Jackie writes:
I really appreciated the Tip last week about changing core beliefs.
My question is: what power do unconscious or subconscious beliefs have over us and how can we bring them into awareness in a way that is not overwhelming?
Dear Jackie:
As you’ll recall from my answer to last week’s Tip, I find it useful to talk not so much about “beliefs” but about “a part of me that believes that.”
And yes those parts can definitely be unconscious, subconscious, or to bring in another useful term, exiled.
And yes, from exile and out of awareness, these parts can have great power over our lives.
And although if all were clear and healed and whole this part would not be out of awareness – and many other things would be different – now it is out of awareness for some good reason. Which might well have to do with a fear that it would be overwhelming if brought to awareness. (Another part’s fear, probably.)
How do we bring them to awareness? We start by looking at what isn’t going well in our current lives.
You see, these parts are out of awareness but they do have impact. So we start by looking for the impact.
For example, my writer’s block. I wanted to write. I felt my destiny was to write. But I just didn’t do it.
Rather than give up (although sometimes I thought I should), I persisted. Finally I had the wild idea that there must be a part of me that didn’t want to write.
I couldn’t feel it. I wasn’t aware of it. But when I looked at my life, I could see its power.
So I sat down for a Focusing session where I invited the part of me that didn’t want to write.
And it showed up! And yes I did discover that it had a belief that I had not been aware of… the belief that if I wrote my book, I would be mocked by other people the way my father mocked me when I was a child.
Once brought to light, and held in inner relationship (I compassionately let it know I heard it), that whole thing turned around and melted.
And that experience formed one of the foundations of the Untangling™ work that Barbara McGavin and I do now.
Thank you so much for being there, Ann and Barbara! Please, let me add my comments. Is there a part of me that does not want to be released from being overwhelmed? Is this part worried that something very important would be overlooked over and over again? That it would be forgotten and left in exile? Is it desperately resisting against superficiality and does not know any other way to do so? Is this part somehow being nurtured by the warmth and depth of crying? Does it maybe simulate the feeling of someone being there with? That virtual touch, that missing understanding interlocutor I missed so much as a child? Is this part in need of delusion? Does it ignore effective ways to reality?