Summary: (http://www.mortylefkoe.com/wp-content/uploads/marty_lefkoe_headshots_Blog_053_201_edit_235251x3002-150x150.jpg)For many years I thought that virtually all of our behavior and feelings were caused by beliefs. When thousands of clients found and eliminated the relevant beliefs, they saw spectacular behavioral and emotional changes. After about 12 years, however, I had a client who eliminated scores of beliefs and made many significant changes in his life, but who couldn’t get rid of the anger he felt toward his mother, who was a partner in his construction business, when she gave him advice on how to run his company. At that point I realized that beliefs weren’t the only cause of our feelings, that stimuli could be conditioned to cause emotions, such as being told what to do causing anger and not living up to expectations causing anxiety. (http://www.mortylefkoe.com/wp-content/uploads/bigstock_Thinking_man_silhouette_with_t_25125881-300x300.jpg)As time went on I realized that sometimes a sense of ourselves or a sense of life could result in feelings, as could conditioned expectations. In other words, there were several sources of emotions in addition to beliefs, although beliefs still seemed to be the major source. Occurrings are the major direct cause of feelings There I was for many years until about two years ago when I came upon the distinction between reality and how reality occurs for us, in other words, the meaning we give reality. I soon realized that the feelings that seemed to be caused by beliefs were caused indirectly by beliefs, but directly by our occurrings. Here’s an example: Assume a woman has the belief, Men are dangerous. When she sees a man and feels fear, it seems as if the belief is causing the fear. In fact, it isn’t. The belief is responsible for the woman giving the man’s presence the meaning, at that moment, that she is in danger. That immediate meaning, that “occurring,” is actually causing the feeling of fear. It is true that the meaning she gives that particular man is determined primarily by the beliefs she already had about men in general, but the feeling is still caused by the occurring. Therefore, by dissolving the occurring you could get rid of the fear at that moment without getting rid of the belief. This was a major insight for me. Although the occurring can be dissolved immediately along with the emotion it caused, if the belief was not eliminated this woman would continue to give “negative” meanings to encounters with men in the future, which would cause fear. Beliefs don’t directly cause behavior either So for the past couple of years I was clear that emotions were directly caused by occurrings and conditionings, not beliefs. But up until last week I still thought that our behavior is caused directly by beliefs. I had plenty of evidence. For example, I had seen many clients totally stop their procrastination by eliminating 16 or so beliefs. I had seen many clients start taking actions they had been afraid to take—such as doing things for the first time, approaching women, changing careers—after eliminating the relevant beliefs. What I just realized (and I need to check out further) is that there are usually thoughts just before we act, especially when we refrain from acting. It appears that those thoughts are occurrings or at least clues to our occurrings. If this is true, then, like feelings, beliefs are only the indirect cause of our behavior and our occurrings are the direct cause. If we dissolve those occurrings I suspect that we could take action without eliminating the beliefs. Let’s look at a specific behavior and see how this works. Procrastination consists of not doing things that either should be done or that we actually want to do. We have identified about 16 beliefs and conditionings that have seemed to cause this behavioral problem. How might your occurrings cause you to procrastinate?
