TLDR: The author asserts that brainwashing is a good thing. Ridding the brain of negative beliefs creates a corresponding increase in positive experiences, says the author, until life becomes an ongoing, ever-getting-better experience.
“In every life a little rain must fall.”
“Life isn’t all rainbows and butterflies.”
“We must take the good with the bad.”
Certainly these “pearls of wisdom” sound familiar. For sure we can think of many others. They all convince people that they must accept the facts: There will always be experiences they won’t like.
What’s curious is, those who don’t accept these beliefs don’t experience experiences they don’t like.
That’s right. Some, to use another pearl of wisdom “have their head in the cloud.” Doing that, they discover what I’m writing about today: that in their life, only good shows up.
Yep. That’s right. Life needn’t contain a SINGLE negative thing. Hard to believe but it’s 100 percent true. I should know: I’m living that life. My clients are increasingly doing the same.
So how can this be? Are people who live like I live brainwashed? Are their heads in the sand? Or is something else more profound happening?
Let’s take a look.
Brainwashing: A good thing
For sure things that seem inherently bad happen. When they happen, though, are they really bad? And how do people living similar to me and my clients interpret such happenings? These are good questions.
To answer them, let’s take a look at “brainwashing”. At first is sounds like a bad thing. But, like bad things happening, maybe there’s a different way to look at that concept. Maybe there’s a more empowering way to look at “brainwashing”.
First, the word itself. “Washing” the “brain” sounds like a great thing. Is washing our bodies a bad thing? Of course not. When we bathe we’re removing dirt and grime. We’re removing old skin cells and other material from our bodies. We’re removing things we no longer want on us. After a bath or shower, we often feel refreshed. So we typically want to bathe or wash frequently.
The same can be true for washing the brain. In washing the brain, we’re removing things we don’t want in us. So what do we not want in us? Well, those who’ve shown themselves enough evidence that thoughts create reality don’t want in them thoughts creating realities they don’t want. Washing the brain, therefore, is a great thing. And, just as with bathing our bodies, after the brain is washed of those unwanted things, we feel refreshed. We feel refreshed mostly because, when thoughts creating realities we don’t want are washed away, our reality reflects that pure, clean inner state back to us. That reflection is one including only great, awesome things.
So brainwashing is a great thing. It gets a bad rap though because of the word’s common context: when an authority does it to a hapless victim.
Context matters
What’s interesting though is, this common context is humans’ everyday experience. They’re constantly subjected to authorities conditioning their inner state with thoughts. Thoughts that, if they thought about them, they wouldn’t want in there.
By “authorities” I’m not only talking about bosses and politicians, teachers and parents and church leaders. I’m also referring to the media, commercial marketing, and society in general, what I call “the peanut gallery.”
I’m sure you’re familiar with most of those “authoritative” sources. But let me give you an example of how “the peanut gallery” can exert powerful influence on people’s inner state.
Two of my clients recently experienced different negative situations. While both situations are different, the origin of those situations was the same. The first client was experiencing extreme mental and emotional abuse from her daughter. I won’t give details, but, believe me, the daughter’s treatment of her mother was horrendous…by human standards. The second client struggled with his self-torment. He believed he must suffer in his marriage rather than create one that works for him. He suffered so much he contemplated killing himself. But the same origin of his suffering kept him from doing that. I’ll clarify that in a moment.
First, however, let’s look at the client with a hellion of a daughter.
A hellion of a daughter
Extremely positive reasons are responsible for my client birthing a child-devil. I won’t get into those reasons though because that’s not the point of this post. After years of this young lady savagely abusing my client, my client finally had had enough. Of course, anyone who loves themselves would have ended that relationship decades ago and handed the imp to her father.
What kept my client sticking to all this abuse? The Peanut Gallery, aka other people’s opinions. Beliefs like “A good mother never deserts her child” and “Mothers should love their children no matter what” and “You can’t leave your daughter, that would make you a bad mother” and “What kind of mother would do that?”
