In our free book on the nature of your own power we already indicated how you literally create your own reality based on the belief systems engrained in your consciousness. A great deal of the information that enters your eyes is 'edited' by your brain based on these conditioned belief systems to create in image that matches your engrained worldview.

Consider this, for example. Your eyes have a blind spot where the optic nerve connects to the eye in the middle of the retina. You can't see anything with that part of your eye. Still, your brain manages to weave a picture together from the information it receives and fills the gap by making assumptions based on what it expects from its conditioned belief systems.

Another example is the condition that is commonly referred to as the 'phantom limb syndrome'. People dealing with phantom limb syndrome experience the sensations of having a limb that was actually amputated or lost to still be attached to the body and still actually feeling the limb. The five senses still seem to react to the brain's conditioned sense of reality.

Even more astonishing examples can be seen in the field of hypnosis. Everyone knows about the experiences in stage shows, in which people are made to believe they are seeing the audience naked, or they run around like a chicken and things like that.

Another common example is that the hypnotist makes the subjects believe they are eating onions while thinking they're eating apples. As an observer you can clearly see that the person is eating an onion, usually expressing clear signs of disgust at the mere thought of it. However, to the person that is hypnotized, the onion actually tastes like an apple.

What happens is that the hypnotist implants a new belief that changes the experience of the person being hypnotized. A new 'hypnotic reality' is created based on a new belief system, namely that an onion tastes like an apple. To the person that is being hypnotized, this reality is just as 'real' as the one in his or her 'awakened state'.

In his book The Holographic Universe, the late Michael Talbot describes another experience with hypnosis. He recalls a gathering with a group of friends, and for entertainment purposes his father hired a professional hypnotist. One of the friends was called Tom, and Tom was the lucky guy to get hypnotized.

The hypnotist made Tom believe that there was a giraffe in the room, and the story with the onion tasting like an apple was used as well (except for the onion being a raw potato this time). But then came an even more interesting part.

During his trance state, the hypnotist told Tom that when he would awake, he would not be able to see his daughter Laura. Next, he brought Tom back to 'waking' consciousness and asked Laura to stand in front of her father. When he asked Tom if he could see his daughter, he replied that he couldn't. Laura laughed about it, and even that didn't make Tom realize his daughter was right in front of him.

After that, the hypnotist stood behind Laura and hid something for Tom by holding it against her back. So to see what he was holding, Tom would have to be able to look through his daughter. When the hypnotist asked Tom what he was holding in his hand, Tom leaned forward to take a good look and answered: "A watch".

Tom was right. After that, the hypnotist asked Tom if he could read the inscription on the watch. Tom had to take a good look, but he actually managed to read the inscription, while his daughter was standing between him and the watch.

So what happened? Tom had in fact been programmed to believe he couldn't see his daughter, so he didn't. Such is the power of your mind.

Another example is proved by Charles T. Tart, who was a professor of Psychology at the University of California (Davis Campus). In his book 'Altered States of Consciousness' he describes how he had two skilled hypnotists called Anne and Bill hypnotize each other.

What he was trying to do was to synchronize their two hypnotic realities. And that's what they managed to do. The two found themselves experiencing the same place, which was a beautiful beach. They swam together in the ocean and studied the crystalline rocks. They even reported talking to each other, even though they were not speaking 'physically' in the 'reality' from where Tart was observing them.

From their experience the 'hypnotic reality' was every bit as 'real' as their 'awakened state'. They had 'regular' five-sense-like sensations. Still, they recalled that during their hypnotic experience they often forgot to manifest their bodies and were floating around as just heads and faces. At one point, Bill asked Anne to take his hand, but she first had to 'think her hand into existence' before she was able to do this.

These examples of hypnosis give some indications of how 'reality' is created 'in here', and not 'out there', as most of us are conditioned to believe. They show how your whole life experience changes once you change your most basic assumptions about reality.

This is not to say that you should go about getting hypnotized into another reality right away (although in some cases hypnosis can be useful for de-programming purposes). The key is to realize that you may be 'hypnotized' right now into a programmed sense of reality that may or may not fit your bill.

The solution then is not to hypnotize yourself into another limited sense of reality. That would be akin to accepting that you have the power to create anything you want and the infinite possibility that comes with it, but still choosing limitation. Besides, in that regard many people are often inclined to choose a reality that they only think they want, because that fits the artificially imposed measures of 'success' (see our previous post on this).

But that would never bring you the sense of freedom and happiness that you really seek. The keys to that are 'self-realization' and 'self-fulfillment'. When you realize what you really want, and start pursuing that, you will find that the path to get there will be almost laid-out for you.

All you need to do is to act on the inspirations that you get. These actions will get you there. It's a guidance by a deeper, subconscious level of yourself, which is beyond the limited perspective of your conscious mind (more about this in a future article).

The problem is that most people have a severely limited perspective of who they are and what they are capable of. And another problem is, that the way 'society' is set up, does not stimulate those levels of yourself that can get the game of what we tend to call 'attraction' in true motion.

We are constantly being programmed into accepting certain realities, because that's what makes those realities manifest. In the movie 'The Matrix' (the first one), the woman known as the 'Oracle' tells the main character called Neo not to worry about the vase. "What vase?", he asks. And as he asks this question, a vase falls on the floor and shatters into pieces next to him. He apologizes for breaking it, but the Oracle replies:

"What's really going to cook your noodle is would it have happened if I hadn't said anything?"

Think about that for a second...

Anyway, we'll give some more examples of how this is done in future articles. But for now, try to understand that all our lives, our belief systems are conditioned with the limited views that prevail our societies. The true knowledge about who we really are and what we're capable of were suppressed or even lost, or have at least been given far from sufficient attention. But you can change your belief systems, and thus your reality. And the knowledge is at your fingertips!

But once again, that doesn't mean you should program yourself into a new reality of 'limitation'. The real solution is to awaken from your hypnotized state and realize that you control your reality, and that you co-create our collective reality on this plane of existence with each and everybody else. The real solution is to realize who you are, and act according to that 'instinct'. Once you accept who you are, the walls of limitation will start to crumble immediately.

You don't have to 'seek enlightenment' or anything like that. It's already knocking on your door. You just need to open it up and let it in.

However, what most of us do is like sticking our heads in the ground with our bums up the air.

"No, no, I can't do that... What will the neighbours think?"
"Oh no, I can't do that, I didn't get good marks in school."

Acknowledge who you are and what you really want, and the walls of limitation tumble down almost automatically. Then you choose what you experience, from a de-programmed, de-hypnotized state.

Freedom at last!

And if you don't know where to get started, here's a suggestion:

Go Here

Nicholas P. Kidd and Henk J.M. Schram
©2008

Show All Articles By Nicholas P. Kidd and Henk J.M. Schram