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Beliefs And You! Here at GuitarPrinciples, students approach their growth on the guitar from the viewpoint of something I have stated often, and in many different ways: "what you are as a person is what you will be as a guitarist". And so, we have players who are pursuing success not just in guitar, but in all matters relating to personal growth and expanded awareness. An interesting question was posed in the GuitarPrinicples Forum recently relating to just such an important, all encompassing subject: beliefs. One of our exemplary forum members, Guillaume LePage, was seeking some insight into how to change limiting beliefs. I thought it was worth a detailed answer.....
It is often discussed in this forum that limiting beliefs are useless and that it is better to just replace them with useful and empowering beliefs. I would like to know how to get rid of limiting beliefs? I have identified limiting beliefs that I hold and just knowing that I don't want to hold them anymore is not enough to get rid of them! In certain situations, bad feelings arise to remind me of the useless belief. However, I have a seemingly unshakable belief that I can get as good as I want on the guitar (and it allows me to always do correct practice and experience a lot of success with the guitar). I am not sure how I got to hold this belief and why other people don't hold it as strongly. Guillaume
Yes, there are thousands of books about the power of beliefs, and in fact the subject has been discussed for thousands of years by sages and teachers of all traditions There are many current and popular books on the subject, and there have been many more in the recent past. I am going to look very deeply into the matter with you. When I do that, when I look very deeply into beliefs, here is what I see. I see that no, it is not possible for you to change or remove your limiting beliefs and replace them with better beliefs. Beliefs may change, but not because of something you do. That is why you don’t know how you came to believe that you can be as good as you want on guitar. Somehow, that belief took root in you without you knowing it. It is also why you cannot change other beliefs you would like to change. If you could change beliefs, I’m sure you would! If people could “do” something to change beliefs, I am sure the secret would be bottled and sold in supermarkets by now, and we’d all be changing beliefs to make our lives better on a daily basis! As I look further, I see that the reason you cannot change beliefs is very simple, it is because you ARE your beliefs. You probably don’t know it (most people don’t) but you are your beliefs. Beliefs can change, but you, being your beliefs, are not the one who can do it. I also see that before you go about trying to change beliefs in any case, you should know something very important about beliefs: all beliefs are limiting. When beliefs do change (and they can), all we are doing is trading one set of limitations for another, hopefully, a set of limitations with different possibilities, which will be more useful to us. The last thing I see is that the reason it is so difficult to change beliefs is because the reason we keep the beliefs we do is because we NEED them. All relationships are based on the satisfaction of needs, and your relationship to your beliefs is no different. People hold on to the beliefs that they need to hold on to, for one reason or another, good or bad. Sometimes, a belief is needed simply to keep other ones from being considered and accepted, and thereby disturbing our comfortable life. When you no longer need a belief, it will leave, or change, by itself. When you, by one means or another, have become the person who does not need a particular belief, that believe will change or leave on its own. These things I know. I also know it is not what you will hear when you read any of those aforementioned popular books on the subject. They will tell you that of course you can change your beliefs by “believing” more, or “believing” in yourself, or something like that. And yet, you can hear all this, and still not be able to change anything, or get rid of those persistent bad feelings you talked about. And that is because you can hear all of that, and still not understand anything about the subject of beliefs. “You” ARE Your Beliefs When I say “you are your beliefs”, you might think that this is a very absurd statement, at which point I would ask you to show me this “you” who wants to get rid of beliefs. Tell me about this “you”. As you would try to tell me about “you”, all you would be able to communicate would be a list of beliefs that “you” currently operate from. Very quickly, you would not be able to distinguish between the beliefs, and the believer! You might say “I am Guilluame, I am a human being living on the planet Earth, I am a 21 year old male, I am a nice guy, I like to play the guitar, and I am nice to little children and nursing mothers, etc., etc. You would be giving me a list of beliefs (ideas) you have about