Session 660

Personal Reality, Session 660

There is a definite correlation between what is called conditioning, and compulsive action.

Here posthypnotic suggestion operates as well as constant daily “conditioning”.  For example, take a woman who feels compelled to wash her hands twenty or thirty times a day.  It is easy to recognize the fact that such repeated behavior is compulsive.  But when a man’s ulcers bother him every time he eats certain foods, it is more difficult to perceive the fact that this behavior is also compulsive and repetitive.

This is an excellent example of the way in which natural hypnotism can act to affect your system adversely.  In a manner of speaking, repetitious actions intimately involve beliefs at the “magical” level.  The behavior usually represents efforts to ward off “evil” that the individual feels is imminent.  While it is easy then to understand the nature of exterior actions of repetitive quality, it is far more difficult to see many physical symptoms in the same light – but here also whole groups of recurring reactions to certain stimuli are involved.  Behind them there is often the same kind of compulsion.  In their own way symptoms frequently operate, actually, as repetitive neurological ritual, meant to protect the sufferer from something else that he fears even more.

This is why belief systems are so important in dealing with health and illness.  Each of the systems use paraphernalia – gestures, medicine, treatment – that are the exterior manifestations of beliefs shared by healer and patient alike.

The same sort of situation operates in hay fever, for instance, and for that matter in most other dis-eases.

Natural hypnosis and conscious beliefs give their proper instructions to the unconscious, which then dutifully affects the body mechanism so that it responds in a manner harmonious with the beliefs.  So you condition your body to react in certain fashions.  Dealing with this is not a simple problem, of course, for the original suggestion of dis-ease was in itself given because of another belief.  Using formal hypnosis, and in the West, you may regress and discover where the suggestion was first given you.  If you and your hypnotist believe in reincarnation, the source may be discovered in another life.

In either case, if the therapy is effective you may give up your symptoms, if both you and the hypnotist implicitly believe in the situation and framework of those convictions.

But behind that there is far more; for if you do not believe in your own worth as a human being, then you will simply get other symptoms that have to be removed in the same manner, using other “past” events as the excuse for the condition – if you are lucky.  If you are not so lucky and your illness happens to involve your inner organs, then you may end up sacrificing one after another.

All of this can be avoided through the realization that your point of power is in the present, as stated earlier (in the 657^th session in Chapter Fifteen).  Not only do you operate within your own personal beliefs, of course, but within a mass system to which you subscribe to one degree or another.  Within that organization medical insurance becomes a necessity for most of you, so I am not suggesting that you drop it.  Nevertheless, let us look more closely at the situation.

You are paying in advance for illness that you are certain will come your way.  You are making all preparations in the present for a future illness.  You are betting upon disease and not health.  This is the worst kind of natural hypnosis, and yet within your system insurance so pervades your mental atmosphere.

Many become ill only after taking out such “insurance” – and for those, the act itself symbolically represents an acceptance of disease.  Even more unfortunate are the special policies for the elderly that detail in advance all of the most stereotyped and distorted concepts about health and age.  There is a great correlation between the kind of policies that people take out, and the illness that they the fall prey to.

Even more disadvantageous are the suggestions given, with the best of purposes in mind, concerning specific health areas dealing with prevention.  There are two in particular that I would like to mention here.

One is the cancer drive literature, and television “public service” announcements, in which the seven danger signals of cancer are given.  Unfortunately, again, within the framework of your beliefs this also becomes almost a necessity for many – especially for those who, because of previous experience of one kind or another with the disease, are almost irrational in their fear of it.  The literature and announcements act as strong negative suggestions, following the nature of natural hypnosis – as a conditioning process, you see, where you are looking for specific symptoms, and examining your body under the impetus of fear.

To those already conditioned in such a manner, such procedures can cause cancers that would not otherwise occur.

This does not mean that those individuals might not come down with another disease instead, but it does mean that the belief in disease is patterned and focused to particular symptoms by such methods.  No wonder you need health insurance!  Illness is not a foreign agency thrust upon you, but as long as you believe that it is, then you will accept it as such.  You will also feel powerless to combat it.

The second health area I want to touch upon concerns the elderly.  Ideas of retirement fall generally into the same pattern, for hidden within them is the belief that at one time or another, at a specific age, your powers will begin to fail.  These ideas are usually accepted by young and old alike.  In believing them, the young automatically begin the gradual conditioning of their own bodies and minds.  The results will be reaped.

In your society particularly, given over so thoroughly to the pursuit of money, such beliefs bring about the most humiliating situations, especially for the male, who has often been told to equate his virility with his earning power.  It is easy then to understand when his capacity to earn is taken away he feels castrated.

Generally speaking, those who advocate health foods or natural foods subscribe to some of the same overall beliefs held by your physicians.

They believe that diseases are the result of exterior conditions.  Quite simply, their policy can be read: “You are what you eat”.  Some in this group also subscribe to philosophical ideas that somewhat moderate those concepts, recognizing the importance of the mind.  Often though, some strong suggestions of a very negative character are given, so that all foods except certain accepted ones are seen as bad for the body, and the cause of diseases.  People become afraid of the food they eat, and the field of eating then becomes the arena.

Moral values become attached to food, with some seen as good and some as bad.  Symptoms appear, and are quite directly considered to be the natural result of ingesting foods on the forbidden list.  In this system, at least, the body is not insulted with a bewildering assortment of drugs for therapy.  It may, however, be starved of very needed nourishment.  Beyond that the whole problem of health and illness becomes simplistically applied, and here food is scrutinized.  You are what you think, not what you eat – and to a large extent what you think about what you eat is far more important.

What you think about your body, health, and illness will determine how your food is used, and how your chemistry handles fats, for instance, or carbohydrates.  Your attitudes in preparing meals are highly important.

