# Definitions & Beliefs > Definitions and beliefs create experienced reality more directly than emotion or thought; changing definitions transforms perception and behavior. - Canonical: https://sassani.app/topic/definitions-and-beliefs # Definitions & Beliefs *Three unmarked frosted crystal lenses show the same shoreline with different framing* In Bashar's teaching, definitions and beliefs are the most directly creative level of the human system — more powerful than emotion, and far more powerful than thought. They determine what a circumstance means to you, and therefore how you experience it. The linked transcripts develop the mechanism, the relative order of belief-emotion-thought, a working sequence for changing a core belief, and the diagnostic question that surfaces a hidden definition. This is foundational material: many other teachings (excitement, fear, mirror nature of reality, body-consciousness) presume this account. ## Definitions create experienced reality The transforming-core-beliefs session states the principle in architectural terms. Your belief systems and definitions are like the blueprints, your emotions are like the builders of the house, and your thoughts and behaviors are like the building materials. Always go back to the blueprint. How you experience any situation depends on the definitions through which it is interpreted, and the most reliable leverage point for changing experience is the definition that organizes it. > — Transforming Core Beliefs (qa-1), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/transforming-core-beliefs) The brain wires itself to see what it has been taught to see, which is why a brain cannot study a brain objectively; only changing what you believe changes what you can perceive. The same workshop names the mechanism precisely: you always choose what you believe points toward more pleasure and away from more pain. Many painful experiences persist because you define the painful thing as more pleasurable than the alternative; as soon as the definition changes, behavior changes instantly. > — Transforming Core Beliefs (qa-1), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/transforming-core-beliefs) A separate session adds the corollary: a habit is something you do that you do not know you are doing. Once you know, it is no longer a habit — it is a choice. Identification of a belief is the end of the process of letting it go, not the beginning. > — Transforming Core Beliefs (qa-2), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/transforming-core-beliefs) ## Belief, then emotion, then thought A separate exchange sharpens the architecture. Belief, emotion, and thought are not equals. Belief is more overpowering, more able to directly create the reality you experience, than emotion; emotion is more directly creative than thought. > — Beliefs Then Emotions Then Thoughts (qa-1), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/beliefs-then-emotions-then-thoughts) This ordering has an immediate diagnostic use: your emotions are usually more indicative of what your beliefs are than your thoughts are, because analytical thought often hides or rationalizes the underlying belief. The instruction is to pay more attention to your emotions as a route back to the belief, not as final evidence about external reality. This is the inverted use of feeling that runs through Bashar's practical teaching. Feeling is real and informative, but it is treated as a clue to the belief it organizes rather than as proof of an external fact. ## Definition as blueprint Bashar repeatedly frames a belief or definition as the first element in a creative sequence. A questioner in Www.aivsoft.com mp3Cut By Aiv Mp3Cutter states the model back to Bashar — "We create from our beliefs or definitions — the blueprint — activate it with our strongest emotion, pattern it with our thought, and then we come to judgment" — and Bashar confirms it. > — Www.aivsoft.com mp3Cut By Aiv Mp3Cutter (qa-1), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/wwwaivsoftcom-mp3cut-by-aiv-mp3cutter) On this view the definition is the structural layer: emotion activates it, thought patterns it, and what is then met in experience carries the shape the definition gave it. The same sequence appears, inverted, in Yardsticks. There Bashar says that "any energy you feel in any particular way is felt that way because of an already ingrained assumption about what it represents," and that "the unknown definition is always scary to you" until you understand that nothing discoverable about yourself is incapable of positive application. > — Yardsticks (qa-4), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/yardsticks) The feeling is downstream; the definition already in place is what makes the energy read as anxiety or as excitement. ## The four Ds: a sequence for changing a core belief The changing-core-beliefs workshop offers four mutually reinforcing elements for working with a core belief: desire, definition, dedication, and detachment. Desire is the passionate wish to be one's true self; definition brings the belief into clarity; dedication makes the work behavioral — the actions you are willing to take on behalf of the change you say you desire; and detachment is compassionate recognition that a belief is not your truth, rather than judgment against it. > — Changing Core Beliefs (qa-1), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/changing-core-beliefs) Without all four, you may give rise to a fifth D — difficulty. The same workshop treats core beliefs as layered like an onion. You usually peel the outer layers first, which gives practice; the deeper work at the core then unlocks the capacity to handle whatever upper layers arise later. > — Changing Core Beliefs (qa-3), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/changing-core-beliefs) ## The diagnostic question Across the transcripts, a single diagnostic recurs: what would I have to believe is true in order to perceive this situation in this