Dropping Beliefs and Finding Balance
Soltar las creencias y encontrar el equilibrio
A student reflects on how the teacher's words about dropping beliefs and attaining balance resonated deeply, leading to a rich exploration of the difference between beliefs and thoughts, the nature of flow, and what it means to act without a sense of lack.
Dropping Beliefs and Finding Balance
A student reflects on how the teacher's words about dropping beliefs and attaining balance resonated deeply, leading to a rich exploration of the difference between beliefs and thoughts, the nature of flow, and what it means to act without a sense of lack.
One thing that struck me as a big deal, something you said about dropping your beliefs and then attaining balance. There's something about that connection. The mechanism in the mind of holding on to beliefs feels like the most perilous journey, as if the boat is going to capsize any second. But the way you connected it to balance just lit something up. These connections feel beyond the mind somehow. I just wanted to point that out.
We can live without beliefs. We can't function without thinking, without thought, but there's a big difference between thoughts and beliefs.
If we know all beliefs are relative, then that's not the kind of belief I'm talking about. I could say, "I believe that if I drop my phone, it's going to hit the floor." That's a way of saying I have a very high degree of confidence in that prediction. But there's also a place where I know there is a possibility it won't happen, because something has been seen about this reality: there's just no certainty.
The belief that sustains the false self
The central belief that causes the imbalance is the kind of belief that solidifies a conceptual sense of self, a mental sense of self. To sustain that function, we need to be constantly out of balance.
It's like a toddler learning to walk. We need to develop that function. But at one point it gets developed enough that we're not practicing balance when we walk. Very occasionally we might trip.
While we're learning to balance, we have to develop some form of strategy that is a binary mechanism: more of this and less of that. I need to sleep a little bit more or a little bit less. I need to talk less and listen more. A toddler will learn this in a very mechanical way. There's not going to be a lot of thinking. As a metaphor, there's going to be a developing of strategies that are somewhat like right or left.
But then, if we grow up with attachments and beliefs about how things are and how they should be, and believe that those are absolute, that they must be this way, what happens is we become convinced. Often those beliefs become unconscious. They're so ingrained. We'll believe we need X or Y in order to be okay. That's the kind of belief I'm talking about, because it's the belief that sustains this conceptual, mental sense of self that is always in opposition, always controlling, always contracting.
Balance restored through the present moment
Most people have developed their functioning well enough that beliefs can be dropped and the functioning will remain. That restores balance, because it comes out of the present moment. Instead of a sense of "I need X in order to be okay," there will be a sense of "I'm okay, everything is well, and right now I need more of X." A minute later, more of Y. "This is the moment for a bit more of this. This is the moment for a bit more of that." But it doesn't come from the sense that something is essentially missing.
This seems really complex, but it's a simple thing. You can inquire with yourself: What do you believe that you need in order to be okay? Not just okay as in "I can handle this," but essentially, fundamentally well. What's missing?
The danger of bypassing
We have to be careful not to bypass, because there can be true desires that need to be heard. For example, somebody who is naturally a writer and has some form of resistance to that deep soul longing because of fear. They might try to be okay while not living out the process of developing that calling, and that's not going to work, because it's going to be based on belief. The resistance to it is going to be a belief: "If I follow this path, my longing of writing, things are going to go wrong, and I need to avoid this to be okay." That's the belief I'm talking about dropping.
It's all kinds of beliefs, and that's why it can be really practical to have conversations where somebody who is in some degree more established in non-belief can spot them and mirror them. But it's really an art, and truthfully it's only the process of one person with themselves. It can be about what you are here for and how you are in all of your relationships.
The work that I propose is the opposite of escaping or avoiding or bypassing any human challenge, because by going through that, we can find what is underneath it. It will seem paradoxical to the mind, but it will be something like this: even in the hardest, most challenging moment, place, situation, fear, pain, or loss, there will be peace and well-being. The mind cannot understand that. It can just be experienced, known, or discovered.
I have a more highly developed mind than average, and it took me months just to try to grasp what I'm talking about. It came like a curveball. It made no sense. How could everything feel so full of wellness and peace in the middle of what I knew to be the most difficult experiences as a person, as a human, what I knew to be my most challenging hells and pains and fears?
I could say simply: it was the dropping of the beliefs about it. Even though it's not something we can do from the mind, it's an invitation to that which is beyond our being. They say "wake up," and then it's even more straightforward to face the challenges of being human. We face them with more integrity, more of an open heart, more caring, more patience toward ourselves and toward others.
It feels like dropping beliefs has a lot to do with being honest. It seems almost inescapable.
Yes, it connects to responsibility, integrity, truth, honesty. I would say that if we follow responsibility to the end, awakening is guaranteed.
The river and the dams
I've been reflecting on this, and it's almost as if balance is synonymous with consciousness. It has to do with dropping the beliefs, because then you can flow. You can move from what you want to do in every aspect, because you don't have ideas like "I'm this way" or "I'm that way" or "I have to do this and I have to do the other."
I was thinking about this the other day, and it came as if I was a river. I got the possibility: it's possible for me to know myself as a river. But if I keep putting boulders in the river and building dams, I'm not going to know myself as a river, because I'm not flowing as a river. I don't relax into that because I'm full of things that distort the river.
Our teacher used to talk about balance quite a bit, but I never thought of it in this different way.
Flowing versus controlling
That metaphor is beautiful: to flow like a river, to be like water. Consciousness is always in balance, and it can also act on itself through being human and having preferences, having desires. If we are aware and awake, those desires will be deeper. They will be the desires of what we, as consciousness, want to do, to live, to explore and experience as human form. It's always changing because the universe is always in movement, and it's always free, because nothing is truly, essentially needed. It's just a dance and an exploration.
We start to become like the river with dams, trying to control the river, when the belief comes in that something is essentially needed that is different from what is. The difference is between the deep knowing that things are essentially okay as they are (and then wanting to flow in a certain direction) and the belief that something's truly not okay and something is needed. Then, to try to move things, it's no longer flowing. I would call it controlling: controlling things in a direction based on that belief.
It's really subtle, the difference between flowing and controlling. The deep desire that comes from what the universe desires through us, versus the desire that comes from the belief that something's not okay and I need this other thing in order to be okay.
The doorway of essential need
For example, the belief that if I don't have more money I won't be okay, I'm not okay. Then there'll be a desire to make more money, but it will come out of contraction, control, and stress. Compare that to knowing that how things are is perfectly okay, that there's a full, sweet satisfaction, but also a desire and an expansion of financial growth that can be experienced as an adventure and an exploration.
Those beliefs about what we feel is essentially needed for us to be okay: that's what we need to explore. It's a doorway. It's the belief that is keeping us attached and trapped.
The same can happen around relationships, and that's where it's a really beautiful ground for learning this. It really opens the door for the joy of exploring where you're most deeply drawn to, without the sense of dread that the fulfillment of it is needed in order to be okay.
Letting go of attachment to the outcome
The Buddhists have this saying, which I think came from the Buddha: let go of the attachment to the outcome of your actions. It's a different way to say the same thing, because then it brings you to the position of: okay, what should my actions be then, if I'm not attached to the outcome? What am I doing? What for? What's the motive if I have no attachment to the outcome? Why do anything? If I'm not trying to fix something that's broken or get something that's essentially missing, why move?
Well, because there is something like the river flowing, or the desire that is beyond the sense of lack.