How to free your mind
How to free your mind
Your thoughts and what you think are the key to creating your reality. Everything around you that you see or experience in the “outer” world has a connection in the invisible, inner world of your thoughts. To become the master of your destiny, therefore, you must learn to direct the nature of your dominant way of thinking that determines your overall mental state or frequency. By doing so, you will be able to attract into your life what you desire to attain as you begin to understand that it is your thoughts that have the true power to change your reality.
Everything inside your mind begins with a thought. You may think your beliefs and feelings are independent of your thoughts but they all started as a single thought. A belief is a thought you have repeated persistently, be it consciously or not, until it was passed down to your subconscious mind and became part of the core beliefs of your personal belief system. Even a single thought-reaction to an outside event can be so impressionable that it creates a permanent belief. Thereafter, your beliefs confirm and justify the way you think. The same applies to your feelings. Your thoughts about a specific event, be it an actual event or an imagined one, give rise to many different corresponding feelings. And those feelings then affirm your thoughts about the event and the one sustains the other.
Every effect you see in your outside or 3D physical world has a specific cause, which has its origin in your inner or mental world. This is the essence of thought power. Put another way, the conditions and circumstances of your life are a result of your thinking, or else, your overall mental state. The state of your life, from the state of your finances to the state of your health and your relationships, is accurately revealing what you think (imagine, believe and feel) in each area.
Most people have it back to front, believing that they feel or think a certain way because of their circumstances, not knowing the truth that it is their thoughts that are creating those very circumstances, whether wanted or unwanted. By internalizing and applying this truth, that your thoughts create your reality, you will grant yourself the power to create the changes you want to see manifest in your life. Reality creation is an inside job that is fuelled by the power of your thoughts.
Once you truly understand that your mind is the single source of all power and that this power is within you, that it is you in its entirety, you will have found the only true source of limitless power for which anything is possible. All the power you can ever come to harness comes from within. Accessing the source of all power begins and ends by looking inwards.
The greatest mystics and teachers have long told us that everything is energy, a fact that is today undeniably confirmed by modern science. Albert Einstein said that “everything is energy… that a human being is a part of the whole called by us the Universe”. Your thoughts are also energy. Invisible to your physical eyes, but very much alive with energy.
The New Thought author, William Walker Atkinson said “where mind is static energy, thought is dynamic energy, two phases of the same thing” and Charles Haanel went on to say “thought power is the vibratory force formed by converting static mind into dynamic mind”. This means every time you have a thought, any thought, you convert static energy into dynamic energy, emitting a specific frequency or energy vibration that corresponds to or is determined by the nature of that thought. Your thought power, therefore, is very much a power in the literal sense of the word.
The basic premise of the Law of Attraction is that like energy attracts like energy. You attract to yourself those things and circumstances that are in vibrational harmony with your dominant mental frequency, which is itself determined by your dominant mental attitude, habitual thoughts and beliefs. If you want to know the nature of your thoughts and overall mental frequency, just look around you. Keep in mind these three words: “thoughts are things”.
The extent of the power of any particular thought is determined by how persistently you have that thought and by the strength of your conviction associated with it. The more you feel a particular thought to be true, and even know it to be true, the greater its power to attract its corresponding circumstance into your physical world through the Law of Attraction. For this reason, your one-off, passing thoughts do not have the same creative power as your habitual thoughts and beliefs that you have assumed to be true. Remember, it is of little use to entertain thoughts of what you desire as if you already have it for just a short burst of time each day if you then proceed to think the opposite unwanted thoughts for the rest of the day. As long as you are thinking in any way, your thought power is always active, never dormant.
A negative thought cancels or diminishes the power of a positive thought and vice versa. Having said this, the power of positive thought is greater than that of negative thought, meaning it takes ‘more negative’ to cancel out the positive than the other way around. But even so, positive thoughts can be of no use to you, if you do not think them or if you follow them up with consistent negative thoughts. Since your reality is the collective effect or product of your thoughts and overall belief system, there is a myriad of factors influencing your life. For this reason, it may appear difficult to directly join-the-dots between the cause (thought) and the effect (circumstance) but the causation is always there. And more specifically, the creative power of your thoughts is always the cause.
How to Use Thought Power to Change Your Life
Your subconscious mind is the storehouse of your deep-seated beliefs and mental programs. To change your circumstances and attract to yourself what you desire, you must learn to program and reprogram your subconscious mind. There are several practical techniques that you can use to harness your thought power and reprogram the subconscious mind to change your beliefs, including visualization, positive affirmations, autosuggestions, changing your perception, revision of the past and more. Having said this, the most powerful technique for harnessing the power of your thoughts is to remember who you truly are—your true self that has no beliefs as we define them.
