What is the reality behind reality?
(continued)
What should you do, then? First of all, you must realize that you are the hypnotist. You must seize the initiative here as you have in other positive aspects of your life. Whatever the superficial; reasons for your beliefs, you must say:
“For a certain amount of time I will momentarily suspend what I believe in this area, and willfully accept the belief I want. I will pretend that I am under hypnosis, with myself as hypnotist and subject. For that time desire and belief will be one. There will be no conflict because I do this willingly. For this period I will completely alter my old beliefs. Even though I sit quietly, in my mind I will act as if the belief I want were mine completely.”
At this point do not think of the future, but only of the present. If you are overweight, insert the weight that you think is ideal for you while you are following this exercise. Imagine that you are healthy if you have the belief that you are not. If you are lonely, believe that you are filled with the feeling of companionship instead. Realize that you are exerting your initiative to imagine such situations. Here, there can be no comparison with your normal situation. Use visual data, or words — whatever is most natural to you. And again, no more than ten minutes is required.
If you do this faithfully, within a month you will find the new conditions materializing in your experience. Your neurological structure will respond automatically. The unconscious will be aroused, bring great powers to bear, bringing you the new results. Do not try to overdo this, to go through the entire day worrying about beliefs, for example. This can only cause you to contrast what you have with what you want. Forget the exercise when it is completed. You will find yourself with impulses that arrive in line with these newly inserted beliefs, and then it is up to you to act on these and not ignore them.
The initiative must be yours. You will never know unless you try the exercise. Now if you are in poor health, and have a physician, you had better continue going to him, because you still rely on that system of belief — but use these exercises as supplements to build up you own sense of inner health and to protect you against any negative suggestions given by your doctor. Utilize the belief in physicians since you have it.
There is a definite correlation between what is called conditioning and compulsive action. Here posthypnotic suggestion operates as well as constant daily “conditioning.” Now: 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 in 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.