Tag: Freedom

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Is Reality Just a Magic Trick?

Have you ever been fooled by a magician? Did a magician ever have you thinking that magic was really happening because there was no way to do what he was doing? Maybe, as you grew wiser, you saw how some illusions were achieved using misdirection and a great deal of skill. David Blaine is one brilliant illusionist that springs to mind. Derren Brown is another, but his illusions are illusions of the mind. Watch him at work and you’ll start to get a feel for how things can seem one way and actually be something quite different. He also demonstrates the ease with which one who understands minds can cause another, in ignorance, to dance to his tune. But he does it with care and sensitivity and no one is harmed.

If this resonates with you then you have to accept that you can be fooled into thinking something is real when it isn’t. You can even be fooled by the illusion while at the same time knowing that it can’t possibly be true – or can it?

The Invisible Holds Great Power

Have you ever seen a streak of lightning? Magical isn’t it? That same power, that same energy, when controlled, lights your home, makes your TV work and connects you to that other unreal world – the Internet. You can’t see the controlled form of electricity. It is invisible.

Have you ever used a compass? The needle moves yet nothing moves it. Ever played with a magnet and pins or paper clips? They move magically. Yet we all know that there is something called magnetism that is invisible. Magnetism is a force that has the power to move objects. Magnetism, at its weakest, is barely detectable, but at the other end of the scale it is so powerful that a maglev (MAGnetic LEVitation) train has carried 100 passengers at over 300mph for almost 30 miles.

But you still can’t see it. Magnetism is only detectable by its effects. At some point in the past somebody noticed it, researched it, and gave it its name – magnetism.

Radioactivity is similar. It is naturally present in rocks – invisible but deadly. Ultra violet light, is also invisible and good in small doses bad in large ones.

So, for the moment, recognise that you can be fooled, and that you are aware of invisible forces and powers.

How Much Do You Know?

Do you know how much you don’t know?

Do you know how much all of the people of the Earth don’t know?

If we knew everything then no new research would take place. So given that you don’t know how much you don’t know, you would have to accept that there might be things going on of which you are unaware. Life and the world may function in a way that is unlike anything you’ve ever imagined, or just like everything you’ve ever imagined in your wildest dreams.

Mind Force

What if, just like a magnetic force field, there was a Mind Force Field or a Personal Power Field that connected everything and everyone. The earth’s magnetic field flows right through your body and you are unaware of it. Mobile phone microwaves go through you as easily as they do through the walls of your house or the windows of your car. X-rays don’t experience much resistance either and you can’t feel them while they pass through you.

Just because we know about magnetic fields and microwaves and x-rays and radiation and don’t know about a Personal or Planetary or Life Power field doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. There was a time in history when mankind knew nothing of magnetism, or microwaves, or x-rays, or radiation, or electricity.

So you can be fooled, you are aware of invisible forces and powers, you don’t know how much you don’t know, and you don’t know that there isn’t some as yet undetected Power field connecting you to everything and everyone else.

Back to Reality

Everything you experience is the result of your mind-brain’s interpretation of sensory input. You see, you feel, you hear, you smell, you taste, you sense. Everything you know about your world is based on your interpretation of the input your mind-brain receives from those six senses. Bio-chemical messages travelling along nerve pathways and hitting a bunch of neurons in your brain and then triggering off cascades of bio-chemical messages within your head are what your world and your Reality consist of. This isn’t speculation, it’s fact. Your world, for you, exists within your Mind-Brain. But the clever bit is that what your Mind-Brain does is to create a representation, within your awareness, of an external physical world. That external physical world may or may not exist. You simply can’t tell because you don’t have anything external to you to test its validity. If I gave you a Virtual Reality headset and gloves to put on you would very quickly be fooled into behaving as if what you were seeing was real. You only know it isn’t real because you can take the headset off and your senses can feel the headset and keep you aware that this is a game. What if you were given a headset the minute you were born? You’d never ever know what was real and what wasn’t. And if this sounds a little like the Matrix, then just allow your mind to wander into that wonderful piece of fiction for a moment or two.

