The Genie Within: Your Subconscious Mind (27 page)

Suppose a child witnesses this active, emotional scene. Her mother sees a mouse in the kitchen. She screams, gets hysterical, and runs around the kitchen chasing the mouse with a broom, knocking over a chair. For a child this is a vivid picture and full of emotion. Thirty years later when she sees a mouse her conditioned reflex is triggered and she screams and gets excited.

“Triggers” are like icons on your computer screen. They are shortcuts to lengthy programs. An example of using a trigger is this. A key to using your subconscious mind is to go into the alpha state of mind. Alpha is achieved by going through a lengthy relaxation program, like the ones presented after the previous lessons. While you were relaxed and in alpha, you were conditioned to a trigger, in one case, the word “ALPHA.” After going through these exercises a few times you should become conditioned to this word. After you are conditioned, you do not have to use the full routine to go into alpha. You simply use your trigger. Take a deep breath, let it out, and visualize and say to yourself the word “ALPHA,” and you bypass the relaxations routine. You are in alpha.

How many times does it take to condition yourself? Everybody is different. Some people condition themselves after only a few times, while others take longer. Moreover, the conditioning should be reinforced periodically. Again there are no hard rules. Go by your feelings or, if you must, ask your subconscious mind if the conditioning is sufficient (see Lesson Five).

Another trigger that was included in the conditioning exercises was touching the thumb and forefinger together to relax. There is no reason to be tense, even for a little while.
Even an elite athlete does not tense his entire body. He uses only the muscles necessary to do the job. Any additional tension is counterproductive. Your thumb and forefinger naturally touch many times a day. Each time they touch, your body is reminded to stay relaxed.

Norman Cousins wrote a book describing how he healed himself of a fatal disease by using laughter to stimulate his immune system. He checked out of the hospital and checked into a motel where he watched funny videos. Laughter stimulated his immune system and, obviously, kept him from getting depressed. Depression interferes with the immune system.

Cousins did not use a trigger, but it would have been a good idea. Suppose that every time he watched a funny video he looked at a symbol of a happy face. After he was conditioned to a happy face, he would only have to imagine, or see, a happy face to stimulate his immune system. He would have eliminated having to watch an entire video. He then could have hung pictures of happy faces in his home, car, and office. Every time a happy face came into view, his immune system would be stimulated.

An experiment similar to this was conducted on mice. One group of mice was injected with a chemical that stimulated the immune system and they were conditioned to the smell of camphor. Another group was injected with a chemical that retarded the immune system and they were also conditioned with the smell of camphor. So both groups were conditioned to the same trigger but with opposite responses, one to enhance and the other to retard the immune system.

Then the mice in both groups were injected with chemicals that cause cancer. When they were injected with the cancer-causing chemical, they were also exposed to the smell of camphor. The mice conditioned to stimulate the immune system by the smell resisted cancer. The mice conditioned by the same smell to retard the immune system got cancer.

A trigger, for example, for self-confidence, might be a picture of Teddy Roosevelt. Another, one I use, is a picture of a bristle cone pine tree. My health program, which takes over 15 minutes to read out loud, is conditioned to a picture of a bristle cone pine tree. Bristle cone pines have a special meaning to me. They live long and they survive under extreme conditions (high altitude, cold, heat, and drought.) To me, they are the epitome of hale and hearty. Triggers are better if they have an emotional meaning to you.

Triggers can be words, images, colors, and actions, such as touching fingers together or blinking. Sounds and odors can also be used. I also use the color green as a trigger to my health program. Each time I see, or think of, the color green, my entire health program is stimulated. I see the color green hundreds of times each day.

INSTANT PLAYBACK

Einstein is reputed to have said, “Time is relative. A minute seems like 10 seconds when a pretty girl is sitting on your lap; ten seconds seems like a minute when you are sitting on a hot stove.” Time is what we perceive it to be.

The first time you drive a new route it seems unduly long. That is because everything is new. You are exposed to thousands of unfamiliar stimuli. The second time you drive the same route, it seems shorter. The same stimuli evoke fewer new impressions to fill in the time.

Relative time can be even more dramatic in the subconscious mind. This is illustrated in an experiment conducted at a Midwestern university. A group of students was hypnotized and asked to pick the fruit off a given number of trees. I do not have the details of the experiment but assume it was a peach orchard of 100 trees and each tree had 10 peaches.

The first time they picked the peaches it took them, say, 10 minutes. The experiment was repeated with the same students. The second time, they picked the fruit in a minute. The experiment was repeated a third time. This time the students picked the same amount of fruit in one second.

Lecron reported a similar experiment. He hypnotized a lady and asked her to review the movie
Gone With the Wind
in her mind, an emotional movie she had seen several times. When she finished reviewing the movie, she was to drop her hand as a signal she was done. She dropped her hand almost immediately. Lecron woke her and told her he meant for her to review the
entire
movie. She said she did!

Once a neurological pattern is ingrained in our brain, such as recalling picking an orchard of fruit or an emotional movie we have seen several times, our subconscious minds can review the entire ingrained pattern in a flash. This is “instant playback.”

You will use this time compression feature, instant playback, to your advantage later in this lesson.

