The entire process of healing, self-growth, and spiritual enlightenment can be considered as only a shift of identity.
At first, we are fully identified with the body, fused only with its drives and needs. Then, in common maturation, we shift to being identified as an individual mind inhabiting a body. In further growth, the sense of self, identity, loosens on even this – we start to see that our identity is not even merely the thinking mind, but something more fundamental. When identity shifts to open awareness, meaning from content to context, then the sense of self may start to see that there is nothing personal or individual about it at all. Identity itself is seen as an imagined construct. Eventually we are not identified as this or that, but just aware that we are aware.
This is admittedly a clumsy breakdown of the process, but it might be helpful to see that in one regard, all we are ever doing is playing in identification. All of the psychological healing we do, could be articulated as working with beliefs, thoughts, ideas within one’s mind, that are stuck in false identities. Our healing work, through attention and love, releases these parts of Self, these belief-beings, of imprinted ideas of self that has kept them separate and struggling and bifurcated in the psyche.
In the IFS language, we talk of healing as an ‘unburdening’. Another way to talk about this, is to say that unburdening is all about releasing false ideas of self. When fractured parts of self, which themselves are just beliefs – when they are truly met from the heart of understanding, they release or ‘unburden’ their previously imprinted false beliefs, and rejoin (in IFS we might say, ‘is retrieved’) in the heart. It ceases being a separate identity, it ceases being an independent belief system or part of self that worked without harmony, and is now seamless – just another colour in the rainbow of being.
And if that happens inside us, that is also happening in the so-called ‘outside’ too. This is the model of healing. Really, there is no inner and outer self. Internal parts of self are all there is. We have this illusion that integration of psychological parts, or internal healing, results in a personality that is whole. But there is no such thing as a personality that is whole. A personality is, by definition, separate from others.
So the healing of ‘small beliefs’ in you, just leads to ‘larger beliefs’ or parts of you, until the belief you are working on is the sense of separation itself – your identity as an individual. This is historically seen as deeply ‘spiritual’ work. But that is an unnecessary label. All of this is work of consciousness. All of this is mind.
Impersonal mind believes itself into time, space and therefore form. All identity is belief. Mind does not come from brain. Mind is the fabric of reality – from atoms to tables to thoughts. Mind gets identified as a body. And in that identity, it can seem to get stuck. It’s ideas, which are no less than the stuff of the universe, make it as real as real can get. It’s not that the material world is not real – it’s just that it isn’t material. That’s the mind trip: matter is mind.
It takes enormous courage to start to see, and own, the true power of belief. You are what you believe you are. And for you, the world is what you believe it to be. Everything you experience is in alignment with your unconscious beliefs of reality. This is easy to see, because if anything were outside of your beliefs, you simply just wouldn’t notice. And when your beliefs shift, it seems that miraculously, the world is suddenly already in alignment. That’s because we don’t experience ‘a world’. We experience only our beliefs. That is all there is. And inversely, if you want to know what your unconscious beliefs are – just look at your experience. 100% perfect reflection. Cannot fail.
The mind is quicker than quick to explain, to coalesce perception into a sensible whole. Anything that we can’t understand, we either discard or explain in a way that adheres to our unknown philosophy.
But what is really happening? Without the filter of your belief-goggles, what is really going on? Most people don’t see much point in being curious about this. Or they think it is futile. Like, why bother? But it seems like the mystics and sages are exactly showing us the example. Who are you really? Could it be that the answer – even approaching the answer – is synonymous with our deepest healing, with finding our great love and peace, with the erasure of all lack.
None of that is being imposed upon you from an outside world. An outside world is itself a fiction and a belief. Question it and see. What do you mean by ‘outside’? Outside of what. Outside your body is not outside your mind. The body occurs within your experience. Not vice versa.
Location itself is just another concept.
If you want to get real, consider this. Everything we could experience, happens within our experience. And what are you, besides the one who experiences? And if you try to talk to me about all the things that happen “outside of my personal experience” then you are clearly talking about fiction.
What a relief to see that all we need to guide us to liberation is our own actual, real experience.
The truth of things frees the individual self, the ‘you’, from all constraint.
The truth sets you free. Because freedom is the truth. Already. Not later. Heaven is calmly waiting for you in this moment.
If we knew what the truth of our real Self would mean for us, we would be ravenous for it.