yourself, or a list of attributes and actions that are outgrowths of your beliefs (i.e. I am nice to people because I believe it is good to be nice), as you attempted to describe YOU, the believer. In fact, anytime someone says I am __________(fill in the blank with anything), they are actually expressing a belief about themselves, or we might say, an idea about themselves, which is the same thing. All of the above description of yourself is a list of beliefs and ideas that have been presented to you as “explanations” of your perceptions and your existence, that you have accepted as facts, as “the truth”. But what could they possibly really mean, if you really thought about them? How could anyone really know what it is to be this thing we call a human being? How could anyone possibly know where they really are? You were not born believing “I am Guilluame”. This idea was taught to you, you learned this, and started believing it. Obviously, you existed before you learned and believed this. Who were you then, who were you when you had no name? Is there not a more basic, fundamental “you” before this “Guilaume” idea?“ When you first began your career as “Guilllaume” (as an infant), you had no idea who you were. You had to depend on what Mommy and Daddy and the rest of those giants who lived in the world reflected back to you to tell you who and what you were. After awhile, you learned to do it for yourself, as the idea of “Guillaume” became an idea, a belief that has grown year by year, carrying more and more attributes with it as it went (“Guillaume, you are so nice, so cute, so generous, etc”), until it has ended up with quite an impressive resume! It is constantly changing, can it really be YOU in the most fundamental sense? All ideas are simply beliefs about reality. Most of them are a special kind of belief actually; they are the kind called “assumptions”. Assumptions are untested beliefs, and our lives are full of them, maybe entirely composed of them. We really cannot avoid living on the basis of untested beliefs, because there is no way to test all the beliefs and ideas we need to have in order to live. I’ll illustrate what I mean. Let’s take a simple belief we all have: we all believe we know “where” we are, and “where” everything else is. This means we can locate ourselves and other things in space. But, what do we know? If you ask me where I am, I might answer very glibly, with perfect assurance like I really know where I am “well, I am sitting in a house in Woodstock NY.” Then I would pat myself on the knee and say “yep, here I am right here”, as if I knew what “here” meant. But really, what do I know? Well, if I look closely at this “where” thing, this “being located in space” thing, I know this house is located on the planet Earth, which is spinning around at around 1,000 miles/hr (at the equator). So, I guess I am spinning with it. So, I’ll have to include my ever changing location in my estimate of where I am. I would probably start giving up trying to figure out where I really am when I thought about how the whole planet itself is sailing around the sun at around 18 mph, and the two of them together are hurtling through the galaxy at 155 mph –and on top of that, the whole shebang is moving through a larger group of galaxies at 185 mph! At this point my head is spinning at about that speed too, just trying to figure out “where” I really am, and yet I live with an undeniable sense of being SOME where! So, if I really probe the matter, I see that I can’t actually know where I am, I can’t actually locate myself in space. There is simply nothing to locate it in relation to. I can only make up my own little “local” idea of “whereness” and use that. I cannot actually know “where” I am in any ultimate sense whatsoever. The very question of “where”, as well as its answer, is ultimately meaningless IF I THINK ABOUT IT. And yet, believing I am in this room right now, choosing this as the somewhere that I am, is incredibly useful to me (because my guitar is in here with me!), but I will not make philosophy, science, or religion out of the belief. You could put any one of your ideas or beliefs through this rigorous process of enquiry, and you would come out in about the same place --nowhere! Now, human beings don’t like being nowhere, it is simply of no use whatsoever, and so we create our world, just like mathematicians, scientists, and priests and philosophers, just so we can play the game. Personally, I love it, but I don’t “believe” it. Just like our assumption about “where” we or anything else is, we experience all of our assumptions as our ideas and beliefs about who and what we are, and who and what the rest of the world is. Since it is inevitable that we must live on the basis of untestable beliefs, we prefer to “be real”, and act as if everything we need to believe is “the truth” or “reality”. While doing so does serve some very useful purposes, it also leads to a lot of confusion, disagreement and trouble between people, and within people, but it seems to be a part of the charm of being a human being!
