Consciousness Explored – Episode 4
All Beliefs Are Limiting (Lion Goodman)
Lion Goodman: The reason I study beliefs is because I understand beliefs to be the infrastructure of the human mind. And so, old beliefs get pushed down also into the subconscious mind. So when you start exploring the subconscious mind, you find all this stuff that’s there that never got dealt with in life.
Melissa Deal: Hello, and welcome to Consciousness Explored. I’m your host, Melissa Deal. In this podcast, we explore the expansion of consciousness, how it shapes our behavior, and transforms our lives. On today’s episode, we’ll have Lion Goodman, who has been called a subconscious pattern detective, a belief therapist, a healer of the psyche, a teacher of change agents, a coach of coaches, and his favorite, I think, an evocateur, one who evokes the best in others.
He’s a professional certified coach and CEO of the Clear Beliefs Institute, dedicated to awakening, healing, and enlightening humanity. Lion is the creator of the Clear Beliefs Method of Trauma Informed Therapeutic Coaching, which we will hear more about later in the show. I’m talking with him today about changing beliefs, resolving childhood conflicts, and of course, what it all has to do with consciousness.
Lion: I grew up in a middle class neighborhood in Denver, Colorado. My father was a shopkeeper, my mother was a housewife, and there were four of us kids. I was number two, and mostly I was lonely. I didn’t understand it, but I felt isolated and alone most of the time in my life. I didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere, including to my family. I felt like an outsider.
And that caused me to become an observer of other people, especially the other kids. I was looking at them, trying to figure out why do they do what they do? How do they do what they do? How are they so comfortable being themselves when I’m so uncomfortable being myself? That led to a lifelong study of psychology, neurology, spirituality, consciousness. I got a degree in consciousness studies in 1975.
And so, I’ve been a constant explorer of understanding human beings, our motivations. What is the nature of human nature is one of my big questions. What’s the nature of human motivation? Why do we do what we do? And how can we change it? Because obviously we have to do better. I became a kind of a rebel.
That was my way of gaining power because I felt so out of place that if I was a rebel, at least I had other people to rebel with. I also became a photographer and I was head photographer of our high school yearbook. And it was very comfortable for me to be behind a camera observing, right, that whole thing about observing others. It was a good match for my personality.
And then I managed to get myself fired as head photographer after six weeks because, although I was taught how to use cameras, nobody taught me how to be in human relationships where you had to cooperate with other people. So I was very rebellious and non-cooperative. And so I spent the rest of the year confused and chasing girls.
Melissa: Lion graduated high school and spent the summer in Boulder, Colorado, where he was to attend university. He met a man in the mountains named T.D. Lingo, who had his own school of natural consciousness expansion on Laughing Coyote Mountain. Lion was thrilled to learn from this man, 20 years his senior, who had been a student of nature and human consciousness for many years. Studying with T.D. Lingo, Lion learned how to expand his own consciousness through natural means like meditation and psychodrama.
He went on to attend university, studying history, languages and philosophy. But he was hungry to know more about consciousness, a subject not taught in universities at that time. However, Lion talked the university into allowing him to pursue a degree in consciousness studies, and he became the first to graduate with such a degree.
Lion: I was kind of confused at first. I was interested in people, but I was also interested in history and philosophy and languages. And so I, I studied everything I could about everything I could because I was hungry for knowledge and understanding.
Lingo taught me that everything was relevant to me, that if I was studying history, I was studying the history of me. If I was studying anatomy, I was studying my own anatomy. If I was studying psychology, I was studying my own psychology. So that made everything relevant by simply applying it to myself. I’m studying myself in everything I learn.
When I was 12 years old, my dad handed me a book and said, here, this might interest you. And he walked away. And it was a book called Many Mansions, and it was about Edgar Cayce’s life readings; his readings about past lives. And I read it. I read it, and I finally closed the book, I said, oh yeah, I remember that. And so there was this memory of that’s how karma worked, that’s how multiple lives worked. So that began my study of psychic phenomenon and the brain. I was interested in it really from my early teenage years
Melissa: At the age of 26, Lion found himself unable to find a career fit for his degree in consciousness studies. So he became a sort of traveling hippie salesman, selling jewelry and gift items. One, day while driving through the Mojave Desert, Lion made a decision that would change his life forever and lead to one of the most unique near death experiences I’ve ever heard.
