By Cathy Eck
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
Are All Beliefs Lies? Really, Cathy?
People say to me all the time, “Cathy, do you really mean ALL beliefs are lies? Aren’t there some exceptions?” They are shocked when I respond with “YES, according to esoteric wisdom, all beliefs are technically lies.” Beliefs are meant to be creative tools. They were designed to be personal, purposeful, and most important, temporary.
I use some pretty radical terminology in calling all beliefs lies because I found that I had to get painfully real with my own mind in order to get it to let go of my own beliefs. We are all highly convinced that our beliefs are the absolute truth. I don’t mean the word lie in a bad way. I use the word lie because it is encoded within the word belief. Lie simply means untrue.
Once we accept a belief as true, we no longer use our discrimination. Yet we can easily see that other people’s beliefs are just not true. In fact, we often think that other people’s beliefs are just plain silly.
Now don’t get me wrong. Our beliefs look very real because beliefs are creative tools. They create reality whether we want them to or not. We’ve all seen evidence of beliefs of all kinds manifesting in the world. This is why we get confused. We think that reality is equal to the truth.
Pure truth is universal; beliefs are not universal. We can’t let go of truth; but we can let go of beliefs. And when we do, we return to truth, which is universally perfect for everyone.
In the false world of duality, it appears that our own beliefs are the truth, but other people’s beliefs look just plain stupid.
Why Did I Want To Delete My Beliefs?
I wanted to delete my own beliefs because I could see that beliefs are all win-lose. Either I lost or someone else did. That didn’t seem like a brotherly-sisterly way to live life. Most beliefs don’t work for everyone. They don’t support the Golden Rule.
I hated when people imposed their beliefs on me, and I didn’t want to do that to others. I didn’t like being judged; so I wanted to eliminate my judgments of others. And most of all, I wanted to get rid of my fear and anger at others who felt that I should believe their beliefs. In short, I wanted to live my life.
None of us like when someone of a religious or political persuasion imposes their rigid beliefs on us. We don’t want their sermon. We don’t want their rules. We don’t like having to tell them that their beliefs don’t work for us. So why do people do that? They do it because they have become brainwashed and lost their discrimination regarding beliefs. They’ve been trained to think that their beliefs are true.
Beliefs have become very complex since they first entered our world. People have been pretending that beliefs were true and selling them to the masses for thousands of years. If a belief had a large enough following, proof of it would show up in the world. The people would start to label it as true. But it was not true; and if we let go of the belief, the proof does disappear.
The world of beliefs, often called the illusion, is 180 degrees in appearance from the true, non-dual world. But we don’t see that until we let go of our beliefs. When we have beliefs, they veil our senses; and we see the projection of the beliefs in the world. When we don’t discriminate regarding beliefs, we live so completely in the illusion that we cannot imagine that a truer, more perfect world exists. This is why heaven was driven into the sky. People could no longer see it on earth because everyone had rigid beliefs.
Remember Jesus talking about those who have eyes to see and ears to hear? He was talking about the initiated ones who lived outside the illusion and could see through the veil. They could see the true world. They tried desperately to convince people to drop their judgment, love their enemies, and follow the God within.
A man must not swallow more beliefs than he can digest.
Havelock Ellis
What Are Beliefs Anyway?
The definition of a belief says that it is the acceptance of an idea as true. Think about that definition! In a backhanded way, it is confirming that a belief is something false that is accepted through agreement as truth. Many beliefs are widely accepted as true; and that gives them enormous power.
The power behind beliefs is emotional fuel and numbers. False teachers create masses of believers, minions who serve their needs. The power of a belief is in the emotion it generates. If masses of minions create large amounts of emotion, the belief appears to be true and powerful. If we strip away the emotions of fear, anger, or excitement, the belief dies a natural death very quickly.
This is why the leaders of movements, cults, and political parties generate so much emotion. They create hope, pride, excitement, resentment for enemies, and fear to fuel their beliefs. The emotion creates magnetic power, which causes the belief to manifest.
