Power Of Beliefs: How We Suffer By Believing Who We Are Not

A belief is something we take as true without verifying it in our own experience. And the most dangerous belief is about who we are. This meditation reveals how beliefs—especially unconscious ones—create all our psychological suffering. You'll discover the three sneaky beliefs running our lives: "My point of view is the only point of view," "Whatever I think is true," and "I am this thought/body/image."

The power of discrimination (Viveka in Indian tradition) can shatter these deceptions. You'll see why thoughts about others' thinking are always untrue. Why a thought appearing to you cannot tell you anything about you (like a photograph can't describe the photographer).

You are not a thought, not an image, not a story. You are the awareness witnessing all of this. Every time there is suffering, there is a belief involved. Living peacefully requires tending your garden—weeding out false beliefs so truth can blossom.

Transcript

Today we are going to venture into something very special.

On the surface it looks very ordinary,

But when we zoom in,

It can reveal a lot of hidden secrets.

And the topic for today is the power of beliefs.

And the hidden secrets it might reveal is about our own suffering and our own identity.

Let's start with defining what is a belief.

A belief is something that we take as true,

Without experience,

Without verifying the truth of it in our own experience,

Is a belief.

When we take an idea or a concept of something to be true,

Unvetted,

Is a belief.

And the power that we have,

The freedom that we have,

Is hidden in this believing,

Because only because of our innermost freedom,

We can take something to be true.

Whatever we want,

We can take it as truth.

Whatever it is that we want,

We can take it to be real.

Whether it is true or not,

Whether it is real or not,

Doesn't matter.

However,

The freedom in us can be exercised and the beauty of this freedom is that nobody can make us exercise this freedom.

I can remind you of your freedom,

I cannot exercise it for you.

So all the beliefs that we have,

All the ideas,

Concepts,

Assumptions,

Conclusions that we have taken as true,

Are completely our freedom.

Either we have exercised this freedom in a conscious way or an unconscious way,

Unaware,

Unintentional way,

Doesn't matter,

It is all a result of our freedom.

And as I said,

Just because we believe something as true,

Doesn't make it true.

We are free to change our beliefs at any point in time.

And to be technically correct,

I don't want to use the phrase change our beliefs.

We can start knowing the truth instead of believing something else in place of this.

I'm not in the business of making you change beliefs,

I'm in the business of making you see the truth.

And once you see something true,

Once you know something as true,

You don't have to believe it.

And the old beliefs about the untrue start disintegrating inside of us.

Everything we perceive through our sensory perceptive organs like eyes,

Ears,

Nose,

Skin,

Tongue,

Is filtered through our mind,

Is interpreted through our mind.

So this mind is an important character in this unfolding of beliefs.

In addition to this sense perceptions,

The mind,

There is another tool that we have,

Which is the power of discrimination.

Whether the interpretation of the mind is true or not,

Can be verified,

Can be discerned with this power of discrimination,

Which in the Indian tradition is called Viveka.

And notice how I'm talking about true and untrue,

Not about facts.

Because this exploration is not about facts.

There is no end to factual verification.

This exploration is specifically for truth.

And even more specifically about truth of who we are,

What is the nature of our mind,

In the context of peace,

Happiness and harmony.

But as my teacher says,

What's good for the goose is good for the garden,

The same thing applies.

If you sharpen this power of discrimination,

The believing can start dissolving.

When we believe something to be true,

Whether it is related to the political party that we support,

Whether it is about how our parents,

Our children,

Our spouses,

Our friends are,

Or the belief about who you are,

What you are,

All these things get filtered through our mind.

And this filtering,

This interpretation is like a proposal that is put in front of you that you can take it or dismiss it.

That's the power of discrimination.

And you rightly guessed that this proposal,

This acceptance or dismissal cannot happen unconsciously.

That's why the power of beliefs lies in being hidden.

They cannot stand the light of discernment,

Of awareness.

Right off the bat,

I can tell you that most of the interpretations that we have about what we see,

About what we hear,

Think,

Feel,

Is untrue.

I'm sure you would have heard of this experiment where a few blind people were asked to share their experience of an elephant.

And they were all situated at different parts of the elephant.

