Morty Lefkoe on “Everyone Knows You Can’t Eliminate Beliefs Permanently…Are You Sure?” (transcript)
Shift in Action: Welcome to the Institute of Noetic Sciences Shift in Action program lunchtime teleseminar interview in the Living Deeply series. Today our host is Tina Amorok and she will introduce her guest, Morty Lefkoe. The title for their discussion is, “Everyone Knows You Can’t Eliminate Beliefs Permanently…Are You Sure?” Welcome Tina.
Tina Amorok: Hi.
Morty Lefkoe: Hi Tina. This is Morty. How’re you doing?
TA: Hi there. Can you hear me okay, everybody?
SIA: Yes we can.
ML: I can hear you.
TA: Good. So, welcome to today’s teleseminar, and it’s my pleasure to introduce to you Morty Lefkoe, and we’re excited to, to let his work…introduce his work to you all. So, Morty has an interesting story that I, I want him to share with you. In brief, he made this discovery more than 20 years ago, and since then it has allowed him to help people make permanent changes in their emotions, cognition, and behavior. He discovered that beliefs were the core cause behind many of our problems, and things that we have previously experienced and thought of as difficult to actually transform or change, and as you all know or are interested in what transformation is and how to, how to facilitate it. So, Morty has helped many thousands of people. He does a lot of telephone sessions and is developing a really wonderful web presence which he will share with you today, and, so, welcome Morty.
ML: Thank you very much. Happy to be here.
TA: I wanted to start by asking you that first question, and that is what led you to your work? How did you make this discovery? And, then, leading into – and, what is the discovery?
ML: (laughs) Okay. Well, like many people, my life was really messed up for many, many years. I had chronic depression, and getting out of bed and, I mean, doing the dishes was a big deal for me. I mean, I was able to do something, but I used to, you know, procrastinate, and, just, I was a writer and many other things for a while, and everything was sort of difficult. And, at the same time, I’d been married twice and had messed up both those relationships, and I was trying to figure out – I was in therapy – and trying to figure what was going on, and I was doing some reading and taking some courses and at some point, what, I guess it was from Buddhist stuff, or I’m not sure – it became clear that our lives really are a function of our beliefs. If we say we can’t do something, we can’t. If we can, we can. The beliefs “I’m not good enough,” “I’m not important” – beliefs like that pretty much run our lives. And, at some point it became clear that that was the case, but it didn’t do me too much good since I didn’t know how to eliminate the beliefs. And, this was about 23 years ago where most people, you know, wouldn’t have said beliefs as the answer. Today I think a lot of people recognize that. Almost anybody says if you want permanent change you got to eliminate beliefs, but 23 years ago that was sort of new, and I figured that out. And I was telling you the other day that I was on a plane trip from New York to Los Angeles and trying to figure out why my life was just not working in so many different respects. And, one of the things I had noticed about me was that I’d come close to success so many times – I’d be just on the verge – and, then something would go wrong, and it would fall apart, and I’d sort of pick myself up and try again. And, I suddenly realized that one of the things that I held so dear to me, that I was so proud of, was that I never let anything get me down – that no matter how bad things would get I would pick myself up and just keep on going. And, my friends acknowledged that about me. They said, “Morty, you, I mean, you’ll keep going no matter what. I mean, that’s, that’s an incredible trait.” And, I suddenly realized that I really believed that that’s the way to survive – that’s what made me a worthwhile person – was the fact that nothing ever stopped me. And, it suddenly occurred to me if I had the belief what makes me good enough, what makes me worthwhile is overcoming obstacles, what would I need a lot of in my life to be worthwhile? Not success! Obstacles! And, I realized that was a belief I had that was really stopping me. So, I journaled for 5 and 1/2 hours from New York to Los Angeles, and I kept writing, well, why do I believe this? And, where did it come from? And, I just kept writing and writing, and when I landed something felt very different, and things started changing in my life immediately. And, when I got back home I started taking a look, and I realized that buried in 5 and 1/2 hours of notes was a process that literally would eliminate beliefs in just a couple of minutes. And, that was the beginning. That was about 23 years ago. And, since then we’ve worked with about thirteen thousand people on the telephone around the world, and we’ve discovered that beliefs ultimately underlie everything from chronic depression -which I haven’t had now in about 15 years – I’ve now been married for 27 years very happily, so I handled those issues, but it works with eating disorders, and it works with obsessive compulsive disorders and the everyday things that most people have if they’re honest – procrastination or workaholism or various types of relationship problems. If you can eliminate the negative beliefs that keep those problems in place, you can change virtually anything relatively quickly. So, that’s how it all got started.
