Come On, Cathy! Are All Beliefs Lies? Really?

What Is Real?

Albert Einstein said, "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." Few people understand what he meant. Einstein realized that truth and reality are not the same thing. Let me explain.

People often ask me, “Cathy, do you really mean ALL beliefs are lies? Aren’t there some exceptions?” They are shocked when I respond with “YES, all beliefs are technically lies.” They all contribute to a false reality known as the illusion.

I use radical terminology when I call beliefs lies because I needed to get painfully real with my own mind to convince it to let go of my own beliefs. We are all blindly convinced that our beliefs are the absolute truth, even though we can easily see that other people’s beliefs are not true.

The definition of a belief says that it is the acceptance of an idea as true. Our minds are designed to accept or reject ideas; we do it all the time. If we view a belief as an opinion, rejection is easy. If we perceive a belief as true, rejecting it becomes nearly impossible.

Once we believe an idea is true, we see proof of it in the world. It becomes our reality. But the proof is only the effect of the belief. It is not evidence of truth. As Einstein said in the opening quote, our illusory reality is very persistent.

Truth versus Beliefs

I’m not anti beliefs. I view them as raw materials for creative purposes. The ancient masters taught that truth is all-powerful. When we live from truth, we only need one clear thought to create anything. A true mind is a free mind.

Beliefs, on the other hand, are not very powerful. They take longer to manifest. This is good news because many of our beliefs are about suffering, disease, or death; we don’t want those to manifest too quickly. We need the benevolent buffer of time.

When we use the word belief consciously, we start to notice just how many beliefs we have in our minds. Our beliefs generally rest in our subconscious. We only know what we believe by viewing the world as a mirror of our mind.

Ancient wisdom says that we are all born free and pure. Then as we accept beliefs into our mind, we become false. If we become very false, we might behave in evil ways. Ancient masters said that if we accept too many false beliefs, we snuff out our life force and die.

Their philosophy reminds me of playing a video game. Sometimes when I’m losing, I like to hit the reset button and start over. I see no reason to play the rest of a game when it isn’t going to get me the score that I want.

Win-Win Beliefs

Useful beliefs are win-win. A simple example could be the idea of cooking food. It has the potential to be fun, creative, and delicious. It adds variety to eating. The ancient masters called this creation from first cause or an immaculate creation. It is inclusive, flexible, and harmless to others.

People eventually started making rules about food. They microscopically analyzed food. They worried about everything they ate. They judged those who ate different food. They labeled foods good and bad. Food slowly moved from a creative tool for sharing love to poison. These new food beliefs were win-lose in nature and included judgment.

Thin people became good; and heavy people became bad. The guilt and shame of being bad then caused the bad ones to suffer whatever punishment the good ones said they deserved. The ancient masters labeled this second-cause creation.

Take any subject, and you can see this same deterioration of thinking. Second-cause creation creates a false illusion, a veil of beliefs, where some win and some lose. It looks very real, but it is not real. It is simply persistent.

The Belief Delete Key

Our discrimination is our delete key. We must let go of our second-cause beliefs, and that takes compassion. We have to let people off the hook who we’ve previously labeled wrong. We have to let ourselves off the hook when we've labeled ourselves wrong.

Using my previous example, we have to go back to enjoying food, trusting everyone’s bodies to choose what they want and need, and cooking food for joy and shared love. We stop policing the plates of others. We stop making money from diets, drugs, and mandatory gym memberships; we go back to inspired living. If we do, weight-related problems will vanish. They only exist in the illusion where thin is good and fat is bad.

Our true Selves are inspired. They are good, beautiful, wise, whole, powerful, free, peaceful, and joyous. They never harm another. They always create from win-win. There is no downside to being our authentic Self. But we have free will. We don’t have to be our true Self. We can be anything we want. And we still won’t harm others if we allow them to also be themselves.

Know Thyself

When we have beliefs, we must follow them. If we believe that eating lettuce all day will cause us to lose weight, then we must either drop the belief or eat the lettuce. If you identify with Catholic, Muslim, or any other organized religion, then follow it to the letter. If you identify with Republican or Democrat, then be one full out. The key to living from beliefs is congruence. Otherwise, we are in conflict internally. We tend to punish ourselves unconsciously if we don’t follow our own beliefs.

We can have some pretty crazy beliefs; and if we follow them completely, they work. When used this way, beliefs create diversity. They make people interesting creators of life experiences. Beliefs only turn evil when we try to convince others to be like us because that denies the other’s creative power and potential.

When Beliefs are Imposed On Others

When people insist that their beliefs are right for everyone, they impose them on others. Often they are quite charismatic as they convince others to follow them. Their need to force others to follow their beliefs comes from fear, powerlessness, and loneliness.

When we have win-lose beliefs, we create separation. We lose our power, and we become fearful of other people. Our mind says that if everyone thought like us, the loneliness and fear would leave. It says our desires would manifest if the numbers of believers were great enough. But the mind is lying. The loneliness, fear, and powerlessness only go away when we drop our beliefs.

If we feel imposed upon, we don’t need to convince the believers to stop expressing their beliefs. Their beliefs only have power if we believe them. They give us practice in saying NO. If we know that another’s beliefs are wrong for us, their power will not impact our life. When we all start following our hearts and ignore win-lose beliefs, the payoff of having them will go away. It will become cool to follow our hearts again.

We can’t screw this up. We can’t let go of our authentic Self. If we let go of a belief by accident, we won’t miss it. If we do, we just have to believe it again.

Unconditional Love

The greatest gift that we can give to another is the gift of unconditional love. When we let go of conditions, judgments, and beliefs about others, we are actually giving them this amazing gift.

For a long time, I worked on letting go of my beliefs about others. One day, I came to the painful recognition that those who played the worst roles in my life loved me the most. They risked my approval to show me my most damaging beliefs. They were my mirrors; and I was breaking my mirrors instead of wiping the egg off my face.

Likewise, I reflected what they couldn’t see. Sometimes they chose to break me and deny the reflection that I offered. We break the mirrors we love when we blame the mirror instead of ourself. If we don’t like our reflection, we need to fix the projection. Parents, doctors, lawyers, leaders, teachers, and clergy all do this without realizing it. It is not their fault. Those who created the illusion hid the rulebook.

It becomes very easy to forgive when you realize that everything we’ve done to another, or they did to us, was really “for giving” everyone a chance to see the beliefs that kept us in prison. Looking in the mirror, and letting go of the dirt on our faces, is our ticket out of the illusory world. It is persistent, but not true.

We are all projectors and reflectors in the illusory world because we can’t heal what we can’t see. When we understand that, we stop blaming. Once we eliminate our beliefs, we no longer project or reflect. We just be our true Self. We’ve removed the mote from our own eye. When we let go of the flaws that we see in the illusory house of mirrors, we are left with the truth. It was simply hidden beneath our beliefs.