negative way? The fear-is-only-a-definition session states the principle at its sharpest. There is never anything empirically in a situation that is fear-inducing; fear does not exist in situations, only in your definitions of your relationship to the situation. > — Fear Is Only A Definition Of Your Relationship To The Situation (qa-3), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/fear-is-only-a-definition-of-your-relationship-to-the-situation) The work is to ask what definition would have to be true for the present reaction to be present, then to become quiet enough to hear the answer. This reframes the labor: identifying the belief is not the beginning of a long process of letting it go — once a hidden definition is seen clearly, it can be replaced with a preferred one. The seeing is the work; the rest is choice. ## Definition creates time and separation The mp3Cut session goes further: judgment and invalidation, which are acts of segregation at the level of definition, are what create the experience of time and aging. The reasoning is mechanical — "the more you segregate and separate things, the more pieces you create things to be, the more space and time that has to be for all these pieces to exist within." > — Www.aivsoft.com mp3Cut By Aiv Mp3Cutter (qa-1), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/wwwaivsoftcom-mp3cut-by-aiv-mp3cutter) "Judge not lest you be judged" is read not as a moral command but as a mechanical principle: to judge, in the invalidational sense, is to become the vibration of invalidation itself, rendering yourself "more into the vibration of separation, space and time." > — Www.aivsoft.com mp3Cut By Aiv Mp3Cutter (qa-1), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/wwwaivsoftcom-mp3cut-by-aiv-mp3cutter) The counter-practice is recollection: living more in the present moment, by trust, faith, love, light, and excitement, so that fewer divisions are being created and less time is needed to hold them apart. > — Www.aivsoft.com mp3Cut By Aiv Mp3Cutter (qa-2), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/wwwaivsoftcom-mp3cut-by-aiv-mp3cutter) *One continuous moss field appears separated only through a nearby crystal screen* ## Yardsticks are local to a reality The Yardsticks session supplies a complementary principle: the measuring rods a person uses to validate their reality are valid for that reality and cannot be applied to measure the validity of someone else's. "Each and every individual is his or her own reality, and whatever measuring rods, whatever yardsticks you may use to measure the reality you believe to be true, are not applicable to measure the reality that someone else believes is true for its validity." > — Yardsticks (qa-1), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/yardsticks) The variance between yardsticks is not an error to be eliminated; it is "what allows there to be an ongoing discovery of new attitudes, new perspectives in life," and is to be cherished. > — Yardsticks (qa-1), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/yardsticks) This bears on belief work directly: a definition can be examined with the yardsticks internal to the reality it organizes, but it cannot be falsified by importing yardsticks from a different vibrational frame. The same relativism appears in You Always Have Free Will, where Bashar says that "any measurement you make is made within your own system of reality. It will tell you exactly what you believe it will," and that "separations between physical and non-physical realities are only ideas." > — You Always Have Free Will (qa-5), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/you-always-have-free-will) ## Definitions distinguish imagination from fantasy Because definitions do this organizing work, Bashar uses them to draw fine distinctions. In Yardsticks, imagination and fantasy are both real — "it is all real" — but imagination "applies very closely to what it is you are working on now," whereas fantasy is the portion of some reality that does not have a high degree of interaction with the reality you happen to be focused in. > — Yardsticks (qa-5), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/yardsticks) Rationalization, in the sense of reason, is then the recognition of the essential message within the symbolic fantasy format, so the kernel can be used without the archetypal symbology. > — Yardsticks (qa-5), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/yardsticks) ## From intellectualizing to knowing A practical belief question — how to move from intellectualizing an idea to believing it to knowing it — gets a definitional answer. The appearance that "each step is more difficult" is identified as a product of the analytical, intellectualizing frame of the conscious ego itself; in dream states, the session notes, you shift realities "without so much as a blink or a step," because you have simply accepted the idea of a new reality. Physical reality is then called "really, in a sense, only a dream, and in very many ways […] more of a dream than the dream reality," and the instruction is to allow yourself to dream while awake. > — You Always Have Free Will (qa-8), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/you-always-have-free-will) Difficulty is thus reframed as a definition the ego layer holds about itself, rather than as a property of the transition. *Three inlet routes follow their own local natural cues beneath one shared unclaimed horizon* ## Practical implications Treat definitions as the blueprint. Emotions are the builders of the house and thoughts/behaviors are the building materials; if the structure is not what you prefer, return to the blueprint rather than rearranging materials. > — Transforming Core Beliefs (qa-1), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/transforming-core-beliefs) When you want to change an experience, work at the level of belief rather than thought. Belief is more directly creative than emotion, and emotion more