Lion: I stopped to help a man whose car had broken down in the Mojave Desert and he ended up traveling with me for three days. I grew to trust him. I was sending him on errands with a van and go get it gassed up or washed up and move some boxes around. So I’d kind of taken him under my wing and he was a companion on the road. And then on the third night, he pulled out a gun and shot me in the head four times.
There was absolutely nothing that indicated that that was something he had in mind. I learned later that he had actually had it in mind from the very beginning that he had pulled out the gun a number of times over the three days to shoot me and kill me, but he couldn’t. And when I asked why, he said, because you kept being nice to me. Why were you so nice to me?
The first thing that I saw, I was in the back of the van; moving things around, kind of crouched between cabinets. He was in the front of the van, and I heard this explosion and felt something hit me in the head. And I thought maybe the gas stove had exploded. And I looked up to my left. You know, the gas stove was intact. And then I looked toward the front of the van, and there he was with a gun pointed at me from the front seat. And I realized he had shot me.
So that was my first indication that I had been shot. Now, I didn’t know what happened. I was not knocked out or anything. It turns out that that first bullet glanced off my skull. And, at first, I thought he was warning me, like he was going take my stuff. And at that point, I said, it’s all yours. Take it all. Take my van, take my stuff, leave me naked outside. That’s fine. Like I had no attachment to anything that I was holding on to at that moment, as long as I could live.
And then he shot again. And I realized he wasn’t warning me, he was going to kill me. I was in a position where I couldn’t move. I was a sitting duck. He was 12 feet away. I understood physics. You know, I knew that I was going to die.
The second bullet missed me by a fraction of an inch. But I realized, okay, if I’m going to die, I want to die well. I don’t want to die angry or upset. I want to die in peace because I had studied death and dying along with everything else I had studied in psychology and spirituality. And so, I first went through my whole past very quickly, and I asked for forgiveness from anyone I had hurt. And I forgave all those who had hurt me because I wanted to die clean.
And then I began reaching up to source, and to the light, knowing that I was going to end there anyway. And a third bullet rang out and explosion. I was not hit by this third bullet either. But by this time, I was filled with light and love and golden honey energy and connecting with source. I found myself outside of my body looking down at this interesting little scene that was going on between two people in a van and in the middle of a desert. And I thought that was amusing as I was in this sort of point consciousness that could see everywhere in all dimensions.
And so I was just kind of waiting and looking up to the light and the fourth bullet rang out. My head was thrown violently to the side and I was back in my body and blood was flowing out of my head. Even though my head hurt and I was bleeding a lot, I felt whole and conscious. And at that point, I thought, okay, if I’m going to die, I want to at least look my assassin in the eyes.
And so I picked up my head and I turned and I looked at him. And that’s when he freaked out and he jumped up and he said, “Why aren’t you dead, man? You’re supposed to be dead.” I didn’t have a good answer for that question. So I just said, here I am, because I’m still in this light filled love space, you know, expanded consciousness. And he said, “It’s too weird, man. It’s too weird. It’s just like my dream this morning.”
And I said, “What dream?” He said, “I dreamt I was shooting at this guy and he wouldn’t die. But it wasn’t you; it was somebody else in the dream.” Now at this point, I had to think to myself, okay, who’s writing the script, how did I get into this movie? And I don’t remember signing a contract. It’s like, this is just very strange.
And so I thought, well, if I can keep him talking, maybe he won’t shoot me again. And so I tried to talk to him and he kept saying, “Shut up, man, just shut up.” Eventually, he came over to me and he said, “Why aren’t you dead? I shot you four times, man.” And I said, “I don’t know. Maybe I’m not supposed to die.”
He said, “Yeah, but I shot you, I shot you.” I said, “Yeah, and here I am.” So he kind of looked at my head and he said, “Does it hurt?” And at that moment, I knew that he had gone from wanting to kill me to caring about me. And this took quite a while, but I said, “No, I think I’m going to be okay.” And he said, “Okay, man, I’m going to take you to a hospital I know.”
