Chapter 2

Who Do You Think You Are?

 

The closer you come to knowing that you alone create the world of your experience, the more vital it becomes for you to discover just who is doing the creating.”

~ Eric Micha’el Leventahl

 

Who is doing the creating? You are. I am. But not the One we are in truth. Who is creating my experience is the creature I made up — but that creature has become a rogue robot. The ‘I’ you think you are may have thoughts like these:

• “In the eyes of the world, I’m a very successful lawyer, but at home I’m angry all the time.”

• “I’m a teacher who loves to read in my spare time. I have a perfect job, I am just so depressed, nothing seems to really matter.”

• “I’m a lousy wife and mother — I can’t seem to do anything well enough.”

• “I’m the life and soul of every party, but I don’t have any really good friends.”

 

When someone you have just met asks you about yourself, you may tell them about your job, your interests, and your family. We tend to define ourselves by our position in society, our education, our favorite sports teams, our hobbies. Our doctors might define us by our health issues; our accountants by how much money we have. We are labeled, categorized, and defined in many different ways.

Society has encouraged us to project an outward image that is often at odds with what we feel inside. We strive to look good, dress well, display the trappings of a chosen style, and possess the gadgets and status symbols that will allow us to be judged favorably by our neighbors. This obsession with appearance is the result of having lost touch with who we really are. We do not want anyone to see who we think we really are, so we are constantly on guard to hide the aspects of ourselves we despise.

There is a subconscious part of our identity made up of core beliefs, many of which may be hidden from our own view. Nonetheless, this collection of beliefs drives our behaviors, and literally chooses our feelings and our experiences for us. This is the small “s” self, or ego. This set of beliefs is what I actually believe I am.

Many of us are not even aware that our minds have made up a “self” that is running the show and wreaking havoc in our lives. If you recognize a pattern of behavior in your life — finding yourself in some kind of frustrating situation over and over again — you can be sure that pattern is driven by subconscious beliefs. The good news is that by becoming aware of those beliefs and bringing them to light, you can transform your behavior patterns. This is how addictions are healed, chronic stress is relieved, and depression becomes a memory.

In order to begin to do the work necessary to become truly happy, we must first get a clear idea of who we think we are. This chapter will show how the ego develops — the self that we “think” we are, based on unrecognized core beliefs.


The Development of Core Beliefs

For most of us, our parents looked at us with pure love and absolute delight when we were born. They cuddled and comforted us, fed us, changed us, and marveled at every new stage in our development. We were perfect in their eyes.

As children, we are totally egocentric — we automatically assume that the world is entirely about us. Adoring parents give us the message that not only are we safe and taken care of, we are inherently worthwhile and deserving of love.

But there comes a point, sooner or later when something happens, and a parent or caretaker reacts to us in a way that is less than loving. Perhaps Mom had a difficult day and reacts with irritation when we throw food from the high chair, or maybe Dad comes home drunk. Having known only loving parents before, we now experience uneasiness, and assume that we must have done something to cause this new and unexpected behavior by a parent. Our young mind will always assume that it is our fault. How many times did our mother or father say: “You make me so happy”? It stands to reason that if I, as a baby, can make an adult happy, then I can also cause their unhappiness.

When mom gets angry again, or dad comes home drunk for the third or fourth time, we will use this additional evidence to cement a belief that we are bad, unworthy, unlovable, destined to be a victim — or any one of a number of negative beliefs. This can include the assumption that if we were truly lovable, dad would not drink and mom would never be irritated. Sounds a little insane, doesn’t it? And, yet, that is how we all formed what we now call our ‘personality’ or ‘character.’

Once such a belief is firmly established, we will begin to look at the world through the lens of that belief. If we believe we are bad, we will keep a record of every time we are scolded or punished in some way, while we must overlook the many times we had fun with our parents. We must overlook those memories because in order to preserve and strengthen the beliefs I hold about myself, I cannot allow contradictory evidence to enter my awareness. “No one can convince you of a truth you do not want,” says A Course in Miracles. Through the lens of our beliefs, we will focus on the things that seem to go wrong, and all the ways we are treated badly or unfairly.

