In my prior post Putting the Horse Before the Cart - Part 1, I reconsidered the belief I’ve held related to consciousness being the true driver of human behavior. While some believe we just need to make better decisions, I’ve argued that to make better decisions we need to elevate our consciousness.
The obvious answer is that our beliefs drive our decisions. Like if I believe in the efficacy of free-market capitalism then I will believe that there will always be rich people and poor people and that’s okay. But if I believe that those who live in what we categorize as poverty need help, then I will perceive that those who live in what we categorize as wealth as the problem. Or if I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman, then . . . you get the idea.
I once knew someone who firmly believed that race determined intelligence. He didn’t consider himself a racist, but instead sited research that posited that Caucasians and Asians have higher intelligence than people of African or Indigenous ancestry. But then what is intelligence? How do we measure it? What is it based on? And who writes the intelligence tests?
Now what if this individual, who shall remain nameless for obvious reasons, were to begin engaging in consciousness raising work. Let’s say he (and yes I’m at least revealing his gender) was to engage in transpersonal therapy, daily meditation, and hire a life coach with a focus on spiritual progression, maybe over a period of several years he would begin to see the world differently.
Maybe if he were to participate in some life changing Native American ceremonies, micro-dose psilocybin for a couple months, do breathwork, take up yoga. Let’s say he meets a woman from one of these spiritual circles that he begins dating, and that woman introduces him to even more spiritual concepts. Mind blown. It’s like he wakes up from a dream. He changes parties, sells his corvette, and divests his stock portfolio of oil companies.
He begins to rethink how he made his money and what he should do with the piles of cash he’s amassed in his life doing what he thought was the right and just thing to do as a card-carrying member of the capitalist society. (There isn’t such a thing, but there might as well be.)
But when does this happen, and why? What precedes it? What leads this fictional individual to makes such radical changes in his lifestyle that leads to a fundamental shift in thinking and belief, which then leads to different decisions?
The individual I once knew who believed that race determines intelligence is not fictional, the fantasy I have about him radically changing his lifestyle and worldview is. It’s extremely rare for people to change this radically and begin making different kinds of decisions. For example, this individual believed (as many wealthy people do) that if you can find legal ways to avoid paying taxes that you should. That if you can hire a sophisticated accounting firm and pay them $100,000 to save you $200,000 in taxes that it’s a good investment, because it is after all legal. Never mind the fact that those living at subsistence level can do no better than TurboTax.
For the wealthy to avoid paying taxes and place the burden of financially supporting the military, public health, infrastructure, law enforcement, and the fire department largely on the shoulders of those of the middle class is merely a reflection of how clever and hard working the wealthy are. They deserve it because of how well they’ve done. And of course anyone has a chance to make the money they made because we live in a free society.
This is the narrative that most people subscribe to. It’s why when certain billionaires put their names in bold lettering on their private jets and buildings we celebrate them for it. Bernie Madoff was highly celebrated, until it became known he was a fraud. Jeffrey Epstein was celebrated within the circles of billionaires for inexplicable reasons, until it became known (publicly) that he was a pedophile. Billionaires in general are celebrated. We celebrate wealth because those individuals represent the height of what is possible for us.
But such a belief is held within the context of a narrative about the world that says that we are separate distinct beings, not connected, not interdependent, not better off together, but better off as rugged individuals pressing our way forward in life, as expressed in the highly celebrated Ayn Rand novels of the 1950s.
If we succeed it is because we have superior abilities and therefore the spoils of our success are ours to do with as we please because we deserve it. And for those who don’t succeed, it’s merely because they didn’t try hard enough, or they aren’t smart enough or likable enough or deserving enough. The smelly homeless guy on the street is there by his own doing so I don’t need to help him because it won’t do any good. And besides I worked hard for my money, why should I give it to him?
But I digress. The question here, the question of all questions is: What precedes the change? What is the underlying driver of transformation? Do I work to raise my consciousness because I want to change my perceptions of the world, or is it because I am questioning my perceptions that I seek to do consciousness raising work? Which is the cart, and which is the horse?
In part one of Putting the Horse Before the Cart I suggested that it’s a non-linear process – that we transform as a result of focusing on unraveling our belief system while doing healing and growth work at the same time. That we shift between the two and incrementally transform our beliefs and raise our consciousness in one glorious often messy process of personal upheaval.
But then I had to think deeper still into the question. What precedes the desire to question one’s beliefs, and what precedes the pull toward consciousness raising work?
It’s a question of paramount importance, because both the questioning of beliefs and doing healing work are far from pleasurable. They are gut wrenchingly difficult. One only does this work because . . .
Right!
Because what?
And here is the answer I’ve come to.
Because our souls yearn for it. Which speaks to our soul’s evolutionary journey — the reason we’re here on Planet X, that we lovingly call Earth, a little round thing orbiting a star we call the Sun, in a lonely band of a spiral galaxy we call the Milky Way. A galaxy among hundreds of billions of others in an ever-expanding Universe that appears to hold solid form that isn’t really solid at all.
Our soul’s yearning.
It’s the only thing that can explain it. It’s the only reason we would submit ourselves to the torture of inner healing work. Of dredging up unhealed trauma from the subconscious mind. It’s the only reason we would question the beliefs that serve as the foundation of human culture. Why we would want to shift our beliefs in such a way where we come to think differently than 99.9% of the populous. Such that when we show up at a cocktail party we can’t bare the superficial conversation and instead receive the odd looks and passing comments of those who have decided we are undecidedly weird and strange people.
Therefore, the answer to the dilemma of human decline and eventual extinction on a planet destroyed by a mere belief system is simply the journey of the soul. Do we connect with the journey of the soul, or continue with the narrative of separation? The answer to this question determines our survival or extinction.
Therefore, the answer to shifting the narrative and making better decisions is so precisely simple — to connect with our soul’s journey and cultivate the courage to follow it.
So, if doing consciousness raising work while also working to unravel our belief systems is the horse that drives the cart of better decision making, then the road comes before even the horse, because without a road the horse and the cart are irrelevant. The road being our soul’s journey, is the amorphous subtle quiet voice that leads us to grow and evolve, which leads us to question narratives, which leads us to better decision making, and there we go.
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Exceptional piece! Because beliefs are the foundation of valuing and behavior, I'd been thinking about how they change, particularly how erroneous beliefs can be changed (in oneself or by others). You indeed put the road before the horse and cart, by attributing it to the soul. Also, in the beginning of the article you described some influences that could turn a person's awareness inward. And that's key. We don't know what we don't know, so it's easy to follow the horse carts down the well-laid tracks of others. The influences you cited help to stop us, to consider that we are creating the "road" by way of soul guidance. My hat's off to those you mentioned, life coaches, etc., but also everyday people in touch with their soul—who, like you and Maria, openly shine a light on the road we make with each step. Indeed, survival and thriving lay in the awareness that, although we appear to be creating separate roads, they're all interconnected and one, leading in the same direction. More practically speaking, we get what we believe.