By Trish Briggs
Everything we experience in life is directly linked to our belief system.
Beliefs are the byproduct of memories, perceptions, judgments, and desires. This includes the verbal, nonverbal, visible, invisible, along with the associated energy and intention buried within. Beliefs precede our actions and provide structure for the way we live our lives. We skew our perspective on different experiences in such a way as to reinforce our belief systems. This is human nature.
Our most deeply held beliefs are found in the subconscious. They were implanted when we were very young, and from them grew other beliefs creating a complicated interwoven belief system. (I see it as a tangled ball of yarn in my mind that needs to be untangled.) Many times as adults, this created belief system makes no logical sense to us; it was based on an erroneous childhood belief, that if it ever served us, no longer does.
Unfortunately, we lack full awareness of these original childhood beliefs and take them into adulthood. They form the basis for our decisions and attitudes about self and others. (If we don’t understand why we are behaving in a certain way, it may be due to subconscious beliefs influencing us that we are unaware of.)
During my own work healing beliefs, I have found that subconscious beliefs are the more difficult beliefs to bring to the surface or into my consciousness to work with. When I got to the root of several childhood beliefs, I discovered that most formed around one word or the intonation of how something was said. My childish interpretation then did the rest. How easily and quickly the beliefs formed surprised me.
I will share an example. The word FIRST was used in relation to care and demonstrated over and over by the actions of my mother, resulting in the implanted childhood belief, “First care for others, then care for self.” My child brain latched onto the word ‘first’ and interpreted that I was not worthy to be first and incorporated it as strand in the tangled ball or yarn labeled “self-esteem/worthiness.” Tangled in this ball was my current self-care behavior. I knew all the right reasons for self-care as an adult, wanted it in my life, but could not consistently do it. Once I understood that the reason was because I didn’t feel worthy of self-care, it all made sense (in its own skewed way). I had to work on my worthiness, to incorporate self-care into my routine.
I had to ask why does this happen? This is what I learned and wanted to share with you.
During a child’s first six to seven years of life, he/she is absorbing everything like a sponge. From a brain development perspective, the child’s brain from age 2- 6 years old is primarily functioning in theta (7-8 Hz.) waves for most of the time. Theta waves create a highly suggest-able programmable state, like a hypnotic state, aka the sponge effect (Lipton, p. 173-175).
The child is forming beliefs about self, others, and the world around them that will be taken into adulthood. Typically, this is all happening unconsciously and being stored into the subconscious. As the child watches and participates in the reality of what is his/her world, the actions and words of others are being absorbed and implanted naturally and unconsciously into his/her brain as beliefs about how the world/people function. This also includes the energy and intentions buried within the words and actions.
We need to understand that during this time, the child is in an egocentric developmental state. This translates to a state without any skills in discernment, only partially developed empathy, and little understanding of another’s perspective (Nikki Gresham-Record, p. 96). This is unfortunate because there is no discernment between fact, fiction, and opinion. As a result, everything is absorbed, including the healthy and unhealthy, and given meaning in the child’s structure of his/her reality. There is no filter.
This is a crucial period for the highly intuitive child. Our greatest influence lies during these years when the child is building his/her foundation of how the world works around him/her. This is our opportunity as parents, to help our child’s foundation build in a healthy conscious and natural way, instead of allowing the process to occur unconsciously through the lens of our child’s egocentric (and intuitive) perspective. It is extremely important that we are mindfully aware of our behaviors and the environment that we are creating for our children. This may require us, the parents to work on our own self-awareness (if we haven’t already done so), to accomplish this in conscious manner.
RESOUCES CITED:
Gresham-Record, Nikki (2019). Working with Chakras for Belief Change: The Healing In Sight Method. Findhorn Press: Rochester, VT.
Lipton, Bruce (2015). The Biology of Belief (10th anniversary edition). Hay House, Mountain of Love Production. USA.
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