School Talk 30 - Suggestion

(Fundamental childhood suggestions & positive thinking)
(Audience participation in parenthesis)

Today we're going to talk about suggestion. Now suggestion is a fact of everyday life. You are 100% subject to suggestion 100% of the time, and we are constantly surrounded by suggestion.

Now let's don't assume that to be suggestible is "bad" or let's don't assume that to be suggestible is "good", it simply is. What could be unpleasant about it for a person, is to be unaware that suggestion was going on; and you might accept a lot of suggestions that wouldn't be decidedly to your advantage. But you're aware that you are 100% subject to suggestion 100% of the time. It behooves us to pay a little attention to the suggestions around us.

Now some suggestions that are around us, I'd like to accept. Some I would just rather, a whole lot, not accept, and if I'm not paying attention to the suggestion, I probably will accept about everything that comes along.

All advertising is a form of suggestion. You can look through little flyers and newspapers, and they say save $500. save $300., save $200. Maybe, it's something you don't really need, so I guess you wouldn't be saving very much if you bought it. Probably wouldn't be saving anything.

Another place suggestion comes from is when we read the paper or listen to radio or TV; and they repeatedly suggest that we're going to have all kinds of illnesses in the world-that there is dozens of these "dis-eases" up here floating around that's ready to attack us. I've already read that we have a killer flu on the way. I don't know where it's coming from; but it's on the way and it, no doubt, will arrive. Now I'd rather not accept that suggestion, if you don't mind; and I want to see that idea as a suggestion, and not as any fact whatsoever that I have to abide by or take on as true until I have checked it out..

Another place that suggestion is quite rampant is that people go to so called psychic or fortune tellers or what-have-you, and they will give you predictions-only that prediction is in the form of suggestion; and if you accept the suggestion and start acting upon it, you will probably bring it about to happen. Then you say the psychic foretold the future; but they didn't, they only offered you a strong suggestion--more than likely a gloomy one.

Seems that people will accent gloomy suggestions a little easier than they will accept nice suggestions. Don't ask me why, because I don't know. I guess it's because we're human beings; and therefore, a wee bit perverse. Somebody can suggest to you that a certain food is fattening; and it would, no doubt, turn out to be that way if we accept it. Somebody else doesn't accept it; and they go ahead and eat great gobs of it, and they don't get fat--but some people do accept that.

We could go on for as long as we care to about the many ways that suggestion is about us.

Now, of course, the most powerful suggestions are the ones that arise ;from within; from not "I's." They are the master "suggestionists". In fact they are such good "suggesters" -- they could almost be qualified as hypnotists.

Now hypnotism is not necessarily the same as suggestion, but suggestion is used in hypnotism (but with some other arrangements)--but powerful enough, suggestion can put a person in a hypnotic state. The not "I's" are very good at putting you in a hypnotic state. They tell you that everybody's picking on you. That this just isn't right. That terrible things are going to happen to you. That other people are going to treat you terribly. That you're going to have all kinds of misfortune. If you do some little something, they say, "Now you've had it, you're going to get wiped out."

And so the most powerful suggestions come from within because you accept that you are being given "intuitive knowledge from somewhere". Now these not 'i's tell you they know all about the future. The not "I's" claim to know all about the future. They tell you that all the tiniest symptoms you have are the first indications of cancer or leukemia or some scary-sounding disease. They know that everything is going to work out terrible.

A young lady I knew quite well who came to classes quite often one time decided she would go to a psychic (that she heard about from her friends)--that he was such a wonder-a psychic, you know, he knew everything. This lady went down to see this psychic; and the psychic told her that she would have a divorce within a year. Now she was a very happily married young lady, and she and her husband had been high school sweethearts; and then they married when they grew up a bit. They'd been together and never had arguments, fights or contentions. They got along fantastically beautiful.

But when the psychic told her this, she accepted it--bought it as being true--and in less than a year, she was divorced from her husband. She has moaned to me about it a lot of the time since then--as to how terrible it was and what all went on; but she merely bought the suggestion that this was what was going to happen--and she made it self-fulfilling.

It wasn't because the psychic knew anything about the future, but it was just suggestion that she believed and took on. Then the not "I's" within got a hold of it and really did a number on her; and so it worked out like the psychic told her--but it was not because the psychic knew the future; but the psychic was an excellent "suggester"; and the lady was firmly convinced that her friends knew what they were talking about when they recommended him. She was firmly convinced that whatever the psychic said was going to be true. So she brought about the divorce.

