Affirmations are flawed because they are more-often-than-not motivated out of selfishness and fear and are not a genuine expression of what you believe, and perhaps, what you even need. Affirmations do nothing to deal with the underlying beliefs that are causing the stress and dysfunction in a person’s life. It is rather like placing a plaster or band-aid on a festering sore and expecting it to heal.
Apparently, our beliefs are established early on in life. Some experts say that the first six years of our lives are the most formative years of our lives. Little do some people realise that many of the issues they fact in adult life today, have their roots in something that they thought or experienced when they were just a child. Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy seems to have a decent track record in dealing with these issues – but it is expensive and can take a long time to complete. Also, a person is ill equipped to perform Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy on their own life, without years of relevant training.
The use of affirmations can also be compared to piling positive thoughts on top of layers of negative beliefs. I remember reading in a book on self-hypnosis over 15 years ago that the use of self-hypnotic suggestions was like pressing the record button on a tape-recorder and overriding the existing message. This sounds convincing, but unfortunately, it is not true.
Another problem with affirmations is that their appeal lies in the promise if being able to have what you most desire – all through changing what you believe in the subconscious mind. However, even if you believe that you can have, be or do a certain thing – there is no guarantee that you will attract it or that it will happen to you. I believe in making myself receptive to something, certainly, but affirmations can become a fantasy to many people as they dream of making certain things happen, such as the accumulation of wealth, the adoration of others and so forth.
Releasing and inquiry do not attempt to try to make things happen or to try to influence other people by the creation of beliefs. In fact, releasing and inquiry highlights the dangers of creating beliefs. It seems that the creation of beliefs is what causes problems in a person’s life. It is as if beliefs become hot-spots for the focus of anxiety. Beliefs equate to expectations – when we hold on to expectations, we are inviting anxiety because expectations often argue with reality or “what is”.
Byron Katie often says, “If you want to suffer on purpose – get a plan.” This concept is also conveyed throughout Eckhart Tolle’s powerful book, The Power of Now. Tolle teaches that as soon as our minds are allowed to drift unnecessarily into the past or the future, it causes anxiety and all manner of struggle for us. Keeping our mind on the present is by far the best means of alleviating anxiety and the confusion it brings. But affirmations become an invitation to examine what is wrong with us and what we believe we should do, be or have. Affirmations work hand-in-hand with the refusal to accept yourself as you are. Affirmations take the mind into the past or the future, as you try to make up for past failures and attempt to build an ideal future.
The Sedona Method identifies the want for approval as one of the core wants that controls our lives. Affirmations are often an attempt to make the changes to your life that you see as fundamental in attracting the approval of others. A person who is considered voluptuous could consider herself to be overweight when compared to the universally accepted concept of beauty in the form of stick-thin models, which adorn the front cover of fashion magazines. Who is to say what is beautiful and what is not? Culture, upbringing, experiences and I would say destiny – all contribute towards a person’s personal preferences and what is right for them. So why would a person want to change an aspect of their life in order to conform to another person’s sense of perfection?
Affirmations also become an expression of a want for security, as you attempt to get those things into your life that you feel will make you more secure: money, power and possessions. There is something powerful and freeing in accepting yourself as you are and being content with what you have right now. In the acceptance of self comes peace of mind and a sense of security in which you trust in yourself, life, God, the Universe or others to meet your needs, as and when they arise. The need to “feather ones nest” and build for the future now, is an expression of insecurity.
Lastly, the want for control is compounded by the promises of various self-help methods and the use of affirmations, as you attempt to change yourself, others and circumstances in a desperate attempt to control your life. There is something liberating in being able to accept circumstances as they arise, knowing that whatever does happen, you will be able to face it and deal with it. I think one of the biggest reasons we want to control circumstances is because of the pain that occurs when something happens that it contrary to what we expected. But rather than attempting to find the latest self-help and spiritual methods that we can use to control our lives and bring added comfort and peace through that, we simply embrace everything that we have experienced thus far and we accept whatever is happening in our lives right now.
Byron Katie often states that the only suffering that we experience is the contraction around a belief. Most people struggle with this concept and seek to refute it, as if it is condoning wrong-doing. However, when you perform inquiry for yourself, you eventually come to see that this statement is absolutely true.
So it would seem that there is a need to move away from creating new beliefs, towards the approach of letting go of existing wrong beliefs. But what is a wrong belief? How do we know if a belief is good or not? Byron Katie asserts that there are no good beliefs. It is not simply a matter of determining what beliefs are good, bad, right or wrong. It is more a matter of knowing that it is not the belief itself that causes problems, but the contraction around a belief. When we use releasing we are letting go of our attachment to a want for emotion.
Lester Levenson, the creator of releasing, advocates releasing on even the most positive emotions! This is proof that it is not the emotions that cause problems or pain, as such, but our attempt to control them by holding onto them or resisting them. If emotions or wants are simply allowed “to be”, to exist as they are, they will eventually dissipate by themselves, without our need to control them. As soon as we grapple with beliefs, desires, thoughts, wants and emotions – we have the effect of holding them in place. Affirmations do the opposite of what we want them to do for us, a lot of the time, in that they become expressions of our anxiety. That is the reason they feel so empty and mechanical a lot of the time, because when we say them we don’t believe we actually have them.
I also feel rather dubious about visualisation, which is like affirmations but instead of speaking out what we desire, you try to picture the end result in your mind. I cannot help but feel that for some people, visualisations simply coalesce with the fantasies of neurotics.
What about those people who make positive affirmations and they experience something wonderful as a result?
Firstly, how can we be certain that their experience was a direct result of the affirmations or other spiritual practices they performed? I have come to the conclusion that many things happen in life without our intervention. Despite this, we seem keen to attribute such things, whether good or bad, to something that we did. I have reached the conclusion that peace of mind and a sense of security are by far the best ways to experience happiness and success in this life. The people, who sing the praises of their self-help and spiritual beliefs, are often naturally secure-minded and confident people who live their life from that positive-mindedness. I believe in a lot of cases that their adherence to a certain self-help or spiritual practice actually does little or nothing to affect their emotions, success and personal experiences.
Secondly, I believe that a person can make positive expressions based on what they truly believe in their heart to be true in that moment. When you are facing a traumatic incident, the spontaneous outbursts that you come out with are expressions of what is true for you at that moment. This concept has been reversed-engineered by advocates of positive thinking, who assert that if you make yourself say positive things, then you will eventually believe it those things will become a reality in your life. This is a misnomer.
So it would seem that working with the attachment to a thought is by far the best means of affecting real, lasting change in a person’s life. This transformation is not something that can be consciously controlled towards a certain set of beliefs, goals and expectations. Our only goal in releasing and inquire is the attainment of inner peace, free of the turmoil that is created when we attach to beliefs. We cannot always control what does or does not happen in our lives, we cannot always dictate how successful and prosperous we will be, but if we are clear minded, that is the best condition we can be in, in order to live life to the full and experience true, lasting peace, fulfilment and even success in this life.
“If we want to know the truth about who we are, all we have to do is let go of our attachment to thoughts and feelings. In silence, who or what we are makes itself known.”
- Lester Levenson.
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