How To Reprogram Your Mind
Becoming Aware of Your Thoughts
By turning your attention inwards to your thoughts, you will find that you become far more aware of your thoughts. With this aim in mind, at various intervals during your day, deliberately ask yourself: “What am I thinking?”, “What am I feeling?”, “What am I assuming?” This will help you determine your overall mental frequency and allow you to objectively get to know your subconscious mind rather than be caught up in its workings as if an automaton. If what you are thinking and feeling please you and take you toward your desired outcome then all is well, but if you find that your thoughts or feelings are taking you on an unwanted detour then endeavour to change them. True thought power starts with being in charge of your thoughts.
Instantly Replace Unwanted Thoughts
To instantly neutralize the creative power of a negative thought, you can calmly and deliberately replace it with its opposite, positive equivalent without any panic. For instance, if at some point during the day something causes you to think or feel “I’m not good enough, I will never succeed”, mentally replace that thought with “Oh that’s not true. I am more than good enough and worthy of abundance. Isn’t it wonderful that success comes easily to me.” You can also use similar affirmations throughout your day, even if you are not wanting to overwrite a negative thought at the time. You have to remember that you are strong, and that you had already decided who you are – e g “I am successful and independent” before someone or a negative thought puts you down at some point later in your day. If you already decided and believe in yourself then you will know that anything else that’s negative is not necessarily true.
The ‘Cancel, Cancel’ Technique of Thought Power
Another useful tool is the ‘cancel, cancel’ technique made famous by the Silva Method. Each time you catch yourself thinking an unwanted thought, mentally instruct yourself with the words “cancel, cancel” and immediately follow it up with a positive thought or affirmation. Think nothing more of the unwanted thought, it was just a thought that you have now neutralized. As you do this, your negative thoughts will become fewer and far between, and your thought power will be more sharpened and more deliberate.
A Word on Thought Power and Collective Consciousness
Since most human beings live their lives with little self-awareness, the countless factors inherent in the collective consciousness of one’s society also play an important role in one’s subconscious thoughts, even on a day-to-day basis depending on the latest ‘news’ being delivered to your front room courtesy of the television. If you are not living with the necessary self-awareness to guard your subconscious mind against unwanted impressions, then the countless possibilities that can happen to anyone in your larger community can also happen to you. This means that the collective consciousness is what is determining the direction in which your thought power is exerted rather than your conscious choices.
Similarly, this means that someone does not attract a tragedy or accident into their lives by way of their direct thinking or more obvious beliefs. Its mere possibility makes it possible, more so if that person does not have positive beliefs with which to counter more significant unwanted circumstances. In other words, an unexpected event that may have shown up in your life is just one of the many outcomes that you have assumed is possible, be it consciously or not, given the influence of collective consciousness over your unguarded subconscious mind. A subconscious mind that has been programmed at random, will give rise to seemingly random events.
There is No One to Blame
Understanding that you create your reality through your thought power is not about blaming yourself for everything that may have gone wrong in your life to date. It is not about blaming anyone else either. What’s happened has happened and the best you can do is commit to change your mind from this point onwards. You can freeze past experiences that are still affecting you and leave them in the past; you can even revise the past entirely with your imagination. But when all is said and done, commit now to a new way of thinking.
Thought Power as a New Way of Thinking
To commit to a new way of thinking is to deliberately think from a higher vantage point of understanding and calm reason and to control your emotions by rising above them when your emotional world is in turmoil. It is to be able to observe your beliefs and the circumstances they give rise to, as the most objective scientist observes his subject without identifying with it. It is to acknowledge your beliefs are the stories you have made up along the way and that a story is just that, a story that is subject to change. It is to realise that you are not your thoughts, you are not your beliefs, you are not your feelings. All these belong to your personal self but even your personal self is not them. Everything you associate with your personality, your strengths, your weaknesses and everything you believe are just the role you as your personal self agreed to play without your conscious consent. You have forgotten it is just a role because you have forgotten who you truly are. Ultimately, to commit to a new way of thinking is to harness your thought power by thinking from the highest degree of consciousness that is your true self with absolute love for all life including yourself, knowing that all is but a dream. And in so doing, joy, faith and gratitude will become your natural mental state, making for the most fertile soil to plant the seeds of your desires.
Something to remember is that your life is an exact mirror of your thinking, be it what you believe, what you imagine, what you assume, what you feel and so on. Whether you realise it or not you are already creating your reality through the creative power of your thoughts. Every effect you see in your outside world has its original cause within you, even if most of your beliefs that are the cause of your circumstances were not consciously chosen to begin with. To gain access to the greatest creative power at your disposal you must learn to direct the nature of your thinking and take mental possession of your thought power by remembering and identifying with your oneness with universal mind. Your thoughts create your reality — know this, internalise it and apply it and you will see your life transform in miraculous ways. Your thought power is your inherent power to create your reality. And if you are not directing it, someone or something else is. So use it wisely.
To reprogram the subconscious mind is to effectively also reprogram your life because your mind is the cause behind all your experiences in every area of your life. The methods in this article will teach you just how to reprogram your subconscious mind by intentionally overwriting negative, disempowering and limiting beliefs. The methods are aimed at positively changing what you believe so that what you think, feel and imagine about yourself, about others and about life also change, as do your circumstances in time. And given the plasticity of the brain, you can reprogram your subconscious mind at any age.