And so he kind of put stuff around me so I couldn’t get up and jump in, which I was not about to do, and started driving. Now, time was very compressed, so I can’t tell how long all this took. But it felt like I was sitting in the back of the van trying to figure this out for about a half an hour and just going over the scenarios, where did this come from, how did this happen, why wasn’t I aware, what the heck is going on here?
Eventually, he pulled the van over and stopped and turned off the engine and the lights. And I knew we weren’t near a hospital because there were no bright lights. There was silence for a couple minutes. And then he walked back toward me and sat on the bed to my left. With a gun in his hand, he said, “I can’t take you to the hospital, man. I have to kill you. Because if I take you to the hospital, they’ll put me back in jail. I can’t go back to jail, man.”
Now I realize not only is this a crazy person with a gun, it’s a crazy ex con with a gun. Okay, so that kind of elevated the seriousness of the situation. So I thought, okay, just keep him talking. And part of what was going on is that I was caring about him. I was in this space of light and love and he was included in it. And so there was no separation between us. And I just stayed completely relaxed.
It was one of the things that I heard when it first happened. I heard a very clear voice said, stay awake and keep breathing. And so that’s what I did throughout the whole incident. So we were trying to work it out and couldn’t. And eventually I said, “I’m in this cramped position for a long time, I’d like to get up and stand up.” And he said, “Okay, but don’t try anything funny.” Don’t worry.
I got out of the van and stretched for the first time in hours. The sky had lightened. I was hearing sounds of birds, which was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard in my life. I was reborn. I walked down to this water pond that he pointed to, and I knew he was behind me with a gun. I thought, well, he could push me into the pond and shoot me and push me in the water. But I felt invincible somehow. I was in this light body that was pure and infinite.
So after I washed myself off, I turned and looked at him and he looked at me strangely and kind of held the gun out. And he said, “What would you do if I handed you this gun?” And I said, “I’d throw it in the water there.” “You wouldn’t shoot me? You wouldn’t try to kill me?” I said, “No, why, why would I do that? I have my life and you have your life.” And he looked at me really strangely and said, “Man, you are the weirdest person I’ve ever met.”
We went back to the van, tried to figure out a way to let each other go. And eventually we came to an agreement, and that agreement was that I would let him go, and he would let me go. And I would not turn him in, and he would never do anything like that again. And we shook on it. Drove to a place that he knew, got out of the van, and we shook hands, and he gave me another quizzical look. And I said goodbye, and drove myself to the hospital where the ER doctor said, “You’re a lucky man, two bullets bounced off your skull.”
I knew I wasn’t lucky, I was blessed.
Melissa: Wow. Lion, that’s an amazing story. Thank you for sharing it with all of us in such detail. Let me ask you something. When you think you’re dying and you’re forgiving others and you’re forgiving yourself, going through all that and preparing to meet your maker, that’s a really powerful moment. You know, there’s so much power in forgiveness for our own conscious expansion and for healing. So I wonder if you could maybe talk about that kind of forgiveness and why it’s so important for healing and really why we can’t fully heal without getting through that part.
Lion: I’d like to expand the question to include karma. Like, what is karma?
Melissa: Yeah, yeah.
Lion: Karma is basically undigested food of the human experience; experiences that did not get resolved because every experience wants to be experienced fully. Every feeling wants to be felt fully. But we have lots of ways of not feeling our feelings and not experiencing our experiences. We can distract with something else, or we can suppress it, or we can bark at somebody else instead of actually experiencing our feelings.
So, everything that we don’t fully experience or feel directly gets shoved down into a sort of a holding bucket, waiting for it to be processed. We do some processing at night in our dreams, but most of that undigested material never gets processed. And so it begins to carry weight, and it’s a weight on our shoulders, or a weight in our body, or it causes us to react certain ways because it’s old programming that never got resolved.
And the reason I study beliefs is because I understand beliefs to be the infrastructure of the human mind. And so, old beliefs get pushed down also into the subconscious mind. So when you start exploring the subconscious mind, you find all this stuff that’s there that never got dealt with in life. Our childhood traumas, our wounds, experiences that were awful for us. It might not have been getting beaten, but they still were traumatic for us.
