Speaker 1: 0:13

Welcome back to Roots of the Rise with me, sarah Hope. Today we're diving into the topic of illusion, especially the kind we create ourselves. How often do you catch yourself thinking this isn't how it's supposed to be? That simple thought can reveal a deeper pattern the way our belief systems, our own BS can keep us stuck and spinning. So why do we stay trapped in these loops? What are the three core reasons we keep ourselves stuck and, more importantly, what can we do to break free? Stuck and, more importantly, what can we do to break free?

Speaker 1: 0:46

If we're going to talk about illusion, we have to start by admitting this. We like to think we know the truth, but more often than not, what we actually know is just what we think is going on or how we think things are supposed to be. Just think of how often you've said something along these lines to yourself this isn't how it's supposed to be. I shouldn't be feeling this. That shouldn't have happened. Examples might be things like I should be 30 pounds lighter, I'm not supposed to lose my job, my relationship should look like this.

Speaker 1: 1:23

Not that these aren't typically just passing thoughts. They're deeply held, often rigid expectations, and when those expectations aren't met, what usually follows? Suffering. You want your life to look a certain way. You want some things to happen and others definitely not to. That's human, that's normal. The real problem, though, is when we start building our entire reality around those expectations.

Speaker 1: 1:52

As we talked about on Monday, if your baseline worldview is negative, or if you carry a harsh perspective toward yourself, your relationships or life in general, then you are likely reinforcing the very patterns you're trying to escape. That's where confirmation bias comes in. Your mind starts looking for evidence to prove those beliefs right. It becomes a self-fulfilling cycle, one where illusion shapes reality and suffering, lack of acceptance, keeps us stuck. Confirmation bias is the tendency we have to interpret new information as evidence that supports our existing beliefs, whether or not those beliefs are true. If you believe someone doesn't like you, even the way they look at you can be interpreted as proof. If you believe you're failing at life, even your small wins will somehow seem like accidents or flukes. If you think your body is betraying you, even a normal ache can be twisted into a sign of illness. And once that pattern sets in, we stop asking better questions, we stop fact-checking our thoughts, we stop investigating.

Speaker 1: 3:04

So let's go back to those earlier examples. I should be thinner. You know this fails to appreciate the way the body is now. I mean it is still functioning. It might not look the way you want it to look, but it is still getting you from point A to point B. And it also fails to investigate the reasons why losing weight might be a problem, even if it's never been an issue before. Like what's going on in your body right now Are there hormonal shifts, stress, illness? You can get stuck in a loop of just thinking I should be thinner or whatever it is, and stop kind of doing the work to figure out. Well, why aren't you?

Speaker 1: 3:41

Second example I'm not supposed to lose my job. This fails to recognize the opportunity of new beginnings or investigate, maybe, what could you have been doing better at the job? Did you actually deserve to get fired? I mean, where did you go wrong? Was this really the right role for you? What might you have missed or outgrown? And where's the opportunity here? Maybe, maybe there's something better for you on the other side of this loss. And then the last one my relationship should be different. This makes you criticize all the ways it's falling short of that image you have in your head of the perfect relationship, measuring everything against an internal ideal that you have and therefore it's likely that you fail to investigate if there might be some sort of deeper learning here for you. What if this is an invitation for you to heal some sort of dysfunctional relationship programming that you've had for a really long time? Maybe this is your opportunity to be the change.

Speaker 1: 4:43

Let's talk about bigger illusions, not just the kind that make us misread a text or misjudge someone's tone, but the ones that live underneath our lives, the ones rooted in the assumptions we've made about how life is. Quote unquote, supposed to be so much of what we believe about love, about relationships, about success, our own worth, leave. About love, about relationships, about success, our own worth. It isn't original, it didn't come from us. It was modeled for us, we inherited it or we absorbed it, often even before we had words.