Methods to Reprogram the Subconscious Mind
1. Positive Affirmations
2. Autosuggestions
3. Creative Visualisation
4. Change Your Perception
5. Leave the Past Behind
6. Change the Past with Revision
7. The Mental By-Product Technique
8. Know Thyself
Core Beliefs and Your Personal Belief System
When you set out to reprogram the subconscious mind the focus is on your core beliefs because they are the root cause of what you believe, which in turn determines what you feel and imagine is possible for you and the circumstances that follow suit. To reprogram the mind at the subconscious level is to change your beliefs, while to reprogram your mind at the conscious reasoning level is about training yourself to commit to doing the methods aimed in that direction with intention and purpose.
The Plasticity of the Mind to Reprogram the Subconscious Mind
Before looking at how to reprogram the subconscious mind, let’s take a look at the latest discoveries in Neuroscience. Studies about the brain suggest that most beliefs are locked in place at a very young age before the reasoning capacity of the mind is developed. Moreover, more recent research suggests that the subconscious mind remains passively programmable until one’s late 20s where ‘passive’ means without one’s conscious input, decision or discernment. Now, there’s no use in blaming your parents, teachers or society for the limiting beliefs you’ve adopted over time. Doing so just serves to strengthen those unwanted beliefs.
Actively Reprogramming the Subconscious Mind
Yes, your subconscious mind was passively programmed with any persistent message from any source until your late 20s. But that is when the passive programming of your mind stops, not the active. Research about the plasticity of the brain concludes that the human brain can be actively reprogrammed at any age, where actively means by using intention and concentrated mental focus. Your aim, therefore, is to determine which limiting beliefs do not serve you and change them, while also bolstering your existing positive beliefs and installing new positive beliefs where they have been relatively neutral to date.
To Reprogram the Subconscious Mind is to Overwrite Limiting Beliefs
While positive beliefs are obviously preferable to their negative counterparts, it is arguably more important to decode your limiting beliefs because they are the ones that stand in the way of the more favourable life that you may be trying to create for yourself, and hence, they are the ones that need changing. Negative beliefs are also the cause behind any low self-esteem or lack of self-confidence you may have. It is only logical, therefore, that limiting beliefs should be the focus of change when you reprogram the subconscious mind. If you are not where you want to be in your life, whether physically, emotionally, romantically or financially (and so on), chances are your negative or limiting beliefs are the cause. This doesn’t mean any of these factors should define you or your self-worth. It just means you are free to also enjoy abundance in every area of your life and changing your limiting beliefs by reprogramming the subconscious mind is a fundamental step in this direction.
Using the methods to Reprogram the Subconscious Mind
The methods in this article are discussed in the context of changing your limiting beliefs but you can use them for any purpose, including to reprogram or program your subconscious mind with new beliefs that you have no opposing beliefs about, bolstering your already existing positive beliefs or creating your desires and so on. Once again, the reason the focus is on limiting beliefs is that they are the root cause of many, if not all, of your unwanted circumstances both inwardly and outwardly. By overwriting them from the outset, or at least challenging them at first as a buffer, you are setting yourself up for long-term success because your life is precisely what you believe it to be.
Make a commitment to your Future Self
Resolve now to make a commitment to yourself, to your future self, that you will put in the effort to reprogram your subconscious mind and create the life you desire. Resolve now to train your mind in the pursuit, not of happiness, but of excellence. Do not leave your life at the mercy of beliefs you did not consciously choose to begin with. Your beliefs are there to serve you, not the other way around. Resolve now to become the Master of your mind—the most benevolent master of your subconscious mind and of your life.
The plan to Reprogram the Subconscious Mind
Make 40 days the first rule of thumb when you set out to reprogram your mind to overwrite limiting beliefs or create new ones. This is based on the understanding that it takes 40 days to create a permanent shift in consciousness. Create a 40 day plan to use the methods that resonate with you, every day and for 40 consecutive days. Do not skip a day, and if you do, start again or at the very least add a day to the plan. Moreover, remember to keep a journal and keep all your related work together as much as possible. When you keep track of your progress not only do you get to see how far you have come and what needs your immediate attention, but it also helps to reprogram the subconscious mind when you have everything in writing. Finally, make sure to keep your efforts private, say nothing to no one.
Whatever you choose to do, and that’s up to you, have fun. Do not make anything so serious that it weighs you down or feels like ‘hard work’. In the same way that children learn best through play, be playful in using these methods and you will find your mind ‘joining in’ and learning whatever it is you want to teach it rather than resisting your efforts. The less resistance you encounter, the easier it is to reprogram the subconscious mind.
Method #1: Positive Affirmations
The first method for reprograming your mind is to use positive affirmations. This is to mentally affirm a positive belief that challenges an opposing negative belief by repeating a positive statement that implies the belief you want to adopt. You want to repeat your affirmations with focus and truly feel what you are affirming—feel it to be true in that moment. The aim is for the new belief to be accepted by your subconscious mind and for the opposing belief to be overwritten in time. A world-famous affirmation is that of Emile Coue: “Every day in every way, I am getting better and better.”