They also tell people that they will be ill and so forth and so on. I was here one day, getting ready to go in the little truck down to San Diego to get some merchandise. This psychic said I would never get back--I'd have a horrible accident and all that kind of stuff. I didn't buy the suggestion; and we didn't even have the car get warm. We didn't have any flat tires. We had nothing but a beautiful drive to San Diego, get what we were going to get, put it in the truck, turn around, come back, and it couldn't have been less eventful-even the windshield didn't get too dirty.

So you could hardly say that he was "right on" with his suggestion; but now if had I bought the suggestion -let's say that I wasn't aware that I was 100% subject to suggestion 100% of the time, I could have been in such a jittered state, mishandled the truck and so forth; and, no doubt, we could have had some little difficulty along the way-maybe a big one. But I wasn't buying that; and I wasn't a nervous wreck driving down the road waiting for this the terrible accident to happen.

But it is very well to know that you are 100% subject to suggestion 100% of the time. Knowing this, one then begins to pay attention. You are aware of paying attention when you're working around high-speed equipment or machinery that could momentarily mangle you. You are well aware that you are 100% subject to being mangled 100% of the time around that machine, is that right?

We used to run meat saws in the back of our big restaurant, and every now and then somebody would be in the place and ask me how to be awake. I said fine, come with me, I'll show you. So I'd take them back in the cutting room, turn on the saw and give them a piece of bone about 6" or 8" long and say slice this into 1" slices on that machine and let's see you go to sleep while you're doing it. Nobody did.

But when you see the necessity of anything, you do it. Now as long as you don't see the necessity, you are going to do it--but not today--you know, like tomorrow or some other time. You're not going to do it today. Like my friends down on the border say, 'We're going to do it, but not today."

So when you see the necessity of being wakeful, you are staying awake. Now you can very easily see the necessity of staying awake with this horrible ban saw running; but you don't usually see the necessity of staying awake to derogatory ideas--simply because you are surrounded by suggestion. And you also are usually not totally aware that you are 100% subject to suggestion 100% of the time. So it is well to be aware of those two things. If you are unaware that you are 100% subject to suggestion 100% of the time; and that you're unaware of how suggestible you are, you are going to buy a lot of very adverse suggestions.

Many business men I know have been very successful at one time or another in a business-done fantastically well--and then some good suggestion got to them and it all went pluuurp-out and gone. All their fortune took wings and flew away, and they can't get started again because those suggestions are still sitting there. Now those suggestions can be very seemingly simple things that somebody said. But a suggestion, in order to really be affective has to "threaten you with a loss" or "prevent you from having a gain" of some sort or other.

That's the first prerequisite of a strong suggestion is that it prevents you from doing. It says you will have a loss unless you do so and so, or you'll have misfortune unless you do so and so.

Now there are suggestions that you will not very easily accept. No doubt you've been offered suggestions that everything would be fine--that you're health would be fine--that you're income would be fine--that you're family arrangements would be fine and on and on. Those suggestions don't carry near the weight that they do if somebody suggests to you that it's going downhill. That seemingly about correct? Everything's on the proverbial "gone to hell with it's back broke." Why is it that you can buy that suggestion very easily, where the ones you hear that say EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE ALL RIGHT don't get accepted?

Now there are lots of groups of people who attempt to counteract all these negative suggestions. They have accepted what's commonly called "positive thinking" or "affirmations". Now if you have accepted that things are not going to work well for you, you could go ahead and make all the "positive affirmations" or the "thinking positive" that you want to, but you won't overcome that one because it's in there first that "things are going downhill; and the "positive affirmation" doesn't work to counter act it.

FIRST you have to kind of recognize what suggestion you have accepted from within--what you "took on" and "accepted, as being factual". After you've done that exercise would be a very good time to use the affirmations or the positive thinking or what-have-you But it will not counteract the old suggestion that you conceived or accepted or that somebody laid in there and was bought very firmly that "things are going downhill with no recourse."--that you are in a bad shape, or you're going to be in a bad shape, or that you're business is going haywire, or whatever the case may be. Now, until you get the old one out of there, the new suggestions don't work.

Somebody long ago made a little statement that you can't put new wine in old bottles. Now the old bottle, we'll say, is the very negative suggestions; and you can come try to put all you want of the new wine of positive thinking or positive suggestion, positive anything in there, and it doesn't work until that old one is looked at and seen.