Any core belief demands evidence to be sustained. So we will behave in such a way that the necessary evidence will be supplied. For instance, we may subconsciously provoke the anger of a parent, the irritation of a teacher, being left out by our group of friends. These events will produce the feeling of shame and rejection that the core belief requires to maintain its hold.

In other words, the deeply buried belief that there is something ‘shameful’ about who I am will direct me to act in ways that elicit that feeling.

The feedback loop shown in the following illustration strengthens the beliefs which coalesce to form our identity. And that core belief will remain in control of every aspect of your life until you learn that it can be challenged and transformed.

Young children typically assume that it is somehow their fault if their parents get a divorce. If we were accustomed to hearing our parents telling us, “You make me so happy,” then when they were not happy, we will conclude that somehow it was our fault they weren’t happy. Now there may have been parents who were happy all the time, but I have not had the pleasure of meeting any! We all made up a belief that we were responsible for our parents’ happiness, and later in life, that we are responsible for our partner’s happiness. One definition of relationship hell is to hold yourself responsible for your partner’s happiness.

When my first daughter was born, I was drunk in the delivery room. However, when I laid eyes on my new little girl, I thought: She’s the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen! and I’m going to stop drinking because I want to be there for her.

But I didn’t stop drinking.

What’s the core belief she might have developed as a result of having a father who was an alcoholic? I’m NOT the most incredible thing he’s ever seen. There’s something wrong with me, otherwise he would stop drinking. I have learned that every child of alcoholic parents has this belief. The fact that I wouldn’t give up drinking at that time, even for my beautiful daughter, provided further evidence for my own core beliefs that I was worthless, monstrous, and weak. As a matter of fact, the self I had made up could not afford to stop drinking. It is not possible to go against a core belief; the belief will ultimately win. Every single one of us has made up some limiting core beliefs about ourselves, and it’s these beliefs that run (or ruin) our lives today — without us even being aware of them! Some core beliefs common to most people are:

I’m not loved (or “lovable”)

I’m not important

I don’t matter

I’m not supported

I have nothing to offer

Whatever I do will be wrong, it will never be enough

I deserve to be punished — I’m bad

I can lose love

I’m not good enough

There is something seriously wrong with me

I’m guilty

I’m a victim

 

These and other beliefs were made up by me and you at an early age, as a result of how we interpreted certain things that occurred — people spoke to us in a particular tone of voice; there was conflict; perhaps some drama ensued — and this chain of events had an impact on our young and impressionable minds.


The Red Truck Cycle

In my own life, there are still times when I feel a rage welling up if I perceive that I am not supported. This can happen at a meeting if support seems to be lacking for one of my ideas; when my partner does not agree with a statement I just made; when a business partner asks for a few more days to consider my proposal. I have traced this back to an incident that occurred fairly shortly after the war, mentioned earlier: my father’s refusal to retrieve my precious red truck, which I had accidentally dropped into a pond. He didn’t seem to care how much the truck meant to me, and I interpreted his reaction to mean that I was not supported, not loved, and at the deepest level, worthless.

This cycle of belief formation and the subsequent evidence it demands is illustrated in the following diagram:

 

The anger I might feel in response to a comment at a staff meeting is the same anger I felt toward my father years ago. The bad news about the core belief — I’m not supported — is that it demands evidence, so I will subsequently behave in a way that will show me how bad, worthless, or unlovable I am. So even if I am supported I will think that I’m not. Or worse, I will reject any support that comes my way. I will sabotage the respect or love that’s being offered until it is finally withdrawn, and then I’ll say: “See, I knew it!”

Fortunately, by now I have mostly healed that belief of not being supported, and I have also trained my mind to catch any feelings of rage as they arise. When they do, I immediately process the mistaken belief that I’m not supported. I’ve been the fortunate recipient of astonishing levels of support all my life, but only in the last twenty years or so have I learned to allow this love and support to be an integral part of my life.

There is an interesting side note to the red truck story. While recently having dinner with my elder brother Joost, he shared some memories from our days in Indonesia. He then told a story about dropping his red truck into the fish pond — exactly as I have told it! I looked at him with amazement and said: “That’s truly remarkable, that is my story. I have told and retold this story in workshops for years. I never heard it from you.” So what actually did happen? We will never know. Either it happened how he remembered it — it was his truck that fell in the water and I took on his rage — or vice versa. It doesn’t matter.

