The Power of Belief & the Inner Self
The first challenges we face as we explore the power of our conscious thought are: the beliefs that some areas of our personal experience can’t be changed, some things are more difficult to change than others, and the changes we can make will take time. As we start to play with these ideas, the Inner Self will create experiences to show us these assumptions are false. In fact, we’ll get information about our creative power the instant we need it – even if we don’t know that we’re entering a time in our life when we must feel confident about our personal power. That’s what happened in my own life.
I was barely out of graduate school and working in a residential treatment center, in charge of a unit for adolescent girls. Shocked by the depth of abuse these children had experienced, I complained to a brilliant young colleague of mine, that it would take a miracle to find a treatment approach that could really help them! As if on cue, he thrust a book into my hands entitled “Uncommon Therapy”. It was about the work of Milton Erickson, a world-renowned psychiatrist, who taught clinicians how to use principles of hypnosis to help their patients create profound changes.
I finished the book at home that Sunday. I had never read anything about this type of approach, and I wanted to learn everything I could about it. There was a postscript in the back that said Dr. Erickson practiced in Tempe, Arizona. So, I got the telephone number and quickly called what I thought was his office. To my amazement, Erickson answered the phone! I began to stammer that I was a new therapist and, …uh, well, uh …. I just wondered…. Did he ever take students? Much like in The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy heard the Wizard for the first time, Erickson’s deep, booming voice responded, seemingly from out of nowhere, “Can you be here next Sunday?”!
The following Sunday, I was seated in front of this great teacher for the first time. Smiling, his indescribably blue eyes twinkled as he said, “You don’t believe I can do anything for you, do you?” and, before I could answer, he said “Now try to stand up!”. Astounded, I couldn’t move! I was paralyzed from the waist down! Erickson grinned at me, saying, “If you delivered a baby now, you wouldn’t feel a thing!”.
In a matter of moments, he had effectively used all the elements of a great demonstration of the power of belief. He disarmed my resistance, by acknowledging my disbelief and giving me permission to have it. With no need to resist anything, I focused all of my attention on him, and was willing to temporarily accept his suggestion about paralysis, in place of my own, usual belief about my legs.
This was an unforgettable event in my experience, and one that literally changed the course of my life. It was the beginning of a long and wonderful relationship with Dr. Erickson in which I had a unique opportunity to learn about the inexhaustible beneficence of the Inner Self, and it’s mission to empower the physical self. And even now, if I find myself questioning the probability of manifesting some desired change and wondering how long it might take, I think back to that day when, in an instant, my cellular structure changed with the change of my belief.
And so I was given an unforgettable demonstration of the power of belief.
