Meditation Articles Series

Inner child therapy has been around now for a few decades. It’s based on the assumption that most of our conditioning is laid down in the first seven years of life.  During these formative years we take on what are known as core beliefs, which are both positive and negative.  Some of these core beliefs especially the negative ones can still be running the life.  Some people may find that even though they have a strong desire to meditate, they also have a lot of resistance to a making a commitment to a daily practice.  These core beliefs may be a factor in preventing someone from meditating. 

There’s so many of them, but I’ll list just a few that could be appropriate in preventing someone from a meditation practice. 

Common negative core beliefs are:

“I never succeed at anything.”

“I’m not good enough.”

“I’m not worthy.”

“I always fail so what’s the use of even trying.”

“No one is going to tell me what to do.”

“There’s never enough time.”

With these beliefs going on it’s difficult to have either commitment to ongoing meditation. 

What to do about a negative core belief:

If you are finding yourself resisting beginning to meditate, or finding resistance to continuing your meditation practice, it may be worthwhile for you to examine your own core beliefs.  What to do if you come across one that is causing the resistance?  Accept and allow it to be there.  Now you have awareness of what’s going on.  That core belief is from the past.  I find it’s a good idea to treat a core belief with respect, and not to beat myself up because of how it has been limiting my life.  With loving kindness I can change the belief, for example, “There’s never enough time,” to “There’s always plenty of time for what I want to do.”  Changing the belief while still showing up for meditation dissolves the resistance.