So this is all undigested material that has to be dealt with. Otherwise, it serves as a weight on our awareness and prevents us from moving forward and being the glorious beings that we are. So karma is just past life stuff like that. It’s like, oh, I killed somebody in my past life, but I never forgave myself. So I carry that guilt or shame with me.
And so we have, not just from this life, all those experiences that are undigested and unfinished, but also past life material. So it can be a very big load on awareness. And when you get free of it, you suddenly have more space, more freedom. You can do things you couldn’t do before. You can think thoughts you didn’t think before.
So forgiveness is part of that cycle because we have to not only forgive those who have trespassed against us, but we have to forgive ourselves for the trespassing we did toward others. And we forgive for ourselves, not for the other person. We do it to release the weight that we’re carrying and the undigested material that’s still sitting there. And that creates freedom. And freedom creates new opportunities. So that’s why it’s so important.
Melissa: Yeah. And you mentioned a lot of expanding awareness with that. And why is healing so central to the ability to expand awareness, to the ability to expand consciousness?
Lion: Well, let’s start with consciousness itself, right? Consciousness and awareness are huge. They’re universal, right? But we have our own consciousness and awareness. It’s like we’re a bubble in the ocean and we get really attached to this bubble. It’s like, hey, I’m really important here. Look how beautiful my bubble is. But your bubble’s not quite as big as mine.
So we get into all this judgment, but we’re really just all part of the same ocean. And so, how can we free us in our relationships because no matter what you want to create in the world, you need to do it with other people. And if you’re hanging on to judgments or criticisms or opinions or uncommunicated communications or harm that you’ve done, being out of integrity with someone, not keeping your promises, all of those are weights on consciousness. They’re like weights hanging off of us.
Pretty soon, you can’t move. You certainly can’t be free. So each time, we clear a piece of information, a piece of the past, we heal something from the past; we’re taking off one of those weights.
Melissa: That is a really, really great way to explain that. I like that a lot. That’s perfect. And now we’re going to dig into more of kind of what you do. Beliefs and emotions are central to healing. So let’s talk first about the relationship between beliefs and emotions and why that matters. And then let’s go to beliefs and healing and how those are inextricably tied together.
Lion: Most think of beliefs as a mental construct, like I believe in Santa Claus, or I believe that there should be less government, or more government, right? These are mental ideas or mental constructs that we feel committed to. That’s an old definition, and it’s only partial.
I see beliefs as the fundamental infrastructure of mind itself. When we’re first born, we’re in this swirl of consciousness. Now, if a child remained in that swirl, they wouldn’t be able to function. We only have a few instincts when we’re first born. One is the ability to suck. Another is the ability to cry when we’re uncomfortable, hoping that we get taken care of.
And so, we construct these structures of the mind by coming to conclusions. For example, when this face comes close to me, I feel comforted and warm. When this face comes close to me, I feel cold and prickly. Now that’s a conclusion out of experience. It’s not a mental construct. It’s an experiential construct. It’s multidimensional because it’s a full experience, right?
So beliefs are actually multidimensional constructs. They’re conclusions that we come to from our experience so we can then use them to survive. That’s the bottom line of what beliefs are for. And so we begin constructing the belief about who I am. I’m a child, I’m a kid, I’m an infant, I’m a girl. We’re putting together the constructs of self.
And later we put together the constructs of personality, how I respond to other people when they do this or do that. And when they threaten me, I get small. These are strategic behaviors or adaptive behaviors that we construct to put together our behavior repertoire. It’s the ability of the mind to identify patterns and then use patterns for survival.
Okay, so now we have a setting of what beliefs are. So there’s a lot of methodologies for changing beliefs out there that are mental. Well, just believe something different. Well, that’s nice, but it’s sort of like, doesn’t really get to the root of things, right? In my methodologies, we go to the root, to the source, the experiential level in order to clear it and heal it.
Melissa: Yeah. It’s become very kind of trite and overdone to talk about limiting beliefs, but it’s also a shame because I don’t think people understand how important that is literally for your life, your happiness. This isn’t small potatoes, you know? So I really kind of want to dig into that.
And beliefs being tied to emotions because I don’t think people really make that connection a lot to their detriment. For example, when I see a hungry lion coming at me and I feel fear, it is not because that fear is telling me you need to be afraid, you are in danger. There’s more to it than that. It’s because I believe that this hungry lion can overpower me and end my life and I don’t want to die. It is the beliefs that I have that cause the fear.