We have now established that 1) you are your beliefs, and 2) all beliefs are really assumptions. Now, let’s talk about why all beliefs are inherently limiting. To believe something, and to have an idea of it, is to know what it is, to “define it”, have a definition of it, and make it definite (which is the opposite of infinite). Whenever we make something “definite” instead of “infinite”, we are limiting it, imposing a structure on it, and we are doing that for the purpose of having some kind of power over it. Defining something gives that thing a shape, a structure, that can be grasped with the mind, and then manipulated for our purposes. That is why codes of law cannot be written about something until that something is defined. So, a belief is an idea about something, an idea that is labeled as “true” or “real”, and that idea is an imposed structure upon something formerly without structure, something sensed in some way, but not possessing clear and defining lines. As we saw, even though I can never actually define "where" I am, I will still construct some sort of idea about it, believe that idea is "real", and go about my day. My idea of "where" creates a dividing line, it tells me I am "here", and everything else is "there". Every belief creates dividing lines, and every dividing line does two things: it labels everything that exists as being on one side or the other. Just as every line divides, so does every belief divide. Every belief divides reality into that which is "true", or "real" (the good side), and "false", or "unreal" (the bad side). That is why nothing divides the people in this world like the beliefs that people hold.
The Walls Of Belief A belief about reality is like a wall. Imagine if you built a few walls (meaning accepted certain beliefs as “the” truth), and put them together into a “room”, and started to live in that room. Imagine you never left that room, and never looked beyond those walls (beliefs). Imagine you came to believe that the space that was your room was space itself, was in fact the Universe! Living on the basis of ANY beliefs is like living inside walls, you are forced to see everything as inside the walls or outside the walls. Now, that may be fine, I love hanging out in my room, but I am not going to forget it is just my room! And I am not going to let it stop me from visiting other rooms! We all build our room with the walls of our beliefs, and believe it is “reality”, but Reality itself is ALL space in existence, not just the little bit we sectioned off. Living inside the walls of our beliefs, we are forced to view everything in terms of whether it is aligned with our beliefs or not. We have only two boxes to put everything in; one says “true, good, agrees with my beliefs”, and the other says “false, bad, does not agree with my beliefs”. We all live within the walls of our beliefs, and the particular walls we have are based on our needs. In order to build new walls we must know what our needs really are, why we have those needs, and who it really is who is living a life based on those needs. When we have this Knowledge, we could truly say we can change our beliefs. What really happens is that, knowing we created the walls we live in, we are free to walk outside, travel where we like, and perhaps take up residence somewhere else (maybe get a time-share!). The walls of belief are special walls - they are mirrored walls. They reflect their very source, the very thing that made them. Just as they are projected from our deepest places, so they reflect back to us an image that we call "me". Just as we feel that our assumptions about reality are in fact reality, we feel that the image reflected from the self made walls of our own beliefs is US. Our beliefs tell us who we are. So, I may believe, I “am” an American, and all of whatever that means to me, or I “am” a guitar player, and all of whatever that means. Whatever my beliefs are will be reflected back to me as various “objects” or concepts, such as “American” or “guitar player”, and I will feel and believe that I AM, in fact, these objects. I will feel myself to be these objects, these concepts, in my ultimate essence. In fact, these concepts exist in my mind only, but I feel them to be real, and to be “me”. It is imperative to NOT believe that we ARE what is reflected back to us from the mirrored walls of our own beliefs. Even though it seems like we are, we must mediate on this whole condition until we realize that we are suffering a delusion, an optical illusion, so to speak. It is essential to understand that we can never “be” in an ultimate sense, anything that can be known or described, as us, and by us. The beginning of changing beliefs, or even better, transcending the limiting power of all beliefs, is to practice disbelief, or to use a better term, discrimination. We must begin to realize that EVERYTHING we believe is just one assumption or another, and that we can never actually KNOW anything, in the truest sense of the word. This, paradoxically speaking, is real knowledge. Living on the basis of this knowledge is at first extremely disconcerting, like realizing that you can never know where you really are. Continuing to live with this understanding leads to the greatest possible freedom, because when you realize that you are essentially nothing, you can become anything.
