The Zen of Advaita - Stephen H. Wolinsky Ph. D.

the case of a False Core beliefthat “I am worthless,” the nervoussystem will constantly be on guardin an attempt to defend againstbeing “found out” — usually byacting in ways that will “prove”that it is not worthless.There are numerous False Cores andcompensatory False Selves, butthe effect of the process is thesame — beginning at a very earlyage, the abstraction concept ofourselves and the world out of allof the information available to usis based on a False Core belief.And from then on we can only seethe world distorted through thatparticular lens.Automatically the nervous systemorganizes chains of similarexperiences for ourselves thatgrow out of this primary andformative event. The backtrackingabstraction process (see above)can also be brought to examineour False Core beliefs and FalseSelves.The following is a list of some ofthe most common False Cores andCompensatory False Selves.127