If I’m a two year old child and a lion comes around the corridor; he’s not growling, he’s not roaring, he’s not salivating. He doesn’t look mean. He just comes around. I’m going to go cutie, you know? So I really want to dig into that connection between beliefs and emotions and why that matters for limiting beliefs and not kind of glaze over it with just a general term. Does that make sense?
Lion: Absolutely. First of all, all beliefs are limiting.
Melissa: Right.
Lion: A belief is a way of taking the universe as a whole and squashing it down into a small section of experience that I had that I then think I know and it will serve me to survive. So even the belief that is a cat. Now that’s not a belief that creates much emotion unless you’re allergic to cats or you don’t like cats, right? But that is a cat is a belief. It’s a word that we use to describe the animal.
If you got rid of the belief and you experience the cat directly, you’d have this experience of an incredible being; a feline animal that has its own consciousness, its own way of understanding the world, its own interests, its own awareness, and you would have one direct experience of that creature. But as soon as we say that’s a cat, we limit it down to a word, which is an abstraction of the experience. And now I don’t have to pay attention to it. Oh, it’s just a cat.
Now think all of the words we have in our language. We have 100,000 words; most people have 50 to 100,000 words in their language. Those are all limitations of the universe. We see through our beliefs. They’re like glasses we look at the world through. And so if I believe life is hard, I’m looking through and it’s filtering out everything but life is hard. I’m seeing life is hard everywhere.
I changed the filter and now life is joy, that’s what I believe. Now I see joy everywhere. So it’s just like sunglasses that prevent certain frequencies from coming through. Our beliefs filter, shape, and color our experiences. I’d like to give you and our audience a direct experience of that. Would you like that?
Melissa: Yes, absolutely.
Lion: Great. Close your eyes for a moment and feel what it feels like to hold this belief. There’s something wrong with me. Say it to yourself as if it’s 100% true, even though another part of you knows that it isn’t. But just feel what it feels like to hold that belief, to be living in that belief. There’s something wrong with me. And especially notice your body sensations. So Melissa, what are you noticing in your body when you believe that?
Melissa: A knot in my stomach. It doesn’t feel right.
Lion: Now keep scanning around your body, see if there’s anything else. There may or may not be.
Melissa: Physically, no.
Lion: Okay, you can open your eyes. A knot in the stomach is one of many experiences people have when they believe that. Sometimes it’s a hunching of the shoulders or collapsing in the center or withdrawing and running away. So, whatever each person’s experience was, that’s what you experience when you believe there’s something wrong with me.
Okay, so now imagine that there was an outfit of clothes you took on at the clothing store and now just take it off because it made you feel that way. It’s like this. Just let it go. Take it off.
Melissa: Right.
Lion: And now close your eyes and try a different belief. Feel what it feels like to hold the belief; I am a sacred and worthy being. What are you experiencing?
Melissa: Well, the knot went away and it went up like, like through my chest, there was an opening and it went all the way until it got to my face and made me smile.
Lion: That’s lovely. Thank you. Well, you can take that one off or you can leave it on because you get to decide what to believe. Okay. That’s a demonstration of the fact that beliefs create our experiences. It’s a small demonstration, but you can try it with any belief, especially the emotional ones, and you’ll get a direct experience.
Let’s imagine you’re standing in front of a very big roller coaster, and it’s your turn to get on. Okay, and before you step on, you have these feelings in your body, so just imagine that. What do you notice in your body?
Melissa: Oh, tinglys and butterflies and nerves all throughout my nervous system is just buzzing.
Lion: Good. Great. And what do you call that emotion?
Melissa: Ah, excitement, anticipation.
Lion: Great. Okay, good. And what if somebody was afraid? What if they believed that they couldn’t handle that experience? What would they feel in their body?
Melissa: Oh, they would definitely call that fear; being terrified.
Lion: Yes, that’s right. Same sensations, two different words because the beliefs are different. I can handle this or I can’t handle this. So there’s an interpretive lens on the direct physical experience. Now, if you were standing there and you just felt those experiences and went, wow, that’s some experience. Then you could walk onto the roller coaster no matter what was happening there.
