The Critical Role of Core Beliefs in Creating Our Reality

How we define ourselves and the world around us forms our intent, which in turn, forms our reality.

When I asked my wife, Sandy, how she would sum up George Bush’s strategy for saving America from Islamic extremists in his 2007 State of the Union speech, she said, “If we’re going to be safe, we have to kill them!” Throughout his administration there has been no talk of negotiation, or visible attempt to understand why so many people are so radically opposed to the moral, economic, and political policies of countries like Israel, Great Britain, and the United States. When people who are opposed, oppressed, or dispossessed by these countries offer to negotiate settlements, they are either met with force, ignored, or given unacceptable demands for unilateral concessions.

Can this type of behavior be unexpected when our current world view, and therefore our life experience, is dominated by core beliefs like: “We’re only human with one life to live, we’re all separate,” and “there’s not enough of what we need or want to go around?” When we step back and look at these self and world-defining core beliefs objectively we can see how they limit, motivate, and divide us at the same time. We can also see how they generate competitive, ideas like “survival of the fittest, dog-eat-dog,” and “devil take the hindmost”, predatory concepts we see dramatized in life, work, and art every day. Coloring our experience even further, are two additional core beliefs, or self-concepts that reflect the type of behavior that results from a strong belief in one life, separateness, and scarcity; “we are basically bad or “evil” and “we cannot trust ourselves” (see: What I Learned in Catholic School.

Fortunately, these are not the only core beliefs people subscribe to. Many of us believe there is more to us than meets the eye. We know intuitively, if not intellectually, that this is only one of many lives we live, that we are both one and separate, and there are enough resources to go around if we share them wisely and take responsibility for maintaining a balance between our needs and the earth’s ability to fulfill them. One set of core beliefs creates a world based on fear, competition, and intolerance while the other creates a world based on love, sharing, and acceptance.

Take these two sets of core beliefs and pull them apart to create a continuum. Then ask yourself, where do I belong on this continuum, am I closer to a belief in separateness and scarcity or am I closer to a belief in oneness and sharing? Doing this exercise benefits us in several ways.

• First, it helps us understand the nature of our own belief system, what thoughts and experiences shape and reinforce it.
• Second, it gives us the opportunity to decide where we want to be on this belief continuum and how we can build a bridge to help us get from where we are to where we want to be.
• Finally, in doing this exercise, we get to see how ideas are the building blocks we use to create our reality. (See: We Create Our Own Reality)