TA: So, I guess the sixty thousand dollar question is how do you actually discover what those core underlying negative beliefs are? Is it, is it – how difficult is that for most people?
ML: Well, that actually is one of the things that sometimes can take a little bit of training. When we train people to do our process that actually takes a 3-day weekend. But, part of it is sort of just logical and common sense, and then a lot of practice is really what it is. But, if, if for example, you, you notice that you’re procrastinating you would say, “What do you believe that logically would have you procrastinate?” And, well you’re afraid of making mistakes, so one of the beliefs underneath procrastination is mistakes are bad. If you didn’t think mistakes were bad you might not put it off. You might have the belief that what makes me good enough is doing things perfectly, so you’re afraid of doing something that’s not going to be perfect. So, basically, it’s sort of logical. If you have a hard time getting into relationships you might believe relationships don’t work, or, or, “I’ll lose my independence if I’m in a relationship,” or men / women can’t be trusted. So, it takes a while sometimes to figure out what they are, but they’re basically logical, and if you’ve, you know, done this for a while, it sort of becomes relatively obvious as to what the beliefs are. See, what I mean by a belief is a statement about reality we think is the truth. It’s a fact. I mean, this is the way things are - “Life is difficult.” “I can’t get what I want.” “Relationships are hard.” For people who have those beliefs – “that’s not, sort of, in my head – that’s not what I think – that’s the way the world really is.” So, what I mean by the belief is the way we think the world really is. And, the way we think the world really is determines how we act, how we feel, how we perceive life.
TA: I understand. So, you were saying to me the other day, Morty, that you’ve identified 19 I don’t know if you want to use the word “core beliefs,” but… that when we can access them they can, they can, sort of, uproot and dismantle any, any problem in our lives. Is that correct?
ML: That might have been confusing… no, the number of beliefs involved varies. There are some simple problems, certain kinds of phobias for example, that may only be 4 or 5 beliefs. Some of the more complex issues like chronic depression or eating disorders can have 40, 50, 60 beliefs. The fear of public speaking - we’ve worked with thousands of people with that - there’s generally about 10 beliefs. So, the number of beliefs really depends on the issue and the individual. What I was talking about was we’re creating an interactive website that ought to be ready in a couple of months that will totally eliminate the most common problem that people have which is a lack of self-confidence and a concern with the opinion of others – we need to have other people approve of us. And, what I said was, is, is our experience is that there’s, like, 19 beliefs that cause that particular problem – some people a few more, some a few less - but, if you eliminate these 19 beliefs, most people will totally eliminate their lack of self-confidence and their over-concern with the opinion of others.
TA: I see.
ML: That’s the number of beliefs just for that particular problem.
TA: And, then you were saying – now I remember – and, you were saying that you, that that is, that you have identified that in consultation with many mental health folks and researched that as, like, the essentially …
ML: That’s one of the most common problems.
TA: …the big human problem – yeah.
ML: that, that’s one of the most common things, is just a lack of self-confidence and worrying about other people – “what are they thinking?”, doing things just to get their approval. So, as is say, you could…there’s many different problems involving different numbers of beliefs, but that’s probably the most common problem people have, and it’s relatively simple to get rid of. There’s 19 beliefs, and when they’re gone the problem’s gone.
TA: So, I’m, I’m wondering, you know, in our transformation study, when people have a realization or epiphany or a deep insight or understanding about something of themselves or in their lives that catalyzes a transformation, it doesn’t always stick. So, I’m wondering…in your process it seems like you’ve had a good success rate in, sort of, the longevity of the success. And, is there actually a process for integrating the realizations into one’s life? Or, is it an ongoing, must we do ongoing practice and reinforcement of, of, of the things that we realize when we get a hold of our beliefs?
