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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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psychoneuroimmunology self-help

I Feel Lousy – Isn’t that Great!

Do you ever listen to other people’s conversations? I mean when you’re standing at a bus stop, or having a drink in a café after a hard morning’s shopping. You know, those people whose voices are just a little too loud and you can’t really help listening; after all you are on your own, and other people’s lives are quite interesting.

What do they talk about? Their problems I’ll bet, with health issues being high on the list. And have you ever noticed how it’s a bit like a game of ping pong. One party will bat a little titbit “my back’s been playing up something awful”, and the other will respond with something ‘better’ and before you know where you are, you know all about all the cancers, and the hip operations, and the chronic chest infections, that their family and friends have had in the past ten years.

Sound familiar?

So illness seems important. If it isn’t, why do we spend so much time talking about it?

Have you ever noticed how you suffer with a bad cold, or dose of ‘flu, or possibly something more serious, when life itself is becoming tedious, work is getting you down, or your husband seems to have lost interest in you. Have you ever noticed how, when you are happy and life is full of joy and excitement, you rarely experience illness? It has been known for a long time that ‘stress‘ has a depressant effect on the ability of your body’s immune system to fight infection. Illness is the body’s way of saying ‘you’re not looking after you‘, and usually the way you are failing to look after yourself is in your mind – your emotional well-being is generally the part which is being neglected when you start to experience illness.

Now, the scientists say that disease organisms, viruses, bacteria, genes, and even your age, cause illness. They may be right. But if they are then those same ‘experts’ are your only hope for defeating illness. Yet with all the drugs and all the scientific advances over that last fifty years – shouldn’t the hospitals be emptying out by now? How easy is it to get an appointment with your doctor? How full was the waiting room last time you visited? All that science seems to be accomplishing is to change the nature of illness without actually removing it.

If illness is a necessary warning system to let you know that you need to slow down, or look at how you are living your life then this is exactly what we would expect to see with scientific advances; a change in the style of illness, but no change in the quantity or quality. Smallpox and bubonic plague have been eradicated, but doesn’t AIDS do pretty much the same sort of job.

So, how can this awareness help you?

Well it can help you if you want to feel better and be less ill. Because the first step to freeing yourself from this pattern of stress/illness is to recognise that the illness is helpful. Now, I know pain isn’t much fun, and I’m not suggesting that life-threatening problems should be ignored. In fact I’m not even suggesting that you stop visiting your doctor for treatment. I would actually strongly advise that you take all the help you can get if you have a health problem.

What I am suggesting is that if you want to be free of illness, you need to start by looking at what illness gives you, and welcome those gifts. You might get a few days off work, early retirement, forced retirement from a job you hate; illness may be the only occasion when anyone looks after you or gives you affection, if you are lonely then illness at least brings you into close contact with people (doctors and nurses) who touch you and treat you gently; if you are trying to cram too many things in your life then illness gives you a break and gives your body a much needed rest.

It would be beneficial then to see what changes you could make to your life so that this ‘benefit’ was no longer needed because you already had it. If you don’t like your job then consider the possibility of doing something you enjoy instead; if you are alone then open your mind to the possibility of this being different. If you are simply too busy then build relaxation into your schedule and see it as just as important a part of life as the ‘busy’ness.

But whatever you do, don’t neglect illness, it is your mind’s way of telling you it’s time for change. And if you decide that change is appropriate for you have a look at Herbert Benson’s excellent The Wellness Book: The Comprehensive Guide to Maintaining Health and Treating Stress-Related Illness which looks at simple techniques to restore health and well-being. Or Carl Simonton’s Getting Well Again: The Bestselling Classic about the Simontons’ Revolutionary Lifesaving Self-Awareness Techniques, which demonstrates the truly awesome power of the mind in the face of life-threatening and (from the medical perspective) incurable illnesses.

Michael  Hadfield    D.Hyp., MBSCH

Is a hypnotherapist who works with visualisation to bring about life changes

Tel: 01928 575784