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The process of melting resistance is really the process of relaxing the grip of our accumulated systems of belief, which we often lump together and call “the mind.” We resist things as they are when they conflict with the way we think things should or should not be. The best place to start is to find elegant ways, both alone and with your friends, to question the mind. One way to do this is with the three words “Is it true?”
When you are faced with a limiting belief, the first thing to ask is, “Is this factual, or is it an opinion?” Would everybody agree? An example of a factual statement would be, “Paris is the capital of France.” As long as we understand what the words mean, then everybody would say that this is a factually true statement.
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“French people are arrogant,” on the other hand, is not a factual statement, but an opinion. Not everybody would agree with it, particularly not the French.
This is the first step: are you making a factual statement, or a statement of opinion? Any opinion is an optional belief about reality. Once you see it is an opinion, you can ask yourself a few more questions.
“If I saw this belief on a menu, would I choose it?” “Would I recommend this belief to a friend, or bequeath it to my children?” “Have I made any vow to keep this belief?” “Have I made any agreement with anybody to have allegiance to this belief?”
Keep a little notebook with a small pen in your back pocket. Or use your iPhone. Throughout the day, whenever you notice yourself come up with a belief that not everybody would share, simply write it down in your little book. You might write, “There’s not enough time,” “Nobody’s going to like it,” “It’s never good enough,” “The world is going to the dogs.” These are examples of subjective Image may be NSFW.
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beliefs, which not everybody on the planet would agree with. Simply the recognition that they are opinions and not facts will allow many (but not all) of them to drop away, and you will discover yourself to be right about fewer things, and feeling a whole lot more free.
You lose interest in your defenses, after a while, after running through them 5,800 times, and finally you realize there’s nothing left to defend. At that point, things dissolve. ~ Gay Hendricks.
Excerpt from Arjuna’s new book, Better than Sex: The Ecstatic Art of Awakening CoachingImage may be NSFW.
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