ML: My experience is that for, oh, 70 to 80% of the people, when the beliefs go away, they never come back. So, there’s no thinking about it, there’s no working on it. When you get rid of the belief ‘I’m not good enough’ and, or whatever the beliefs happen to be, and all the beliefs that cause the given problem, the problem goes away, and the beliefs don’t come back. We have found that in some cases, and I’ve got some hypotheses that I’m currently researching - maybe 20% of the cases, or something, the beliefs do come back. Now, they seem to come back with less intensity, so when you say the words, and you think about the belief they don’t feel as strong – it’s a lot more subtle – but, they do, they can come back. And, all you need to do is, again, go through a 15, 20-minute process, get rid of the belief again, and then it either goes away permanently or comes back with even less intensity, and 90% plus people, if you eliminate it two or three times, will never come back again. So, this is not like cognitive therapy which is a tool for the client to keep looking at your, you know, “Are you thinking well? Are you thinking logically? Are you making thinking mistakes? Well, you’ve got to work on yourself between sessions.” This is more a tool for the facilitator to help a client eliminate the beliefs, and when the beliefs are gone there is nothing more that the client has to do except notice that your life has changed.
TA: So, can you talk more then about how this compares to other models of transformation. And, in, in comparing it and contrasting it help us understand more, more deeply how, how your, how this method, and your, your experience, and sort of the theory behind it and the application has translated into your model of what transformation is.
ML: Ok. Let me give you a quick answer, and I’d then like to do a little exercise with all of our listeners where they’ll actually get a first-hand experience of what I’m talking about, and then I can give a fuller answer after that. But, basically, in most cases today there is a split between psychology and psychotherapy and what we might call transformation or enlightenment. A lot of people – Ken Wilbur and many others – have pointed out that you can be enlightened and get into non-dual spaces and still have a life that is totally screwed up, that doesn’t work, and you’re unhappy. And, on the other hand you can be relatively in good shape psychologically, have good relationships, and have your emotions under control, etc. and not necessarily have a transformational or enlightenment experience. And, they seem to be two different disciplines. And, one of the things that I’m excited about with the Lefkoe Method with our, our particular approach is that it merges the two disciplines. And, what happens is when you eliminate a belief, and you realize, “wait a minute – this was never true. It’s just something I made up a long time ago, but I’ve lived my life consistently with it,” and you then go into a kind of an altered state of consciousness in which you have the experience, “I’m not the creation called ‘Morty’ or ‘Tina’. I’m the creator of that creation. In order for there to be a belief I had to create the belief, so I’m the creator of my beliefs, which ultimately create my life.” And, you have this very profound experience that anything’s possible – that you have no limitation – that nothing’s missing, and it’s a kind of an altered state of consciousness that leads to a kind of enlightened experience or transformational experience – the kind you talked about in, in your book. So, basically, the process that we use merges the two. At the same time you’re eliminating beliefs and improving your life, at the same time the same process that does that has you go into this state where you realize you’re not your beliefs, you’re not your thoughts, you’re not your feelings. You’re the consciousness, the space, the ground in which all that arises. So, the process does, sort of, both of them. And, even though I’ve just explained that, I’ve told you conceptually, I think that if people can do a little exercise it might make, it might make this a little more real. So, is that okay? Can we do a little exercise now?
TA: That, that sounds fantastic. Thank you.
