up to reveal our inner life. I see it as pure magic.
I have watched the relentless need ego has to be right. “Don't tell me what to do!” says one ego to another… Immediately the other ego takes on a defensive stance; “I'm not telling YOU what to do … you're trying to control me!” – and the fight is on. Both sides are so busy creating the world they believe in that they don't notice that it is their own reaction that is inciting and generating the outcome they unconsciously expect.
A loved one mentioned her decision to no longer frequent a particular eating place in town because, “I don't get along with the owner… she is jealous of me and treats me badly when I eat there… so I'm just not going back. I don't have to put up with people treating me mean.” I listened, without comment … for how was I going to be able to share with her that it was her story about the owner that was mistreating her, not the other person. To say so to an ego who is already looking for a fight can only invite more resistance I could guess that she was reacting out of deeply embedded beliefs that tell her she can't trust the world to be on her side … that say that people are always trying to hurt or take advantage of her, or are trying to belittle her. It's not my job to tell her that by believing these thoughts she will continue to react in unconscious ways that will provide her ample evidence that what she believes is true. It IS my job to understand that I do that very thing too sometimes.
It is our uninvestigated core beliefs that prompt such hostile projections onto others. A core belief is a thought that we've invested belief in — it's a lie that we make true through the reactive and defensive behavior we get into because we believe it. Because we've never questioned it, we believe it to be true. Therefore we act as if it is true. In this way, we cue those around us about the way they need to behave in order to help us verify our core belief.
Let's say, for instance that I have a core belief that the world is dangerous. Having never questioned that thought I go through life seeing the world through that lense. This causes me to interact with others in defensive or paranoid ways. They react accordingly. I then use their response to me as evidence to verify my painful core belief. This allows me to accumulate a long list of evidence that my story about the world is correct. I need even thicker armor in order to “protect” me from a terrifying world. “The world is increasingly hostile”, I think … is it any wonder then that “attack” comes again?
We endlessly re-create our core belief story by reacting out of it. In this way we generate intense misery for ourselves. These innermost and escruciatingly painful beliefs become our daily reality. Without knowing it, we are worshipping at the altar of ego – it rules.