You can use daily positive affirmations to challenge your limiting beliefs and overwrite them at the subconscious level through the repetition of positive statements. They can also be used to impress your subconscious mind with brand new beliefs. In this way, you effectively reprogram the subconscious mind to be more positive and optimistic. Any thought you repeat often enough will be accepted by your subconscious mind and will in time overwrite the opposing belief or create a new one. Put simply, the aim of using daily positive affirmations is to create an inner world of excellence that will in time come to be reflected in your outer world, and in everything you think, say and do. Put simply, what you mentally affirm, is in time physically confirmed.
The Effectiveness of Daily Positive Affirmations
By using positive affirmations daily you can effectively change what you believe and what you think about yourself, about life and the most important areas thereof. And the more you use them, the more you will find that your circumstances start to change and match your new beliefs because it is you that creates your own reality through your thought power, and more specifically by how you feel. When you change what you think and what you feel, so does your life change and in ways that may seem miraculous to you right now.
Method #2: Autosuggestions
The second method to reprogram the subconscious mind is the often-overlooked power of autosuggestions. This method is similar to affirmations but quite different in its approach. Unlike affirmations, autosuggestions are stated in the second-person as if addressing yourself using your first name. While affirmations affirm a positive statement as if it already holds true, autosuggestions simply suggest it as if wanting to convince yourself of it. Using the same example from Emile Coue an autosuggestion looks like this: “[Your first name], every day in every way you are getting better and better.” You may find autosuggestions are preferable if faced with inner resistance or feelings of despondence with little desire to repeat affirmations.
The use of autosuggestions is a largely forgotten, or at least overlooked, technique that you can use to reprogram your subconscious mind through the repetition of positive suggestions in the second person. Most people have only heard of positive affirmations and you may be already using these with varying degrees of success. Nevertheless, this approach is an alternative and equally powerful technique to affirmations, if not more so in some cases.
The Difference between Autosuggestions and Affirmations
Autosuggestions and affirmations are similar in their aim, only different in their approach. Affirmations are usually stated in the first-person (I am (your first name) whereas autosuggestions are stated in the second person as if addressing someone else, which in this case is yourself using your first name. In other words, with positive affirmations, you affirm the positive statement as if it already holds true for you whereas, with autosuggestions, you simply suggest a positive statement as if wanting to convince yourself of it. This will become clear as you read more below. Nevertheless, choose the technique that suits you best, and of course, you can use both depending on the belief you are wanting to reprogram and how much resistance you are feeling.
Autosuggestions versus Affirmations by example
Say, for instance, you are feeling very weak. If you tell yourself ‘I am strong’ then you are unlikely to believe it since you are feeling weak. But if you address yourself as if speaking to someone else and say with encouragement ‘(your name) you are a strong person’, then you sit up and listen. Stop reading now and try it out for yourself by using a first-person affirmation and a second-person suggestion for something you want to change within yourself. The difference will become very obvious. This is in no way intended to discourage you from using positive affirmations to reprogram the subconscious mind. Rather, autosuggestions are an alternative that you can use when you are facing inner resistance to reprogramming your mind and a very powerful alternative at that.
Method #3: Creative Visualisation
Creative visualization is one of the most effective methods with which to reprogram the subconscious mind. Whether you want to overwrite a negative belief or create a specific desire, visualization is the way to go. Put simply, in a relaxed state of body and mind, imagine a scene that implies the new positive belief that you want to adopt with no concern whatsoever for the negative one that you want to overwrite. Feel what it would feel like if it already was your belief in the present moment until it feels real and you believe that it is. Imagine yourself feeling, thinking, talking and acting as if it was your belief in that moment. Repeat the visualization daily, morning and night, until the scene in which you are acting out your new belief begins to take on the tones of reality; until it feels so real to you that the old belief feels foreign. And finally, detach and let it go—when you believe you have something you don’t think about it all day. As is the case for all methods aimed at reprogramming the subconscious mind, I suggest 40 consecutive days of visualizing the fulfillment of the positive belief.
Creative visualisation is the basic manifesting technique for creating your reality and more specifically, your desires—any desire. It is the process of using concentrated thought power to consciously relax, imagine, feel, believe and detach from what you want to experience in your inner or outer world. Put simply, through visualisation you change your inner world knowing that your outer world follows. And the best approach is to assume a child-like wonder. Not childish, but child-like. Let go of everything you have been taught to believe is possible (or not) and learn to imagine your wish fulfilled in the moment.
Practice Creative Visualisation: Repetition
You must practice, practice, practice, which means repeat, repeat, repeat! Set aside a time each day to visualise and imagine what you want to create. The most ideal time of day for creative visualisation is once in the morning upon waking up and once in the evening before you go to sleep. Both these times are ideal because your mind is already in a semi-relaxed state, the state that the New Thought author Neville Goddard called a ‘state akin to sleep’ (SATS).