Melissa: And that’s true. I do feel the same exact feelings and nervous system feelings. When I stand at the edge of something, or I’m high up, that’s not exciting to me. It’s not remotely exciting to me. It’s terrifying. I just, I don’t know. I’m just terrified of the edge of something or falling off something. You have these like falling nightmares. That’s how it feels in my body.
Lion: Right.
Melissa: Yeah. But I, I define it as very scary.
Lion: Right. The belief is I could die. So this is just a demonstration that when people talk about emotions or feelings, first of all, they’re using an abstraction. They’re using an abstract word. When you say I’m anxious,, I don’t know what you’re experiencing. I know what I’m experiencing when I’m anxious, but it could be a completely different body sensation.
But if I ask you, what are you noticing in your body? And you say, I’ve got some butterflies in my chest and my jaw is tightening up and the back of my head feels like it’s being squeezed. I could go, Oh, I get it. I get what you’re feeling, right? So body sensations are a place that we focus a lot in the Clear Beliefs Method because it’s a way into the subconscious mind. It’s a way into direct experience.
And it could be called embodied mindfulness, but it’s basically the same technique. You can’t heal what you don’t feel. So we get people into the feel of things because then, now we’re talking about real direct experience, not an abstract thought.
Melissa: Do you get a lot of pushback on limiting beliefs or clearing all beliefs?
Lion: Yeah, people sometimes ask me, well, can I clear all my beliefs? And my answer is, sure. Just make sure you have an attendant who can change your diaper and feed you because our beliefs are also very useful. We need them to navigate. It’s like, look both ways before you cross the street is a really good belief for a baby, but it’s also good for us as adults. Without that belief that a car could kill you, we might just walk across the street blindly and get hit by a truck.
So beliefs are tools that we use to have certain experiences and to navigate in the world. So you don’t want to get rid of all your beliefs. You want to get rid of the ones that are interfering with your life.
Melissa: Right. Yeah. Yeah. So the role of beliefs in healing then, and we touched a lot on that, but let’s just kind of really cement it down so we have a nice clear understanding of beliefs and healing.
Lion: Sure. We work a lot with trauma. And trauma is any experience, which was overwhelming at the time that you couldn’t handle that got stuck someplace. So when we get overwhelmed with an experience, especially negative experiences or painful experiences, we can’t work with it, especially as children.
And so we have to shove it somewhere. So we shove it into our body, or we shove it into our memory, or we shove it away, or we shove it up into the spirit, or we shove it down into the ground. So we’re putting it someplace, right? Because it’s undigested. As I said before, it’s undigested experience. And so it sits there and kind of like a lunch that’s 20 years old. It doesn’t smell very good after a while. It starts stinking up the room.
Melissa: Right.
Lion: So our traumas are trying to get processed, but we’re not letting them get processed. So we first have to feel the original trauma, the originating experience that happened to us. And we can feel it as an adult while holding the child. We work with the inner child quite a lot because the child is the one that experienced the trauma. So we go back and we actually change memories.
In psychology, it’s called memory reconsolidation. And we shift what happened in memory. Because it’s not the trauma that we carry, it’s the beliefs about ourselves and about the world and about other people that we carry with us. Just like you can injure your arm, you can get a cut in your arm, and it’ll heal. It’ll leave a scar, but it’ll heal, right?
The body knows how to heal. But if it doesn’t have a chance to do that, it just stays there in trauma. But by going back in memory and actually re-experiencing it in a different way, it changes the memory as to what happened, so that now we’re living in a memory system in which something different happened.
I was able to get through it. I managed to survive. Not only that, but I managed to thrive. And now here I am as a healthy person even though that thing happened to me. So we’re not changing what happened. We’re changing what we carry about what happened. And that’s what’s part of the technique is to go back and actually heal the past because it’s never too late to have a happy childhood.
Melissa: Yeah. And I want to highlight what you said that the body can heal itself of anything if given the chance. And that goes back to the beliefs that you said and the perspective and how your reality is your perspective.
Lion: Well said. That we’re carrying our past with us and that past is weighing us down.
Melissa: Right, right. And people get very attached to their beliefs because there’s a familiarity and a comfort even in the painful ones, and then also attached identity wise. You know what? He’s just an angry person. I’m just not a happy person. I’m just a whatever.
