I remember believing that I couldn’t do a backward dive into the swimming pool. Every time I said to myself, This time I can do it, that nagging little doubt would surface at precisely the moment I would attempt the back dive. I’d find my body turning around at the very last second. The tiny doubt attached to the belief about my ability was what I relied upon at the moment of execution.
If you believe something based only on what others have told you is true, when a big test shows up, that belief will often let you down. Suppose that you believe that you are capable of riding a motorcycle. If you try to escape a dangerous situation by taking advantage of a motorcycle that happens to be there, the chances are high that the doubt attached to your belief will keep you from escaping on that nearby motorcycle.
That which you know can never let you down. Ever! If you had absolute certainty about your ability to jump on that motorcycle and zoom away, that knowing would propel you away safely. Because a knowing is not laced with internal doubt, you have absolute certainty about your position. This becomes true in everything that you experience, both physically and metaphysically.
If you have a belief that God will be there for you in a moment of trauma, and that any suffering that you are experiencing is just as divine as any joy that you have experienced, but you do not know this, you will find the pain of your disappointment will become an affirmation that God doesn’t really exist for you. Your belief will be shattered in a moment of trauma. This is because you are attempting to have a vision of God that has come to you from outside of yourself and it is weakened with doubt.
Knowing God and suffering in the way William Blake wrote about in the following poem would pull you through your trauma “safely,” as the poet suggests:
Man was made for Joy & Woe
And when this we rightly know
Thro the World we safely go
Joy & Woe are woven fine
A clothing for the soul divine.
Knowings can never let you down because they are woven into the fabric of your being. If you cannot doubt that which you are, and you know that you are, then you will never be disappointed. Again, beliefs have that insidious doubt attached to them, while knowings are free of such contamination.
Your beliefs are mental exercises. Your knowings are physical exercises. Your beliefs are located in the mental realm as thoughts that you constantly reinforce. Your behaviors in the world are strongly affected by the limitations of those beliefs. These are strictly mental exercises that you constantly practice until they become your reality—that is, a reality based upon the doubt that is attached to these beliefs.
You may believe that people shouldn’t wear jewelry in their noses, or that people who don’t attend church are evil. These kinds of beliefs will influence your conduct and cause you to judge others (until you change your belief and perhaps search out a nose piercer!).
Your knowings are located in the physical domain, even though they originated in the mental. When you know something, it is a part of your total being, originating in the mental and residing in your complete being.
That which you absolutely know with certainty—such as how to dance the mambo, or ice skate, or swim, or make love or ride a bicycle—is a part of your cellular being. It resides so deeply within you that it is in the cells of your humanity. That which you once only believed, because it was given to you by some external person, has now been transferred into a knowing. All of your physical knowings began as beliefs and ended up with this certainty.
You may also have some beliefs within you that you actually treat as knowings. These include beliefs that are so strongly ingrained that they act like knowings within you. Some of these entrenched beliefs may be judged by you to be knowings, but they really are not.
For example, you may believe that you have no talent for art, but somewhere deep within your consciousness there exists a tiny smidgen of doubt about whether it would prove really true were you to actually apply yourself in a new way. Similarly, you may believe that you cannot master a foreign language, but you also have some doubt about this proving true were you in a situation where your life was at stake.
When you know something, it becomes your physical reality and you act on this knowing at all times. When you merely believe something, whether it be negative or positive, you have a tiny tiny bit of doubt connected to it, and that doubt becomes your reality. Beliefs are mental. Knowings are physical, though they originate as mental beliefs.
Beliefs restrict you. Knowings empower you. Since your beliefs are imposed upon you, they are literally the inner workings of other beings within you. Therefore, your beliefs do not resonate with authenticity in your daily life.
That ever-present shadow of doubt about whether these beliefs are true for you, even if they were true for your ancestors, tends to place restrictions upon you. Your thoughts create your reality. Any thought that you doubt is like a restriction upon yourself.
That which you know empowers you to higher and higher levels of awareness. When your heart knows something is right and you follow your heart, you experience progress and growth. The inner knowing permits you to take the step that you would have avoided had you listened to your mind.
Louise Hay is a perfect example of what I am writing about. She is a beautiful and sensitive woman who has written many powerful books on healing and is the publisher of a collection of my personal affirmations and daily reminders titled Everyday Wisdom. We were on a national television hook-up together when a caller asked whether Louise had ever considered any traditional approaches to treating her cancer eight years earlier. Louise gave the kind of answer that I hope you will be able to cultivate as you see how knowing can empower you to higher levels than you might have considered. She responded, “I knew in my heart that I could not allow them to radiate me or put chemicals into me or cut me…. I just knew that this could not be my method for dealing with this cancer. My knowing led me to other alternatives, which I have written about, and ultimately to the eradication of the cancer from my body. I am not disparaging any other form of treatment, I just knew inwardly that I couldn’t go in that direction.”