And each one had its own unique description of what an elephant is.

In part,

Each of them was quote-unquote right.

But that's the shortcoming of our sensory perceptions that it is a point of view.

Everything that we are perceiving is from a point of view.

It is not the complete view.

And because it is from a perspective,

That perspective is always going to be incomplete.

For instance,

Wherever you are,

Whatever you are perceiving right now,

Whether with your eyes open or closed,

That is unique to you.

Nobody else in this universe is having that perception.

But because we are having this perspective,

The mind forgets that it's only a perspective,

A point of view.

But it assumes that this point of view is the only point of view of perceiving.

With this underlying belief that my point of view is the only point of view,

Everything that we get perceived,

Everything we perceive gets interpreted as such.

That's why it's very hard for our mind to understand that two people could be right at the same time having completely opposite viewpoints.

Because it cannot fathom the idea that there is another point of view.

And this belief that gets interpreted and perpetuated on a daily,

On a moment-by-moment basis,

Creates this strong sense of right and wrong,

A strong sense of morality,

Righteousness about what is right and what is wrong.

And of course,

My point of view is always right,

Is what the mind believes.

So anyone who doesn't have this point of view is automatically wrong.

And I don't need to tell you where this belief is taking this entire world,

Especially now.

But it is not just one person or a group of people,

It's all of us who is doing it.

Whether at a global,

National,

Local level or at an individual level,

We are all falling for this undercurrent of belief that my point of view is the only point of view.

So the first sneaky belief was the belief that my point of view is the only point of view.

The second sneaky belief is whatever I think is true.

Although we don't formulate it in such a way,

But we act in more or less this way.

The thoughts that appear in my mind are real and they are true,

Is the belief.

So instead of changing the beliefs about our thoughts,

I would invite you to recognize the falseness of our thoughts.

To recognize that thoughts are merely projections in our mind.

You know our thoughts are pretty presumptuous.

So let me give you a few instances to demonstrate how absurd our thoughts can be.

As I said,

All of us are having a unique experience and that applies even to our thoughts.

Our thoughts are such that only we experience our thoughts.

Only I can experience my thoughts.

I cannot experience any of your thoughts.

Our mind seems to forget this and believe the thought that this person thinks so and so about me and I am sure about it.

I cannot be wrong.

Our mind is a pattern recognition system.

So based on certain actions,

It creates a pattern recognition and predicts that this is what might be happening.

So instead of taking it as probably they might be thinking this way,

We assume,

We conclude,

We believe that that is the case.

This one insight can revolutionize most of your relationships.

Because what you think that the other person is thinking cannot be true.

Most of the times,

Most of us are so unaware about our own thoughts that even that person might not know that they are thinking that.

Yet we have this audacity to believe that the mind telling us that it knows what the other person is thinking is outrageous.

How much suffering,

How much doubt,

How much anger,

Disappointment,

Shame we experience because we are sure that this other person is thinking this way about me.

Based on certain looks,

Certain words,

Certain gestures,

Our mind concludes and we believe.

That's how cheap our beliefs have become.

The power of discernment is completely dormant when it comes to our own experience.

And in the process we suffer so much,

We struggle so much.

All thoughts about other people's thinking are merely ideas that are 100% not true but probably could be somewhat true.

We need to see through this audacity of the mind and exercise our power of discernment.

Because the mind is going to conclude based on past experiences.

But past is no predictor of the future.

Otherwise we would all be in a simulation where everything is predictable,

Everything is predictable.

But that's not the case.

All of us are free.

And every moment is new.

The mind cannot handle anything new.

It is a pattern recognition system,

It is a past echoing system.

You cannot think of something that you have not experienced most of the times.

Yet the mind concludes assertively that this is real,

This is true.

And we believe it,

We go along with it,

We act upon it.

And then we suffer one way or the other.

And then the most important,

The most dangerous belief is the belief of who we are.

Thinking tells us we are a body,

We are the mind,

We are the narrator,

Mediator of our experience that interprets,

Narrates what is happening,

What is what,

All the time.

Sometimes we are a personality,

Sometimes we are our skills,

Our accumulations,

Our roles that we play in life.

And we believe everything that our mind tells us about who we are.

