Is it possible to control reality

Was there some nuance missing? There had to be. I do believe in the power of thought to create. And yet everyone, including myself, spends their entire days with all sorts of thoughts passing through their mind, many, if not most, of which they are not aware. My mind has become quieter and kinder, yet by no means have I been able to stop the discursive thinking. Wandering, uninvited thoughts still come crashing through the door, often surprising me, for some are strange, some are even disturbing, and I wonder why a dark thought like that would appear in my head; this, after decades of intensive inner work.

How does one overcome or escape this self-fulfilling not-so-merry-go-round? Something felt amiss. Consider the thoughts circling in your mind, look at them carefully, and ask yourself, is this the first time anyone — ever — has thought this thought? You are creative. As the saying goes, there is nothing new under the sun.

Everything that arises does so because it has its origins already set in the creative sea of potentiality that is Cosmic Consciousness. All potentials exist at once, and we are simply choosing which potential to experience in any given moment.

Nothing is drawn fresh out of a void. From a past life perspective, you carry in your DNA the memories of all your previous incarnations. All those prior experiences when you were celebrating, suffering, in submission, in achievement, the times you were terrified, alone, connected and in love, all those continue forward into this present time experience as imprints in the incredibly vast living library of your DNA.

Those — not all — coded imprints create mental impressions that translate into thoughts. Of course, there is also your upbringing. Some thoughts or beliefs you explicitly heard from your parents, grandparents, schoolteachers, and other caregivers.

Others you took on implicitly. For example, if you were blamed for doing something that was not your fault, you could unconsciously develop a belief of I am wrong. Ancestral trauma also informs your thought patterns. Research shows that inherited memories go back many generations, and can influence such things as having a fear to a particular stimuli. I remember in my healing journey processing things that were not my own.

It was my father I was referring to. Given all his adversity, he indeed had to be strong to survive. There was no other choice. In that moment of catharsis, I was clearing out something for him. I was the vessel through which that trauma found resolution. Ancestral trauma is more powerful than people realize. It quite literally codes the DNA. Fears, beliefs, etc, get passed down and influence us from the shadows.

Those imprints then, of course, impact how we think and perceive on a day-to-day basis. The last source of thoughts I want to point out is the collective consciousness. We are living in a soup of vibrational information that comes at us and absorbs into our consciousness without us even knowing it.

When we consider the influence of the media, entertainment, education, and other societal inculcators, we are bombarded from day one with all sorts of frequencies and storylines that shape our identity.

How much we allow those in depends on our state of consciousness. I personally feel that those souls who have a higher consciousness, and thus can remain more true to and anchored in their own personal truth, have an easier time withstanding the storm of influence. Imagine a ship sailing across the vast sea. That ship is the limited ego identity most identify with as their self. It experiences itself as separate from other ships and from the ocean. Now imagine that the surrounding water is your soul or higher self.

This is a metaphor, so there will be some limits! The path of healing and awakening is the gradual embodied awareness that you are not the ship, but the vast ocean of life.

The ego can now be used as a tool — consciously — versus being the all that is self which most believe it to be. Outside of the lab, there's the example of British soccer players who play for their national team. They are among the best in the world, beloved by millions.

But they know that those who cheer for them, who so want their success, also harbor doubts based on many years of the English team not living up to their high expectations on the international stage. Most pointedly, the English teams are notorious for losing high-pressure penalty kick shootouts in big tournaments. They are among the most highly skilled players around, but studies show they are rock-bottom among soccer powers when it comes to penalty kick conversion.

Too much is riding on their shots. Penalty kick shootouts are typically won and lost based on who can handle the pressure and who will crack. And being on a team whose fans are so rabid that wins and losses can radically impact their national pride and self worth brings intense pressure that can be murder on the penalty spot. You have a fascinating discussion of phantom limbs.