The key here is her use of the word “knew.” She didn’t believe in an alternative therapy, she knew that those traditional methods were inconsistent with who she was. She consulted her knowing. That knowing empowered her.
When you learn not only to abandon beliefs but to convert them into knowings, you will have only that inner knowing to consult when traumas surface in your life. A mere belief is simply a mental note attached to your lapel by your mommy. A knowing is etched into the cells of your being and therefore lives within you with an absence of doubt.
Your beliefs are transitory. Your knowings are eternal. Think about many of the beliefs that you have today and how they have shifted over the years. In fact, many of the beliefs that you now hold were met with revulsion and disgust when you first experienced them.
Can you remember how many people were shocked to see men wearing long hair and earrings when this style of dress was first introduced? Many tried to get these young men banned from schools. They labeled them sissies and weirdos. Today those same people sport shoulder-length hair themselves and watch football played by mastodons of masculinity with earrings and long hair protruding from their helmets.
Beliefs change. Many of the beliefs that you hold today will be rejected by you in the coming years.
For example, I receive letters almost daily from people who tell me that when they first heard me talking about some of these ideas two decades ago they thought I was promoting selfishness, and today they find those same ideas comforting. As for me, I find my ideas on God and spirituality have changed drastically since my earlier agnostic days as a teenager and very young adult.
My ideas on welfare, capital punishment, politics and evil have altered. As a young man I only believed with a strong conviction. I didn’t know, and I always had some doubt about my position on these issues, particularly because I studi
ed spiritual masters who had ideas that conflicted with mine.
Those things that you have had a knowing about are still with you today, even though you have undergone a complete physical transformation. Imagine this! Today you are in a body that did not exist on the physical plane only a decade ago. Every cell of your being has been replaced by new cells.
You have new legs, arms, arteries and even a new brain. The actual molecules of your physical being are constantly changing. You are being replaced even as you read these words. Millions of atoms come and go, forming new physical parts for you, even though those new parts look identical to the old ones.
This is the phenomenal part: although you are not the same body that you were a few years ago, your knowings have somehow been transferred from the old body to the new one—not physically but meta (beyond) physically.
I knew how to ice skate as a young boy and I still know how, even though I stayed away from this activity for thirty years. The knowing is still with me, even though I have new legs and feet and a totally new brain.
So you can see that when you know something in the cells of your being, it stays with you even though your physical being is constantly undergoing inevitable change. You are changeless in that inner world, and so are your knowings.
These then are the five characteristic differences between that which you believe and that which you know. It is obvious that most of our knowings are in the physical domain and they remain with us as long as we are in our physical bodies. The one characteristic that separates knowings from beliefs is the presence of doubt. Beliefs and doubts go together, while knowings have no doubt whatsoever attached to them.
It is my intention to help you shift many of your old beliefs out of your consciousness. But even more helpful for your quest for your sacred self, I hope you will learn to shift those that remain from mere beliefs to knowings.
Your knowings do not have to be restricted to the physical domain. You can have knowings in the metaphysical domain as well. For instance, you can know your guides—your angels and the loving presence—rather than just believe in their existence. Similarly, all of the qualities of the higher self, which are included in part 3 of this book, are available for you to know rather than merely to believe in.
Nisargadatta Maharaj, in I Am That, describes the process this way: “Mere knowledge is not enough; the knower must be known…. Without the knowledge of the knower there can be no peace.” This is a radical idea—getting to know the knower. It is the subject of the next chapter, but it is helpful for you to be acquainted with this idea now.
There is the physical you who has knowledge, and there is the known. But most significant, there is the knower of the known. This is your true identity.
The peace that Maharaj mentions and the way of the sacred quest become available when you are guided by that true identity, which is the highest part of yourself. To attain that peace and to find the way of the quest involve letting go of old beliefs and shifting to a new dimension—where knowing supplants believing and where faith replaces fear.
FEAR AND DOUBT
There is an old saying (the origins of which I am ignorant), “Fear knocked at the door, and faith answered, and no one was there.” Fear stems from doubts we have about our divinity. The antidote to fear is faith.
I know within that I am not alone, ever. I know that I have divine guidance available to me at all times. This inner knowing makes fear impossible. You too are not alone, and you also have omnipresent guidance accessible at will.
When you truly know that the loving presence is always with you, the possibility of living with both doubt and fear evaporates. It has to have the quality of being a knowing. Then the notion of fear vanishes.
As you begin to rid yourself of fears, you will develop a kind of confidence that reflects your inner awareness of your divine mission. Gabriel Saul Helig, writing in Tenderness Is Strength, describes how fear dissipates when doubt is banished:
We still tremble before the Self like children before the falling dark. Yet once we have dared to make our passage inside the heart, we will find that we have entered into a world in which depth leads on to light, and there is no end to entrance.
