Peter,
At a loss here. I find that when I reach a bottom line I don’t know what to do with it. You write “can begin to disassociate these beliefs from reality.” I don’t know how to do that. How do I remove a core assumption that has been a major influence of my perception of who I am for most of my life?
Thanks,
Charles
Charles,
Consider that if you can’t drop an assumption then you aren’t really experiencing the nature of the assumption—that it is a conceptual activity you are doing. When you create an image in your mind of a purple dragon you know you can also stop imagining a purple dragon, because you experience that it isn’t “real” in and of itself; instead, it is something you’re doing as a conceptual activity. It is the same with the assumption, but because it’s so foundational to your self make-up, and assumed rather than known as something you’re doing, it can be hard to drop.
First, you have to get that it is like grasping a stick. If you open your hand the stick falls away. But the challenge here is that you don’t know you are grasping this stick. You can’t find, in your experience or consciousness, the act of grasping. Until you can, you can’t let it go, or stop doing it.
The other factor you mentioned is that if it seems to be a part of yourself. In this case, it is as if you are identifying the “stick” as a part of you, so it then becomes like the stick trying to let go of itself. This won’t happen. You need to consciously and clearly experience that the assumption (stick) is indeed not you. That’s the only way you can let it go. Given you may have based much of your identity and life story on this assumption, you have to be willing for all of that to change or be seen as empty and unreal.
If you don’t find any willingness or ability to drop it, you may have to live with this aspect of your self as it is. Yet, if you can really get that it is not you but something you’re doing, then you can hold it as such—something that is as if playing a role or being a substitute for you but isn’t actually you.
Of course, you’re likely to just believe that it isn’t you, and so pretend this is the case, rather than have a real consciousness of the truth in your experience. To avoid such an outcome I’d recommend that you drop the assumption at least temporarily—but certainly and clearly—so that you experience the truth of it. Then when the automatic programming grabs onto it again, you’ll have the possibility of relating to it differently. If you can’t at least get free temporarily then you must acknowledge that you aren’t really conscious of the true nature of the matter, you aren’t experiencing the assumption as something you’re doing.
Good luck with that.
Peter
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