You get attached to that as part of your identity, which makes it even more important because that’s you. You know, you can’t let go of any of that when the ego is run of the show. So how do you help people determine which beliefs are not working for them?
Lion: Great question. We work with whatever the issue is that our client is working with. So it might be a relationship issue. It might be a work or career issue. It might be a financial issue. It might be a parenting issue or a child of a parent issue. So we take whatever the issue is. And then we work our way down through the layers of consciousness to find the source material that’s actually manifesting out there in the world.
So that may take a half an hour to an hour of working to see what’s underneath that, what’s underneath that, what’s underneath that. What is the originating problem that’s coming from some originating experience? And so we have to work our way down through those levels to find the source material. Then once we have the source, then we have a number of different techniques to work with to clear things at the source.
But the first thing is to work our way down and find out what it is. You know, the judgment, that person’s a real jerk. Well, okay, that’s good. You can’t change them. You might be able to change yourself. So do you want to change your perspective about them? No, they’re a real jerk.
Okay, well, let’s look at your judgment and see how you see him. Now we’re looking through your own filter, your own beliefs, and that’s something we can work with. So it’s like whatever the situation is out in the world, there’s layers of beliefs underneath that. We’re looking for the original wound or the original decision or conclusion that started the whole system off.
Melissa: Well, as we wrap up today, Lion, what is one thought or piece of advice that you would leave with the listeners as it relates to the things we’ve been talking about? Emotions, beliefs, healing, consciousness? What would you like to leave them with?
Lion: I give this advice all the time because it’s the bottom line for me. If you don’t like something that’s happening in your life, review your beliefs about it. If you’re unhappy in a relationship, look at what you believe about the relationship, and about the other person, and about yourself. If you’re unhappy in your career or work, look at your beliefs about work and career, and do a diagnosis.
In each of my free e-books, we offer this exercise called Belief Self Diagnosis, so that you can bring up the beliefs you have about yourself, about other people, about the world, about religion, or about life itself. It’s a process for excavating the beliefs that you have about a particular topic. And when you do that, and you look at them, and there’s hundreds of beliefs about each topic, you can recognize which ones are running your life.
And then you can focus on those, and clear those, so that you can get them out of your way and actually live your life from a place of freedom and openness, happiness, and joy.
Melissa: I like that. I like that. And one other question I have for you, where can people find you, see what you’re up to, and also let us know what you’re up to?
Lion: My personal website is liongoodman.com. If you’re interested in my training, the Clear Beliefs Coach training, we offer monthly two-day trainings, our Introduction to Belief Transformation. And you can find out more about that at IntroductiontoBeliefs.com. And the main training site is clearbeliefs.com. So introductiontobeliefs.com and clearbeliefs.com if you’re interested in the training.
Melissa: Perfect. Thank you again, Lion, for being with us today. I had a great time. I had a great time. That was good.
Okay, guys, stick around for my takeaways from today’s conversation with Lion.
I really enjoyed my time with Lion. That was a terrific experience. And it started me thinking the past few years for me have been all about digging deeper into definitions and beliefs and expanding consciousness, which has been mind-blowing and transformative.
And in reflecting on this interview, I realized that my transformation of awareness and healing in the past five years had actually surpassed all the work I’d done in the two decades prior. And that made me think back to what that initial catalyst was. And it really came down to just a single moment in time, the moment I became aware of my own awareness.
I was reading a book filled with quotes from some of my favorite writers, philosophers, and teachers. And at one point, I just closed my eyes and I thought about what I just read, and then it hit me like a bolt of lightning. I can’t be the one thinking and also the one aware that I’m thinking at the same time. I was like, hey, there’s someone else in here. Who is that? And the only answer I could come up with was that it was me. The rest of me. The me I never knew was there.
I was not my brain, my body, my thoughts, or my emotions. I was the one able to observe it all. And all the years of reading personal development books, and studying psychology, and neuroscience, going to therapy, working on myself, it all just paled in comparison to my newfound awareness because none of those other things took into account the rest of me; the whole of me.