I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.
Bertrand Russell
Accepting or Rejecting Beliefs
Our minds are designed to accept or reject ideas, and we do it all the time. Someone asks us to go to the movies, we accept their invitation or reject it. A belief is nothing more than an idea that has been thought over and over again.
We borrow beliefs from others; they don’t come from the universal forces or God. They come from humans who want us to play a role in their life drama. If someone wants great power; they have to instill the beliefs that give them that power in the minds of their followers.
I’m not anti beliefs. I view them purely as creative raw materials. They make life interesting when treated as we treat opinions. They make a mess of life when we confuse them with the truth. Most arguments and wars can end quite quickly if people just recognize that their beliefs are their opinions, and everyone gets to choose what they believe.
Once people realize that beliefs are not the truth, they find that dropping them is quite easy. And once you drop a few beliefs and get the gifts of wisdom, insight, and quietness of mind and body that comes from letting go, you are highly motivated to keep letting go.
If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.
Albert Einstein
Truth vs. Beliefs
The ancient masters taught that truth is all-powerful. When we live from truth, we only need one thought to create anything. Stories of masters, like Jesus, demonstrate this potential. But for our truth to operate at this level, our mind must be free. We must operate from what the ancient masters called a virgin mind. A virgin mind only holds win-win beliefs. It lets go easily when the belief’s job is complete.
Truth is always win-win for everyone involved. The ancient masters taught that the opposite of good is not evil; it is false. We are all born good. As we accept beliefs into our mind, we become false. If we become very false, we might behave in evil ways.
If you don’t change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?
W. Somerset Maugham
Using Win-Win Beliefs for Creation
Beliefs that are useful are win-win. A simple example is that I have a belief that I want to sell my car, and you have a belief that you want to buy a car. Our mutually win-win beliefs bring us together to complete our transaction. As a seller, we don’t care who the buyer is so we allow the universe to handle the details. We drop our beliefs after we complete the sale. We don’t hold on and repeat the sale every day. The ancient masters called this creation from first cause.
Faith is usually first-cause creation. A Christian might have faith in Jesus to heal them. A doctor might have faith in medicine. A vegan might have faith in the food they eat. And that is win-win so long as they allow others to have faith in whatever they want. If they think another should follow their belief, then they have taken something win-win and turned it into win-lose.
When we feel that another should believe like us, it is a sign from our inner self to let go of our beliefs. If we are jealous of another, our belief is causing the jealousy. If we fear another, our fear is pointing to the belief that we must let go.
Win-lose beliefs cause us to create from what ancient masters called second cause. These beliefs are win-lose in nature and often include judgment. The world of second cause is the world of good and evil, which causes wars, arguments, and suffering.
It is a man’s own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.
Buddha
We Have a Belief Delete Key
When we use our discrimination regarding beliefs, we free our mind. We can free ourselves from any situation by eliminating the belief that holds us in a win-lose situation. So what beliefs should we delete? It depends on what you want from life.
If you want to return to heaven on earth where normal life is abundance, free, joyous, peaceful and unconditionally loving, then you must let go of every last win-lose belief. That is the natural state of our true Self.
But if you simply want better health, then let go of your beliefs about disease or forgive whoever you need to forgive to heal your anger. No one has to let go of their beliefs. Beliefs are personal. However, in my experience, win-lose beliefs never make life better. There really is no reason to keep them. We only keep them because we get some payoff, like money, approval, or power; or someone has falsely convinced us that they are the truth.
Some people believe holding on and hanging in there are signs of great strength. However, there are times when it takes much more strength to know when to let go and then do it.
Ann Landers
A Real Life Example of Letting Go
My epiphany regarding beliefs happened when I owned a technology business. I could not stand all the sales tricks that I encountered everyday. I made a decision that I would no longer take any engagement unless it was 100 % win-win for everyone involved. I decided that if that meant I went out of business, so be it. I stopped playing games and just told the truth. When I heard a belief in my mind that was win-lose, I just dropped it. I didn’t accept it as true.
