“All You Need Is to Believe”, she told me, quoting what she’d heard in a workshop she attended.
How easy it is to say this phrase. How many people say it. How guilty we feel when we fail to live up to it. And how few truly understand how to create belief anew.
We never really lost faith because, from the start, we weren’t born with it. We were born with a wordless knowing – a knowing that we are free to be ourselves. In truth, we were not even born with that knowing, as the very existence of knowing implies the existence of not knowing. When we came into this world, we were freedom itself.
Then we were born, and life began. Pleasant experiences alongside painful ones gradually taught us that we are not truly free. Every unloving experience, whether intentional or unconscious, created in us another layer of pain, another understanding or belief about how life works and who we are. It was a deeply ingrained emotional learning, woven through lack, pain, and fear.
We learned that the world is dangerous, that it isn’t safe, that not everything is attainable, that compromises are necessary, that loss is possible, that there is pain, that we have to let go of important things, that there are negative emotions, unworthy desires and needs, dreams that will never come true, love that is not always present, that we are flawed, not good enough, and unworthy. We learned that if we only changed, everything would be okay – yet we would never manage to change enough. We learned there are things we must accept even if we don’t want them, and that life is unfair.
From these experiences, beliefs took root within us, etched into our emotional and physical being. They were etched in pain, fear, guilt, anger, and hatred, becoming our “truth”.
Later in life, we arrive at a workshop, and they tell us, “Just believe, and everything will change”. As if belief were like a passing thought, something that comes and goes; as if by pressing a button or making a conscious choice, we could simply change it, and everything would be fine.
At first, we try. We practice the exercises, recite the mantras, meditate. Sometimes it helps, even significantly. But not always, and sometimes the effect fades over time. So we try again, seek something new, not giving up.
Until we reach a point of despair. And we lose faith that we barely had. A faith that says healing is possible because we’ve heard of others who healed and changed, and we want the same. We lose this little faith when we fail to apply the exercises and believe in these mantras or beliefs: “I am healthy”, “I am abundance”, “God loves me”, “I am love.”
If this has ever happened to you, there’s a high chance you blame yourself for not succeeding. Just as likely, you may blame the teacher, the entity, the method, the technique, or perhaps the entire field.
There’s a reason why it’s not so simple to believe that things can be different, and it lies in everything I’ve just described: To replace painful, ingrained beliefs learned and etched emotionally and physically, we must go back and heal our wounded emotions.
That is, we must go back and heal painful memories, past traumas, moments of terror, loss, and anguish. We must revisit them, even if we don’t remember them precisely. We return to the pain to heal it, to heal it and the fear, guilt, anger, and hatred it has created.
To return to our emotions, to feel again the wounded parts of ourselves. To grant them legitimacy, breathing space, and feeling. In other words, to give this to ourselves. To revisit our pain, so we can relearn that we are not seeing reality correctly. To learn that the problem was never us to begin with, but rather those who hurt us – even if they were the people who loved us the most.
What I am offering is neither easy nor a quick fix, and it’s not magical. I’m not suggesting you connect to the fifth, seventh, or ninth dimension, or to realms of freedom, magic, and belief, to feel better and live better. I’m suggesting you connect to the painful place, dense with painful memories, that needs healing. I’m suggesting you return to the third, emotional dimension – the one we never truly left.
The more we return and heal our wounded, painful emotions, the more we rebuild ourselves. We create new beliefs that say it is possible, that everything is okay. And over time, this belief can turn into knowing. A knowing that, over time, becomes a state of being – a freedom like the one we experienced, briefly, when we entered this world.
All it takes to believe that things can be different and to live differently is to heal the wounded, painful places within. It also requires determination, patience, persistence, gentleness, and even a touch of faith – which is not always there at the beginning – that it is indeed possible, that it is allowed.
