I often say, “I don’t believe in anything. Including the fact that I don’t believe in anything.”
It makes people chuckle, but it’s also the closest I’ve come to describing how slippery beliefs feel to me. Some sit close to the surface—you can spot them easily, like a passing opinion about how the day should go. Others run deeper, quietly shaping the whole way life is experienced without ever being questioned. And then there are the invisible ones—the ones so baked in, they’re like the very bottom layers of a lasagna; you don’t even know they’re there until you dig in.
A belief, at its core, is just a thought that’s been given extra weight. The mind holds onto it, repeats it, and before long it starts to feel like “the way things are.” From that moment on, experience gets filtered through it. Life is colored, organized, and even limited by these inner convictions—most of the time without our conscious awareness.
I was reminded of this recently when I sat in meditative inquiry with a question posed in John Prendergast’s beautiful book, Your Deepest Ground. Although I can’t recall his exact wording, it was something like: “What belief do I still carry that is the lynchpin?”
As I held the question gently, the words “I am not enough” arose. My first reaction was surprise. If you’d asked me five minutes earlier whether I believed that, I would have said no. And yet, I realized in my bones that I had been moving through life with this lens fixed in place, even though I hadn’t seen it until that moment.
Wow.
Beliefs like that don’t always announce themselves, especially when we approach them with an agenda for their destruction. They hum quietly and consistently in the background, shaping how we see ourselves, how we relate to others, and how we meet the world. Sometimes they soften and fall away on their own. Other times, it takes the simple but radical act of pausing, listening, and allowing what’s hidden to show itself in its own time.
So when I say I don’t believe in anything, I suppose what I really mean is this:
I don’t hold onto beliefs as if they are the ultimate truth. I know that they’re not. I’d rather notice them, question them, and let them pass through when they’re ready. Because beneath all the layers of lasagna... beneath even the deepest, invisible, crispy-at-the-edges ones... there’s something here that doesn’t need belief at all—something steady, open, and alive.
And the invitation is simple:
Pause.
Look around.
Like really LOOK. With your whole being.
See if you can sense it for yourself.
It’s not a belief to adopt, or a thought to hold—it’s already here, already present, always waiting for your attention...