How we Form our Thoughts – The Role Suggestion Plays in our Daily Lives

I often get asked “can everyone be hypnotized� Or are there some people who can’t? What this shows me is that most people don’t understand what hypnotism is or how our mind naturally operates by way of it. A better question would be, “is there anytime we’re NOT being hypnotized� Many people spend the better part of their lives in a constant state of hypnosis, being basically unconscious of how they’re being influenced by everyone around them, and how they’re systematically “given†thoughts, that they then adopt as their own, personalize them by how they imagine them, which simultaneously modifies their paradigm by incorporating them. These thoughts then become our own, and we use them to program ourselves by way of them by simply thinking about them. Our thoughts, as our internal dialogue is the most basic form of self-hypnosis. We program ourselves by way of our own thinking. In order to understand how this works, all we have to do is look at what hypnosis is, and what laws of the mind it operates by, and then learn how to recognize those same processes as they operate in our daily lives.

 
All hypnosis can be thought of as the primary means through which a thought as a suggestion is introduced into the mind which is receptive to it, meaning, there’s no form of resistance to it. We have two aspects of the mind that are always operating in tandem to create our experience and turn ideas that are introduced into it into full fledged inner realities by imagining them. The subconscious, which is the powerhouse of the system, is programmed and operates out of memory and produces all our natural behaviors by regulating our emotional state which is attached to memories of various sorts. As emotions are stimulated in us, we reference memories associated to those emotional states and use them to perceive our outer situation. The subconscious is passive and receptive, which means as long as information is delivered in its language as an imagined reality with strong feelings or emotional content, it doesn’t resist, argue against, edit or analyze the information, but simply accepts it as an “actual reality†that it then utilizes like an actual memory producing a whole series of behaviors out of it that act to produce it as an outer experience, while simultaneously forming our perceptual lens to include the idea, connecting us to that idea in our outer environment.

The self-conscious aspect is the “thinking mind†that forms our internal dialogue as what most think of as our “thoughtsâ€, that are a form of self-talk, and acts as the gatekeeper to the subconscious by examining and editing everything to decide what’s allowed in to take hold, and what’s resisted or declined, and therefore prevented from taking hold. Whenever we’re in a relaxed state and have no strong objections to the information being received, we are in a passive state, and readily allow ideas in. Likewise, whenever information is delivered with a strong emotional component, especially fear, the emotion overrides the logical aspect, and is instantly taken in and allowed to take hold. Emotion is like a hook that seats the idea in the psyche where its then “dwelled on†and thought about extensively. The emotion married to an idea is what determines how we develop that idea in our imagination through the meaning we give it. The meaning shapes the story we tell about it, and the emotion intensifies it. Through this process all memories are produced by emotional states of some sort, and the emotion activates the memory associated with it as our perceptual lens that restructures our outer objective reality into a personalized subjective reality by how we interpret it. Memories are an interpretation mechanisms that provide us with instant realities as a means of creating consistent types of experiences based on them.

 
The primary forms of hypnotic induction that most commonly take place in our daily lives is various forms of entertainment (especially ones that come as movies or virtual images with music and sound), researching information (with a sense of anticipation), shock or fright of some kind, experiences that have strong emotional impact, and mental entrainment that comes from a strong feeling of familiarity or resonating with someone or something, being seduced, and of course, the most powerful of all, falling in love or being mesmerized by someone or an idea about something. Naturally, fear causes us to close down, stop, avoid, move away from, or hide in some way, and love, being compelling, draws us towards things with a desire to become one with them. Both extremes, love and fear, control our thoughts and we form internal images that first produce and amplify those feelings, then act to intensify and increase them, giving us more of them. Our thoughts act as suggestions to our subconscious mind which converts them into imaginary realities that it perceives as being real or actual experiences. Because the subconscious operates out of memory and forms behavioral patterns based on memory, it turn imaginary realities into actual memories and creates automatic and natural behaviors out of them. When this happens we are living a great deal of our life out of an illusion of our own making.

The basis of hypnosis is the willing intake of an idea as a suggestion that has a strong sensory component that invokes a strong emotional response, intensifying it, that we take into our mind and begin developing it by imagining it as an actual reality or conceptualization that makes it believable, forming what the subconscious mind mistakes for an actual event or outer reality. An idea given to the subconscious as an actual life-like reality with strong emotions (making it seem actual), it interprets the same way it does an actual reality as an outer experience, and uses it as memory to form its programming. The imagined memory programs the subconscious mind with new patterns that become our perceptual lens and connects us to those same types of emotional patterns in our environment, magnetizing us to them. By imagining an idea with strong sensations, incorporates that idea as a modification to our overall mental programming as our paradigm, giving you a new way of perceiving things and new behaviors for creating and cooperatively participating in that reality as an actual experience or possibility. We naturally begin anticipating more of those same types of experiences, setting an expectation for them, and being able to create more experiences out of them by how we perceive and interpret things. We only pull out of any situation the elements that can be reshaped into our pattern as a storyline by how we interpret it to give it meaning and significance and use it as the basis for telling our story about it, while ignoring anything that doesn’t fit in.

 
If you simply sit and observe your own thoughts for awhile, you’ll notice that most of them came from some form of outer source. Even the ones that form your paradigm as the thematic storyline you’re always telling yourself about things, probably came to you through something that was said to you, some movie or video you watched, the lyrics of a song, an article you read, an idea you studied, or something you learned in school. Most of our thoughts come as suggestions from others that we continue developing by how we think about them and evolve them through various life situations or stages, and acquire them as our own, constructing our paradigm by way of them.

Dr. Linda Gadbois

Spiritual Development

Personal Transformation

About the author:
Dr. Linda is a Spiritual Scientist and scholar of Hermetic Sciences and Ancient Wisdom traditions. She’s a professional educator and trainer for all areas of personal transformation, self-creation, mind development, and soul/spiritual evolution. She practices Integrative Medicine with a special emphasis on Psychology and Creative therapies. She conducts ongoing classes, Playshops, and Adventure Seminars, and is available for private or group training, mentoring, and speaking engagements.
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