Speaker 1: 5:17

Maybe you grew up watching your parents stay in a miserable marriage. The love, maybe even the like, was long gone, but they stayed, maybe for religious reasons, maybe to avoid the shame of divorce. The message you received was clear you stay, no matter how unhappy you are. So you get married and maybe you're deeply unhappy, maybe it's even abusive, but something inside you whispers this is just how it is. You're supposed to stay no matter what. Or maybe your parents were so obsessed with appearing perfect they locked out the world rather than risk the truth leaking out. That was my parents. Their investment in the image of a perfect marriage, perfect family, was so strong that they isolated themselves completely. They chose illusion over connection over vulnerability. These aren't just stories. These become scripts we unknowingly follow, and often we don't even realize we're in the grip of them, in the grip of the illusion, because it feels so much like truth to us. Here's another example.

Speaker 1: 6:29

In one of her chakra books, anadeya Judith tells the story of a young woman whose father abandoned her as a child. He, you know, left, came back, left, came back and then finally left for good. Is it really any surprise that the daughter then adopted this deep fear of being abandoned? Even the slightest conflict in any of her relationships would send her into a spiral. You know, she became obsessed with the idea that her boyfriend was going to leave. No matter how often he reassured her, the fear just wouldn't go, because illusion is louder than logic almost always and Judith in the book explains that you know, illusion tends to express itself in two ways either obsession or delusion.

Speaker 1: 7:15

Obsession is when our energy gets stuck right. We loop around a singular issue over and over and over again. Delusion is when we build an entire inner world, like in an elaborate, distorted belief system, around one core assumption. And the more we invest in those stories either way, the harder it is for us to question them, even when they hurt us, even when they don't serve us, even when we get new information that might be telling us something different. Because here's the first, deeper truth illusion protects us from uncertainty. It might not feel good, but at least it feels familiar, and the brain loves familiarity. I mean, our entire system just loves homeostasis.

Speaker 1: 8:03

Neuroscience research tells us that the brain is designed to seek patterns, not necessarily truth. It wants to resolve ambiguity as quickly as it can. And that's where confirmation bias comes in. It filters our reality to match the beliefs we already hold. So if you believe people always leave, you'll interpret every delay or disagreement as proof that it's happening again, that it's about to happen. If you believe life is hard and nothing ever works out, your brain will selectively focus on every single hardship and overlook every moment of ease or grace.

Speaker 1: 8:43

And then you know, we also begin to get entangled in our belief systems, we begin to adopt them as our identity, which is the second, deeper truth. You know, sometimes we cling to a painful belief because we've built our entire identity around it. If I'm not the person stuck in this relationship, who am I? If I'm not the responsible one who holds the family together, even at my own expense, who am I? If I'm not the responsible one who holds the family together, even at my own expense, who am I? You know, letting go of illusion doesn't mean seeing more clearly. It often means grieving the version of yourself that was built to survive it.

Speaker 1: 9:20

You know, the third deep layer here is this unconscious loyalty to our belief systems. Many of us stay stuck in illusions because it feels somehow like a betrayal to let them go. If your mother stayed in a miserable marriage, who are you to leave yours? If your family struggled and suffered, thriving might feel like you're leaving them behind. So you unconsciously sabotage your growth, your relationships, your dreams, not because you don't want them, but because something inside you is still loyal to that past. And all of this is happening beneath the surface, stuck in your unconscious. As Carl Jung said, until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. This is how you end up living from beliefs like life sucks and then you die. People can't be trusted. It's always going to be this hard Things will only get worse.

Speaker 1: 10:16

These beliefs. They don't serve us, but they are self-reinforcing. Where attention goes, energy flows. Just another one of those. These beliefs, the more evidence we gather to prove them through confirmation bias, we can even self-sabotage to create the very thing we fear.

Speaker 1: 10:39

I've used this example before. The woman who is afraid of her husband cheating on her, who then dogs his every move, demands to know where he is all the time, who he's with what he's doing, to the point where she drives him absolutely crazy. She smothers him and creates such a toxic and emotionally draining environment he finally just goes out and has the affair because why not? If he's going to be punished for it anyway, he may as well go ahead. I don't mean that literally. Obviously, infidelity is not okay, but this is an entirely plausible scenario where this woman has created the very thing she feared.