Reaching Freedom Believing that we “are” the descriptions and ideas we have learned about ourselves, is the root of bondage to beliefs. It is not possible to go beyond ideas and beliefs until we, on some level, understand this. Only then is it possible to not BE our ideas and beliefs, and so limit ourselves unalterably to one structure or another. Believing that we are these things is called “identification”. We feel that what we think, and feel, and do, and experience, IS us. It is a powerful, and usually automatic and unconscious force within us. Like so many other important things in life, I believe I first learned this in kindergarten. One day, I was a bad little child, and performed some type of kindergarten infraction. My teacher, Mrs. McCarrol, made me stay after school. When I was finally allowed to go home, and was feeling very sad and very bad, she knelt down to button up my coat, and said to me “I’m not mad at you Jamie, I’m mad at the things you did”. This was quite an astounding thought to me! I certainly felt at the time that I was what I did - I did a bad thing and I felt like I was bad! The very idea that “I” was not necessarily what I did, intrigued and attracted me. I would expand on this idea throughout my life, as I learned that “I” am not what I do, (and this includes the actions we call thinking and feeling). Well, then who am I? A little reflection brings me to the answer: there is only one "me" always here, no matter what else has ever been going on - the "me" who is aware of all these things going on. Whenever I actually look for myself, all I can ever find is the one who is aware of all these things, the one who is watching all these things being felt, thought, and done. This understanding, applied intensely in the midst of daily life, is the power by which we break the chains of unconscious, and automatic identification of all the objects perceived by the mind as being “us”. It is an ancient and venerated practice taught in many of the worlds major religions. It goes by many names, such as “ego death”, “non-attachment”, “discrimination”, and, in Christianity it is coupled with intense devotion and is called “dying in Christ”. They all lead to the same place, the undoing of the false idea we have of who and what we are, and the realization of our true nature.
As We Change, Needs Change, And Beliefs Change As we perform this process of discrimination, of realizing that we have been deluded into believing we ARE this or that, and simply see that it may seem so but cannot be so, we begin to reclaim our real self, that formless being who can seem to become all these things. Think about this: when we were 6 years old in the playground, it sure seemed like the end of the world if our best friend became someone else’s best friend, or all the popular kids wouldn’t let us play with them and made fun of us instead – but now as we think about it, it seems like that “self” who went through that agony is some comical, temporary, almost unnecessary self we once thought we were. Now, being all grown up, it is very hard to care whether all those little kids will play with us or not. Where is that person who cared so much about being made fun of? Did that person vanish like smoke? Yes, they did, they vanished like the smoke they were made from. But they sure seemed real then! It sure seemed like “the end of the world” then, but now, we see that the world we thought was ending, didn’t even exist! It is gone now, and never in fact, was the life and death situation we thought it was. It was just a passing show. When we see that this self that seems real now is made of the same stuff, we are in a very powerful position, we are starting to wake up. Everything that seems so life and death important now, is as important as the world of the 6 year old's playground. (In fact, our understanding of this, at age 6, or 60, will determine how much fun we are able to have in any playground we find ourselves in!). When we start to understand the game, we cannot be the same. We must ask ourselves what imaginary selves are we busy believing are “us” right now? As we let go of these imaginary selves, they disappear like clouds of smoke. And so do the needs they had, the needs that gave the staying power to our beliefs.