So we're going to take a little time here in the next few minutes and each of us is going to talk about some of the possible suggestions we've conceived or accepted that made us feel that we can't get going. Something is not working right in your life. It doesn't matter whether it's in your inner state, or your inner mood, or your relationships, or your business or your health or whatever. We're going to work to see if we can find those suggestions we've accepted as fact so that anybody and everybody can Work to find a general method of looking for something that has been suggested to us in the past; and then we can decide if that "suggestion" we accepted as fact is still true for this present time, place and circumstance.

The suggestion has no strength over us until we accept it. Now we have a statement somewhere along the way in the teachings as to the origin of not "I's," is that:

ONCE A DECISION--A CONCLUSION HAS BEEN MADE-IT IS THE RULE OF ATTITUDE-ACTION UNTIL THAT DECISION OR CONCLUSION IS RECOGNIZED AND RE-EVALUATED AND DISCARDED.

So we're going to do a little exercise or practical application of seeing what is true for us--of trying to locate something that we have accepted as being true, and that has no reason to be true. However, once we have accepted it, we live by it. We act upon it, and it comes out that it is true for us.

Possibly if you'd been "suggested to" as a very young person while growing up: demonstrated somewhat by your parents, you can do nothing but make money-and also suggested that you could do that in no uncertain terms, then you experience making a lot of money. We all know people who make the statement, "They could fall in a cesspool and come out smelling like a rose", or with a lot of gold. They can do that because they grew up with a family who probably had a certain amount of income, and then they stated "you can do it". "You can do it!" They taught them. whatever the reason being, that you're going to have it; and if kids accept that suggestions, they go do it.

But by the same token, if you were suggested, "We're just poor people. We can't have all these things, We're just poor folks, We can't have that." That decision also gets in there and does it's dirty work.

If you were praised for being healthy most of your life; and as to how wonderful you looked, and how wonderful you felt as a kid, everybody told you how wealthy you were--you'd probably be all those.

But if everybody made a big fuss over you and kept saying "poor little so and so, is kind of frail" and "poor little so and so is kind of sickly" and "poor little so and so seems to catch everything that comes down the road." Pretty soon you could accept all of that; and the suggestion would be put in the mind year after year. So year after year, you would be acting out that old suggestion that had been bought--agreed to and concluded that that's the way it is because those we accepted as authorities said it to us. And it would be there until that suggestion is looked at--the decision we made about it is re-evaluated. It is then seen that it is not true for me in the present time. It may have been true for me 30 years ago--it may have been true for me last year--it may have been true anytime; but it is not true today. When we begin to see that, we can begin to do something about it.

And being able to do this little exercise is possibly the most effective exercise to change the whole direction of a person's life that I have been able to observe in all the years that I have been working with people and their various and sundry problems. That is that they can see what it is that they have decided about themselves--whether it's a matter of health, or personal relationships, or their well-being, or their economic well-being. That this can be looked at, brought up to be re-evaluated and seen that that is not true for me. Ok?

Now when that is done, you can begin to accomplish a whole lot by whether you call it positive affirmations--positive thinking or whether you just begin to say, "Well, I can do it--whatever it is." I prefer the simplest route of LET'S CAN DO IT. I don't necessarily feel that we have to go through the long routine of positive suggestions and all that; but inasmuch as so many people do, they can, at least, make the proper preparations by first seeing and re-evaluating the obstructions to do them before they start using them. There are many thousands and thousands and thousands of people all over the country that are using the positive thinking method. Some of them will do a certain amount of legitimate use for themselves if they can do it; but most of them won't get it done because they still have the same old suggestions within that are still working.

So there's two things we'd like to observe. I want to remember that I am 100% subject to suggestion 100% of the time--that I accept all negative suggestions a lot easier than I do the positive ones; and that I cannot start a new suggestion without undoing the old one, otherwise, it won't do any good-whether the suggestion comes from within--or whether it is autosuggestion--or suggestion from without. The new one won't work.

When I used to practice working with ill people, I would usually give them a little positive idea as they left the door saying you'll feel better in a few hours, what-have-you If they had this good solid suggestion that, "There's nothing can be done for me", they didn't hear my little suggestion, "You'll feel a lot better in an hour, four hours or six hours", but they would say, "Ahhhh, I sure hope so."--which said very plainly, I know damn well it won't.

So I finally arrived at a way of getting, at least, some method that worked. I would tell them they would be very ill as a reaction to the professional care they had. They would have intense vomiting for two hours or about six hours from now--or they would have a lot of very difficult muscular pain--or they would have diarrhea. I like vomiting because that really gets their attention. Almost 100% would accept the suggestion that they would vomit. They would get very nauseated and vomit. Well, that got their attention; and then I told them after they did the vomiting, they would begin to feel better. So they could accept that, but there's no way they could accept the suggestion, "Well, you're just going to feel better in a little while." It just flat won't go.