Speaker 1: 11:12

The more we believe something to be true, the more it becomes our reality, the more we believe our own BS, our own belief systems. So how do we break free. We need to combat illusion with vision. Vision is different from fantasy. Fantasy is about escaping reality. Vision is about transforming it. Vision gives us direction, a purpose, a way forward. It gives us clarity, what is true and if we don't like what we see, it gives us the opportunity to reshape the future, to take actionable steps, to create the future we want, not what we feel doomed to experience.

Speaker 1: 11:51

Vision says I see what I want. Want and it might not be true yet, but it could be. That little word yet is so powerful. I'm not at the weight I want to be, yet I haven't found the job that lights me up. Yet my relationship doesn't reflect the love I long for yet, yet holds the door open. It invites possibility. It says I'm still becoming. But then you have to follow it up with action.

Speaker 1: 12:21

You know, illusion. Part of illusion is that it keeps us stuck. It tells us nothing can change. This is just how it is. Old dogs can't learn new tricks. You know we are stuck in the way we've always been. But vision, vision empowers us. It reminds us that we can't always change the wind, but we can adjust the sails. Thank you, jimmy Dean. I believe, because illusion binds energy, but vision consciously directs it. So let's end with this.

Speaker 1: 12:49

The illusion isn't about anything out there. It's about what is within you. It lives in the stories. We repeat the roles we play, the beliefs we forgot to question. But when we pause, when we get curious, shout out to episode six, which I'll link in the show notes. When we start asking better questions, we reclaim our power, we come back to center and we begin the incredible work of creating a reality that's rooted in truth and who we truly are, in a way that is inspired by the vision we have for our lives.

Speaker 1: 13:28

So today I've got some questions for you. You can just sit and listen as you drive, go home journal about these. Pick the ones that resonate with you. Pick the one that makes you uncomfortable. That's usually a good indication that it's something you might want to dive into and see what comes up.

Speaker 1: 13:45

Okay, here are the questions. What might I be getting wrong? What belief am I clinging to that's shaping my entire reality? Where am I mistaking bias for truth? What assumptions did I inherit from my family, culture or religion that I've never questioned? What painful belief or identity am I holding to because it feels familiar or safe? Is there something I keep trying to prove true rather than see clearly. And who might I be if I no longer believed this?

Speaker 1: 14:29

If you want a great book about asking questions to see what's true, check out Byron Cady's. It's called Loving what Is Four Questions that Can Change your Life. I'll link it in the show notes, or you can just wait for some day in the future when I'm sure I'll go over this book in greater detail. It's a good one, but let these questions sit with you. Don't rush to answer. Sometimes just the asking starts to unravel the illusion. And just a teaser one of next week's episodes is going to be all about my favorite questions to ask whenever I feel stuck, confused or trapped, no matter what the situation. I have a certain group of questions that I repeatedly come back to again and again whenever I feel like I really need to get honest with myself and see with new eyes. So stay tuned for that. It's going to be a good one.

Speaker 1: 15:22

That is all for today, my friends. Thank you for joining me. If this episode stirred something in you, give yourself a moment to pause, breathe and just notice what's moving. If you want to share what came up, feel free to click the message me button if you're listening on Spotify, or email me at rootsoftherise at gmailcom. If you found value in today's conversation, I'd love it if you shared it with a friend or left a review. It helps us work, reach others who might need it. Until next time, remember, know who you are, love who you've been and be willing to do the work to become who you want to be. Just a quick reminder this podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. I am not a licensed therapist and nothing shared here is meant to replace the guidance of a physician, therapist or any other qualified provider meant to replace the guidance of a physician, therapist or any other qualified provider. That said, I hope it inspires you to grow, heal and seek the support you need to thrive.