How Awareness and Beliefs Shape Your Reality, Perception of God, and Life Experience

Awareness

I wrote this article as a summary of what I’ve come to know after weeks of asking Jesus for divine guidance since our first conversation, which began late evening on May 17, 2025 and continued intermittently for the following three weeks.

 

If we want to transform the fear-based, divided, and often painful reality many of us have been experiencing—especially in recent years—then we must first understand how that reality was created. Because without awareness, we react unconsciously. With awareness, we respond with intention.

 

It all begins with awareness—awareness of who we are, what we believe, and how we perceive the world around us, including God.

 

But here’s the question: What determines the outcome of our experiences—including how we experience life, ourselves, and even God?

 

I’ve contemplated this question ever since my conversations with Jesus, which began on May 17th, 2025. You can read more about them on my blog titled ‘What Jesus Taught Me About Who We Are and the Power of our Beliefs'.

Let’s walk through the steps of the cycle that Jesus helped me to understand after weeks of asking him for guidance, which I call The Awareness-to-Experience Cycle:

 

Step 1: What determines the outcome of our experiences?

The beliefs we hold before the experience even happens. It’s not the experience itself that defines us—it’s what we already believe going into it.

 

For example, if we believe we’re not good enough, or that God is distant or judgmental, that belief will shape the way we interpret and respond to life’s events.

 

Step 2: What shaped our beliefs?

Our perceptions—how we saw and understood the world and God at the time.

Beliefs don’t just fall from the sky. They’re formed over time by how we view life, love, ourselves, and the Divine. The problem is, our perceptions aren’t always based on truth. They’re shaped by past experiences, what we were told or taught, what we observed, and how we made sense of it all.

 

Like many people, I didn’t realize for close to five decades that most of my beliefs weren’t even mine. They came from the repetitive thoughts and ideas of others—parents, teachers, religious leaders, books or society. And I had unknowingly accepted them as my own.

 

Step 3: What influenced our perceptions?

Our level of awareness or understanding at the time.

We can only perceive life through the level of awareness we hold in any given moment. And that awareness affects how we interpret everything—what we believe is true, what we fear and what we trust. It also affects the way we view God, and people of different gender, nationality, beliefs systems and culture, just to name a few.

 

For nearly 50 years, I believed God was a large invisible male being in the sky, watching and judging me and all of humanity. That belief shaped my entire relationship with the Divine. I feared God, doubted my worth, and felt undeserving of love because I was a sinner. I also believed that God couldn’t—or wouldn’t—want to talk to me directly without a go-between person like a priest.

 

It wasn’t until I began journaling with God in late fall 1999, while going through an extremely difficult time of my life—and later, through my work with the Message Art—that my awareness began to shift dramatically and positively, as did my perception.

 

Step 4: What shaped our level of awareness?

The experiences we had leading up to that moment in our lives. Every uplifting, painful, confusing, or joyful experience brought us to the awareness we hold right now. Nothing happened by accident. It all helped shape how we each see the world today.

 

It was while receiving the divine messages for each Message Art painting that I began seeing how my past had shaped my awareness—and how that awareness shaped my perception of everything, including God, and every person on Earth.

 

Step 5: And what happens next?

A new experience.

And that new experience—if we’re open—expands our awareness. That expanded awareness shifts our perception, which then reshapes our beliefs, and ultimately transforms how we experience life, ourselves, others, and God.

 

In summary, the five steps that make up the Awareness-to-Experience Cycle: 

1.       Your level of awareness shapes how you perceive things.

2.       Your perception forms your beliefs.

3.       Your beliefs influence the outcome of your experiences.

4.       Your experiences expand your awareness—or keep it stuck.

5.       And the cycle begins anew.

This cycle repeats itself again and again, until you return back to spirit form

 

Unless we become aware of this cycle, we stay trapped in it—repeating the same patterns, living the same fears, guilt, and anxiety, having the same types of experiences. We also hold onto the same outdated beliefs that block our growth and keep us from expanding, in other words, from reaching a higher level of awareness.

 

But the moment we begin to question our beliefs—especially the ones we’ve never examined—things start to shift. When we ask: Is this really my belief? Or is it something I picked up from others? —we open the door to our soul-awakening journey.

 

For me, this journey took time. It took years of wrestling with old fear-based beliefs—many of which I didn’t even know I had, or realize weren’t mine. It was hard to let go, especially of the God-fearing beliefs I had clung to since childhood. But I couldn’t move forward until I did. I had to be willing to let go of what I’d been taught and allow God to guide me toward my truth. And what I discovered was life-changing.

 

God wasn’t judging me. God wasn’t distant. God wasn’t someone I had to please.

And I wasn’t apart from God—I was always an important and unique part of God.

That meant God was with me, in me, and surrounding me every moment of my life.

 

Not once during all the months I spent painting the Message Art collection—or throughout the years it took to receive its divine messages—did I feel judged, punished, or rushed. Instead, God was always loving, understanding, and endlessly patient. There wasn’t a moment while journaling about this sthat I didn’t feel deeply loved and accepted exactly as I was. It was a healing love that gently dissolved every cloud between me, God, and the truth.

 

That love shifted everything—my perception, my beliefs, and my experience of God.

And in doing so, it transformed me, my life, and my relationships.

 

So, do our beliefs play a role in our experiences and our soul-awakening process?

Absolutely. They either hold us back from expanding our awareness—or help us reach a higher level.

They can cloud the truth—or help dissolve the cloud.

They can block our connection to God—or open our hearts to our Oneness with God and divine love.

 

And it all starts with awareness.

If we want to co-create a more loving, peaceful, and united world, this is where we begin: By becoming aware of what we each believe, why we believe it, and whether it's serving our soul’s truth.

 

Thank you for being here. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.