They are sort of like the bones in your body. You can’t see them and yet they give you your shape and they determine how you move. If they change, everything changes.

You can imagine them like the wood frame of a house. Concealed behind the walls, it gives the dwelling its form and character. To change the house, to build an extension or to dormer the roof, the frame must be altered.

I’m talking about your beliefs. Not the ones you can easily name, like believing in a religion or in a political cause. It’s the invisible ones. The ones that give your personality its shape. The ones that determine where you stand and how you move. Those are the unseen structures that exert more influence in your life than just about anything else.

In the same way that the shape of the bones of your arm let your elbow bend one way and not the other, the invisible assumptions that you hold let your consciousness move in one way and not another. Ultimately, it means your life unfolds in that way. Like an elbow, it can’t go the other way.

Poof

When they are old, habitual and unconscious, these beliefs are not so different from the two-by-fours in your walls. Your frame-like thought-forms build your reality its theatre. They give your reality the semblance of being hard and fixed. The architecture doesn’t budge. Reality seems solid.

But unlike their earthy, wooden cousins the two-by-fours, these structural beliefs can change, dissolve and completely transform in the blink of an eye. Then, poof, the whole house changes form. In the case of the body, it suddenly becomes flexible where it had been stiff and cramped. The structure of the mind, having changed shape, changes the shape of your life.

You can’t see them

I was struggling with a computer problem. I spent four hours creating and deleting and creating and deleting folders and not only did I not fix the problem, I created a much bigger one.

I decided to get myself out of the hole I was digging and to spend some time tending to my vibration. I looked at the bigger picture. I invited my native enthusiasm about the project. I re-ignited the calling of my heart that led me to this journey in the first place. With my passion reawakened, I was able to realize that this was just a little technical snag. No big deal. I got myself very, very happy about my project and about everything that was going magnificently well. I stoked my faith that it would all work out. Even though nothing had changed on my screen, I was feeling pretty good.

The next day, I received an email from tech support suggesting that I double-check my folders. The technician explained that the program would not work if all the folders were in another folder.

The funny thing was that I was working under the assumption that they had to be in that other folder in order to work.

This was an invisible assumption. It never even occurred to me to ask about this because I didn’t think it was in question.

It was causing my whole project to fail. And it all boiled down to an invisible assumption.

This was just a little technical snafu. What about the bigger issues in life? What about anxiety and depression? What about our addictions and our struggles?

Seeing Through

All these difficult states of consciousness are built on beliefs. The kind you don’t even know you have. Within the emotional walls of anxiety you’ll find the two-by-fours of a belief in disempowerment. They are hidden within the structure of depression. They give rage its shape.

How do you renovate your beliefs? How do you change the shape and functionality of your life? It requires looking through the situation rather than at it. For as long as you may look at your elbow, you don’t see the articulation of the bones. All you know is which way it bends.

In order to look through the situation you must stop thinking the situation is fixed and real and final. You look through it when you pay attention to how you feel. Abraham* tells us that our emotions are our guidance system. They are also your x-ray machine. They tell you what is going on under the skin of the situation. They tell you the shape of the underlying bones. They reveal the structure behind the walls.

Under Construction

Here’s a quick little exercise you can do to start moving walls and adding extensions to your reality.

1. First find something you love about your reality just the way it is. Find a space of appreciation from which to launch your project.

2. As you think about the unwanted situation in your life, notice how it feels to you.

3. Understand this feeling as a structure.

4. Imagine yourself changing the structure. Make it a space that feels wonderful and just right for you. Shift the frame. Move the walls. Add doors and windows if you like. Do anything that feels a little bit better to you. Do it quickly and easily. Don’t think about it too much. You can’t do this wrong.

When you revisit this previously difficult area of your life, you may feel more open to new possibilities than you have ever been. You may be surprised at your frequent discovery of solutions that were “staring you in the face” the whole time. And your joints may suddenly become more limber, too.

All structures in your life benefit from even a few moments of tending to the structure of your invisible assumptions. And the best part of it is that you don’t have to know what these assumptions are. All you have to know is how you want to feel in your new dwelling.

© 2005 Rebbie Straubing

Dr. Rebbie Straubing is the author of the new on-line program, Miracle Tools for Great Relationships, available at www.GreatRelationships.net. Her free e-course, 7 Secrets for Manifesting Your Heart’s Desire is available at www.YOFA.net and her new meditation recordings are available at www.AffirmativeContemplation.com. To get news and updates on Rebbie’s offerings, send a blank e-mail to yofa@GoldenReports.com.