In practice, the more you use creative visualisation to imagine and assume the consciousness of your wish fulfilled, the more seeming coincidences and opportunities will arise in your life to create that outcome. You will also find yourself taking the aforementioned inspired physical actions where necessary. Actions that you do not have to think about much because they will arise naturally out of the opportunities that present themselves and the new state of mind that you have adopted.
Method #4: Change Your Perception of Past Experiences
The fourth method to reprogram the subconscious mind is aimed at changing your perception of a past negative experience, which may itself have created a negative belief or exacerbated an existing one. To change your perception, imagine yourself acting and reacting differently in that past experience as if you already had the positive beliefs you would have wanted to have had at the time. In other words, knowing what you know today, how would you have wanted to act or react in that experience? Imagine a different outcome based on the positive beliefs, or else, a different reaction on your part to the same outcome. Either way, your perception of the experience will change and so the associated negative belief will weaken because you will have ‘cut’ its root.
Only when you change perception can you change how you feel about an experience. What you assume or believe happened in an experience and what it meant about you, is just your perception of that event, a wholly made up perception courtesy of your beliefs. And since you made it up in the first instance, you can change your perception at any time. Your perception is the personal lens through which you view your version of reality but for any given experience there could have been other versions, better or worse, had your lens been different. Your aim, therefore, is to learn to adjust your lens so that what you focus on, assume and believe serve you.
Identify the Experience and the Beliefs
The first step to change perception is to identify a past negative experience that you know is holding you back in life and you want to change perception about it so as to be free of its influence. Once you have an experience in mind, identify the limiting beliefs that caused you to have the negative experience in the first instance and to perceive it in the way that you did.
Neutrally Re-Live the Experience
The second step is to bring to your mind the negative experience that you want to change your perception about. In a relaxed mental state with your eyes closed, and without judging the experience itself, neutrally imagine it as if observing it from the outside as you do a movie—how it started, how you felt, where it took place, why it was negative for you and how you reacted. As you continue to neutrally watch the scene unfolding through to its end, get a sense of how your beliefs about life and yourself made you perceive the experience as negative. Notice how in this relaxed state of mind, neutrally watching the scene, that you can change your perception if you want.
Change Beliefs to Change Perception
Next, having identified the negative beliefs that caused that experience in the first instance, imagine how differently you would have felt had your beliefs about yourself and life been different. For instance, had you had more self-love, self-esteem and self-confidence when an important relationship ended; or had you had no attachment to money and no fear of failure when your business was in trouble. Sense how your perception of that experience would have been different if your beliefs were different. Feel how you would have felt if you already had those beliefs.
Change Your Actions & Reactions to Change Perception
Next, imagine yourself acting or reacting based on those positive beliefs, only this time project your consciousness into the scene that you are imagining so that you experience it from a first-person perspective and in the moment. Imagine, for instance, that you love yourself and trust life, how would the end of a relationship cause you to feel? Would you not leave the relationship gracefully with your head held up high and your self-esteem intact? Perhaps you may even be grateful for the relationship even though it has ended while having no doubt you will meet someone else. Yes, you may still feel the loss because of the break-up but what the break-up means about you would be very different. Whereas in the past you may have believed that your partner broke up with you because you were not good enough, now your self-love reigns supreme and so the experience and your perception have been transmuted. Let’s look at another example of how to change perception. If you believe that all things work in your favour and success comes easily to you, would you be panic stricken if your business was in trouble or your job was at stake? Would you not feel confident that whatever happens, you always manage to succeed? Perhaps you would even have clearer and better ideas about how to favourably turn the situation around if you wanted to. Again, if your business did fail or you lost your job, you may still feel disappointed because of the loss but what the loss means about you would be very different. Whereas before you would have perhaps told yourself that you’re a failure, now you see the opportunity for a new start and even greater success, and again the experience and your perception have changed for the better.
Internalise Your New Perception and Beliefs
Finally, when you truly feel what it would feel like to change perception of your experience based on your changed beliefs, you will notice how any sense of disempowerment has been transmuted into one of empowerment and inner peace. Feel how the experience doesn’t matter as much anymore or how you even feel stronger for it. From this place of inner strength and peace of mind, take a deep breath and as you exhale release the experience knowing your perception has changed and that from now on it will serve your greatest success. Get on with your life with your changed perception and your new beliefs firmly planted within you. Repeat this technique as often as you feel necessary.
Method #5: Mental Time Travel to Leave the Past Behind
This fifth method with which to reprogram the subconscious mind is aimed at leaving a past negative experience behind where it belongs, in the past, by mentally travelling back in time to when it happened, perceiving it through the eyes of positive beliefs and then ‘freezing’ it in place. This technique is most effective when you can trace the limiting belief back to the time it was created or exacerbated. In this way, based on the timeless nature of the Universe, you effectively change all the moments leading up to your present moment thereafter because the negative experience has not been carried with you to the present, and so, the associated negative belief begins to feel very distant and is more easily overwritten.