Realization Techniques Here are some things “you” can do to change who you really are. The truth is, when you do them, and I mean really do them with earnestness, it will not be you doing them! It will be the newer “you” that is crying out to be uncovered and discovered. When you find yourself in the state of mind that prompted you to ask your question, when you find yourself beset by troubling feelings, while at the same time knowing those feelings are coming from beliefs that are being held deep within yourself even though you know those beliefs are negative and limiting, at such a time, do this: Observe how there are really 3 selves here: the one who is acting out the limiting belief, the one who is upset about the one who is acting out the limiting beliefs, and the one observing the other two as well as the whole situation. This last “you” is the one who wrote the question in the forum. You must make the very conscious effort to stay in the position of this observing self over an extended period of time. From the position of this observing self, you must watch the first self, the acting out one. You must watch that self act out the negative belief, and at first, you must watch it without trying to stop it, or tamper with it in any way. You are there to study it. In addition, you must observe the second self, the one who feels bad about what the first one just did. Staying in the position of the observer, you must see and feel the whole scene. This is not easy to do, it takes great strength of mind. Practice makes it easier. When you really begin to observe yourself in the midst of all this (instead of just “being” it), there will more and more develop a mechanical quality to the whole drama itself. You will become more and more identified with the third self who is simply observing and not acting, and the first two will begin to seem more like robots (which they are). The robots are the ones acting from the script called “beliefs”, that is why they can’t change it. As you become more and more who you really are, the simple observer of the drama you call your life, everything will take on a marvelously fluid quality. Then, beliefs and behaviors (including your inner emotional experience) will change by themselves, and they will change by whatever is appropriate to the flow of your life. The placing of your attention on the observing self creates a space between the real you and the mechanical selves that have grown throughout your lifetime. It is this space that gives you the freedom to use the marvelous adaptive powers of the psyche to change yourself and your world. Remaining centered with your attention as the observer of your own mind, you will have stopped “freezing” the force of your own being into the robot actors that comprise most peoples personalities and that causes them to think “this is me”. Everything will flow. This “noticing self” has been extolled in all the spiritual traditions of the world, in the Eastern traditions, it is called the “Witness Consciousness”, in the Western traditions, it is described in the Bible as “be still and know that I am God”. When we are completely still, we know God as Existence (before any description is added to it), as “I Am” (the Name of God revealed to Moses on the mountain), and we do not qualify it further. Beliefs change only as a fuller awareness of your real essential nature develops. Then, you will be a different person, and you will certainly have different needs. As these needs are felt at the level of your mind, they will reach out to the world as new thoughts and feelings, and beckon to new beliefs and new ideas about yourself and the world. At random moments, ask yourself “when I touch that which I feel to be “me”, what am I touching”. Examine that which you are touching, examine that which you feel yourself to be, and then be the one who is touching. As we stand in place, looking at the walls of our belief, it determines what we call our “viewpoint”, literally. It is the THE point from which we view what we call “the world” or “reality”. If we were to move to another room (another set of beliefs), we would have a different point from which to view When we are able to achieve a degree of distance from the automatic mechanisms that create our beliefs, our world, and our sense of who we are, we are much more free to literally stop being who we are. We can help this process along by using a technique I call being an “attitude chameleon". Our attitude is the lens through which we view the world, it determines what we see, and it is itself determined by our beliefs. We can instantly switch our point of view, if even temporarily, in order to allow ourselves to experience, or “try out” other ways of viewing things, other ways of existing as a person in this world. I began to use this technique rather spontaneously while young. I’m sure others do too, without perhaps noticing it. I will explain it by giving an example….. At one point in my life I began to write songs and send them to publishers, hoping to get somewhere in that field. The first time I sent a song to a publisher, I promptly got a rejection letter back, explaining it was not what they were looking for at the time. Now, I was incredibly naive with a large dose of ignorance thrown in, and to me, that letter really said..... “Dear Jamie, We regret to inform you that you stink as a songwriter, (and very possibly at everything else!). Please stop bothering us, and do the world a favor; give it up right now and get a real job!” Best Wishes , Yes, I was devastated. Of course, it helped me develop the skill of continuing on with my dreams and desires even while feeling devastated, but in the best of