MindThe Beginner

“If you just believe in yourself everything will work out”. How often have you heard that one before?

You can’t count the times? Neither can I.

Whenever we believe in something, who is the is that believes? Well, it’s the “we” who believe right? But who is we, or for that matter, who are “you” and who am “I”. We, you and I are just projections of our being, and we call it our self. Self is something we create in our own mind, it’s just an idea in our heads.

Believing in self

There is an idea in our head that’s called self. A creation of the mind, and yet we unquestionably believe it. Somehow when you put it that way, it doesn’t seem that good an idea any more now does it?

Let’s continue with the mind warping.

Excluding the actually experience of the present moment, everything is just a concept. None of the mind games like believing and self can actually relate to our real being. This is because we project our beliefs, assumptions and identity onto the self. Not onto the actual being.

Who is this self?

Our sense of self comes from what we’ve accomplished in life, what we do and don’t do, what we believe, what we own, even our name is part of the self. They are all concepts, ideas in our mind. Ideas and concepts are the fabric of self. Turning that round we can say that our sense of self is fabricated from concepts, ideas. Who is self? Self is a fabrication.

Let’s have a quick look at our self shall we?

As an example, do you know the moon orbits the earth? If you’ve paid a bit of attention in school you’ll answer this with “yes” right away. A good perception of the world, your concept and the truth can see eye to eye. Great!

Moving on to a different concept, consider something more personal, something about yourself. Isolate this idea for a moment and let it linger in your mind for a while. Savour it for a moment. Notice how quickly you can confirm the idea? After all, it is about you. You know what you’re talking about when it comes to yourself.

What happens when you don’t believe

Now consider something that you don’t believe. The earth is flat! Yeah right, that’s not true and you can’t understand anybody believing that it is true. You don’t identify yourself with this concept. Correctness is you, not correct isn’t you and it never will be. That’s something for “others”. You’ll have no part of it, you won’t go there. (And you wonder why it’s so hard to admit you are wrong.)

All this, this answering of questions, confirming or denying ideas happens within a heartbeat. It’s so fast in fact, that you won’t notice it unless you know what to look for. But it’s very significant. Because if it’s true or not is not the issue, it’s just one of those concepts that you’ve formed in your head. They relate to you, me and us but not to the being.

Believing or not will change you, it will not change the being. It’s just a concept, nothing more.