Working With Doubt

tadamichi

I’ve been moved by the response to my recent posts on aligning your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors with your mission in life – particularly the idea that your practice can be your purpose. 

That quest for a higher purpose has led to a series of conversations among community members about something we all come up against in this work – doubt.

The first thing I want to say is: doubt isn’t a sign that you’re doing something wrong or failing in your practice. Remember: there’s no such thing as failure; it’s all information. Doubt comes up for all of us, including me. And so, we’re going to talk about when and why we encounter doubt – and how to work with it.

Your State of Consciousness: Your Level of Mind

The first thing we need to recognize and understand is the level of consciousness – or unconsciousness – that leads to doubt.

What do we mean when we talk about consciousness? 

You can break it down like this: 

 

Consciousness is awareness. 

Awareness is paying attention. 

And paying attention is noticing where you’re directing your energy.

Think of your state of consciousness as your level of mind. 

In other words, 

1. How aware are you? 
2. What are you paying attention to? 
3. How are you reacting to your environment and circumstances? 
4. Are you noticing where most of your energy goes? 
5. Are your thoughts and feelings making things better – or worse?

What does this have to do with doubt? 

Let’s say you’re in the middle of a challenging situation and struggling to find a solution – but you’re still in the same level of mind that led to the challenge. Then, you probably do what most of us have become programmed to do in that circumstance. You focus even more intensely on the challenge, giving it your attention – and, therefore, your energy. 

And giving something your energy only ever does one thing: amplifies it.

As a consequence, the challenge has become more solidified in your world as a problem. 

As you feel the emotions associated with the current circumstance, you give the problem more and more energy. You become more frustrated; more anxious; more resentful. You fuel the emotional state that led to the thoughts ... that created the particular level of mind ... that brought you to this situation in the first place.

It’s so important to remember, in these moments, that you can’t solve a problem from the same level of mind – or consciousness – that created it. And the only way to change your consciousness is to change your energy.

What do I mean by that? 

To change your consciousness is to become aware that there is a new possible reality or solution. So, if you don’t change your consciousness, you’ll limit your awareness of that possibility and continue to fuel doubt by focusing on your problem – creating ever more distance between you and a solution.

The Level of Mind That Leads to Doubt

To better understand how your level of mind can intensify doubt, think of a challenging situation from your past – one where you struggled to find a solution. Maybe it was a serious health condition that was getting worse. Or a difficult financial circumstance. And let’s say it was a situation you wrestled with for a long time – or kept coming up against in familiar ways. You did everything you thought you knew could change it.

Now, see if you can identify some thoughts and feelings that led to the level of consciousness you associate with that experience. Maybe you had an old story in your head about lack – and it activated feelings about abundance being out of reach for you. Maybe you spent hours online reading about a troubling diagnosis and became convinced there was no hope of healing.

Looking back, you might be able to see that you kept giving energy to the problem by paying more and more attention to it in the same exact ways. Maybe now, you can recognize that you got stuck in that situation because every day, you approached the same problem with the same level of mind – meaning you couldn’t see a solution.

When we can’t imagine a solution ... when we’re unaware of, or can’t envision a new possibility ... then it doesn’t exist for us. And when possibility doesn’t exist for us, we can’t believe our situation will ever change.

And what is disbelief? It’s doubt. This isn’t working. This issue will never change. I’ll never figure this out. I’m not doing it right. It works for other people, but not for me. I’ll never ...

So, if you’re facing a problem, but you’re at the same level of mind that created it, you’re going to see and react to it in the same ways that led to it in the first place. You’re going to keep doing what you know – more of the same – even if you’ve already seen and experienced that it doesn’t work.

In other words, your consciousness is now equal to the problem itself. And now, the problem is controlling the way you feel and think. You become a victim of your environment and circumstances – instead of the creator of change in your life.

And the harder you try to solve the problem from within that state of mind, the more elusive the solution seems. And the more doubt takes hold. Even if intellectually, you understand there might be a solution, you still doubt it can happen – because you can’t feel it.

New Level of Mind; New Possibilities

If we use “consciousness” interchangeably with “level of mind,” “awareness,” or “energy,” then we could say the level of mind that leads to doubt arises from a certain level of energy. That’s why it makes sense that we can’t solve a problem from the same level of mind (or energy) that created it.

A simpler way to say it is: to solve a problem, we must first change our energy – or our emotional state – around it. Because it’s only in changing our energy that we change our level of mind ... and only by changing our level of mind that we can become conscious of new possibilities.

When we default back to our old ways of thinking and feeling; old ways of believing and behaving; we return to the level of mind that leads to doubt and disbelief. We limit ourselves from new ways of seeing our circumstances – and new ways of approaching (and solving) the challenges in our lives.

The key, then, is to learn how to change our level of mind by changing our energy – and then sustain that elevated state, even in the midst of persistently challenging circumstances.

I hope you’re wondering how to do that – because that’s what we’ll explore next.

Working With Doubt: 

Changing Your Energy

We left off talking about the key to working with doubt: and that’s learning how to change your level of mind – or consciousness – by changing your energy. What inevitably comes next is:

                    OK, but – how?

In Part I, we discussed the first step: becoming aware of your level of consciousness – that is, how you think and feel about whatever circumstance is creating the doubt – and noticing how it affects your perspective. Now, let’s talk about how you can work with doubt from that place of understanding.

Cultivating Awareness

As you did for Part I, think of a challenging situation in your life – only this time, think of one you’re currently facing. It could be a worsening health condition ... persistent financial troubles ... or perhaps a deepening relationship conflict.

Now, applying what you’ve learned about your level of consciousness, see if you can tune in and become aware of that now. Are you feeling the same feelings, thinking the same thoughts, or doing the same things you’ve always done to try to address the issue? 

