Lessons From Your Religion or Culture That Are Not Helping You

Life Doesn’t Have to Be a Struggle or a Test

This is Easter weekend, a time that symbolizes rebirth for many.

For many people, myself included, a strong religious tradition helps us to understand the universe and our place in it. It helps us to make sense of things. And it offers guidance on how to live in a way that gives the most benefit to ourselves and those around us.

But religions can have their darker sides.

The strongest dark side is religious persecution, where you may suffer or die simply because of the religious views you hold. But you can also pick up negative messages, such as “money is evil”, that make your life more difficult than it needs to be.

Those negative messages, if you believe them, can become mental blocks.

When my parents visited me at my first real job, I couldn’t get them out of the house fast enough on Sunday morning to attend my normal church service. We had to go to another church with a later service.

We were shocked by the sermon preached to the congregation.

In essence, the congregation was told that they were all sinners, and were all doomed to an eternity in Hell. For about twenty minutes, we heard about all of the ways in which we fell short. All of the ways that we would suffer for those sins. Finally, we heard that if our faith in Jesus was strong enough, He would save us from that fate. But our faith probably wasn’t strong enough, so most of us were doomed.

Coming from a tradition that preached love, harmony, and helpful tips for making the world a better place, I was horrified at this worldview.

If you internalized that you were a sinner who was going to hell, it gave you permission to be your worst self. After all, if you were going to suffer for all eternity, why not try to maximize your pleasure before you died? Why bother considering others? Just be selfish, and out to get all you could, while you had the chance.

Even if you thought you were one of the lucky ones who would escape this punishment, it still was not a healthy message. After all, your faith was a get out of jail free card. It didn’t matter what you did, as long as you believed strongly enough, you wouldn’t suffer for it.

And if somehow, you managed to become a decent human being despite this setup, you still had problems looming over your shoulder. Because if you internalized this message, you’d self-sabotage yourself to reinforce the message that you deserved to suffer, just for existing.

You’d have a massive mental block.

Religious mental blocks are one form of generational mental blocks. The other form is cultural mental blocks.

Both of these happen when information and stories are passed down through the generations. If your culture is also based on your religion, such as the Jewish culture, then you have a double whammy of generational mental blocks.

Sometimes, the lesson that someone learned is passed along outside of the context that made it applicable. This often happens with immigrant families, who try to give their children all of the lessons they learned about how to fit in and be accepted by their new culture. But those lessons may not be appropriate for people who grew up in the new culture.

Other times, people don’t intend to pass along a lesson. They are instead celebrating the stories of their family, lineage, or faith. But the children who hear those stories may take an unintended lesson from them.

I was thinking of this topic this week, because it seemed that many of the blocks that I worked with were generational. Cultural blocks regarding the proper role of children. Religious blocks regarding the nature of suffering. Cultural and religious blocks regarding persecution.

There are three basic steps to removing a generational block.

1️⃣ First, you have to identify the root belief. This could be something like “money is evil”. (The actual quote is “the love of money is the root of all evil”, but most people who have trouble with this block use the shorter form.)

2️⃣ Second, you have to acknowledge that it is a false belief. For example, there is a coach I know who specializes in helping women to overcome their belief that poverty is a virtue using Biblical quotations about wealth building. So, if the Bible is encouraging you to become wealthy, then money can’t be evil.

3️⃣ Last, you have to stop holding on to the belief. This is the tricky part, because often, there’s a reason you adopted the belief. It served you in some way, and you’re reluctant to give it up because you think you’ll lose something. When a belief is associated with our religion or culture, that is an even stronger fear. You’ll need to find a way to honor and cherish your religion and culture, in a way that replaces the damaging belief with a supportive one.

Sometimes, just getting rid of the false belief is not enough. There’s all sorts of emotional ties to the belief. How did you acquire it? What troubles has it caused? How has it impacted others of your faith or culture?

In this case, more advanced methods of dissolving blocks are called for.

After all, you’re not just dissolving a block, you’re dissolving the interlocking network of thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that supported that block. It often takes multiple efforts, each dissolving a piece of the puzzle.

The good news is, it can be done. No matter how many generations a particular block has been passed down, you can be the last generation who has to suffer with it.

Top 3 Blocks Dissolved This Week

1. Exhaustion and overwhelm - read the case study

2. Chronic pain - removed “suffering is a virtue” 

3. Not getting job offer - removed “it's not safe to be powerful”

Inspirational Words

When I think about rebirth, I think of people who suffer and fail, and use the strength of that experience to become better people. It implies that it is through our own experiences of suffering that we are able to understand and empathize with others.

This week’s quotation speaks directly to that notion of rebirth.

Inayat Khan was the person who brought understanding of Indian Sufi beliefs to the western world. He toured the United States starting in 1910 before establishing a Sufi order in London in 1914. Although he died in 1927, the order has continued to publish his works, both previously published and collected writings unpublished when he died. Most recently, in 2016, they published a centennial edition of his writings.

This illustrates the power of generational beliefs. Things that Khan said in the 1920s are still being published and studied today, 100 years later. They can continue to inspire and elevate people.

But if a generational belief does not inspire you, and instead constricts you, that’s when it becomes a block. It’s time to dissolve it, and be reborn as someone with supportive, inspiring beliefs.

To your rebirth!

Jennifer Dunne, Caribbean Compassion Coaching