Nothing Matters But Your Experience

In actual fact none of it matters. None of it matters because your experience is the only thing you have to relate to. It seems real. It seems external. It seems solid. That makes more sense than the virtual reality idea, so why not just put that to one side for the moment.

If your world is separate and independent from you, then nothing you do in your mind or with your mind can possibly influence it or affect it in any way because there is nothing connecting the two. The only thing that will bring about change for you is action. Yet action has so far eluded you as a way to solve your sense of Powerlessness. Whatever you do leaves you feeling as if you are stuck and nothing you do or can do ever makes any difference.

If your world is somehow connected to you in a way that you don’t know, like magnetism or gravity or some other invisible energy, then your mind, and what you do with it, could be the key to changing your life and your world. And since you always have your mind with you, you will never be without the thing you need to bring about the change you desire. You can never be resource-less.

How do you Control that Power?

What you don’t know at the moment is how to activate those resources in a way that will find you feeling Powerful and in control of your destiny.

If you’d like to open the door to an exploration of that forgotten power then check out my book Change Your Life with Self Hypnosis and start to take control of your mind and your world.

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How Free Are You?

Our lives are controlled by everyone around us – not directly – but subtly.

We are controlled by the processing that takes place within each of us as we interact with others. We constantly monitor their response to us: our words, our presence. We modify our behaviour, our mannerisms, our voice, in order to elicit the responses that suggest acceptance rather than rejection. And the worst of it is that most of the time we don’t know it’s happening.

Subliminal Control

That’s because of the tiny little things we pick up on without realising it. Things like pupil dilation; tension in tiny facial muscles; movement of body or limbs towards or away from us; self-grooming actions; and so on. These are things we all do at a subconscious level. It’s only when we make an effort to understand ourselves and our behaviours; only when we allow our curiosity about our lives and our minds to lead us on a journey of self-discovery; that we start to see what’s really going on. With that awareness, we begin to understand what’s going on with others too – because we are all the same.

We are all the same even though we each have a unique and special life journey and each of us has our own adventures to enjoy. There is no difference. We are each of us beautiful beings with the power to work magic and touch the hearts and minds of every individual we make contact with on this incredible Journey. But we can’t do that while we are trapped in the powerlessness of having to do and be what others want us to do and be. If we rebel against what others want us to do and be and deliberately do something else – we are still in their power. They still control us because our choice isn’t a choice from freedom of spirit or personal desire. Any choice you make because you need the money, the affection, the sex, the love, the approval, the support, the food, the cigarettes, the alcohol, isn’t a free choice.

When Your Heart Sings

You know you have made a free choice when your heart sings.

Of course all of this makes it very easy for governments to get the majority of the population to do what they want them to do.

 Fear is Used to Manipulate You

Are you afraid of terrorist attacks, or at the very least a tiny weeny bit troubled? The government would like you to be because then it can wage illegal and inhuman wars against other countries simply to destabilise an area of the world – and convince you it is protecting your life and the lives of your children. Funny how it only seems to be evil dictators, and repressive regimes, in areas of the world that control valuable natural resources like oil and gas that gets their population liberated from oppression and torture and suffering. These same problems going on in Africa, Asia and South America seem to be quite acceptable to the same governments that find them unacceptable in the Middle East.

The government takes charge of your health too. Courts decide whether or not you can live or die. They insist that you have your children vaccinated with their vaccines whether you like it or not.

Lies and Dollars

I read an article a few years ago when there was all that furore about brain damage as a result of the MMR triple vaccine. There was a lot of heavy advertising following this and the government made it very difficult for parents not to have their children vaccinated. The article I read suggested that the drug company that made the drug had large quantities of it stored away and it was reaching its expiration date. The groundswell of parents wanting to miss out the mumps bit of the vaccine was going to lose this drug company a great deal of money – hence the manipulation of the population from a government level and the massive advertising campaign. I don’t know how true this is but I didn’t have a problem believing it. This perspective on the situation fitted the observed facts better than that of the doctors encouraged to tell reporters that the vaccine is perfectly safe. If there are large sums of money changing hands in the background then you are probably being manipulated.