You can leave the past behind where it belongs, in the past. To move on from the past, there is no need to travel faster than the speed of light or break any laws of physics to travel back in time. All you need to do is access a world that is not subject to time. You have instant access to such a world. This world is your mind and more specifically, your imagination. Mental time travel is always at your disposal. And you can do so because the physical plane is subject to the constraints of space and time (spacetime) but the mental plane is not, at least not to the same degree. In a dream, many years can elapse in a few hours and in the same way you can use your imagination to mentally travel anywhere in time, backwards and forwards, without any obstacle. Your mind is a time machine.
The Timelessness of the Universe
To better understand just how you can leave the past behind through mental time travel, here are a few excerpts about time from some of the greatest scientific minds. Albert Einstein said “(the) distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion”. Stephen Hawking wrote, “the universe does not have just a single existence or history, but rather every possible version of the universe exists simultaneously in what is called a quantum superposition”. And the physicist, David Bohm, said: “Ultimately, all moments are really one, therefore now is an eternity.”
Without having to understand the physics behind the timelessness of the universe, it has profound implications for your view of reality in the context of conscious reality creation. It means that the past, and more specifically your past and every possible version of it, exists right now. The past, therefore, is not something relegated to memory alone. It exists at the quantum level and so does every version of it whether you have physically experienced it or not. And you can access any possible version with your imagination knowing that you are there because it already exists.
Leave the past behind by giving every experience its rightful place
The subconscious mind cannot distinguish between what is physically experienced and what is imagined. This means that every time you mentally re-live a negative experience, unwittingly adding some extra negativity as you go along, your mind believes you are experiencing it again. So instead of living an experience just the one time, you live it a hundred, a thousand or even countless times. And so, instead of being able to leave the past behind and moving on, one part of you is stuck in the past, while another has brought it along with you to your present moment.
Step #1: Identify the experience
The first step to leave the past behind is to identify a past negative experience that you know is holding you back in life, one that you perhaps play over and over in your mind, or one that you know is somehow always mentally present even if not consciously so. You can also identify any negative beliefs that played a role in the experience and the ones that its persistent memory has been reinforcing.
Step #2: Imagine your timeline
Next, in a relaxed state of body and mind, with your eyes closed, mentally create an image of a horizontal timeline of your life where the furthest point to your right is your present moment. To use this timeline to leave the past behind, make sure your timeline includes a specific point for your negative experience as well as a length of time before that experience, stretching back as far as you want it to, even into your childhood. With this timeline in mind, mentally sense how you have carried the negative experience with you since its occurrence through to the present moment and how its shadow has somehow hovered at every point and coloured every experience thereafter.
Step #3: Move on from the past by freezing the experience
Imagine yourself travelling backwards in time along your timeline until you come to your experience. If it is too difficult for you to mentally re-live, you can do so as if watching a movie without having to experience it from a first-person perspective although you can if you want to. With the new clarity you have gained, mentally freeze the experience in its place and thank it for its lesson, knowing that it cannot follow you back to your present moment in its frozen state. You can imagine a padlock in place or the event quite literally being frozen over.
Step #4: Go to a time before the experience
Next, continue to travel back in time to a point when those negative beliefs or feelings that created the experience did not exist. You may find that you have to travel back well into your childhood years or you may find that the experience itself created new negative beliefs. In the case of the latter, imagine travelling back to the closest point that is unrelated to the experience.
Now, if you are not doing so already, project your consciousness into the scene from a first-person perspective and truly feel how light, happy, carefree and confident you felt without those negative beliefs and feelings. Step into and embrace these feelings as if you are feeling them in the present moment and sense the relief that comes over you now that the negative beliefs are not present. Continue imagining this moment for as long as it takes for you to feel that it is real for you in the moment.
Step #5: Leave the past behind by returning to the present moment
Mentally make your way back along your timeline to the current moment. See yourself effortlessly gliding past your once negative experience without any emotion and notice how it is and always will be frozen in time as just one of your many life experiences. Notice its absence from every point thereafter as you continue travelling forward to your present moment.
And when you come to the present moment, sense how the present feels different to what it was before your time travels and how your expectations about the future have changed now that it is no longer under the influence of that experience. Feel how you have left the past behind and have now moved on. Allow yourself to enjoy this sense of freedom and lightness. In this state of inner strength, start to mentally count upwards and slowly open your eyes. Repeat this exercise for any experience you wish to let go of.
To leave the past behind is to create a different possible present
When you move on from the past in this way you effectively create a different present moment. You are now effectively on a new timeline because every already existing past moment that has elapsed since the now frozen negative experience has changed. By leaving the past behind, every moment that is not under the influence of the frozen event is a different possible version of your past, so effectively you are on a different possible version of your present than before—one that is free from the influence of the event.
Your Reality is Yours to Create
Your past experiences have no power over you, other than the power you grant them. Resolve now to release yourself from the grip of the perceived negativity of your experiences and allow yourself to enjoy the glorious game that is life. Apply this mental time travel method with consistency to leave the past behind and you will enjoy much positive transformation in all areas of your life. In a very short period of time, you will find that while the specific experience may still exist in your memory, there is no emotion attached to it, you are stronger because of it and you are free of its influence.