Regardless, I developed a destructive belief based on that incident and I played out that belief for a long time. It is so important to realize that whether a memory is based on fact or is purely of my own imagination is not important. In my mind it happened and I suffer from the made-up memory because I have made it real.

Tracing upset feelings to core beliefs formed in our past is the method employed by the Choose Again Six-Step Process. This link between our feelings and our memories has been well documented by Joe Dispenza in his book You Are the Placebo. By investigating the memories that are linked to feelings, we can discover the beliefs that were generated at that time. Once a belief is uncovered and exposed as merely a belief, the barriers to happiness begin to dissolve. However, if a belief is left unrecognized and unchallenged, it will persist, produce more evidence of its validity, and become stronger and stronger, cementing a fortress defending against love or joy.


Should I have been born?

Let’s look at another personal example. In Chapter 1, I discussed my life in the concentration camp in Indonesia, and how I sensed that my mother wanted to die but stayed alive for my brother and I. Sixty-five years later, I am at our healing center in Costa Rica on a day when absolutely everything is going wrong.

And not just a little bit wrong, completely off-the-rails wrong.

I felt as though everything was crashing down around me and I just wanted to crawl into a hole and die. This was a very powerful feeling, one I wasn’t familiar with. I asked myself, “What’s the message of this powerful feeling?”and the message was: I shouldn’t have been born. Now I had heard that belief expressed by others about themselves, but I had never recognized it as a belief of my own.

And yet there it was. I realized that I needed to do some work to identify the core belief that was making me feel so miserable. I couldn’t access the memory that produced it, so I did Holotropic breathing, a highly effective transformational tool that we use at the Choose Again centers. Rapid, strong in-breaths over a prolonged period of time (with trained supervision) induce a highly oxygenated brain, which produces a state in which one’s normal defenses are bypassed, often allowing deeply suppressed subconscious thoughts to surface.

What was eventually revealed was that I had deep feelings of guilt associated with my mother. The sheer strength of the guilt feelings indicated that I had hurt her in some horrible way. I know I had hurt her in the small ways that typically happen with normal family dynamics, but this motherlode of guilt was much deeper, and disproportionate to the circumstances of our early relationship.

Or so I thought.

What my breath work revealed was that my mother wanted to die in the camp because it was utterly unbearable. The only reason she didn’t was to ensure that my brother and I would survive. Thus, I had “hurt her very deeply” for a number of years, although we actually did nothing but survive. This realization made sense, and I could process it quickly. The belief that I had felt so strongly, however, was that I should never have been born!

How could I have gotten that message? I got it from my guilt as a child, but I also got it from the fact that my mother had been pregnant with me when she, my father and my brother were fleeing the Japanese, traveling into the mountains in order to escape the invaders. What was the message I had picked up energetically in utero from my mother? This is not a great time to be pregnant.

You can see how this “double whammy” of similar beliefs combined to create the debilitating conviction that I had about myself. It lay buried in my psyche, waiting for just the right moment to surface, which it did on that day at the Center sixty-five years later. This happens with all beliefs; they will all surface sooner or later.


Guilt: The Common Denominator

Guilt is found in the psyche of everyone on the planet, and from it springs all manner of other erroneous beliefs that run our lives. Let’s consider the justice system. In North America, there exists the largest jail population per capita of any society in the history of mankind. I would argue that every single person in jail has a strong underlying belief that they are guilty.

Now you might say, “Well they are guilty. They stole, they murdered, they committed arson,” and so on. My response would be, “Yes, they did all those things but why did they do them? They did them in order to get evidence for the belief that they’re guilty.” In other words, the belief that they are guilty preceded their criminal behaviors. Some 1800 years ago Augustine of Hippo saw this play out early in his life with incredible clarity:

 

Behold, now, let my heart tell you what it was seeking there, that I should be gratuitously wanton, having no inducement to evil but the evil itself. It was foul, and I loved it. I loved to perish. I loved my own error — not that for which I erred, but the error itself. Base soul, falling from Your firmament to utter destruction — not seeking anything through the shame but the shame itself.”