Having said that, whatever you do, and whatever you believe is your choice – even though your freedom of choice has been seriously compromised by propaganda. For instance, in elections you have the illusion of choosing a candidate to vote for. But the truth is that you had no choice about who was on the list you are handed in the polling station. Those choices were made by others. You are simply offered the illusion of choice from those who best toe the appropriate party line or can be presented as squeaky clean and best match the allusions of the local voters.

You Can’t Un-Choose Once You Have Committed

However, notice that allowing someone else to make your choices for you is giving them the gift of power over you. Taking on what they say, along with other viewpoints, and then making your choice based on what feels appropriate to you in the moment is to make a choice to retain your power and your freedom. It never matters what you choose – only the reason you make that particular choice is what’s important. Deepak Chopra, in The Book of Secrets, assures us that the moment we make a choice the whole of the Universe is behind us assisting us and making sure of the best possible outcomes for that choice. What this means is that only the moment exists, and only your intentions in that moment matter. So whatever you decide you decide with the best intentions given your current level of awareness, knowledge, and life experiences. There is no predestination. Once you choose A instead of B, B no longer exists as an option. A is all the Universe has to work with and the energy of attraction is constantly re-configured around you based on your current thoughts, beliefs and perceptions in order to get you what you want. Only your own resistance to having what you want can prevent it.

Unfortunately, resistance is often invisible and so it seems, perhaps, that you are unlucky or unloved by God.

Freedom is achieved by going within and feeling your way to an appropriate choice.

 

If you would like to explore this further and discover techniques that will help you to achieve the freedom you seek then check out my book Change Your Life with Self Hypnosis

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Worry – What Is It Good For?

Absolutely nothing.

I know, I used to be a first class worrier. All it ever achieved for me was to make my life miserable when everyone else seemed to be having fun. Then there would be that sage advice – don’t worry everything’s gonna be ok. I always used to think, in response to that particularly useless bit of wisdom, how do you know everything is gonna be ok. Are you psychic or something. That was in the days before I started reading tarot cards and didn’t know any psychics though. My overriding thought was if I knew how to not worry, don’t you think I’d be doing that? Does this look like I’m enjoying it or something? I never had the courage to say those things back in those days, but those thoughts were prominent in response to unasked for advice from well-meaning friends.

I still worry from time to time. The world, thoughtless people and greed occasionally break through my barriers to worry, but most of the time now my mind is peaceful and when something crops up that needs me to do a little worrying – the worrying lasts a couple of hours rather than a couple of weeks. In fact sometimes I worry that I don’t do enough worrying nowadays and just totally ignore stuff that used to get me into a panic state. So I find myself pretty much doing what I want to do and ignoring the world as best I can.

So how did I shift from this place of anxiety-ridden existence to a place of peace and wisdom?

I worked really hard at it.

I looked at my world and my thoughts about that world and I changed the thoughts because they weren’t helping.

Whenever I experienced an emotional reaction I would treat it as though the cause was my believing something about the world that simply wasn’t true. I would seek out the truth.

I observed just how much of my worry was sourced not in real life events but in what I thought others were thinking about me. So I stopped mind-reading.

I became aware of how much worry was being caused by the events going on in the world. That led to a realisation that news reporting was totally focused on negative events. I stopped watching the news. I’ve never read newspapers, but if I had done I would have stopped reading those too.

I learned to meditate because that gave my mind a rest.

Then one, day the breakthrough came. It was one of the most amazing things I have ever experienced – but it was over in a moment.

I was sitting in my favourite worry chair, worrying about something or other that wasn’t going right in my life. I was really working hard at it. This wasn’t an idle worry, it was a full-blown, explore every nuance of every possible aspect of the situation kind of worry. Then, in a moment of clarity, I thought ‘I’m fed up with this, I don’t want to do it any more’ and then I got up and went over to my computer and did something much more interesting instead. The worry was gone.