ML: Okay. So, if you do the exercise, you will have some profound realizations. If you listen to me talk and do not do the exercise nothing is going to happen, so all I can do is urge you to please do it. It’ll only take about 10 minutes. But, if you do it you’ll have some real profound realizations here. So, if, if you’re in a position to close your eyes it will work better - you don’t have to. But I’d like you to imagine something for just a couple of minutes, and I’d like you to close your eyes, and just relax – unless you’re driving, obviously, in which case you’d better keep them open – and, just imagine you’re 4, 5 years old and you’ve got a mom and dad, a really wonderful mom and dad who really do love you, but they take a look at the world and they say, “this is a tough world out there. You can’t be good and make it in this world - you got to be special, you got to be very, very good.” And, they’re committed to having you excel in every area of your life. So, here you are – just imagine, make this real, try to picture these events as best you can. You are about 4 years old, and you take a look at your room one day, and it looks like a typical 4-year-old’s room: total, utter chaos. And, for no particular reason you say, “I’m going to clean up my room.” And, you quietly go… now imagine this as best you can - actually imagine doing this… you close your door, and you just start picking things up and throwing them into the closet and under the bed and into the trash can, and you just work feverishly for about five minutes, and you fix up your room, and you go to the door, and you open, and you call, “Mommy! Daddy! Come here! Come here!” And, mom and dad walk to the door, and they take a look, and they say, “Well, that’s not bad, but if you’re going to clean up your room, do it right. You still have stuff all along the walls. Put everything under the bed or in the closet. At least have a clean floor.” You say, “Okay. I, I, I can do that.” And, it’s a little bit later, and you’re playing a game of soccer, and mom and dad are in the stands, and you’re running up and down the field, and you kick a goal! And, you’re so excited! And, you look up in the stands and wave at mom and dad, and you keep playing the game, and after the game you say, “Mom, Dad, did you see? Did you see my goal?” And, mom and dad said, “Yeah, it was pretty good, but you had a kind of intensity or focus when you got that goal that you didn’t seem to have throughout the entire game. You think if you had able to keep that throughout the whole game, maybe next time you’d get two or three goals.” You say, “Okay. Thanks. Thanks. Okay, I’ll try.” And, now it’s a little bit later. You’re now in kindergarten, and you’re coming home from school with your first report card, and you got 4 As and 2 Bs, and you are so excited! You run home report card waving in the breeze. You burst through the door, “Mom! Dad! Look, look, look!” Mom and dad take a look at your report card, and they said, “Hey! You’re a smart kid! But, what did you do in these courses where you got A’s you didn’t do in the course where you got Bs? What do you think you need to do to get those Bs up to an A?” And, you notice that no matter what you do, mom and dad are always talking about how you could have tried harder, or how you could have done better, or how you fell short in some way. If that characterizes most of your interactions with mom and dad, what do you think you’ve concluded about yourself by the time you’re 5, 6 years old?
Tina, why don’t you answer for the group. What do you think people would have concluded by the time they’re 5, 6 years old?
TA: That nothing, that nothing they do is good enough.
ML: Yeah. “I’m not good enough. Nothing I do is good enough.” That’s how we form our beliefs. We form our beliefs trying to give meaning to the events that go on around us. And, we can form beliefs at any age, under any circumstance, but the first 6 years of our life we’re trying to make sense of ourselves, and the best way to know about ourselves is by the interactions we have with our parents. So, what mom and dad do, what does this mean about me? And, if mom and dad are critical, it probably means there’s something wrong with me – “I’m not good enough.” And, if we can’t get mom and dad’s attention, they’re never around, they don’t listen to me – what does that mean? “I guess I’m not important.” And, if what we say doesn’t seem to have any impact, we’re not listened to – what does that mean? “Guess I’m powerless.” So, we’re trying to understand ourselves in life. If mom and dad fight all the time and get a divorce, that might mean for many kids, “Relationships don’t work.” But, basically, the first 6 years we’re trying to understand ourselves, so we form most of our self-esteem-type beliefs during the first 6 years trying to understand what do the events around us mean, and generally the events that lead to these beliefs as a child are what mom and dad do and say in their interactions with us. So, that’s the basic idea. That’s how a belief is formed. Now, let’s take a look and see, why are beliefs so stuck? Why can you be in therapy and try other disciplines for years and sort of cope with the beliefs, overcome them, but they don’t go away. And, why does the Lefkoe method