Something miraculous happened. I didn’t go out of business; in fact, my business doubled in size. People sensed that something was different. There was something different. I ceased playing the win-lose game. I wasn’t spending my energy competing; I spent my energy loving and giving.
I wanted to expand this way of life, but other areas of my life were much harder. In business, I was an authority. I had not been fed business beliefs as a child. I did not fear letting go of my business beliefs. The beliefs didn’t even have a strong emotional charge so they were easy to let go.
However, I wasn’t an authority in other areas of my life. Others in my life were sure their beliefs were true. Some had convinced me to accept their beliefs, and they didn’t want me to let them go. Often these older beliefs had strong emotions attached to them. They were not win-win for me or any other; but often people got payoffs from my sharing their beliefs. They did not want to lose their payoff.
Eventually, I realized that my emotions were telling me exactly which beliefs to let go. Beliefs that didn’t serve me had emotional agitation attached to them. No one else could feel in my body; so no one else knew what was right for me to believe or not believe. And as I let go, I began to really love my mind again. I started to feel like me. I now share this information, not because I want others to change what works for them. I share it because I want others to know they can change what doesn’t work.
It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.
Buddha
Know Thyself
The advice of the ancient Greek initiates was to “Know Thyself.” If we have beliefs, the very best thing we can do is follow them perfectly. If you believe that eating lettuce all day will cause you to lose weight, then you must either drop the belief or follow it to lose weight. If you are Catholic or Muslim or Buddhist then follow the beliefs to the letter. If we don’t follow our beliefs, our mind sees us as in conflict with our false self; and we punish ourselves.
Sometimes, we find ourselves in a place where we just can’t follow a belief. When our beliefs don’t align with our words and deeds, we suffer. We need to let go. It doesn’t serve an overweight person to believe that food makes you fat. It doesn’t serve a gay person to believe that being gay is a sin. It doesn’t serve an mother to believe that her child is stupid or bad. And yet, most people will hold on to those beliefs because others say they are true.
If we want complete liberation, then we have to let go of all of our beliefs. The desire for complete freedom causes all beliefs to show up as undesirable. Our emotions and pain tell us exactly what to let go. You cannot screw this up. You can’t let go of your true Self. I assure you if you let go of a belief by accident, you won’t miss it.
After practicing what I preach for several years, I am thankful that beliefs don’t create with much power because I’ve found some horrific beliefs in my mind that I would not have wanted to live. I’ve sure I’ve averted many problems by letting the beliefs go before they manifested. Now my goal is simply to continue to let go until my mind is filled with nothing but unconditional love for every single person on this earth.
I’ve learned that the greatest gift I can give to others is the gift of unconditional love. I give it when I let go of conditions, judgments, and beliefs about others. Beliefs label those who agree with us a friend; and they appear to keep us separate from foes. In truth they pull our enemies right into our path. If we see another as an enemy, we can’t intimately connect with them or unconditionally love them. Love is the only thing that heals a relationship or tames an enemy.
One day, I came to the painful recognition that those who played the worst roles in my life showed me my most damaging beliefs. Then I realized that I also played some pretty tough roles for those that I loved. I had no enemies, only brothers and sisters who forgot I was their friend. There are no heroes and no villains. There are no victims or victors. We are all reflections of each other. We do that for the same reason we look in the mirror. We can’t heal something we can’t see.
A man is but the product of his thoughts what he thinks, he becomes.
Mahatma Gandhi
Cathy Eck has a Ph.D. in Esoteric Studies and has been studying ancient wisdom for over two decades. She provides non-judgmental support for people who want to let go of beliefs and free their lives of problems, pain, and suffering. Follow this link for a free e-book: https://gatewaytogold.com/unlocking-heavens-gate-handbook-for-life.
