Discernment combined with fear becomes stubbornness. Close-mindedness. One result of that is that we get so invested in our limiting beliefs that we, often unbeknownst to us, fight for them.
When we are in fear, we tend to choose being right over knowing the truth. And if this stirs something in you, it’s probably worth investigating the validity of these words for yourself.
Self-sabotaging tendencies are often, too, a result of the fear to know the truth. And so are any recurring triggers that you may have.
In my own experience, the limitations that I found most persistent and difficult to unravel, were those that gave me a false sense of safety. One of my most groundbreaking discoveries was that I’d been afraid of knowing the truth because I was scared of what I might find out if I did. As a result, a part of me was closed off to shifts in perceptions, including shifts in my limiting perceptions about myself or life.
The underlying opportunity in recognising that we’re invested in being right is in investigating the fear that gives rise to this attachment.
To know the truth, we need to let go of our existing perceptions and maps of reality and enter the unknown. Understandably there’s resistance to, as the unknown feels scary.
But this, too, is often just a perception.
We find that when we investigate the unknown we enter a place of deeper and wiser knowing. It’s a heart-based rather than mind-based knowing, and it has an embodied fluid stability to it that is not accessible cognitively.
Counterintuitively, the unsafe and the unknown are the gateways to the most profound sense of safety and knowing.
Control and clinging, whether we cling to ideas, things, thoughts or people, are always fear-inspired coping strategies that on the most basic level arise from the idea that we wouldn’t be okay if we let go. So a question for you is what are you afraid would happen if you didn’t know?