In that moment I realised a most amazing thing. Worry is a choice.

Worry is also a habit.

Habits are not easy to break but all the work I’d been doing had been interfering with the habit aspect of worrying. I’d loosened the habit enough to be able to choose not to do it.

At the very deepest level what drives worrying is a distorted view of life and your world. The distorted view is not your fault, it’s simply your reaction to your world as you were growing up. Your view is highly coloured by the distorted views of the significant adults who were around you in your young life. Everyone’s view is distorted –this is not a condemnation or a blaming of anyone. We are all always doing the best we can given what we believe to be true.

The more distorted your world view, the greater your levels of anxiety are likely to be.

Change that view and you change your world.

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The ABC of Anxiety Relief

Watch on Youtube at: http://youtu.be/5MopqZynWck

Not written anything here for ages, because I’ve been exploring the possibility of using video to communicate my message to a wider audience. So here is my very first attempt at video production.

I hope you enjoy it and find it of some value. I’m a one man show so performing, filming, editing, & titling are all new skills I’m having to learn, and that’s one of the things I’d like to write about here before I get on to the main topic – the subject of the video.

Learning new skills, even if they are highly complex, is a wonderful way to keep your mind young, healthy and active. There was a point where I was ready to tear my hair out trying out figure out how to get my titles out of Adobe After Effects and into my video editing software. Two weeks later I can do simple stuff relatively easily. The rolling credits at the end were the biggest challenge and I’m not totally happy with the outcome but I’m pleased that I’ve done as well as I have.

Keep your mind engaged with new, difficult and fascinating  challenges. It keeps you young. It keeps you healthy. And it expands your world.

Expanding your world is another way to reduce anxiety levels. The bigger your world, the less impact any change will have because your world is so big that even losing your job is only a small part of what you live for.

But anxiety interferes with fun, enjoyment and learning. So it is hugely important, if you are a worrier, that you learn techniques to help you reduce your anxiety load. I have designed this video to help you do just that by following three easy to remember steps and repeating them as often as you need to throughout your day. It takes just a moment and, like video editing, it might seem complicated at first but if you keep at it, it will soon be second nature and crippling anxiety will be a thing of the past.

If you enjoy the video please leave a comment below.

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Don’t Worry, or You’ll Soon Be Dead!

The latest research from the University of Edinburgh, looking at the lives of over 85,000 individuals in good health and aged 35 or over, has established a link between mild mental health problems and an early death. I’m sure it will be no surprise that depression and anxiety leads to physical illnesses like heart disease and cancer, but what is surprising is that there also appears to be a causal link with death from external causes. Unsurprisingly the more intense the psychological distress the more likely a person is to die of cardio-vascular disease, cancer, or accidents.

The types of psychological distress looked at in this study were: anxiety, depression, social dysfunction, and loss of confidence. Quite low levels of distress predict an almost 1 in 3 increase of death from cardiovascular disease, and from external causes. But it seems that more severe psychological problems are needed to trigger increased cancer risk – but when the distress is more serious the cancer risk increases to 2 in 5.

The interesting thing about this study is that the distress levels at which mortality increases are not high enough to require any medical intervention. What has been highlighted here is that about a quarter of the adult population are at risk of an earlier death unless they take action regarding their own mental health and well being.

The connection between stress and a lowered immune system response has been known for a long time, but this new study is really highlighting the fact that your mental health is hugely important and that minor stresses and feeling low should not be shrugged off or coped with. What is needed is for individuals to discover that there are things they can do to help themselves feel better. These are simple things, but they do require action. For instance turning off the tv news and slipping a DVD into the player so you can watch something that makes you laugh, or just feel good, is a smart move. But it takes effort. When you make the effort regularly, actions like this soon become effortless habits.