 

Not seeking anything through the shame but the shame itself…” Do you identify with this insight? If we have a strong belief in our guilt we’re going to find a way to express it. Whether it means being unfaithful to our partner, running our business in such a way that we’ll be saddled with a huge lawsuit, or getting into major debt and having to declare bankruptcy — whatever it is, we’re going to find evidence for our guilt. When people come to a healing circle and explain why they are there, the symptoms vary. Typically, there will be someone with treatment-resistant depression or a substance abuse issue, someone who’s dropped out of university because they didn’t get good grades, and another person who is wondering how to keep her second or third marriage together. All of them have the same issue — a deep sense of self-hatred, a strong belief in guilt, or self-hatred based on guilt — even though the presenting symptoms are different. Whether this self-hatred takes the form of depression, chronic stress, alcohol, philandering or overworking makes no difference. The symptom is never the issue.

Belief in guilt is universal. Underneath every upset is guilt; underneath every twinge of sadness is guilt; underneath every expression of grief is guilt. I believe there’s not a single person who doesn’t have a low-grade, constant sense of chronic guilt. We all do. The questions we need to face about it are:

1. Am I aware of my belief in my guilt?

2. Where does this guilt come from?

3. How and when did I make this up?

 

The last question is connected to an even deeper one: Why do we ALL feel guilty? That has a simple if not obvious answer: Guilt finds its genesis in the belief that we’re no longer part of the Oneness — the Oneness that is Truth, the Oneness that is wholeness, the Oneness that is only Love. We feel that we are no longer part of this divine Oneness and so we must have done something to be kicked out of the Club of One. The primary guilt I feel is simply because the ‘self’ I invented is in direct contradiction to the truth of my ‘Self’. This topic will be discussed more fully in Chapter 3.


Core Beliefs and Addiction

When people come to see us with an addiction, they typically want to talk about being addicted to substances. However, substances are never the issue. The substances are just the tip of an iceberg of feeling. We may feel long-standing tension in our body; we may feel desperately lonely; we may be chronically anxious or worried, or we may get angry at the drop of a hat. These are feelings. Feelings have a biochemical component and we are addicted to these bio-chemicals. That’s how we become addicted to these feelings.

Where do these feelings come from? Our feelings are chosen by the beliefs we have about ourselves. If I have a belief that I’m not supported, I will find evidence to show I’m not being supported. When I see that evidence in any form, I will feel rage, and it is that feeling of rage that I am addicted to. In this vicious cycle, I became addicted to the feeling of rage associated with the idea that I am not supported (see diagram).

We can begin to understand the roots of our addictions to feelings, and to substances, when we can answer the question “Who do you think you are?” Thus, the key to unraveling our deep sadness, depression, substance abuse, workaholism, eating disorders, and other debilitating “symptoms” is to tackle the underlying belief structure that makes up who we think we are. This has been the key to the remarkable success Choose Again has enjoyed, working with clients with all kinds of presenting issues, whether it be depression, stressed relationships, chronic anxiety or substance abuse. The Six-Step Process is the method by which this dismantling of core beliefs can be achieved.

Before I committed to my own healing work, my alcohol intake was substantial. I was drunk almost every night for about thirty years. This abuse was purely a choice I made based on my deep sense of self-hatred. This self-hatred was the outcome of a set of core beliefs that included my being unlovable, guilty, worthless, and deserving of punishment. These beliefs demanded evidence which my alcoholic behavior amply supplied.

I went to Alcoholics Anonymous for help and learned their perspective on the issue: Alcoholism is an illness and I, as an alcoholic, am powerless over it. I believed this for a while. After having worked on myself using the Choose Again methodology, I came to understand that it’s the ego which believes it’s powerless over alcohol (and many other things). Now I would never say that I’m powerless over anything. This is because I’ve learned that who I am in Truth — beyond the ego — is infinitely powerful, not powerless.

AA has helped many people and I admire its record. It’s a magnificent organization that’s saved literally millions of lives and continues to do so. And, yes, it could go further. Many AA veterans who have been at our Center stated with surprise: “This is the missing link!” A key question needs to be asked: “Why was I drinking in the first place? Where did that come from?” If you’re drinking too much you need to ask yourself, “What’s the purpose of my drinking? What is its function? What do I get to be right about when I drink?” It’s the urgency and necessity of drinking that needs to be addressed. This urgency and necessity is informed by an underlying belief that makes me want to destroy the ‘self’ I hate.