Physically, it is true, but again generally speaking, that your body needs certain nourishments.  But within that pattern there is great leeway, and the organism itself has the amazing capacity to make use of substitutes and alternates.  The best diet in the world by anyone’s standards, will not keep you healthy if you have a belief in illness.

A belief in health can help you utilize a “poor” diet to an amazing degree.  If you are convinced that a specific food will give you a particular disease, it will indeed do so.  It appears that certain vitamins will prevent certain diseases.  The belief itself works while you are operating within that framework, of course.  A Western doctor may give vitamin shots or pills to a native child in another culture.  The child need not know what particular vitamin is being given, or the name for his disease, but if he believes in the physician and Western medicine he will indeed improve, and he will need the vitamins from then on.  So will all the other children.

Again, I am not saying, “Do not give vitamins to children”, for within your framework this becomes nearly mandatory.  You will find more vitamins to treat more diseases.  As long as the system works it will be accepted – but the trouble is that it is not working very well.

If you are feeling poorly and happen to read an advertisement for vitamins, or a book about them, and are impressed, you will indeed benefit – at least for a while.  Your belief will make them work for you, but if your insistence upon poor health persists, then the counter suggestion represented by vitamins will not be effective for long.

The same applies to the “public service announcements” dealing with tobacco and drugs alike.  The suggestion that smoking will give you cancer is far more dangerous than the physical effects of smoking, and can give cancer to people who might otherwise not be so affected.

The well-meaning announcements pertaining to heroin, marijuana, and acid (LSD) can also be damaging, in that they structure in advance any experience that people who take drugs might have.  On the one hand, you have a culture that publicly points out as common the often exaggerated dangers that can occur with drugs, and on the other holds out drugs as a method of therapy.  Here the dangers become something like initiation rites, in which loss of life must be faced before full acceptance into the community can be established.  But those involved with native initiation rituals knew far more what they were doing, and understood a framework of beliefs in which the outcome – success – was fairly well assured.

All of this involves natural hypnosis.

Let us return to the example of the gentleman who has ulcers.  He believes implicitly that certain foods cause his stomach to behave in a particular manner.  There is a medicine, however, that will stop his pain.  As long as it is effective, the medicine further convinces him that his stomach difficulty can only be relieved in this fashion.

It becomes a counter suggestion, yet it is all a part of the same hypnotic process, based upon his belief in his original illness.  While it gives temporary results, the fact that he needs it reinforces his dependency upon it.  If his belief in his poor health continues unchecked, the medicine will no longer serve as an adequate counter measure.  It would seem only good sense to refrain from the foods that bring on the condition.  Yet each time this is done, the individual acquiesces more and more to the hypnotic suggestion.

He fully believes he will become ill if he eats the forbidden foods, and so he does.  It never occurs to him to dispense with the belief – to realize that it alone sets up the conditioning process through the operation of self-hypnotism.

The point of power is in the present.  You must thoroughly understand that, and then you can take hold of your life and begin to use natural hypnosis for your benefit in all areas.  It works advantageously for each of you now in those portions of your lives with which you are pleased.

In all such situations, it is highly important that you do not concentrate your main attention in that area of experience with which you are least satisfied.  This acts as a deepening of hypnotic suggestion.  Just reminding yourself or your other accomplishments will by itself operate in a constructive fashion, even if nothing else is done.  Such focus of attention on positive aspects automatically pulls your energy away from the problem.  It also builds up your own sense of worth and power as you are reminded of adequate performance at other levels of experience.

Whenever you are trying to rid yourself of a dilemma, make sure that you do not concentrate your attention upon it instead.  This acts to cut out other data, and to further intensify your focus upon your difficulty.  When you break that focus the problem is solved.

Let us take another example, a very simple one.  You are overweight.  It is a physical fact.  It grieves you, but you believe it completely.  You begin a round of diets, all based on the idea that you are overweight because you eat too much.  Instead, you eat too much because you believe you are overweight.  The physical picture always fits because your belief in being overweight conditions your body to behave in just such a manner.

In the oddest fashion, then, your diets simply reinforce the condition – since you diet because you believe so deeply in your overweight condition.

Until you change the belief, you will continue to utilize your food in the same fashion – and to overeat.  Momentary gains will not last.  Your entire behavior pattern operates according to the strong hypnotic suggestions given, and then of course your appearance and experience always reinforce your belief.

You must, therefore, willingly suspend that belief.  Using the exercises given in this chapter, you must make a conscious effort to insert a different belief; employ natural hypnosis in this new way.  If you realize your own worth after reading this book, then that realization in the present can negate any past idea of unworthiness that may have attracted you to the condition.

The same applies if you are underweight, of course.  You can eat a great deal for a while and only gain a few pounds, or find all kinds of excuses for not eating.  You can be served the richest diet, yet gain no weight.  You are not underweight because you do not eat enough, or utilize it properly.  Instead, you do not eat enough because you believe that you are underweight.

No amount of food will be sufficient until you alter your belief.

Ideas of worth are involved here also, and the point of power as mentioned earlier.  (See the 657^th session in Chapter Fifteen.)  In any area, great clues can be received simply through paying more attention to the conscious thoughts that you have during the day, for each of them serve as minute suggestions, modifying your behavioral patterns and affecting bodily mechanisms.

Chapter 17: Natural Hypnosis, Healing, And The Transference Of Physical Symptoms Into Other Levels Of Activity

Some people who have been ill for years suddenly recover, and then throw themselves into some great beneficial social endeavor in which their own problems are lost, and a new stability is maintained.  Often this represents a symbolic transference of symptoms from the body outward into the social structure.