If you get hold of your free copy of my book Freedom you’ll find information in there that will help to lift your spirit and move you away from a life of worry.

Many people have lives that don’t seem to be working and every day is a struggle for them, but the rest are just getting by. If you are just getting by then you really should start to pay attention to the constant stream of negative messages that impact you during your day.

As a one time exercise get a pad and pen and just make a note every time you receive negative input from outside of yourself. It comes in the form of gossip, bitchiness, judgements, opinions, headlines, and tv. You even get it from ads. The ads do it subliminally because most ads create a positive aura around the product they want you to buy. However, the subtext is that your life is not good enough right now and will only be perfect when you purchase this whatever-it-is.

This research is a real action call to be much more aware of your mind state and to take action when your mood is low.

So why not take up my offer of a free book – after all it may add years to your life.

Michael

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Fix Stress Quickly And Easily

Worry seems to be normal. At least worry seems to be normal if you class normal as what most people do. Natural is not the same as normal and worry is not natural. It’s not natural because worry is something we learn to do.

As tiny humans we are ‘engineered’ to learn rapidly by observing and emulating those around us. This is a survival trait. The sooner we learn what’s safe in our world; the sooner we learn what to steer clear of in our world; the greater our chances of survival.

What we observe most adults do is worry.

Now watch the news.

There must be a channel with news on. Go and watch it for 30 minutes.

Now tell me there is nothing in the world to be concerned about.

Are there crazy gunmen randomly killing people? Do tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanoes wipe out the lives of thousands as if they were of no more value than the ant you probably accidentally squished when you were out yesterday? Are the finances of your country in a total shambles with meltdown, and the devaluing of all your hard earned savings and investments, just around the corner? Are jobs scarce, difficult to get and harder to hang on to? Do you now know how many million unemployed there are, and just how serious this is – for you? Do you know now just how bad the weather is (again?) this year and the adverse affect it’s going to have on crop yields and food prices? Do you know where all the floods and droughts are? Are you fully clued up on all the infidelities and dishonesties of your favourite politicians?

And talking of politicians – do you know how the war is going? There’s always a war, politicians arrange wars to provide an external distraction from the internal problems they are not dealing with and don’t really want you to pay too much attention to.

Go pick up your daily paper.

Isn’t it full of the same stuff?

There is plenty to worry about. But, most of it is brought to you from outside agencies. Consider for a moment that you are away on holiday, perhaps in some isolated place, maybe camping away from people; maybe somewhere quiet and peaceful with a nice beach where you can just relax, read a good book and generally chill out. This is a holiday where you’ve left your phone at home. Now who would do such a crazy thing as that– I mean what if the world couldn’t go on without me?  What if something bad happened and no one could let me know? You’ve also decided that the only reading you are going to do is enjoyable books, and you’ve come to a place with no tv, and no internet.

It sounds like Hell I know. No tv, no papers, no phone, no facebook, just sunshine, sea and sand, or maybe trees, lakes, open spaces, beautiful mountains, and amazing wildlife.

Could you survive this hell for a couple of weeks?

The truth is the world does what the world does and it does it whether you are paying attention or not. Worrying about volcanoes, earthquakes, and other tragic events, doesn’t stop them doing what they do. If there is a real danger then take whatever action you can to protect yourself and then forget about it. I‘m not suggesting for a minute that you shouldn’t take precautions, just that you should do it or not do it and then get on with your life. If you choose not to take sensible precautions then recognise that that’s a choice you’ve made, don’t keep worrying about what might happen because you’ve not done the sensible thing.

In my part of the world it’s usual to lock up your doors and windows when you go out even though there isn’t a lot of crime. It also makes sense to lock your car when you leave it. What doesn’t make sense is spending the time away from home, or car, worrying about what would happen if someone broke in.

I have a simple solution to the worry problem. I don’t watch news on tv. And yes that means I sometimes don’t hear about disasters and serious crimes until two or three days, or maybe a week or two after they’ve happened. Oddly, I’ve found that makes absolutely no difference to me – other than my mind is freer of worry than a lot of people I know. I haven’t read a newspaper regularly since 1975. I find there is so much more interesting and inspirational stuff to read that newspapers are just a waste of my mindtime.