In my case, not only was I drinking too much — I was also doing drugs, philandering, and sabotaging my business on all levels. I was trying to self-destruct. I did not succeed. Sadly, some people do succeed, or remain on a self-destructive treadmill.

Why did I drink so much? For two reasons: one, I was on a misguided search for a higher self through a transcendent experience. In my self-styled fanaticism I thought booze was going to take me there — it would transport me to that spiritual realm I was seeking (is it just a coincidence that alcohol is called “spirits”?).

The second reason I drank was to destroy the self I hated so much. Why didn’t that work? Because it can’t be destroyed. I was trying to destroy a belief — the belief in my worthlessness — but you can’t actually destroy a belief. What you can do is withdraw your attachment to it. Take away the faith in your own belief, and it will wither. With it will go your self-destructive feelings and behaviors.

Here’s a diagram of my drinking belief cycle:

 

Fixing Symptoms Doesn’t Work

 

Correction belongs only at the level where change is possible. Change does not mean anything at the symptom level, where it cannot work.” ~ A Course in Miracles

 

If you’re a drinker and manage to give up alcohol, nothing really happens except that you are not drinking anymore. You have to go to the source, the reason behind the drinking, to truly become free of addiction. Otherwise you’ll either go back to drinking, or find other ways to express your self-loathing. Back in 1986 when I attended AA meetings for a few months, I was struck by how many people were smoking. The fact that virtually every treatment facility in North America allows smoking is truly puzzling. What’s the difference between smoking and drinking? What is the message I give myself when I light up a cigarette? When you get down to it, they’re both expressions of self-hatred.

The Choose Again Six-Step Process tackles underlying beliefs, not symptoms. Addressing the cause of drinking, rather than trying to manage the drinking itself, is the difference between Choose Again and Alcoholics Anonymous. By transforming the roots of the self-loathing that prompts drinking to excess, the motivation for excessive drinking is eliminated and will not be transferred to other destructive behaviors. Having said that, of course, the first thing many people need to do is stop drinking, snorting coke, or whatever behavior their self-hatred compels them to pursue, but that is as far as behavior modification will go in our work. Behaviors are permanently erased only with the removal of their cause.


How do we discover who we think we are?

The Choose Again Six-Step Process is a powerful tool for uncovering the beliefs that make up who we think we are. It uses the feelings experienced in an upset to rediscover a memory of a childhood incident in which a core belief was generated. Applying this radical process to every upset results in remarkable and remarkably quick transformation and healing.

There are at least three other gateways to accessing and identifying our major beliefs, which I will briefly discuss here. They are our judgments of others, our attachments to things, and our special relationships.

Judgments

When we judge other people critically, we are really seeing the parts of our egos that we don’t like. If there is any emotion behind a judgment, we can be sure that it actually applies, in some way, to ourselves. If we are just observing without an emotional involvement, then what we are seeing is less likely to be about us. If I see someone taking the last piece of cake on a dessert tray and I am pissed off, I am looking at an old belief in scarcity: ‘there will never be enough for me.’ If I look at a birch tree and comment on its grace, it does not mean I have a deeply buried belief that I am a birch tree.

We often resent hearing that the things we hate about others are really attributes that we have ourselves, and do not want to look at. Whenever you feel strongly judgmental, the first thing to do is to ask, “Would I accuse myself of that?” Often, you’ll have buried that particular fault, trying to portray yourself as its total opposite, because acknowledging that self-judgment is too painful. The next time you want to judge someone, take a long hard look in the mirror and see how that judgment plays out in your own life.

One of our staff members, Charles, had a very powerful fear of being gay. When I asked him “What is your judgment on people who are gay?” he would not express any judgment. Gay people are fine, nothing wrong with them. But that clearly was not the case at a much deeper level. So we went back to the feelings that came up for him when he considered the possibility that he too might be gay. He allowed the feelings to grow, and eventually recognized them as disgusting, monstrous, horrible, something wrong. None of these had anything to do with sexual preference, and everything to do with how Charles saw himself. All these judgments were traced back to a memory of him witnessing his parents arguing, and concluding that it was somehow his fault. Much later, he projected these feelings onto gay people. By processing each of these core beliefs, Charles gained a tremendous sense of peace around this issue. Whether he actually was gay or not no longer mattered at all, and never did!