get rid of them so quickly and so easily and permanently? So, let’s follow along. What I’d like you to do now is to take a look and see, follow these steps, and do this process. You know I can’t hear you, but you can hear me, so just sort of say out loud, make real the answers to the couple of questions. This’ll just take a couple of minutes. So, can you see that ‘I’m not good enough’ is in fact the logical, reasonable response to those events? That most kids 4, 5 years old given the scenario I just described would conclude, “there’s something wrong with me,” or, “I’m not good enough”? Can you see that that’s not a mistake? It’s not silly. That’s the reasonable interpretation for a child of those events. That make sense? Ok. However, in addition to that interpretation, I would contend that there’s other interpretations for the same events that you just didn’t think of as a child. For example, one interpretation might be, “I’m not good at certain things, but that doesn’t mean I’m not a good enough person.” Did you see that that could explain why I’m not doing certain things well, because I’m not good at certain things, but it doesn’t mean I’m not a good enough person – that’s a totally different interpretation. Another possible interpretation, logically, is, “Maybe Mom and Dad thought I wasn’t good enough, but that doesn’t mean they’re right.” Another interpretation is, “I wasn’t good enough to live up to Mom and Dad’s unreasonable expectations. It wasn’t that I wasn’t good enough. They just expected things of me that were totally unreasonable for a 4-, 5-, 6-year-old, and I couldn’t live up to those expectations, but it doesn’t mean that I’m not good enough for my age. I’m perfectly fine for a 5-year-old, I’m just not a good 15-year-old at the age of 5. Maybe ‘I’m not very good as a child’ doesn’t mean that will always be true.” And, what you realize is, is that the same events could have lots of other interpretations or meanings other than the one you came up with. So, what you’ve been living with as the truth since you’re 4 or 5 years old isn’t the truth, it’s not a fact – it’s just one interpretation. Ok? Let’s go on to the next step. Take a look, be that little kid again, imagine mom and dad at the door in the room you just cleaned, imagine the soccer game in the stands, imagine the report card, and as you observe these events, doesn’t it seem as if you can almost see ‘I’m not good enough’? As you observe these events, can’t you see ‘I’m not good enough’? Now, I can’t hear your response, but 99% of the people would say, “Well, of course I could see it! If you were there you’d have seen it too!” And, it seems as if, looking at these events, you can see the belief. In this case – ‘I’m not good enough’. Now here’s my next question: Keep doing the process. Don’t listen to me, but actually do what I’m asking you to do. Can you really see 'I’m not good enough'? It seems as if you can, but keep looking. See, because anything you can see, you can describe. Anything at all – if you can see it, you can say, “well here’s some color, there’s a shape, here’s where it is.” So, anything you really can see can be described with a color, shape, location. So, if you can see ‘I’m not good enough’, what does it look like? Is it on the floor, the wall, the ceiling? Red, blue, polka dot? And, what I think you realize is you can’t really see it. What can you see? Well, what you’re really seeing is the events. “I cleaned up my room, and Mom and Dad said, ‘why isn’t it better?’” You got a goal, and mom and dad said, “why can’t you get 2 or 3?” You get 4 As and 2 Bs, and mom and dad say, “why didn’t you get more As?” No matter what you do, all you can see is mom and dad not really acknowledging you for your accomplishments and suggesting you can do better. Now here’s the important question: what does it really mean that mom and dad treated you the way they did? Now it clearly had consequences. It was uncomfortable, it didn’t feel good, and you would have preferred something else. But, what does it mean about you? And, can you realize that you can’t draw any conclusions for sure about you from knowing how mom and dad treated you when you were a kid. See, if I wanted to write a biography of you and say – about Tina, or any of you that are listening – I want to write a biography about who you really are. What are you like? Who or what kind of person are you? Do I know anything for sure about you from knowing how mom and dad treated you when you were a kid? Obviously, I don’t. And, if I don’t then you don’t either. So, in fact, mom and dad’s behavior / response to you has no meaning. So, where’s the meaning been all these years? In your mind. Where is ‘I’m not good enough’? In your mind. So, what you realize is what you think you can see in the world you can’t see, it’s only something you made up – one interpretation out of many possibilities. Now here: the reason beliefs get so stuck, the reason most therapies and other disciplines have such a hard time helping people get rid of their beliefs, is that we think we can see them, and most people know reality based on what they can see. So, if you can see something, it’s got to be true! Now here you are as an adult – successful, making a contribution in the world, with a great