In other words, are you trying to solve the problem from the same level of consciousness that led to it?

If it feels challenging to try to see yourself in this way, don’t worry – and don’t judge yourself. Our survival instincts are so hard-wired, it can be difficult to have any objectivity about ourselves when the feelings associated with them – such as fear, anxiety, worry, mistrust, frustration, defeat, or resentment – are activated.

And challenging yourself in this way, especially when it’s unpredictable or unfamiliar, might bring some of those feelings up – along with doubt. But don’t be discouraged. If you can catch your personal reactions while trying to determine your level of consciousness, you’re already raising your awareness. That’s because consciousness is awareness. That’s why the first step is to become conscious of your unconscious self.

Now, let’s work on developing that blossoming awareness to change your energy. The best way to do that is by first practicing during your meditations.

Elevating Emotions; Opening Your Heart

Before you begin, think about your intentions for your meditation. Because you’re working with doubt, and how to change your level of consciousness by changing your energy, here are some things to focus on:

1. Set the intention to move out of the addictive emotions of survival – which fuel doubt – and into the elevated emotions of creation (remember, your heart is your creative center): joy, wonder, curiosity, awe, gratitude, compassion, and care. I’ve found there’s no greater way to change your energy than feeling the emotions connected to pure love. That’s the consciousness – and the energy – of the heart; the fourth energy center.

2. To help you feel those elevated emotions, practice opening your heart during your meditation. 

For tips on how to do this, you can re-read my post about the Tuning In With Your Heart Meditation – which is a great one to work with for this exercise.

In doing just these two things during your meditation, you’ll get a sense of the energy and emotions related to what it feels like to be in a new reality – one where the situation you’re in is significantly different. And simply doing that will change your energy. Why? Think of emotions as “energy in motion” – meaning, when you change your emotions, you change your energy.

And, as I’ve said many times: When you change your energy, you change your life.

When you feel the emotions of your new future, you turn up the volume on trust – and turn down the volume on doubt. Suddenly, you begin to become conscious and aware of possibilities you’d never considered before.

Memorizing a Feeling; Installing a Mind

In essence, you’re using your meditation practice to train your body and mind to feel new emotions and to think differently – which will lead to new behaviors. Through this practice, you’re “memorizing the feeling” of living in a different world; one where a new experience – in this case, the resolution of a problem – has already happened.

You’re learning how to install and exercise a new mind; one capable of staying aware of new thoughts and possibilities – not only while in meditation, but also after you’ve opened your eyes and returned to daily life. That’s why you’re doing the meditation in the first place.

The purpose is to evolve from a place of limited belief to one of unlimited belief. And since a belief is just a thought you keep thinking over and over again, you must remind yourself to stop thinking the same old way and start thinking a new way – until you believe those new thoughts. That’s when you’ve installed a new mind – and, at the same time, uninstalled the old one.

The best part about this exercise is, you don’t have to know how the situation is going to change (that’s the known); you just have to change your energy and live in the possibility that it already has changed. That is, you live in the unknown – but without doubt.

Let’s go back to the situation you’re currently facing. 

If it’s financial stress, you might be stuck in survival emotions and thoughts based in fear, worry, and guilt – that this won’t ever change; that you’ll never have enough; that your family’s future and well-being will be negatively impacted. You might compare yourself to other people and feel unworthy to have abundance yourself – or shame about not measuring up.

So now, when you enter your “think box” before meditation, you’re aware of the level of consciousness (or unconsciousness) that fuels the problem. This will help you identify the feelings and thoughts you want to practice during your meditation. In other words, you’ve clarified the emotions you want to change in order to change your energy – because those are the exact emotions that keep you from seeing change and cause you to doubt. When you feel those familiar emotions, you can’t believe in a different future – and you’re more prone to believe in what you know from the past.

When you enter your “play box” in meditation, then, you practice feeling elevated emotions – because they cause you to believe in that new future. That’s why some people in this work – people who’ve changed their health or life circumstances in other significant ways – sometimes meditate two or three times a day. They do it to overcome their doubt and chronic disbelief – by changing their energy and emotional state. They do it so they can believe again and again.

So, in your meditation, you might practice feeling immense gratitude for having all your needs met. Or the tremendous lightheartedness and relief that comes with the freedom to do whatever you want – whenever you want. Or you tune in to the great joy of having so much abundance, you can give it away – and spread joy to others.

You practice feeling love for your life – every part of it, including the very challenges that brought you to this moment of awakening and possibility.

From Survival to Creation: A Triumph

What you’re learning to do, through these practices, is open and activate your creative center – the heart – and become aware, or conscious, of possibilities that already exist by installing a new mind in the brain as well as the body. In doing so, you change your energy – and, therefore, your consciousness.

You begin to develop a new way of thinking and feeling – which will enable you to face the challenges in your life by behaving in new and different ways. As you hone these skills, you’ll discover solutions that were always there – you just couldn’t see them from the same level of consciousness that created the problem in the first place.

If you can teach your body what it feels like to be in that new future, and keep reminding yourself how to approach the problem with a new consciousness, you’ve entered your meditation as one person (the same old person with the same old problem and the same old inability to solve it) and you’ve come out of it as a new person – with a new mind. You’ve opened your heart to a new possibility.

You’ve moved from survival to creation. And that, in itself, is a triumph.

Over time, you can evolve your practice and perspective so that, when doubt arises – as it will for anyone in the river of change – it won’t overwhelm you. Instead, it can become a catalyst in your life. It can help you recognize your level of mind, clarify your intentions, and recommit to the work. Working with doubt in this way, you can change your energy – and change your life.

 

Dr Joe Dispenza