And there is no fixed identity,

We are a moving identity according to our mind and we buy it.

We pay the price of suffering and we buy every explanation,

Every thought about who we are.

How can a thought that appears to you can tell you anything about you?

It's like saying a photograph taken by a camera can tell something about the photographer.

Yeah,

That's how absurd my first statement sounds as well.

A thought cannot tell anything about who you are.

Because you are the one seeing the thought.

Yet the mind keeps telling us,

Yes,

You are this,

You are lacking this,

You should go achieve that,

Then you will be full.

Oh no,

You are hurt because this person said so and so,

You are hurt,

You feel this way which means you are not good enough.

Every explanation that the mind comes up with we end up believing without verifying whether it's true or not.

This obsession,

This surrender in front of our mind and its conclusion,

Its assumptions is what the Indian tradition calls as ignorance.

Where we are ignoring who we are and believing who we are not.

We are not that thought,

We are not that feeling,

We are not that idea,

We are not that concept.

We are not even that image that you see in your mind.

You,

The awareness cannot be photographed.

You cannot have an image.

Yes,

Your body can have an image.

So even the actual physical or digital photograph is not you.

Can you imagine the image in your mind to be you?

Actually most of us believe that's true.

Not only do we believe that we are that image,

Most of the times we are believing that other people's images in our mind are them.

You know sometimes you will be sitting next to someone you love,

Maybe your boss,

Maybe your child,

Maybe your friend and instead of talking to them you could be talking to an image of them in your mind,

Completely oblivious that you are talking to yourself,

Pretending to be talking to them.

Because that's how our mind fools us and we go along.

Yes,

We go along because nobody can make us go along.

Whatever story your mind is playing in your mind about who you are,

What your life has been,

What you have accomplished,

What you have lost,

How much you have suffered,

It's just that it's a story.

You are not the story.

You are not what happens to you.

You are not what appears to you.

You are not what disappears in you.

You are not a thought.

You are not an image.

As a first person direct experience,

Verify it if you are a thought,

If you are coming and going.

You are the awareness.

Pretending to be a thought.

Because that's the freedom you have to believe whatever you want to.

If I walked in your house and told you,

Hey,

This photograph is you,

This image is you,

You would kick me out of the house.

Because you will find it so absurd.

How can you tell me who I am?

Yet,

We don't have the same standards when it comes to our mind.

The mind tells us who we are and we happily go along without verifying.

And it's not that we have to do some research,

We have to talk to a hundred people or read a book or read a dozen books to verify who you are.

Nobody can tell you anything about you.

Only you can tell everything about you.

So this is such an immediate experience.

If we are conscious,

If we are aware,

If we are discerning,

The mind has created these complex ways of convincing,

Fooling,

Deceiving us into believing we are thoughts,

We are the mind,

We are the body,

We are an image.

So once you see the truth of who you are,

The awareness,

And once you listen to the explanation of how beliefs happen,

Then the rest of the life is to colonize this understanding into a living experience,

To weed out these unconscious deceptions that are happening in so sneaky ways that we won't even recognize them in the beginning.

Every time there is suffering,

There is a belief involved.

Every time there is psychological suffering,

Every time there is a struggle,

Emotional struggle,

Mental struggle,

There is a belief about who you are and who you are not.

There is truth and there is a warning when you come close to untruth,

That is suffering.

Everything else is just an unfolding.

You are free to believe and you are free to not believe.

As long as we are settling into believing,

There cannot be knowing,

Knowing of who you are,

Clarity about who you are.

Believing is so simple,

We don't have to do anything.

We just have to take what is coming in front of us from our minds,

Which is getting shaped by whatever food it consumes,

Whatever information it consumes.

And when we shatter these beliefs,

These deceptions about who we are,

Every shattering blossoms into peace in our life,

Blossoms into truth in our life,

Harmony in our life.

Living a peaceful life is not an accident.

By default,

Weeds grow.

If you have to create a garden,

You have to tend to it.

Your life is a potential garden.

If you tended to it,

If you took the weeds of beliefs out,

The flowers of truth can grow.

And the fragrance,

The beauty,

The harmony and the love can spread in your life,

In your garden.

Thank you.