Can you explain this phenomena, and what it reveals? Phantom limbs are a sensory illusion experienced by most people who have lost a limb. Periodically, they actually feel their lost limb re-form but often in strange and painful ways — as if the limb is twisted or being wrenched up behind them. The phenomenon and the pain had been observed for centuries and no drugs or surgery could help. In the early s, a neuroscientist named V. Ramachandran hypothesized that the sensation of the lost limb and the pain are both conjured by the brain based on its expectations that we have an intact body — two arms and two legs — under our control.

It means that our brains are constantly assessing and re-assessing who we are based on matching these expectations with sensory feedback. For instance, when subjects are in a virtual reality world looking at themselves moving in a virtual mirror, their brains takes ownership of their digital avatar.

And research shows that if the avatar is taller, or better looking, or older, or a different race, this can subtly change who we think we are, and thereby shift our attitudes, choices and behaviors. Partly this has been a staple of economics for centuries — the value we see in something shifts according to our situation and proclivities. Just browse Ebay sometime.

You may have no use for an obsolete Polaroid camera that shoots out tiny self-adhesive photographs. So, it has no value for you. But somebody out there really wants one for a party, and they are going to outbid all comers yes, this is autobiographical. However, I write about research that takes this idea a step further, showing how our brains adjust the value we see in something based on how much we expect others value it.

In brain scan studies, for example, the reward centers in the brains of young men looking at photos of young women go up and down based on learning that their peers supposedly thought that this particular woman was more or less attractive than they did originally. Think of the recent housing bubble and how much value we saw in a three bedroom house in our neighborhood during the boom and how much now, after the bust. A Stanford Medicine psychologist is helping patients reduce pain without opioids and prescription drugs.

She offers practical steps for people to harness the power of their mind-body connection to reduce symptoms of pain and increase their quality of life. By scanning the brains of subjects while they were hypnotized, researchers at the School of Medicine were able to see the neural changes associated with hypnosis. Mindset matters for more than health, of course. How people think about themselves — in particular, whether they think traits like intelligence are malleable — can have a powerful effect on their success in school and beyond.

That idea has been applied most famously to education, where Dweck and colleagues have shown that children with a growth mindset do better in math and other subjects. But the same basic concepts apply to recovering from romantic breakups and even easing the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

Most important, even whether people have a growth mindset is subject to change. In , for example, Dweck and colleagues demonstrated that minute online interventions could raise grades and reduce dropout risk among underperforming high school students. Stanford Professor Jo Boaler says that research findings show how all students can learn to enjoy math and achieve at high levels without suffering from fear or failure.

The research challenges the popular view that willpower is a limited resource that depends on a consistent supply of glucose. To Gregory Walton , an associate professor of psychology, belonging may be the most interesting mindset. When students question whether they belong in school, especially a school they value, Walton said, their classroom performance and health can suffer.

The most proximate determinant of how people behave is how they understand things, and you can change that. Part of the reason lies in how students explain setbacks to themselves. But before we go internal to look at how you can choose from the infinite possible mental states that represent your Godhood, we should understand a more simple example of how you have the power to manipulate the external world.

We compel the electron to assume a definite position. We ourselves produce the results of the measurement. You rise to your feet and are suddenly dealt with the decision between infinite permutations of reality: you could go to the bathroom; you could go to the bedroom; you could walk outside; you could grab a baseball bat from beside the door and bash your TV to splinters, or crawl on the ground and bark like a dog; you could take that bat and use it to rob a bank and use the money to purchase a plane ticket to some tropical location where you can choose to live like a monk or become an internet porn star.

Or you could simply sit back down. The point is: you could do nearly anything you can imagine. Within the realm of logic and with enough time and effort, you can immerse your consciousness into any reality you want. But that option which you did select—well, its photons are now becoming more vivid, turning from abstract imaginary choice into tangible forms you can interact with whether its the bathroom door, the baseball bat, or eventually the sand on the beach.

This is the power you have in every moment: to see all the possible futures you could take, and then pull yourself consciously into the one that seems most inline with your desired outcome.

I ask that you always remember this when you feel trapped within the illusion of a job or a relationship or any other label. If something in your life has become a true source of pain and sadness for you, you have the power to change it.