My husband wrote this particular piece about the human mind and the power of hypnosis. I found it a very fascinating read and asked him to share it on my blog. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Glenn always likes writing about these things, about self development and matters of the spiritual nature…

“We are in trances every day, states of mind dependant on what thoughts go through our minds and how we feel. They say that the first six years of a child’s life are the most important because their minds are in a constant suggestible state, that they are constantly taking in information and what they are told, what they observe and what they learn sets the course for the type of personality that will develop. But even throughout our lives we are still taking in information, processing information all around us. And our minds are always suggestible to whatever goes on around us, what people say to us and what we say to ourselves (our inner conversations).

I should mention that in my strongest belief, it is what we say to ourselves, our communication with ourselves that determines our quality of life, because in a way we are hypnotising ourselves into various altered states.

Statements like ‘I am hungry’ ‘I am tired’ ‘I am angry’ ‘I feel happy’ ‘I feel frustrated’ ‘I feel sad’ etc, all determine our state of mind, how we feel. It is like being the hypnotist and the hypnotized. And whatever altered state we are in affects our perception (how we see things) and feelings. Shows just how powerful and fragile our unique minds are.

I once witnessed a hypnosis demonstration where they hypnotist put a man in a trance and convinced him that the flat end of a pencil was a lit cigarette butt. The moment it connected with his skin, a rash appeared, much to my astonishment. He was further hypnotized into thinking he was a piano player and actually started playing the piano really well even though he had never played an instrument in his entire life.

In this day and age when information is all around us, it is important that we are carefully what we process. All information has a source and the big question is always whether that source is reliable. We always have a choice as to what we choose to believe and whatever we choose to believe becomes our reality. It is my own opinion that mainstream media is very dangerous because of the propaganda it spews out to the masses and you have to question sometimes whether it is really true. In the film ‘Network’ which exposes the truth about mainstream media, the mad prophet of the airwaves, Howard Beale says that the news has the power itself to make our break popes, politicians, presidents, prime ministers, celebrities and just about anyone. In a way, the TV in our living rooms is our hypnotist and whatever information it spews out is suggestion which is only purely designed to alter perception and change feelings.

You ever wonder why they call what we watch on TV, programmes?

They are purely designed to alter and affect our perception of things.

Many huge corporations understand this, the human mind, and they spend millions on advertising, using techniques very similar to hypnosis in order to put us in the desired trances so that we desire and crave the products or services they are selling to us. In fasion and beauty, the industry tries to make us feel like we are ugly, incomplete and that we need their beauty products in order to look and feel beautiful. It’s the same with health where pharmaceutical companies try to make us feel like we need their drugs to feel and look healthy. Makes you wonder, with all the advancements in technology, with all the money these corporations have, why there has never been a cure found for anything like cancer, the common cold or flu for that matter. Why we have to take their artificially created drugs to feel and look healthy, when all they do is alleviate the symptoms and create side effects which affect our health even further making us crave more of their drugs.

The human mind is powerful beyond measure. But as I mentioned before, it is also very fragile. Whatever stories we believe, whether from TV or what someone has said to us, or whatever we say to ourselves will determine our quality of life. It will affect how we perceive things. From mind comes everything. If we are happy, if we look on ourselves with kindness, empathy and unconditional love, the world will look like a joyous place to be and life will feel phenomenal. Sadly, it is the opposite for most people who see life through black and white lenses and it is a lot to do with the information they process from what they see on TV, what they are told and the inner conversations they have with themselves. Most of the time, the inner conversations are always negative. People are always constantly beating themselves up saying they are stupid, dum, clumsy, a screw up etc. But every statement we believe is a hypnotic suggestion that will inevitably alter our perception.

It is very important that we are careful what we say to ourselves. I know that it is practically impossible to watch and monitor all our thoughts because there are far too many of them. But my advice is simple…

a/ Cut down on TV and Internet time, especially the news. I know you might think ‘The news is important and I want to be informed.’ Yes, I understand that. But you don’t have to to be inundated. The news is filled with nothing but bad news, negativity. You never hear a newscaster say that over a thousand planes made it safely to their destinations. It is always about that one plane that crashed killing X amount of people. Or that another hundred or so people died from Coronavirus and that it is the worst plague since the Spanish Flu. You never hear about the hundreds, thousands of people who are healthy and recovered from it. The adverts after every TV program are just as worse because of the way they try to get you to buy this or that. You really don’t need that one extra item to make you feel more complete. Again, it’s more reason to cut down on your TV time and do something that is fun, enjoyable and productive. TV is not the answer. If you want answers, look within yourself. That is the only place you will ever find any answers at all.

b/ Learn to shut out the negative mental chatter in your mind. Put on some music you like. Learn to catch yourself when you find your inner chatter box saying anything negative to you. The key to doing this is to stay centred in the moment. Negative inner chatter only occurs when our minds start time travelling from past to future. When your mind is centred on the moment, the present moment, you are more aware of the thoughts that come to mind and are better able to catch yourself saying a negative statement to yourself.

I do strongly belive our thoughts create our future, determine our quality of life. But it is the quality of the information we choose to feed our minds with. So learn to take out the rubbish in your heads and life will get better.”

Glenn Riley.