And from that moment on, I was able to experience exponential growth and transformation because I was finally now working with my whole self. One thing that became clear very quickly was that the vast paradigm shifts I was experiencing required a level of self-trust that I did not have. So it was really important for me to integrate that new part of me, develop a relationship with it, and really learn to trust myself.
Our beliefs are generally a product of our familial, social, religious, and educational systems. Very often within those systems, curiosity is discouraged. Intuition is dismissed. New ideas and imagination are regarded as nonsense or a waste of time. We’re encouraged to accept and regurgitate what others believe.
But curiosity, imagination, and intuition are uniquely human. They are characteristics of that very part of us that I’m talking about. That part that I was unaware of for so long. Robots can regurgitate programmed information. That’s not being human. What could possibly be the advantage of abandoning or denying the value of the very essence that makes up such a significant part of who we are?
Attachments to beliefs, they really restrict that. They restrict our curiosity, our intuition, and imagination. And we tend to actually distrust people who hold beliefs loosely or trust their own intuition over anything else. People who dare to imagine differently and then act on it are often regarded as fickle or unstable.
We even have sayings like, you’ve got to stand for something or you’ll fall for anything. But is that really true? Are we really so daft as to fall for anything if we don’t pick a side? Is intuitive discernment really so untrustworthy? I don’t think so. I really don’t.
I liked when Lion did the demonstration with me about the roller coaster because I do believe that we get to individually define everything in our experience. We don’t experience any emotion outside of our beliefs. Every emotion is a result of a definition or belief we hold, and we get to determine what those filters are. That can be really tough to realize, though, because we do get really attached to them. It feels like that’s who we are, and that there aren’t other options.
And that takes us right back to consciousness, and that part of us that is so often asleep, denied, or forgotten. That awareness, that ability to observe ourselves, to be aware of being aware. We can use that uniquely human part of us to go deeper. We can use our curiosity to discover the beliefs that define our experience. We can use our imagination to decide what we really want to believe and our intuition to sense what feels true for us.
I spend a lot of time asking myself questions. And I find that to be super helpful. I often ask, is this belief objectively true? A kind of litmus test for me is whether or not I can find just one example of a belief I have not being true. We often call this an exception to the rule, but really that’s just another belief. For me, if there’s even one example of my belief not being objectively true, I get super curious and start digging in.
Let’s use a common belief as an example. Let’s say a person believes that it takes money to make money. Because they have that belief, they see lots of evidence to confirm that. But let’s say that person makes a conscious decision to look for one example of that not being true. They will find it if they’re looking because there are really tons of examples out there. But just one example coupled with their unique human essence can change that person’s perspective and thus their personal experience. That’s the expansion of consciousness.
Lion also talked about how sometimes we say that we want to experience change in our lives. But when it comes down to it, we simply refuse to let go of the beliefs we’re attached to. This is incredibly common, but why do we do it?
Well, let’s go back to our money belief example. If you believe it takes money to make money, and you don’t have any money, then that belief provides you with a plausible excuse for your lack of money, and is likely also protecting you from all sorts of other things you don’t want to experience. Things you fear are actually worse than not having money. Things like fear of taking risks, fear of failure, fear of success, fear of rejection, vulnerability, embarrassment, expectations, the list goes on and on. We even have fear of confronting and challenging our fears.
So we continue to hold tight to those beliefs we think are protecting us from the things we fear. The bottom line is beliefs are simply subjective definitions. They are not inherently or objectively true. We get to decide what we believe and what we choose to fear. And as human beings, we are beautifully and uniquely equipped with powerful facets of ourselves that can help us do just that.
Thank you for listening to Consciousness Explored. Consciousness Explored is part of the Mirasee FM podcast network, which also includes such shows as Just Between Coaches and Course Lab. A special thanks to Lion Goodman for generously sharing his time and perspective with us today. In the show notes, you’ll find the links to his personal website, liongoodman.com and to his training site, clearbeliefs.com.
If you’d like to reach out to me, I’d love to hear from you. My contact information is in the show notes or just below on YouTube. Make sure you don’t miss great episodes coming up on Consciousness Explored. Please follow us on Mirasee’s YouTube channel or your favorite podcast player. And if you enjoyed the show, please leave us a comment or a starred review. It really is the best way to help us get these ideas to more people. Thanks, and I’ll see you next time.