Of course as soon as I got interested in hypnosis, for use as a therapeutic tool, I realised that newspapers are just a way to hypnotise and control the masses.

No I’m not a conspiracy nut, but when you step back from this stuff you can see what’s going on. While it’s important to you and you are in the middle of it, you will defend it against criticism.

I value my own opinion. Newspapers tell you your opinion.

So, if you haven’t guessed it already, the first step on the way to fix stress quickly and easily is to try out an experiment.

For just one 24 hour period, watch something more fun than the news, and read something more interesting than a newspaper.

And see what happens.

It’s just a day. Anyone, no matter how addicted, can survive a day without the negative input of tv news and newspapers. Yes you may miss the world’s biggest disaster and have no idea what’s going on when everyone else is talking about it, but then if it isn’t in your immediate neck of the woods isn’t it just voyeuristic anyway?

If there’s a serious problem in the world, then if you can take action to help – take action; if you can’t then forget about it. Your thinking or worrying or stressing about it all day will not change one tiny aspect of what’s going on.

The only place true freedom exists is within your own mind.

You cannot experience that freedom while your emotional state is being manipulated by others.

Take that first step towards Freedom and give yourself a taste – just for a day.

If this resonates with you then please leave a comment below.

Michael

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Peer Pressure And How To Make Choices

Choice is one of my favourite topics because it pulls in all sorts of ideas – like free will, and destiny, but there is another side that is also of importance and that is how to make a choice when there is pressure to choose.

We all know how difficult it is to be the lone voice in the crowd. But I also think that that lone voice is potentially the one most worth listening to.

There is a well-known experiment, by psychologist Solomon Asch, that took place in the 1950’s to test the effects of peer pressure. In this experiment one test subject was placed in a room with seven ‘fake’ participants. The test subject thought everyone was being tested. The experiment demonstrated a couple of things.

  1.  That it is very difficult to voice a difference of opinion when everyone else is in agreement.
  2. That it only takes one person to disagree with the ‘crowd’ in order for you to feel safer expressing your own opinion.

What the experiment showed was that when everyone else agrees it can either distort your perception of reality or it can cause you not to voice a difference of opinion even though you know everyone else is wrong.

It also demonstrated that if only one or two speak up against a majority who are wrong, this then provides sufficient authority for you to also speak up – assuming that there are no negative consequences for doing so.

In other words, being a lone voice crying in the wilderness is really difficult.

Isn’t it so much easier to go along with the crowd?

Sociologists observe this in mob behaviour when individuals find themselves behaving in socially unacceptable ways because the ‘mob’ behaves as a single organism and it seems to override individual morality.

Now you know as well as I do that when you are pressured to agree to do something you don’t want to do – that you quite often agree. If all your friends are arranging a day out at a theme park, but you’d rather visit a museum, or walk along a picturesque river valley, you probably find yourself at the theme park because the alternative would have been to be on your own – or worse be seen as boring, no fun, a wet blanket…

People who have difficulty saying ‘no’ also have this problem. They are controlled by others. If you always have to say ‘yes’ when someone asks you to do something for them, then you have no freedom. You live at the whim of others. Many people who suffer anxiety and stress problems have a problem saying ‘no’. The freedom that learning to say ‘no’ brings with it is a great stress release.

If you want to enjoy freedom in life then you have to live it on your terms. You have to make your choices based on your own needs and desires. Of course, that creates conflict if one of your needs or desires is to be liked and have friends and the other is to spend time in nature, because the theme park gives you one of those and the river gives you the other. In such cases the solution is simple. Just ask yourself the question “what would please me most, right now?” and then go with that. That way, on some days you’ll find yourself at the theme park and on others out in nature. This is not a compromise. Compromise is always a lose-lose situation. When you always go with what would please you most right now – you always win.