family, contributing, etc. – of course it’s silly, it’s illogical, it’s stupid to believe you’re not good enough, but if you think you saw ‘I’m not good enough’ hundreds of times as a child in your interactions with mom and dad then that belief is not going to go away because it’s reality, you saw it. So, the reason that logic doesn’t get rid of beliefs in most cases is because logic will never overcome the evidence of the senses and allow you to believe you didn’t see what know you saw. Why does the Lefkoe method work so effectively? Because it takes you back and has you realize you never saw it – you just made it up. And, the instant you get you just made it up, that the events have no inherent meaning, that the meaning is only in your mind – the belief will go away. So, that’s how the basic process works. And, for people who’ve really eliminated a belief, we then ask the question: “You think you’ve had the belief your whole life ‘I’m not good enough,’ and now you realize you don’t have that belief. If you take a look inside, you realize that you’re still there – there’s still a ‘Tina’, there’s still a ‘Morty’ – yeah. But, if your basic beliefs are gone, and you’re still here, then how you can you still be here?” “I guess that I’m not my beliefs.” Then who are you? “Well, I created the beliefs.” Who’s the ‘I’? There had to be an I to create the belief before the belief got created. Who you are is the consciousness that gave them meaning. So, there is a creation called ‘Morty’ who used to be not good enough and who now is good enough, but who you really are is not the sum total of your beliefs and the thoughts and feeling and emotions that come out of those beliefs. Who you really are is the creator. And, when you actually do the process you go into that state where you have this experience 'anything's possible'. So, that's a short summary of how it works and how the process for eliminating beliefs leads you to an enlightenment or transformational experience.
TA: I would imagine it gets trickier when you’re doing this practice in relationship to a significant other or an intimate other, then you have these, sort of, two colliding belief systems, and I could kind of imagine that it would be a, you know, a beautiful thing to unravel that in relationship with your, with your, with your loved ones and intimates. Can you speak a little bit about that?
ML: Well, in most cases, I don’t know that you’d be working with your loved ones. I’ve done it with my wife, and she’s done it with me, and we’ve done it with our children - for many years they didn’t want to do it - it was mom and dad’s thing. But, then it’s also difficult when your children say, “Well, the source of the belief, Dad, is when you did so-and-so.” And, you just have to sort of get, “Ok, that’s what I did,” and be objective about it, and say, “Ok, so when your dad did so-and-so you concluded…” and so forth. So, it can be a little tricky working with a, with a loved one or somebody who you might have been involved in the belief, etc, but that doesn’t happen in most cases. I mean, most of the time people are working with a facilitator or working with our online program or working with somebody else that’s been trained, so we’re normally not doing it in our case it’s something we do all the time, so we do it with each other, but most people would not be working with their family I don’t think.
TA: You wouldn’t be doing it in relationships. Which brings up my other curiosity: if we think of ourselves as relational creatures -and, I love that exercise you just led us through, by the way - one thing that came up for me thinking of, you know, remembering the past is, okay, so that wasn’t, I, I created that belief, but what if or does it matter that maybe, you know, maybe, maybe my parent really did believe that about me. So, what you’re saying is…
ML: Well, that’s, that’s fine.
TA: …it doesn’t really matter. I mean…
ML: It doesn’t matter. What mom and dad…
TA: …you’re buying in…
ML: See, another interpretation is mom and dad really thought you weren’t good enough, but the fact they thought it doesn’t mean it’s true. They might have even said, “Tina, you’re just no good. You never were and never will be any good.” That doesn’t mean it’s true. It’s just true they said it. And, one interpretation is they’re right, and another interpretation is they’re wrong, and another interpretation is they didn’t mean it – they were just saying it to motivate you because they didn’t know any better. So, people saying things doesn’t make it any truer than people doing things. It’s still - your interpretation that their saying it is true is still your interpretation, because the other interpretation is they think so, but they’re wrong.
TA: Right. So, like with your kids then, Morty, if your kids sort of call you on a belief that you, that they think you’ve, you’re having about them, and, and they are explaining their reaction and their understanding how, you know, they formulated a belief, or however that happens, what you were just describing, then does it, does it call, call forth from you to sort of, you know, get really, you have to get really honest with your kids, you have to, you’re committed to having only very positive, life-affirming beliefs about them, and so forth?