directly creative than thought. > — Beliefs Then Emotions Then Thoughts (qa-1), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/beliefs-then-emotions-then-thoughts) Use emotion as a diagnostic — it often reveals the underlying belief more honestly than analytical thought does — but do not treat emotion as proof of an external fact. > — Beliefs Then Emotions Then Thoughts (qa-1), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/beliefs-then-emotions-then-thoughts) For a core belief you want to change, bring all four elements to it: desire to be your true self, clear definition of what the belief actually is, behavioral dedication, and compassionate detachment from the old belief. > — Changing Core Beliefs (qa-1), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/changing-core-beliefs) When fear or resistance appears, ask what you would have to believe is true for the situation to feel this way; the answer, when you can hear it, is the definition at work. > — Fear Is Only A Definition Of Your Relationship To The Situation (qa-3), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/fear-is-only-a-definition-of-your-relationship-to-the-situation) Notice that a stubborn negative belief usually persists because some part of you has defined it as serving you; allowing that possibility is what makes the belief available to be seen and replaced. > — Changing Core Beliefs (qa-1), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/changing-core-beliefs) Treat the definition as the blueprint, and the feeling as its read-out. The creative sequence places belief first; an unwanted feeling is a clue to an already-ingrained assumption about what the energy represents. > — Yardsticks (qa-4), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/yardsticks) > — Www.aivsoft.com mp3Cut By Aiv Mp3Cutter (qa-1), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/wwwaivsoftcom-mp3cut-by-aiv-mp3cutter) Notice segregation as a creator of time and heaviness. Bashar frames judgment and invalidation as mechanical acts that produce separation, and recollection as the practice of creating fewer divisions by staying present and acting from trust, excitement, and love. > — Www.aivsoft.com mp3Cut By Aiv Mp3Cutter (qa-1), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/wwwaivsoftcom-mp3cut-by-aiv-mp3cutter) > — Www.aivsoft.com mp3Cut By Aiv Mp3Cutter (qa-2), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/wwwaivsoftcom-mp3cut-by-aiv-mp3cutter) Use your own yardsticks on your own reality, not someone else's. The measuring rods valid in one reality do not apply to another; variance between them is treated as a condition for discovery, not a defect. > — Yardsticks (qa-1), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/yardsticks) Regard the sense of increasing difficulty as an ego-level definition, not a fact about the path. The session on intellectualizing locates that difficulty in the analytical frame itself, and points to the effortlessness of dream-state shifts as evidence. > — You Always Have Free Will (qa-8), [Source](https://sassani.app/source-transmissions/you-always-have-free-will) These implications are framing for self-examination, not psychological or medical treatment, and they do not replace clinical care for conditions in which beliefs, emotions, or thoughts become difficult to bear. ## Representative passages Belief is more overpowering, more able to directly create the reality you experience than emotion. Emotion is more directly capable of creating the reality you experience than thoughts. … Your emotions are usually more indicative of what your beliefs are than your thoughts are many times.— Bashar, The basic curriculum we will be covering today involves four Ds: desire, definition, dedication, and detachment. These are the four general elements necessary for changing core belief.— Bashar, Whatever it is you fear is only because of your definition of your relationship to that circumstance. There is never actually anything empirically in the situation that is fear-inducing. … Fear does not exist in situations. It only exists in your definitions.— Bashar, Your belief systems and definitions are like the blueprints, your emotions are like the builders of the house, and your thoughts and behaviors are like the building materials. Always go back to the blueprint.— Bashar, We create from our beliefs or definitions — the blueprint — activate it with our strongest emotion, pattern it with our thought, and then we come to judgment with polarities and expectations.— Bashar (affirming the questioner's model), The more you segregate and separate things, the more pieces you create things to be, the more space and time that has to be for all these pieces to exist within. […] "judge not lest you be judged" […] is not a command. It's a mechanical principle.— Bashar, Each and every individual is his or her own reality, and whatever measuring rods, whatever yardsticks you may use to measure the reality you believe to be true, are not applicable to measure the reality that someone else believes is true for its validity.— Bashar, Any energy you feel in any particular way is felt that way because of an already ingrained assumption about what it represents. The unknown definition is always scary to you.— Bashar, The idea that each step is more difficult is purely a product of the intellectual side. That difficulty is an extension of the analytical, intellectualizing frame of your conscious ego.— Bashar, ## Related - [Fear](https://sassani.app/topic/fear) - [Excitement](https://sassani.app/topic/excitement) - [The Formula](https://sassani.app/topic/the-formula) - [Emotions](https://sassani.app/topic/emotions) - [Thoughts](https://sassani.app/topic/thoughts) - [Physical Reality](https://sassani.app/topic/physical-reality) - [Imagination](https://sassani.app/topic/imagination) - [Judgment](https://sassani.app/topic/judgment) Markdown twin of https://sassani.app/topic/definitions-and-beliefs. The HTML page is the source of truth.