I cannot imagine anyone has made it through the last year without coming across someone accusing someone else of believing in conspiracy theories.
Or having noticed how people can have two completely opposite views about something, while both sides believe they have all the facts that absolutely 100% infallibly confirm their position.
Magickal man Robert Anton Wilson in his book “Prometheus Rising” posed an experiment (below) to help his readers understand the role of thought and belief in how the world is constructed by us as individuals. He said that whatever you think about, your mind will look for evidence of it as proof. If you ask your mind to find proof that fits your theories – you will find it everywhere.
His theory states that the mind has two operators that he calls The Thinker, and The Prover. And as he says: “What The Thinker thinks, The Prover proves.”
Whatever it is that you think about, your prover will seek to find you evidence for.
You will have seen this in action in your own life. If you’re after a new car and you’ve decided what make or model you want, isn’t it crazy how you start to see that car everywhere you go? When I used to use hypnosis to help clients who were trying to fall pregnant, they’d tell me how all of a sudden everyone around them seemed to be having babies, how everything on TV was about children. Personally, I had a hankering to buy a pair of Doc Martens last year. I used to live in them in my 20s, but haven’t had a pair since. Suddenly, everywhere I looked everyone seemed to be wearing DMs – on TV, in magazines, online. Or another example is when you learn a new word, and then you hear it again and again when you’d never heard it before in your life.
It’s not exactly magic… or is it?
In neuroscience this is the work of the Reticular Activating System. The RAS takes what you focus on and then creates a filter for it, allowing it to become one of the few pieces of information that it lets in to your conscious awareness. It can’t let EVERYTHING in, or you’d be totally overwhelmed with information coming in through your senses. The RAS is why you can hear your name being mentioned in a noisy room, or pick up if someone else around you is having a conversation about something you’re interested in.
This is the non-mystical process behind the Law of Attraction. If you’re actually thinking about manifesting something, your brain is more likely to make you notice the opportunities to bring it into your life.
So if you want to change your perception of the world, you can work on changing the way your brain processes it. Actively choose to look for the things you want to bring in to you life. Vision boards work because you tell your brain that it’s something you want it to start working on bringing into your life.
So for your business, your work, whatever you do, actively go out into the world and look for ideas. Look for your ideal clients. Look for solutions to your problems. Ask, and the universe will provide. But not because it’s a magical unicorn answering your wishes from up high, but because you set your prover to work and your RAS responded.
Robert Anton Wilson’s Experiment, from Prometheus Rising
1. Visualize a quarter (or any coin) vividly, and imagine vividly that you are going to find the quarter on the street. Then, look for the quarter every time you take a walk, meanwhile continuing to visualize it. See how long it takes you to find the quarter.
2. Explain the above experiment by the hypothesis of “selective attention”—that is, believe there are lots of lost quarters everywhere and you were bound to find one by continually looking. Go looking for a second quarter.
3. Explain the experiment by the alternative “mystical” hypothesis that “mind controls everything.” Believe that you made the quarter manifest in this universe. Go looking for a second quarter.
4. Compare the time it takes to find the second quarter using the first hypothesis (attention) with the time it takes using the second hypothesis (mind-over-matter).
5. With your own ingenuity, invent similar experiments and each time compare the two theories—”selective attention” (coincidence) vs. “mind controls everything” (psychokinesis).
Victoria Ward does hypnosis for business owners, leaders and visionary creatives. Her website is at Victoria-Ward.com. Message her on [email protected].