ML: Well, it takes a lot of work. I mean, my wife Shelley and I have done a lot of work on parenting, we lead parenting workshops, and we did write a, an e-book on parenting for Chicken Soup for the Soul, the Chicken Soup for the Soul Guide to Effective Parenting, which is at the Chicken Soup site. But, some of the basic principles, the single most important principle is that most parents think that their job is either to give their kids love, or to make sure their kids are happy, or to make sure their kids learn the right thing or do the right thing, and all of that’s important, but the big question is, is, what’s going to determine their life when they grow up for the rest of their life? What is the single most determining factor? And, from my point of view, the answer is their beliefs. So, if that’s the case, the most important thing that needs to be done is to have a, parents help their children facilitate positive beliefs as a child. So, what you need to do is always ask yourself, “What is my child concluding out of this interaction?” Not, “what do I want? What do I think is right? What theory is right?” but, “What would the average 4,5,6,7-year-old kid conclude? Not if I do it once, but if this is the way I interact with my kid no matter what my motivation is, no matter what my goal is, what is the average kid likely to conclude?” And, if it’s something positive, keep doing it. And, if it’s something negative go to apologize to your kid, figure out why you’re doing it, and stop. Now, that’s not always, it’s easier to say than to do, but I worked real hard on it, our kids have a lot of positive beliefs, and they formed a bunch of negative beliefs, but we’re lucky – we’ve got the process, so we’re able to help them find they negative beliefs they formed from us or from other interactions in life and get rid of them. See, the bad news for parents is, be very careful what you do, because you are the model, you are the reality out of they are forming their beliefs about themselves, life, and people. That’s the bad news. The good news is nothing you do effects your kids the day after you do it. Nothing you do has any impact on your kids the day after you do it. What does? The meaning they give what you do – that stays with them forever. So since what you do doesn’t affect them – it’s the beliefs they form, the meaning they give it - it’s never too late to eliminate meaning. You could do it, you know, when you’re 10, 12-years-old – it’s harder. We’ve worked with a few 10, 12-year-olds – normally it’s 14, 15 when kids start able to follow the process, and we work with people in their 80s. So, number 1 is, as a parent, do your best to keep you kids from forming negative beliefs, but realize that what you’re doing is not in itself hurting them, it’s the meaning they give, and they can always change the meaning, so it’s never too late to fix it.
TA: Excellent. So, so Morty, what about the relationship between this personal, or, you know, subjective and inter-subjective domain, and our culture? You know in, for example, in the transformation study we define the transformation that we’re looking at as a shift in one’s core way of being, so something that really affects their identity, world view, perception, belief. I think we’re very in line with you. And, then we try to talk about this, you know, the reciprocal relationship between our culture and our world view, the institutions that have been created, that we’ve been a part of creating, and how that feeds back into what kind of, you know, parents we are, what kind of human beings we are feeds back into our sense of self, our identity, our world view, our belief system. So, can you talk a little bit about…
ML: Sure. Sure. The first thing I just want to comment briefly in what you just said that your definition of this transformation is a basic shift in our world view or our being, and that’s actually what this does, it, the Lefkoe method not only shifts your basic beliefs about yourself so that you, you see the world and you act totally differently as a, as a person, as a self with a small ‘s’, but when you realize who you really are is the creator of that, you come out of life being able to experience yourself is, like, it happens for me sometimes – my kids will do something, or something’ll happen, and I’ll start to get upset, and I’ll say, they say, “Wait a minute – what do I believe that’s producing this upset? Because another set of beliefs I wouldn’t have it.” Now, I may not know what the belief is, I may not be able to change it, but I’m able to sort of recognize that whatever I’m feeling is a function of my beliefs, and I made up the beliefs, so I’m not my thoughts and my feelings – I’m just having thoughts and feelings – that’s not who I am. So, I’m able to sort of pull myself out of my little self and get into my, sort of, capital ‘S’ self who I really am, the consciousness I really am relatively easy, and that’s one of the things this process does is it shifts your world view from a small ‘s’ to a big ‘S’ self, from a creation to a creator. So, that’s sort of along the way. But, the other thing is, is in the last chapter of my book I actually take a look at culture and say our education system is, is not working. A lot of people recognize that, lot of suggestions on how to change it, and I would suggest that the same reason that individuals have a hard time changing without changing their beliefs first, institutions of society, the parts of our culture are run by beliefs, so if you have a belief that the role of education is to give you information – to tell you that to be able to fit into the culture, to be able to work in an industrial society which was the purpose of the public education system when it was formed, to be able to read, write, have basic skills to go to work in a factory, and be part of a homogeneous culture – if that’s the purpose of education it’s doing it fairly well. It’s not teaching you to think, it’s not teaching you to question, but it’s teaching you to memorize, and that’s what schools are. It’s about multiple-choice questions, remembering the teacher’s got the answer, etc. So, if you actually take a look at it you’ll see that there is a series of beliefs that underlie most public education, and the school system’s not doing a bad job in fulfilling those beliefs. What you might say, however, is operating that way with those beliefs is totally inappropriate for today’s society, and I would agree, but then you got to change the basic beliefs about what a good educational system is.
