THE MEANING YOU GAVE to each event that happened to you in your early life was banked in your subconscious mind as a thought. From that thought came an emotion, sometimes positive, but sometimes negative. Either way, from the emotion you experienced came an attitude, sometimes positive, but sometimes negative.
Your attitude led to a desire. If your attitude was positive, the desire was for more of the experience. But, when your attitude was negative, you experienced a very special desire.
That desire was to get back what you lost or to do something different so that you would never again lose whatever you lost. What did you lose?
A certain amount of love, respect, significance, or security.
The desire caused a certain behavior.
This behavior was a strategy, and it sometimes worked. But sometimes it did not. Proverb 14:12
When it worked, your subconscious mind banked it as a winning strategy and one that could be used without thinking.
Over time, your winning strategies became habits and you accepted them as a natural part of who you are. Your character was formed, and you were on your way to what you hoped would be a successful life.
With a little reverse engineering you can see that if the meaning you attached to the memorable events that happened in your early life were from a child’s perspective, you could have attached the wrong meaning. Or at least a skewed meaning for lack of knowledge or experience.
As a child, if someone called you stupid or ugly, you might struggle today to believe you are smart or beautiful.
If you heard those disparaging remarks repeatedly, you might have developed a strategy to prove you are or are not stupid or ugly.
Today you could be an underachiever or an overachiever simply because of the meaning you attached to the event.
If the disparaging remark was something you could agree with, your subconscious mind banked it as the truth, and it would use all the other information you believed to be true to plot and plan your behavior so that you would remain safe from the pain of your truth.
The truth of a child.
From the words of a human being.
A human being who is probably not ordained in the business of assigning intelligence or beauty.
What I have described is the process by which we accumulate our faulty beliefs that lead to counterfeit strategies. Which leads us to hurt ourselves. And others. Proverbs 23:29-35
While I have given you an example of a negative situation, you can also develop faulty beliefs and counterfeit strategies from positive situations. Let’s say you were the favorite child of a parent or grandparent and you were noticeably indulged above your siblings. Rather than feeling pain, you may have felt great pleasure in being favored.
Your thoughts may have led to an attitude that you were special, and a desire to always be treated better than others. Today, you may expect to be the center of attention in everything you do and with everyone you associate.
You may have chosen behavior that helped you get noticed, or you may have chosen friends who would see you as better than them. If you aren’t the center, you may struggle to get in the center, or you may abandon situations where you cannot feel important.
If you are tired of fighting for center stage, you can thank your subconscious mind for banking the truth you believed as a child, and then do the work of revisiting the meaning you attached to being the little princess or momma’s boy.
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.–1 Corinthians 13:11-12NIV
If the belief is faulty, the strategy will prove to be counterfeit.
What if, when you felt in your heart that you lost a certain measure of love, respect, significance, or security, you could see that your thoughts were taken captive by Fear?
How different might your life be if you can acknowledge you have been in bondage to Fear and you need a way out?
What if you could see that what you need is freedom from your faulty beliefs and counterfeit strategies?
Even before we acknowledge God, who transcends time and space as we know it, he is doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves. He knows the faulty beliefs and counterfeit strategies that we hold dear, and he knows what it takes to bring them to the surface from the deep recesses of our hearts.
He knows what we depend on to save ourselves from heartache, and when we are ready, he will replace our faulty beliefs with truth worth believing, a truth that will lead to the behavior we seek.
If we could change on our own, we would have already changed.
It’s only when we recognize we need help that we can be saved from the rinse and repeat of faulty beliefs and counterfeit strategies.
Your vision will become clear only when you can look inside your own heart. Who looks outside dreams. Who looks inside awakes.—Carl Jung
I must caution you that looking inside your own heart is a tricky business because it can awaken you. It can awaken you to the reality that your heart, which controls your thoughts and behavior, is deceptive. Jeremiah 17:9
This reality can lead to depression and hopelessness.
The way out of the grip of Death, which always leads us back to the rinse and repeat faulty beliefs and counterfeit strategies we trusted, is to admit we are stuck in prison, a solitary confinement of our own devices. When we acknowledge the immaterial foe inside is keeping us from the full measure of love, respect, significance, and security we seek, we become ready for the immaterial Spirit who sets us free. Hebrews 2:14-15
How different might your life be if you can see that you haven’t suffered pain in vain, but for the purpose of finding freedom?
Let’s face it. Who would ever seek or even need God if not for pain?
This is why I believe Jesus.
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”–Luke 4:18-19NIV
How do we successfully do life? By surrendering our best thinking to God, who supernaturally transforms us with, and by, his love. By admitting we are powerless to change ourselves and by choosing to believe, with God, anything is possible.
I Corinthians 6:12, Galatians 5:16, James 4:2, 1 John 2:16-17, Matthew 6:21, 1 Peter 5:8, 1 Corinthians 10:13, Isaiah 26:8
As always, it is my intent and hope that my words may encourage you wherever you are in your journey.
Please share your thoughts in the comments below or go to the group tab above to share your own experience. It only takes a minute of your time and your words may help others.
If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.–Jesus(Mark 4:23)