By Universal Law, and more specifically the Law of Attraction, you cannot attract the same negative experience into your life once you have positively changed the belief that originally attracted it to you because your vibration has changed and since like-vibration attracts like-vibration the negative will find nothing to be attracted to. You may at first still experience some remnants of the old experience in the present moment but do not become frustrated. They are just shadows of the ‘old you’ and it’s just a matter of time before the old experience has no place in your present moment in any way because you will have left the past behind and moved on.
Method #6: Change the Past with Revision
This method to reprogram the subconscious mind is based on Neville Goddard’s Revision Technique. It changes a past negative experience in its entirety, into the version of events you would have wanted to experience with the positive beliefs you would have wanted to have had, and with no concern for the details or the negative beliefs of the original experience. Once again, based on the timelessness of the Universe, which means that all possible versions of your past, present and future already exist, you imagine the version of events that you would have wanted to have had, instead of the version that you did have. And since it already exists, you bring it into your timeline and change not only your past but also your present moment and your future because all associated negative beliefs are overwritten.
Learn how to change the past using Neville Goddard’s life-changing revision technique. Since the universe exists timelessly, all possible versions of the past, present and future already exist. Revision is about imagining the version of a past experience that you would have wanted to have had, instead of the version that you did have. And since it already exists, by imagining it you bring it into your timeline and in so doing you don’t only change the past but also the present moment and the future. Your wonderful imagination is the key to changing the past and all that follows.
What is the revision technique for changing the past?
The revision technique, discussed in this article, is the most powerful way of changing the past because it changes a past negative experience in its entirety into the version of events you would have wanted to experience with no concern for the details of the original experience. This may appear to be something of a fanciful approach to dealing with the past but its power is beyond measure and should not be overlooked. Your results will speak for themselves.
The past is not done and dusted with as you may have been told. You can change the past whether what you want to change is something that happened many years ago or just a few minutes ago. This is because your past exists at the quantum level and so does every version of it whether you have physically experienced it or not. This is exactly the same reason why imagining a future possibility of a desire as if taking place in the present moment, is in time manifested in the physical plane; because that version of events already exists.
Step #1: Identify and review the experience
The first step is to identify a past negative experience or event that you wish had gone differently to the way it did. It does not have to be a life-changing event, it could be something that for instance made you lose your temper earlier in the day that you wish you could change or something that did not happen that you wish had happened.
Step #2: Mentally review the event you want to change
Having chosen the event, simply review it in your mind without any judgement. And then decide how you would have wanted it to have happened—the best possible version that you can imagine or had hoped for at the time. This is your desired version of the past. Remind yourself when you decide upon the ideal version that it already exists timelessly, as do all possible versions. Have no concern about how it’s going to work or why it does, just do the steps that follow.
Step #3: Change the past by imagining the desired version of the past
Next, this is where the fundamentals of the revision technique come into play. In a relaxed state of body and mind, imagine yourself experiencing exactly what you wanted to have experienced and feel what it would feel like if you were experiencing it in the present moment. In other words, feel that it is real until what you are imagining feels totally natural to you without any sense of anxiety or even over-excitement. Relive the revised experience in your imagination over and over again until what you are mentally imagining begins to feel like it actually did happen that way. Endeavour to feel like you feel about all those experiences that have gone your way and are a natural part of your life without having to think about them.
Step #4: To change the past, believe and detach from It
Believe, in the moment, that what you have imagined is now really your past experience and do not question it. Let go of the original experience altogether as if it never happened and have no concern for its details. Just keep your imagination on your new already-existing version of events and then let it go, knowing that by the act of conscious imagination, it is now done, the past has changed.
Step #5: Open Your Eyes in Your New Timeline
When you are ready take a deep breath and as you exhale slowly open your eyes, knowing you are now in a new present moment because the past that has led up to it has changed. When you look around, you are unlikely to see any physical changes because the conscious creation process in the physical plane requires the passage of time. Just take a moment, however, to sense how different the invisible atmosphere of your present moment feels and how different you feel as well. Even if nothing in your Physical Plane changes, your consciousness has changed because the past has changed and that is what is going to change your future. Believe that the past has changed because you have ‘activated’ the already-existing version you wanted through your imagination and so all events following it have also changed, then get on with your day. You can also drift off to sleep if you are visualizing before going to bed. Repeat the exercise as often as you like for the same event if you deem it necessary based on the way you feel about it.
The past is not set in stone the way you may up until now have believed it is. It is just as malleable as the future because all past, present and future possibilities already exist timelessly. You can change the past by revising it, which is to imagine a past event having gone exactly the way you had wanted it to go until it feels so real to you that the original event starts to feel unreal. By imagining in this way you change and correct your past, putting yourself on an altogether new path where your present moment and future are no longer coloured by the past unwanted event but instead are inspired by the one you have imagined.