Attachments

A mind attached to anything becomes a sick weak mind. A weak mind will keep going to the garbage of attachment and this causes the nervous system to get squeezed and weakened so it cannot handle this very energetic decision for freedom. A strong mind is needed to make the strong decision and handle the power that will come with it. To heal disease you must first decide that you want to be free of pain and suffering. Without wanting this nothing else will work. To forgive and forget is the best medicine for curing all pain. Let the thought that causes pain come into the present and discharge into Emptiness. Do this now!” ~ Sri H.W.L. Poonja

 

What do you think you couldn’t live without? If you’re attached to a particular consumer good, like shoes, you may be convinced that you need a new pair of high heels every week in order to feel attractive. This desire is driven by the larger, overarching belief that you need something outside of yourself to be secure or feel happy. Underneath such a belief is likely a deeper one: I am not lovable the way I am, there is something lacking within me.

Special Relationships

A special relationship is one in which each holds the other responsible for how they feel. In a special relationship, I have given my partner the task of making me happy. The arrangement stems from a belief in lack, that what I need has to be supplied by my partner. Finally, a special relationship is a prolonged bargaining session which is doomed to fail; sooner or later my partner does not keep his or her end of the bargain.

Yet ultimately, we attract partners who share our beliefs in order to heal them together. I used to attract people who had a noticeable addiction to the feeling we call anger. They came into my life in order to offer me a steady stream of replays of my father’s anger. What was the purpose of attracting anger? Ultimately it was to heal my belief that I deserve to be punished, and to heal my huge fear that when someone is angry it means I will be abandoned.

My partner will always push my buttons and trigger my beliefs better than anyone else, so if I pay attention to those triggers, we’ll both discover the beliefs that we need to heal. Relationships are the most powerful healing laboratories available to us all.


We think we are our labels

In the same way that we hold ideas about who we think we are (introverted, bad at math, a poor driver, phobic about heights), many of us are also labeled with diagnoses such as ADHD, anorexic, bi-polar, or depressed, to name just a few. If we allow ourselves to be labeled and we accept the authority of an outsider to give weight to the label, then inevitably we become the label. I have certainly seen people who were labeled in some way act more and more like the label over time. There is a seductive quality to a label or diagnosis: “I am off the hook. Now I know why I’ve always behaved the way I do.” The label absolves one from taking ownership of a problem or behavioral tendency.

A young woman who was twenty-two, deeply depressed, and on suicide watch came to see me for a session. Her psychiatrist had given her a life sentence: “You’ll never be happy!” If she had believed that, where do you think she’d be now? Someone had told her about our work, and she came to see me in Vancouver.

She instantly connected with the suggestion that depression and suicidal ideation were part of a deeper issue and were chosen by her to support some core beliefs about herself. Two days later she was at our center in Costa Rica, and three days later she had commuted her life sentence. She learned that she could choose again; she had a vote after all. Very quickly she decided to shed the labels and start living. It does not always go that quickly; progress depends on how ready someone is to choose again. It depends on how strongly the person wants to be right about something that had happened in the past, and whether one is willing to let everyone in the past off the hook.

Whether you’ve been labeled as bipolar, depressed, suicidal, or anything else, it’s crucial to remember that those labels only point toward symptoms. Those symptoms are informing you that there is something wrong with your belief system; there’s something wrong with who you think you are. Your mistaken identity is manifesting as depression, or as manic behavior, or as being habitually conflicted, but that is not who you are. Understanding who we think we are is the prerequisite to transforming our everyday experiences. Getting in touch with who we really are puts us on the path to healing, the subject of the next chapter.


Summary

1) We make up core beliefs about ourselves as young children.

2) Our beliefs demand evidence, which we will find in our everyday activities.

3) Beliefs run like default programs determining our behavior, and creating barriers to happiness. We think we are our beliefs, our stories, and our labels, but none of these are who we really are.

4) Awareness and correction of these beliefs are essential for becoming happier and healthier, by decreasing their power over us.

5) We can find out what our beliefs are by examining our upsets and feelings using the Choose Again Six-Step Process, and by examining our judgments, attachments, relationships, and labels.