On Beliefs
Photograph By: Isaque Pereira
I create not from a place of vision
but from a place
of feeling.
The feeling creates vision.
Invisible conviction
that lives in my gut
moves me,
even into stillness.
My original way of knowing
the sense that awakens all other senses,
inspires them to paint life.
Lines, colors, sounds, silence, sensations.
But some days, I grapple with beliefs…deciphering my own knowing from fear induced inherited dogma. It is part of my accountability process…interrogating not just what or how I create but where I create from.
Once upon a time, in pursuit of a karmic lesson, I assumed the conditionality of my lovability. “I as I am in my holy ordinariness am not enough. Love is earned through extraordinariness. To be worthy, I must be special. To be special, everything I do must be exceptional. I am only as worthy as I am remarkable.” The first lie I ever told myself. The first untruth I learned to believe. The first mirage I saw as real. Every other lie has in some way been an elaboration on this original unintentional betrayal of self.
Lies…things that start off not being real, end up creating very real conditions. Dreams deferred, overwork, reciprocity deficient relationships, an imbedded sense of indebtedness I just couldn’t shake. Energetically anemic, there was nothing left to do but surrender to my own slow unravelling. An exercise in faith. Time, utter exhaustion, and love more relentless than my own sense of unworthiness motivated me to clear my senses, guiding me back to self. Truth be told, I am still being guided. An extension of the Beloved’s grace, I am enough just as I am and always have been. I don’t have to earn love because I am love. Every day I work on remembering.
We are conditioned to celebrate “achievements”, “special” occasions, “wins”. The marvelous and miraculous. We take for granted the exquisite sacredness of the ordinary. We learn to recognize beauty or significance only when it is something other than common…but most potent magic is routine. Sunrises, sunsets, the phases of the moon, shifting of tides, dragonflies, and fireflies…ordinary, commonplace, routine, magic…
Beliefs are rarely an individual construct…often collectively manifested, fed, reinforced, and kept alive. Our realities are cocreated because at the core our beliefs are cocreated. Once again…lies… things that start of not being real, end up creating very real conditions. Race may not be real but racism and the conditions it creates are. If beliefs are the building blocks with which our realities are constructed, changing our realities requires not just changing our beliefs but thorough examination of the soil those beliefs are rooted in.
Awareness is medicine. Until next time, be like water my friends…reflect and flow.
What do you know to be true?
How open are you to being wrong about this?
What is the first lie you ever told yourself?
How did believing this lie shape your reality?
Where do you create from?