The same thing with the health, the medical system, the health system. The basic belief is, is that illness is caused by germs, bacteria, etc. – by something outside of you – your consciousness has nothing to do about, with it, and there are people called doctors who are experts in knowing what needs to be done, and if you go to them they will give you some drug or surgery, and they will make you better. And, the medical system is based upon those beliefs. So, there’s now alternative, which means outside the conventional system, where maybe our minds, and our thoughts, and our feelings have something to do with our health, and maybe we need to be responsible, but that’s questioning the basic beliefs.
So, my answer to your question is, is I would contend everything in our society, every aspect of our culture, every one of our institutions, is run by a series of fundamental beliefs, and those beliefs determine what we do, and its very difficult to produce a significant change no matter how much evidence there is that what we do doesn’t work because we think these beliefs generally unconscious are true. And, in order to change the culture I think what we need to do is identify what are the underlying beliefs, and change those beliefs.
TA: Very, very powerful. And, you are a most articulate teacher and guide through this. I’m…
ML: Well, thank you.
TA: I’m really excited by this work, and I, and I look forward to learning more and doing it and applying it – not only to my, to my own life but introducing it to others in professional settings. Right now, I’m sitting in my office on an adolescent psychiatric in-patient unit, and my imagination is going completely wild in a wonderful way…
ML: Well, thank you.
TA: …even just about, you know, how crystal clear this is and how, how resonant kids would be with these ideas.
ML: I, I would, I would give any…I worked with some incarcerated teenagers some years ago, and it was very effective, but I would love the opportunity to work with a, with disadvantaged kids who grow up in an environment with all negative beliefs because I would contend that most of the negative things, you know, kids do, teenagers, etc. are from those beliefs. Just be, I’m ready for the questions, but just real quickly, we’ve created a website that eliminates 5 of the most common beliefs that, that sort of show up in almost any negative pattern. These 5 beliefs, or at least some of them, are there, so you can eliminate 5 beliefs in an interactive website: ‘Mistakes and failure are bad’, ‘I’m not good enough’, ‘Change is difficult’, ‘I’m not important’, and, ‘What makes me good enough or important is having people think well of me’. That last belief is one of the main beliefs that causes us to be concerned with the opinion of others. And the, the spiritual process which I call ‘Who am I really?’ – that process is on there also. So, right now this is free, and if you go to www.recreateyourlife.com you can sign up and go through those 5 beliefs and the spiritual process at no charge and get a sense of how this stuff all works.
TA: Fantastic. And, I really encourage everybody to do it. I, I did it in the last week or so, and, and got a lot out of it, and was very, very pleased with my experience with your, with what you are offering. So, I actually have to sign off and go back, go back to my work, and Angela is going to be facilitating your questions. So, again Morty, thank you so much. I’m going to stay in touch…
ML: Oh, thank you for having me. It was my pleasure.
[The Q&A portion of this teleseminar has been removed by request.]
