Holistic Movement Center
845 Napa Ave, #A Morro Bay, CA 93442 Ph:
(805)-909-1401
On Beliefs..
Beliefs can be very powerful. They have a great effect on a person’s success, failure and experience of life. Some beliefs can help you and other can sabotage you. Some beliefs you are quite aware of, and others are so hidden and so ingrained in your conditioning that it becomes extremely difficult to identify them.
A belief is a feeling of certainty about what something means. It carries conviction. However, a belief is different than a truth. If a tree falls and every one sees it fallen, the truth is - it has fallen. We all will agree on that fact. However, why the tree has fallen may arise speculation. Some may say it had grown old and sick. Other may say it was the wind that knocked it down. Yet soil specialists may say that the earth was unsupportive and the tree’s roots couldn’t go as deep as they should have to support the tree. Whatever one believes about the faith of the tree, one can find evidence to support that belief, which in turn solidifies the belief even more.
The history of civilization is the story of the beliefs originated or adopted by influential individuals. Every political movement, every religion, every philosophy, every cult, every revolution has its beginning in the confidante expression of a belief or a belief system. When a single statement, or comment attracts the attention of enough people, who than go on to repeat it, it spreads and acquires the status of knowledge. As such it can be used to support the development of further beliefs.
So, belief systems seem to be a natural evolutionary process. Over time, certain individuals, families, groups, tribes, or governments develop a strong vested interest in extolling certain belief systems. Thus the belief wars began. When one group saw the power and influence conveyed to them by their special belief systems eroded by the introduction of competing belief systems, their young man were painfully indoctrinated with the group’s beliefs and formed into armies. Wars seldom address whose beliefs would create better experiences for the people, but are more a contest of whose belief systems will win and survive. In the end the rightness of a belief is determined by the fierceness of its believers.
As individuals, we all operate under a number of belief systems – political, spiritual, philosophical, religious, which all combine to create the character of your logic, mode of operation and life choices. Consider the question: Are your beliefs shaped by your experiences, or are your experiences shaped by your beliefs? This is a trick question worth dwelling upon.
According to science, when a baby is in the mother’s womb, it is aware, but it is not self-aware. It seems to also be the case in the first few days, or weeks of a newborn baby’s life. Out of that you become who you are and we all become something different. The first cry you had because of hunger, and your need was met you learned cause and effect. You also learned to be self-aware. The “I” was born, and that’s the first letter of the Ego. The first time your mother decided you should eat at 8 am, 12 noon, 4 pm and 8 pm you learned to conform to rules. The first time your mother decided that it was time for formula rather than mother’s milk you learned to trust other people’s choices for you. You now have the belief that “Mother knows best.” You live with this all your life, wondering why your mother makes rotten choices, struggling to feel free in a world of rules which you believe are necessary for order and safety in society and yet you feel inhibited, unhappy, unfulfilled. Your relationships are little contracts for fulfilling expectations, and when those expectations are not fulfilled, you suffer, you struggle, you argue, you even leave just to find your self in a similar situation a little later.
A pillar of the psychoanalytic community Elvin Semard believed that in order to be fully alive, it was important to explore all facets of the self’s experience. He said one “must come to acknowledge, experience and bear the reality of his life – both the painful reality and the pleasurable reality of it. Than he can finally put into perspective the feelings that arise in the process of living.” This process involves the confrontation and examination of ones belief systems and paradigms. The process itself can be extremely intense and for a lot of people, impossible to complete. To succeed one needs tools. Tools are widely available from psychoanalyses, to drugs, to psychics, to complicated processes that claim to help you identify all your beliefs and discard the harmful ones and install useful ones to program you for success and to protect your from failure. Do they work… some do better than others, some cost a lot of money, some only create a new layer of stuff over your old stuff, kind of like positive thinking. Over time the bag you carry along gets bigger and bigger and heavier and heavier.
And than there is yoga…. Yoga psychology gets very specific about the exact nature of the conditioning that keeps us ensnared in delusion about our true nature. The classical scriptures identify 5 afflictions (kleshas). These are conditioned beliefs and behaviors that keep us bound to “gross apparent reality.”
They are: Avidya (Ignorance), Asmita (I-ness, me and mine), Raga (Attraction, seeking pleasure), Dvesha (Aversion), Adhinivesha (Clinging to life and fearing death, the survival instinct of the ego).
These 5 afflictions are seen as being in kind of cause and effect sequence and are listed in the order in which they arise. Ignorance is the ground from which all other afflictions arise. Out of it arises the I-ness, the belief in and clinging to a separate small “self”. Out of it arise attraction and aversion - I like, and I dislike, I favor and I disagree. Out of this inevitably arises the clinging to life the way “I know it, like it, understand it.”
In addition to the five affliction, the scriptures also identify four erroneous beliefs that sustain the delusion of the kleshas. These are:
When our vision of reality is colored by the five afflictions and the four erroneous beliefs, we live in delusion. Funny thing is that from within this delusion we struggle to “reprogram” our selves, to improve, to find peace and meaningful relationships. It is practically impossible. It’s like looking for guavas in the frozen lands of Iceland. You can import a few guavas into Iceland, but the sweetest tasting guavas grow under the sun of the tropics with the nurturing waters of gentle rain, lulled by the misty breeze.
The regular practice of yoga helps us still the mind and get a glimpse of who we truly are. It helps things from the unconscious babble up to the consciousness giving us an opportunity to transcend out habitual patterns of behavior, re-examine our beliefs and presenting us with the choice to change.
Amrit Desay – the founder of Kripalu yoga once said – “We are like people walking around a room with the lights off. We are attempting to move around and live in this room without light. So, naturally we bump into things, and into each other. We continually hurt ourselves and others. And we feel a sense of dissatisfaction and pain. We are deluded because we thing that our fundamental dilemma is that there is something wrong with this place that we are in. Even more painfully, we thing that there is something wrong with ourselves. Actually, there is nothing wrong. If we could simply turn on the lights, we would see reality more clearly. The solution is so simple: illuminate the landscape. With the light of vidya (knowledge) we might align our movements and our behavior with the way things really are and we could be quite content and effective in living life in this very same reality. Cutting through avidya (ignorance) we simply turn on the lights. One problem, one solution.”