Method #7: The Mental By-Product Method
This method is aimed at bypassing negative beliefs so that when you visualize the desired outcome, associated negative beliefs do not hinder its manifestation. If you attempt to imagine what you desire while leaving associated negative beliefs unchecked, then by the Laws of Attraction, Vibration and Polarity you may inadvertently attract more of what you do not want. You can use this technique to bypass such negative beliefs by imagining a scene that is a by-product of what you desire but not specifically what you want. In other words, imagine a scene that you do not have a specific negative belief about but that in order to experience it, you must also have what you actually desire. This keeps your subconscious mind from overriding what you imagine and ensures the manifestation of your desire. It also indirectly changes negative beliefs into their positive equivalents, which is of course to reprogram the subconscious mind.
When to Focus on What You Want
Mentally imagine exactly what you desire when it is something you do not have an existing negative belief about and of course more so when you have an underlying positive belief or no strong beliefs either way. For instance, if you enjoy keeping fit and want to run a marathon, you can imagine yourself running one and feeling the satisfaction of completing it. If you have your own business and want to increase sales, you can imagine doubling or tripling your sales and experience the joy of your customers. If you are an avid traveller and want to experience a great travelling adventure, you can imagine experiencing your chosen destination in the present moment. So how can you tell if your underlying belief is negative? Well, if you currently have the opposite of what you want in your life, then chances are you have a negative belief related to what you desire.
The Mental By-Product Method Example #1
If you want to attract a trustworthy partner but have a negative belief about faithfulness in a relationship then just the thought of ‘trust’ may bring up feelings of anxiety and imagining a trustworthy partner may in that moment bring up all the memories that created the negative belief in the first instance. So how do you bypass negative beliefs in this example? Instead of specifically focussing on someone you can trust, focus on having a loving relationship with your partner.
For instance, you can imagine experiencing a fun activity together, laughing and feeling totally confident and at peace. Or else see yourself totally at ease as you go about your day-to-day tasks, looking forward to seeing your partner later during the day. Each of these scenes implies that you trust your partner even though you are not focussing on the specifics of a trustworthy partner. Instead, you are focussing on a by-product of having a partner you trust.
Example #2
If you want to shed some weight, just the thought of imagining your desired weight on your scale may trigger anxiety or feelings of ‘I can never do it’. Instead of specifically focusing on yourself being slim or on a number on the scale, bypass negative beliefs by imagining yourself wearing the most beautiful clothes you have always wanted to wear at your ideal weight and feeling gorgeous in those clothes. Let the feeling be on the clothes and the confidence you feel wearing them, rather than on the idea of losing weight or being thin. And to keep the weight off, imagine a whole new wardrobe and wearing your slim-fitting clothes years down the line. This implies you’ve kept the weight off otherwise you wouldn’t have changed your wardrobe, yet your focus has not been on the weight.
Example #3
If you are struggling financially and want to improve your finances then just the thought of having enough money to pay your bills may leave you feeling despondent or anxious. Instead of specifically focussing on paying your bills, bypass the negative beliefs by seeing yourself giving your money away. For instance, imagine joyfully donating to a charity that you believe in or even starting a charity yourself. Or else, imagine yourself giving expensive gifts to your family and friends that they may want and feel their joy in return. Giving your money away in this way implies that you already do have money and probably much more than you need to cover just your basics. But since your mental focus is not on paying your bills your negative belief is unlikely to negate what you are imagining because you have no beliefs about giving your money away.
Method #8: Know Thyself
The final and by far supreme technique to overcome limiting beliefs, reprogram the subconscious mind and also to create anything you desire, is based on the greatest instruction passed down to us by the Ancient Greeks: ‘Know Thyself’. To know yourself is not about knowing your beliefs or knowing your strengths and weaknesses. These are aspects of your personal self and have nothing to do with your True Self. Your true nature is above the limitations of the Physical Plane and above even your mental contents of the Mental Plane. The domain of your True Self is the Spiritual Plane. Your True Self has no limiting beliefs because you are a Divine Spark of The Absolute, All Powerful and All Knowing. No limiting belief, no matter how ingrained or how seemingly powerful, stands a chance in the face of the omnipotence that is also your true nature. Likewise, your subconscious mind is wholly subjective to your Higher Mind, so when you remember who you truly are, you can reprogram your subconscious mind at will—you declare it done. Knowing who you truly are is the only unchanging source of inner strength (and of any strength) as it can never be disturbed by outside appearances, limiting beliefs, supposed weaknesses or anything else. Ask yourself ‘Who am I?’ When you know yourself and remember who you truly are, there’s only ever one answer.
Note
Developing an overall positive mind and changing your negative beliefs is key to creating the life you desire. There are several methods you can use to reprogram the subconscious mind, change limiting beliefs and replace them with positive equivalents that serve you and your success. These methods include positive affirmations, autosuggestions, visualisation, as well as changing perception and changing the past. All these methods are effective whether used individually or together but the master route to lasting change is to know your true nature. When you know yourself, your self-worth is built on the unshakeable foundation of omnipotence.
