The Fight of Faith

By Joe Lilavois / July 3, 2025

Heart and Mind Coherence

To create the reality you desire, two essential elements are needed: a feeling and a story. Your heart and mind must work in harmony, thinking and feeling the same thing simultaneously. Feelings energize thoughts, thereby shaping the reality you experience.

The Nature of Worry

This is why worrying is often described as “praying for what you don’t want.” When you spend your day thinking about your lack of money while entertaining feelings of fear, you are “creating” your future. You are creating more opportunities and situations to experience fear and worry in the future.

Detaching Feelings from Stories

If you detach the feeling from the story, it ceases to have creative power. For clarification, I believe that feelings are trapped in the body and seek your permission to be released. When these feelings arise, the best way to grant them permission to leave is to truly feel them without attaching a story to them. Adding a story transforms feelings into a toxic mix that fosters a life of misery.

The True Self’s Role

The real you—the conscious part of you—is detached from worry and is aware of these feelings in the body. This true self gives permission to those feelings to exit the body. The minute I feel those feelings of fear, I say, either aloud or in my mind, “You are allowed to leave my body.”

The key is to identify with your “true self” while allowing feelings of insecurity and fear to dissipate. Tears may stream down my face, but once I allow those feelings to express themselves—by feeling them without a story—I experience a profound sense of freedom. I can feel a powerful release, as if a weight has been lifted.

The Fight of Faith

This process is what is known as the fight of faith. The struggle is not against an external force or evil entity; rather, it is a fight with the false self—the ego that seeks to keep you trapped in familiar, toxic patterns.

The “false self,” or ego, tends to cling to familiar, unhealthy toxic patterns and encourages you to identify with it. In contrast, the “true self” embraces the declaration of “I AM” and chooses to connect with oneness with God. “In me is all you need. I AM full provision and abundance. The real struggle is centered around identity.

The Financial Struggle

Today is the 3rd of the month, and I still do not have the rent for this month. Additionally, I have not yet paid last month’s rent. The owner, thinking I would pay both months together on the 1st, generously gave me some grace to catch up.

Confronting Fear

With no money in sight and no appointments, orders, or clients lined up, I am experiencing overwhelming bouts of fear. The feelings are very real and strong. Fear tries to hook me in a story by invading my thoughts, replaying a negative narrative over and over in my head. Each time I felt those toxic emotions, I said out loud, “You are allowed to leave my body.” I was committed to not engaging with the stories in my head while allowing those emotions to exit.

Riding the Emotional Wave

As I experienced intense emotions, tears streamed down my face, and I felt overwhelmed. As the intense emotions surged within me, I rode them like a wave. I understood that this feeling wouldn’t last long—just a few intense minutes. I focused on riding the wave without dwelling on the cause of my fear. I could tangibly feel the emotions dump from my body like a boulder being dropped. Once they had passed, with tears still streaming down my face, I quickly shifted my thoughts and welcomed new feelings. I replaced thoughts of being a “loser” and a “victim” with the affirmation, “I AM Abundance.” The feelings of fear were transformed into feelings of safety, as I reminded myself, “I AM Safe.”

The Challenge Within

This was not an easy fight, as everything within me wanted to identify with the “victim” and indulge in self-pity. It was all I knew to do; it was how I had lived my entire life. I would have descended into depression, which would lead me to “nurse” negative thoughts while drinking alcohol to numb the pain. The difference lies in feeling those emotions instead of numbing them. When we numb our feelings, they remain trapped inside us. But when we allow ourselves to feel them, we can release them.

The Cycle of Wealth and Poverty

“The rich get richer and the poor get poorer” due to the narratives and emotions they consistently identify with. History tends to repeat itself, as patterns recur because we often respond to our circumstances with the same emotions and narratives. However, if you can find the strength to react differently, despite the strong temptation to fall back into familiar patterns, you can break free from this cycle.

Buried Pain and Emotion

I have incorporated this into my daily practice and have come to realize that I carry an overwhelming amount of pain and trauma that I’ve “buried” in my body over my 57 years on this planet. As life puts pressure on me, it triggers these buried emotions, allowing them to surface.

How emotions get trapped in the body

For the record, when we don’t address our feelings right away, they get buried in our bodies. Many of us follow the principle of “I’ll deal with that later” because we feel we need to be strong in the moment. However, if we never revisit those emotions, we end up burying them deep within our bodies. Every instance of offense or triggering is an attempt for those feelings to be expressed and released.

When you’re not aware of how to handle your triggers, you miss a valuable opportunity to release them. Instead, you might end up entertaining these feelings and identifying with them, which grants them creative power and causes them to repeat and return in the future. Each time they resurface, it is an opportunity to free them from their confinement in your body.

The Consequences of Unresolved Issues

I believe we’ve all met an elderly person who seems angry at the world. Even a simple greeting can provoke a negative reaction from them. This reflects someone who has not taken the time to address their unresolved issues. As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, triggers are a gift. They provide valuable opportunities to eliminate the toxic patterns in your life.

Break Free

If you want to break free from the toxic patterns that repeat in your life, it’s essential to take control of how you respond to life’s challenges. When you react as your “old self,” you’re essentially signaling that you wish to continue those same toxic patterns. However, by responding as the person you aspire to be, you can disrupt the cycle and establish a new pattern.

A New Normal

Resist the temptation to react like your old self. Instead, create a new path in your brain—a new neurological pathway that serves as your default response. While it may be challenging at first, the effort is worth it in the long run, as you will find yourself liberated from these toxic patterns.

Each struggle we face offers a chance to break free from the narratives that bind us, transforming pain into strength. By allowing ourselves to feel and release our old trapped emotions, we not only liberate ourselves from the cycles of fear and negativity but also open the door to a more abundant and fulfilling life.

Moving Forward

As we move forward, let’s stay committed to the fight of faith and work towards creating a new normal. It’s important to maintain consistency in our reactions, even in the face of pain and challenges. It may feel like nothing is happening, but trust that progress is being made. Eventually, you will experience your “suddenly” moment, where all your hard work comes together and suddently reveals its full impact.

Help in the Trenches

If anyone knows how tough life can be, it’s me. I have definitely chosen a difficult path here on earth. If you need encouragement or want to learn more, feel free to meet with me for a one-on-one session. You might also consider taking my video course, “Unveiling your soul’s purpose” Together, we can make a difference and finally “get Out of our minds.”

Coach Joe
Exbeliever.com