BACKGROUND

I believe classic conditioning is the best method for conditioning crucial programs in your subconscious mind, such as health, success, and personality traits. Classic conditioning is easy but it takes a little more time than the other methods because an affirmation has to be prepared. First, a couple of
points need to be reviewed. You do not
change
programs in your subconscious mind; you
replace
them. Your subconscious mind can accept only one of two or more concepts as true. If your subconscious mind has been conditioned to believe you are shy, then you need to condition your subconscious mind with a new program—one that will give you poise and self-confidence. If your subconscious mind has been programmed to believe you will get one or more colds every winter, get a headache under every stressful condition, and are prone to get sick, then you need to program your subconscious mind to hold the concept of being healthy, hearty, hale, and having an immune system that is strong and keeps you well.

If someone is 50 years old, his or her subconscious mind probably has 50 years of conditioning the concept it now holds true. To overcome those 50 years of conditioning in a short time, a very efficient way is needed. The conditioning must be done in the alpha state, it must be done using a comprehensive affirmation, and it must be repeated until it is the dominant thought in your subconscious mind.

It will take more than once to condition your subconscious mind with a new concept for it to become stronger than the existing negative one. Everybody is different, so there are no finite rules for how many times you have to condition your subconscious mind with the new program. My suggestion is once or twice a day for a week, then once a week for a month, then once a month for a year, and then once or twice a year.

STEP ONE—WRITE AN AFFIRMATION

The affirmation should be broad to cover every aspect of the new concept you want in your subconscious mind. I wrote a general affirmation for “health” for an example, which is given at the end of this lesson. The affirmation itself is over seven pages long. Staying healthy is important so you want
to be certain that you replace every negative concept in your subconscious mind with a positive, healthy one.

Use the affirmation in this lesson as a starting point. Tailor it to your needs; shorten it or add to it. Use images that mean something to you. For example, when affirming the filtering capability of your kidneys, you might use one of the following images. If you are a chemist, you might picture an elaborate chemistry laboratory with complex filtering technology. If you are a homemaker, you might picture pouring orange juice through a sieve or fine cloth to remove the seeds and pulp.

WORDING

Words, for the most part, are the tools of the conscious mind. Words are your tool to create an affirmation for the subconscious mind. So keep in mind that these words are used to evoke
images
and
feelings
. Use words to describe action and to paint vivid scenes that evoke strong emotions.

“I am healthy” is nice but something like the following is better:

“I see myself with a radiant glow walking briskly in a beautiful park planted with bright-colored flowers. I see yellow pansies with delicate stems and sturdy blue daffodils as I walk by. My step is fast and I feel as though I am floating. I relish life. I enjoy life fully. I enjoy the beauty of nature. I feel one with nature. I feel a vital life force coursing through my body as tiny dancing bolts of lightning. I am happy. I see myself with a wide grin as I walk, knowing that I am alive and well and hearty and vigorous. My happiness and good nature stimulate my immune system. I visualize my cells talking with each other and with my subconscious mind with tiny cell phones. I thank my cells for communicating with my immune system and for staying healthy and for functioning for the good of my body.

“I picture my white cells patrolling my body for unwelcome foreign bacteria, viruses, and anything that is not there for my best health. When they spot an unwelcome microbe, they attack and annihilate it like little Pac Men, gobbling all the bad guys in sight. I see macrophages as super tiny vacuum cleaners coming in and cleaning up. I see them keeping my blood pure and healthy. My immune system has a humongous hard drive that recognizes millions of foreign substances and my immune cells get rid of them as soon as they enter my bloodstream. My immune system is magnificent. I love it. I thank it.” (You could animate your immune system by giving it shape and a voice. Then you could talk to it directly.)

“I feel my heart pumping blood throughout my body easily, effortlessly. I sense that my heart is strong and powerful. I see the corpuscles delivering nourishment to every cell. It gladly pumps blood and nourishment to every cell of my body. I now thank my heart for serving me faithfully. I visualize my heart with a smile. It is happy and loves to pump nourishment to all my cells. My arteries and blood vessels are wide open and flexible. The blood that they carry supplies each and every cell and organ with all the nourishment they need to function at peak level. My blood carries away all waste to maintain healthy cells. I bless my heart and the blood that it pumps,...,” etc., etc.

Thank and bless all of the cells, organs, bones, and everything else in your body. Embellish! Exaggerate. Emote. Lay it on. Get carried away. Forget what you learned in writing class. Your affirmation does not have to be logical. You do not even have to use good grammar. It should cover as much as you can think of and it must make you
see
and
feel
what you are talking about.

BE REALISTIC

Be bold in what you want to accomplish but being unrealistic may cause discouragement and loss of confidence. If you like to play tennis, are a “B” player, and 72 years old, having a goal of winning a Wimbledon championship would be unrealistic. Seek excellence, not perfection.

An exception to being “realistic” is healing an ailment. I believe anything is possible concerning health. Spontaneous healings have been documented. These spontaneous healings were due to a mental process, not a medical one. One study, conducted by Elmer and Alyce Green, showed that the commonality of spontaneous healings in the study was a
change in attitude
. By all means use these methods but never use them in place of professional help. Use them in concert with professional help.