circumstances, this is a difficult and energy consuming thing to do. At some later point, I was working with a producer on a recording, and he was an aspiring songwriter as well, also pitching his songs. He told me that he just got a rejection on a song, and that it was no big deal, he put it right on the pile, because, after all “it’s a numbers game. It is just a matter of doing it over an over, the more you send out, the better your chances of success”. I was stunned by the amazing difference between his reaction and mine, to the same experience! I marveled at his incredibly positive attitude. I immediately realized that I would be greatly served by having at least some of that myself. Now, here we were, two very different people with, I am sure, a whole set of different reasons why we looked at the world so differently. But, I didn’t have to try to dig out my past, and all my beliefs, and fight with them and try to change them. No, there was a much simpler way. I would simply pretend I was him! The next time I found myself in the same situation, I would use my imagination, and play a little game in my head where I was undergoing the same kind of rejection that caused the overwhelming emotional reaction in me, and just pretend I was Dan, looking at it the way he did. And it worked. By practicing this, and giving it attention, I became much more impervious to rejection. Not completely, mind you, but I certainly brought the volume of that disabling emotional reaction to well within workable, healthy, and controllable levels. This little game of imagination, this “pretending” to be someone with a desirable belief system, is quite a valid technique. Look at the word “pretend”, to “pre-tend”. It means, “the thing we do prior to having a certain tendency”. We can make ourselves ready to possess certain tendencies by “pre-tending”. I recommend this technique of identifying negative behavior syndromes presently active within your personality structure, and studying others who display a markedly different behavior. Like a chameleon, try their characteristics on for size, and see how they feel. Over time, it works backwards, the newly expressed behavior brings inner and outer experiences to the psyche that actually change the negative structures, the negative beliefs systems you habitually operate from.
Knowledge and Belief There is one more understanding that needs to be in place before we can say we really understand the subject of beliefs. We must understand the difference between beliefs and knowledge. Beliefs can be “held” and they can be “lost”. Beliefs can be accepted, or rejected. Before we believe something, we must have some proof that satisfies us, and then we “hold” the belief. If that belief also answers a need we have, especially a deeply seated emotional need, then we will most likely hold on to it and use it, for good or for bad. Knowledge is not like that. Knowledge can only be realized, or not realized, seen, or not seen, recognized, or overlooked. Knowledge, once seen, is its own proof, it needs nothing outside itself for verification. It is tacit, self-evident, or what the philosophers call “a priori” truth. Knowledge is always alive and appearing as obvious in the present moment, we do not have to look in our little "book of beliefs" to see if it is still in there. The only need it serves is the need of the truest part of ourselves to be aligned with all truth. Because of all this, knowledge is unshakeable. Knowledge is truth, it is "what is", known and realized , and made real AS us. When we are real, and “what is” is appearing “as us”, then life is experienced as a complete flow, moving meaningfully down the river of life, the river of this world, and taking us where we must go, in the way we must go there. The most primary knowledge we have is knowledge of our own existence. It is a simple, direct awareness that needs no proof. It cannot be denied, for anyone who says they don’t exist must exist in order to say it, and even though someone may say it, they obviously don’t believe it, they are just being cute with words. Knowledge is not to be gained directly. Knowledge is simply what is there, what remains, what is obvious, when ignorance and delusion is removed. Ignorance and delusion are dispelled by coming into contact, by some means or another, with Wisdom, and being ready to receive it. For example, your feeling that you can be as good as you really want to be on guitar is based on knowledge, not belief. It is not because you started to believe something that you began to feel this way, it is because you STOPPED believing its opposite, you stopped believing that being great on the guitar was due to something a few lucky people were born with, and you either had it or you don’t. The insight you gained from reading The Principles destroyed the basis of that limiting belief. It may seem like one belief was traded for another, but in reality you gained knowledge and let go of belief. (Note: I asked Guilluame when he began to feel this way, and he told me it was after studying The Principles). You said yourself it is “unshakeable”, you know you cannot lose it, because you are not “believing it”, you know it, you see it. You were ready to receive and use that insight, and you became a new you.-and that is why you don’t remember deciding to believe it! As we gain real Knowledge, one quality that begins to lose force in our lives is the quality of doubt. Doubt is never real. Doubt has a “negative reality”, it is only seems to be there, with a life of its own, because of what we are NOT aware of, and we are not aware of the difference between living a life based on beliefs, and a life based on knowledge.
