Given this, how can we possibly free ourselves from stress, limiting beliefs, and self-defeat? To answer this, we must first ask ourselves what are stress, limiting beliefs, and self-defeat?
Without going into details—details that are studied in depth in the school—stress, limiting beliefs, and self-defeat, among so many other of our polarized expressions, are the Material Nature.
Stress is the degree to which our Material Nature is out of balance, off center, polarized, charged, in judgment, in fear and guilt, and out of alignment with itself.
What causes this? We're unable to go into detail here, due to time and space, but we can say that Material Nature stress is caused by perception—or rather, by misperception, i.e. seeing ourselves, our lives, and the world around us in a lop-sided way.
The cure for stress is balanced perception, i.e. seeing things as they truly are as opposed to how our lopsided Material Nature sees them.
For this, as we've discussed in previous sections, we first need to break free from our Material Nature's conditioning and from identifying ourselves with its lower needs and wants. We need to move from Material Nature consciousness into Spiritual Nature consciousness.
This means expanding our perception; it means seeing and embracing all sides of events, people, and things instead of seeing these in terms of black or white, right or wrong, positive or negative, painful or pleasureful, and so forth; it means moving beyond the duality of our Material Nature perceptions into a more inclusive and unified state of consciousness—a state corresponding to Presence or enlightenment; and it means discovering and embracing the higher service that all things in our lives play in the greater Perfection.
What about limiting beliefs? Well, this is exactly what we've already been talking about.
Limiting beliefs are the lop-sided misperceptions of our Material Nature—things that we mistakenly believe limit us, lessen us, or hold us back.
As we said before, our Material Nature is only concerned with survival, safety, security, comfort, and pleasure. It has no interest in higher ideals, a spiritual path, greater consciousness, or free will. When we identify with Material Nature as being who we are, we see everything through the filters of these concerns. Living like this limits how we see ourselves, which, in turn, limits what we're capable of.
The cure for limiting beliefs is to expand our perception of ourselves and of the events, circumstances, things, and people in our lives, past and present; it's to look for the larger Picture, beyond the lop-sided misperceptions of our Material Nature. S.O.L.A.R.® has specific processes for doing just this.
And what about self-defeating behaviors? First, what do we mean by this?
Self-defeating behaviors arise when one part of us has an aim, a goal, a dream, and another part of us sees that aim, goal, dream as a threat to our survival, safety, security, comfort, or pleasure requirements.
The part that has the aim, goal, dream could either be a Material Nature need or desire or it could come from some higher, more integrated whole of us—something more akin to our Spiritual Nature. The part that sees this as a threat is more often a Material Nature part.
When the two sides are pitted against each other, who do you think is going to win? More often than not, it's Material Nature. Why? Because Material Nature rules us until we consciously and intentionally embark upon a higher path and strive to break through its stranglehold and illusions.
The cure for self-defeating behaviors is to break free from identifying ourselves only with our Material Nature and to come into a more aligned and unified place in us—in our Hearts, which is the home of our Spiritual Nature. This place of consciousness in us has the power to overcome any Material Nature behavior that's not serving our greater good.
How do we do this? Well, first we must see that most of what we call ourselves is Material Nature and that this is running our lives. We must rid ourselves of the illusion that we already possess the degree of consciousness and free will that Material Nature has fooled us into thinking we have.
Then, we must observe and understand how Material Nature works, what its "tastes" are, how it controls us, how it keeps us asleep, how it distorts our perception of things, what it's goals are, and how it actually serves us until we are ready for greater truth and ready to strive for something higher.
Observing and working with self-defeating behaviors is the perfect place to start, because these show us in no uncertain terms that we're not in control—that is, that our potentially higher Spiritual Nature is not in control, at least not yet.
Back to beginning of "Free Yourself of Stress, Limiting Beliefs, Etc..."