Fear is our prison. We must eradicate it by knowing the absurdity of being afraid of anything in this intelligent system we are a part of that has infinite intelligence flowing through everything. Bringing this one simple awareness into consciousness when you are experiencing any fear will help banish both the fear and the doubt.
The things we most commonly fear can be explained away by lengthy research and investigation. Or, fear can be eradicated with one short and simple statement. I have chosen the second way, hoping to stun you with the simplicity of eliminating fear.
Fear of failing. Get rid of it! You cannot fail at anything. Everything you do produces a result. It is what you do with the results that counts. Labeling yourself a failure is meaningless.
Fear of disapproval. Get rid of it! You do not need external validation. You are a divine creation of God. Your path is unique and special. The opinions of others will invariably be judgmental. When you know that you are on a spiritual mission, you become independent of the good opinion of others. Get on with your purpose.
Fear of suffering. Get rid of it! You cannot suffer when you know your sacred self. Only the person you imagine yourself to be suffers. Your joy is divine and so is your suffering. All of the woe is a part of God’s plan, bringing transcendent wisdom when you stop judging it.
Fear of isolation. Get rid of it! You can never be alone. When you know this, you will never fear loneliness. There is a gigantic support network of loving souls with you on a similar path. Know that to be true. Stay focused on your purpose and forget about feeling isolated. When you do this, all of the guidance and love that you need will begin to be known by you.
Fear of looking foolish. Get rid of it! When you are doing the work of the higher self, you are always on purpose. Whether others judge you as foolish or not is irrelevant.
Fear of success. Get rid of it! Replace the fear with knowing that you deserve any prosperity or abundance that comes your way. Know that when you are on the way of your sacred quest, external measures of success will appear. Your success, however, is an inner matter. It is your personal feeling about yourself, and certainly you do not want to be afraid of yourself.
These are the six fears that interfere the most with the way of our divine purpose. Know that you possess the inner tools to transform your life, and the fear will be gone before you can utter, “Get rid of it!”
One of those inner tools is to acknowledge to yourself when fear enters your personal picture. When you do notice yourself experiencing fear, please be sure to gently allow it into your awareness. Feel it. Refuse to judge it.
I have a friend who takes the time to have a silent conversation with her fear-thought. She tells me that this alone often causes the fear to dissipate because it is welcomed as an old belief that once was a loved part of herself. Other times, she and the fear-thought agree on a new “job description” for it. Feel the fear and do not let its historical effect continue.
The first time I walked out on stage to speak before several thousand people and had forgotten my notes, I experienced severe feelings of fear. Not acknowledging my fear would have kept it right there on stage with me. But I surrendered to the fear while I reminded myself that I was not alone. I went out on that stage with my fear as my companion. Before even a few minutes had passed, I was absorbed in my mission and my fear was gone.
By acknowledging the fear and then doing whatever you were afraid of anyway, you serve notice on those kinds of self-defeating thoughts. You also take a giant step toward banishing doubt from your life.
Fear and doubt are partners. That which you doubt will cause you to be afraid. That which you fear creates doubts about your ability to deal with it. As I mentioned a few pages earlier, the real antidote to doubt and fear is faith.
Developing faith as a mea
ns to eliminate fear from your life is a supremely spiritual lesson. A Course in Miracles beautifully elucidates this point, with the emphasis on knowing:
If you knew Who walks beside you on the way that you have chosen, fear would be impossible.
FAITH AS AN ANTIDOTE TO FEAR AND DOUBT
In most cases, the use of the word “faith” is associated with developing a religious framework for our lives. Faith and worship, in this context, go together. I am not writing about faith that way. I honor whatever your religious persuasion is, but I do not want you to confuse religious beliefs with the actual presence of faith.
Faith is akin to knowing God, which is different than believing in God. Knowing, as I am writing about it, is an experience on a cellular level of personal experience, which has not one iota of doubt attached to it. To me, faith is an inner knowing and capacity to see God in everything, including myself. This kind of faith does not come from books.
The kind of faith I am describing does not need a religious service or a holy book. It comes from having the direct inner experience of God as a part of your higher self. It is demonstrated in countless ways in daily life. You do not necessarily have to see this inner light with your senses, yet the experience is known. You know that what you do not see is there for you.
I’ve seen my wife, Marcelene, demonstrate this inner faith on seven different occasions when she has given birth to our children. Throughout her pregnancies, she talks to me about her faith in God being with her. She knows that bringing a child into the world is more than a physical experience. She knows that it is a holy opportunity that she has been entrusted with.
She has absolutely no doubt about her ability to proceed through all stages of her labor and childbirth without complications, pain or any suffering. This faith literally puts her into a higher state of awareness, and her physical appearance changes. She has left the confines of her body. Through the power of her miraculous concentration on what she is to do, she proceeds unaware of surrounding distractions.
Your Sacred Self Page 9