Beliefs & Guitar And finally, what would be the use of all this far flung rumination and theorizing without talking about how it makes us better guitar players??!! Well, if you are a person who is deeply dedicated to your continuous growth toward your ever expanding potential, you will grasp the connection between beliefs about how to play the guitar, and the discovery of infinite possibilities. In my first book “The Principles Of Correct Practice For Guitar”, I have counseled all guitar players to keep the thought “ I don’t know how to play the guitar” constantly in mind. The attitude of “ I don’t know how to play the guitar” keeps your mind always in the most receptive state possible, it keeps it ready to receive that one single insight that you need to move to your next level of ability on the guitar. It is the constant refusal to believe that the total of our acquired knowledge of how to play guitar qualifies for the label “knowing how to play”. Thus, knowledge is constantly expanded through the process of negation of belief or assumption. Most players walk around feeling (and needing to feel) “of course I know how to play the guitar, and quite well thank you!” This belief, this assumption, keeps growing awareness out of reach. I feel, on literally a daily basis, that I am just finally learning to play. Every day, I see further, and wonder how I have gotten on all this time not realizing what I have just realized at this moment. We must always be ready to see and to accept that something we are doing is completely wrong, or inferior to another way, and it should yield to a new possibility. The only way to always remain in that state of receptivity is to contemplate the thought, “I don’t know how to play the guitar”; everything else is defending your terrain. The key to why this works is this: what we are really doing is rejecting the thought and belief, “I know how to play the guitar”, which implies that nothing more can or needs to be added. The ability to remain free of the frozen belief that “ I know how to play the guitar” is based upon the realization that “knowing how to play the guitar”, as a total and complete conception, is not something that can ever be defined, quantified, calculated, bottled and sold. Like reality itself, it is eternally open ended. And so must be our minds. Every time I have a major new insight on the guitar, one that causes a permanent change for the better in my playing, it is because I have re-examined an existing structure I had been using, an existing idea of the “way things work”, and, upon fresh examination, changed it or abandoned it. Curiously, it is always accompanied by the feeling of “wow, how could I not see that before” (we call these “idiot moments” here at GP). The reason for this feeling is that I know the truth has been starting at me all along, but I didn’t see it because I was busy looking at something else. This is how knowledge is more uncovered than discovered. It is uncovered by a releasing, at least momentarily, of our habitual point of view. And so you can see that when talking about guitar, or life itself, any belief is a limitation, and the negation of all beliefs is the doorway to knowledge and ever new insight. We progress in guitar not so much by discovering the truth, but by discovering the false, which leaves the truth uncovered. Students of guitar always hear teachers and advanced players talking about the need for relaxation while playing. However, we learn to be relaxed not by learning relaxation, but by becoming aware of tension. We realize that tension in the muscles is not something that is happening to us, it is something we are doing, and so we stop doing it. What remains is the true state of freedom required to play the guitar well. In Conclusion If there is one fundamental belief by which I conduct my life, it is what I wrote in my book "The Deeper I Go, The Deeper It Gets"; "Life is endless discovery through infinite mystery". Like any other belief, this one is limited, for it may be useful to look at life from many other viewpoints as well. However, it has very wide limits, and the possibilities that it brings to me are what I prefer as the fabric of my life. I chose it, and in fact, constructed it quite consciously in order to have it serve me, and it does. It serves my strongest need, which is the need for constant expansion of self. After contemplating the nature of beliefs and our relationship to them, and gaining insight into the whole matter, I recommend to you to examine your own beliefs, and examine the ways in which they are serving you. And then come to know the one who has created, accepted, and ultimately, come to be those beliefs. At the very least, you will be free of the bewilderment that so many people feel as they wonder how their life came to be as it is. Eventually, you will earn the power and the freedom to live within the walls of your own conscious creation, or leave them, with the freedom that is your true birthright. Copyright 2007 by Jamie Andreas. All Rights Reserved. |
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Philosophy Section
