What is the reality behind reality?
(continued)
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 your 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 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, then that realization in the present can negate any past ideas 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 food, 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.
The same procedures as just given for those who are overweight should be used. In each case body conditioning is set up through natural hypnosis. Daily behavior and chemical functioning smoothly follow according to the belief.
Ideas of worth are involved here also, and the point of power as mentioned earlier. 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.
End of excerpt from “The Nature of Personal Reality”
This book is on our Recommended Reading list.