Now read this carefully: what’s really interesting was other people in my client’s life were telling her she should cut ties with the daughter. So where were “other people’s opinions” coming from? That’s right! They were all in my client’s head! Her own beliefs, in other words.
But they aren’t really “hers”. Well, they are, but that’s not where they came from. She allowed herself to believe these beliefs as a result of living life and allowing herself to “take in” or conclude beliefs based on her experience. Her experience with all those other authorities I mentioned above including a not-so-good upbringing from similar-minded parents.
So “the peanut gallery” typically isn’t actual people telling us what to do or not do, although it can be. It usually is, however, our own thoughts we use to judge ourselves in advance for behavior we’re inspired to take. We’re inspired to take that action because it will make life better for us. But we often talk ourselves out of taking that action.
Let’s look now at the second client.
Frozen to the point of suicide
He too, has a Peanut Gallery going on and on in his head. What he really wanted at the time was a different marriage. He considered divorce, but his Peanut Gallery wouldn’t allow that. “I have to stick it out” and “I’d be a bad person to divorce her” and “what kind of husband deserts his wife, especially one who doesn’t work and is ill?” all racked his brain.
The problem was as he stayed in the marriage, thinking thoughts amplifying his negative experience, he got to thinking about ending it all. But even there, the Peanut Gallery stopped him. Thoughts like “What would people think if I did that?” and “What would my wife do? She’d be devastated” froze him in his tracks.
Now, suicide is not a bad thing. It’s like the death penalty, which isn’t bad either. When a person dies, whether at their own hands or the hands of another, they return to nonphysical, are instantly removed from their suffering and return to a state of sublime bliss. So it makes total sense a person in deep despair, pain or other intense suffering would make that choice.
There are other ways to relieve such suffering, however, which my client now is realizing. He’s no longer thinking about leaving his marriage or killing himself. But what’s really interesting is, as he washes his brain free of his Peanut Gallery, he’s finding an interesting experience: happiness and empowerment. Even with his marriage not changing a bit.
Empowerment is intoxicating
The first client too got a glimpse of that extremely liberating state that is empowerment. After she washed her brain free of disempowering beliefs, I asked her “how would you feel after cutting ties with your daughter?”
She immediately answered with one word: “Relief”.
Now relief isn’t the greatest, but it’s a start. And after amplifying her awareness of how much better her life could be without her daughter in it, she too found herself empowered. Empowered enough to take the action.
She’s still getting ready to take that action. But more than ever before, she’s seeing not only the wisdom of that new thought, she’s also feeling more and more the empowerment that will be increasingly hers after she takes it.
Empowerment is so intoxicating. It’s rarely felt by humans. But it’s supposed to be our natural state as we move through life experience.That partly explains its intoxicating nature; it feels so good because it’s so rarely felt. Even when it’s felt for a while though, it can become addicting: once one gets a taste no other life condition will do.
And when a person lives in that state for a while, life must reflect that state back to them in the form of ever improving life situations. Is must, because that’s what life is: a reflection of our inner state.
Everything is good
And that’s why I assert that life can only contain good things. That and because I’m living the experience. My clients are living that experience too, increasingly. It all happens when we wash our brains of thoughts life reflects back to us making us see the bad things happening.
Now there are two things to note about this phenomena: one, bad things do happen. We see them every day. But those things needn’t be interpreted as bad. Being able to see them as good is possible.
For example, if you know what you’ve read here, we could say such things, when they happen, happen because the person they happen to is figuring out through life feedback how to think better. Two, just because they happen to others doesn’t mean they must happen to us. In other words, this time-space reality is filled with VARIETY. Variety of EVERYTHING. Including life experience.
And that’s another way we can wash our brains, thus enabling us to see only good: by recognizing that that variety is a great thing. Not only does it act as feedback for us, but it also allows us to select from the variety experiences we want to have.
Now, it takes a while to produce such a life because others have trained us into accepting that “In every life a little rain must fall” and “Life isn’t all rainbows and butterflies” and “We must take the good with the bad.” But once we wash our brains of those thoughts, we discover a new world dawning. And in that bright light of dawn we find our bliss. The bliss of empowerment.