So, I had more people upchucking than you could shake a stick at; but nevertheless, in a few hours, they felt good. But I told them within 12 hours they would suddenly feel a wave of nausea and they would upchuck; and they had better be where they could get rid of it--and they could do that with the greatest of ease.

So I found that I had to give an adverse suggestion in order to get one through that would be somewhat beneficial to the person. I had to get that rough one in there first because they would accept a rough one; but they couldn't accept a good one if I handed it to them. So it would be temporary when I gave them that little exercise until we got around to finding what it was that they had as a fundamental conclusion about themselves.

They each had some fundamental suggestion in self. Now nothing seemed to do any permanent good; but I could get temporary good by making them vomit for a while--then feel good. They could accept that. And once they did that, they'd be all right. But you gotta do that routine some way or other to get by until you can get to the real Work.

In order to get any permanent well-being for the person, we had to find out about the fundamental conclusion that they were living by; and, of course, it was very worthwhile for me. It helped me find out about not "I's" and how they work. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't have found out a lot of information about those suckers; but at least it worked real good.

So, I think I've covered the subject adequately enough that we can talk about it. So, let's talk about our fundamental suggestion within. How about you, Miss Mary. Tell me something that you've lived by most of your life--if you want to look back at it

(Well, you touched on it.)

Well, naturally, I touched on it; that's why I'm sitting over here talking about it. I want you to let it out--come on--lay it here for me. What's the fundamental that you can't seem to get over? What's the big hurdle?

(That I can't have anything.)

You can't have anything nice because you're just poor folks, right?

(Right.)

A poor little orphan that can't have anything, and you're lucky to even have food, nothing else, huh? But today you can have a almost anything, but you won't allow yourself to have it because if John took you out and wanted to take you on a shopping spree and buy you the prettiest clothes in town, what would happen?

(He'd have to do it, I can't.)

But if you went with him, could you stand for him to buy them for you; or would you go all to pieces the minute he was trying to get them for you?

(I'd probably let him do it, but I'd fall to pieces.)

All the way home.

(Right.)

You'd have all kinds of nervousness and tensions; and you'd cry and faint--and he'd probably have to take you to the emergency room, right?

(Not that bad.)

Almost?

(Yes)

As soon as you heard the ambulance, you'd revive a little bit?

(Yes.)

Just barely though; but you'd still not enjoy it at all. In fact, it would be extremely painful for you, right? It's even painful for you to have a car to drive around?

(Yes.)

Even though you appreciate it--glad to have it, and so forth, it's painful to you?

(Yes.)

But you can buy cheapie stuff. You can go to Grants-Grants went out of business. You can go to K-Mart and get some little something there--that would be all right. You're entitled to have a cheap shirt, and a cheap pair of pants and some funny looking jewelry, huh? But what about nice stuff--what happens? How do you feel?

(It hurts.)

It hurts. Why does it hurt--because you got an old suggestion you bought long ago which is "we're poor and we can't have those things", and if you get them, it's almost like you're stealing them or something, right?

(Yes.)

Now don't you think it would be possible for you to look at that suggestion; and say, that may have been true umpteen years ago--you can call the number, I won't. How many years ago was that true. You were say five or six years old?

(Yes.)

It may have been true then, right? But is it true today? Of course not! So do you have to let that suggestion stay with you the rest of your days; or can you undo it now so you can begin to enjoy at least most of the things that are available to you. There are lots of different things available to you that were not available to you then, is that right? But do you have to go on and be the "poor little match girl on the streets of Baghdad staving to death and having to burn your matches up to keep your little hands warm, and then you're going to be beaten because you burned the matches up."

Do you have to live that way all your life? Do you have to play the role of the "poor little match girl" because you had a suggestion when you were five or six years old, or can you start right now to undo that and say THAT CONCEPT IS NOT TRUE, ok? It was true then. It wasn't a lie then. It was fact, and it was constantly suggested so that you wouldn't be asking for more than you were going to get. Now it was reminded every day; but those days are not here. You are not that little six-year-old girl, are you?

(No.)

But you sometimes act like it-in fact most of the time. Now anybody says you can have this or have that, you break out crying.

(Yes.)

Because you see it as they're making fun of you. You see it as you can't have that nice thing anymore than if somebody would have said to you, when you were five years old, "You can't live in that palace-you would have said they were making fun of you because you knew you couldn't have it.

(It makes me feel guilty)

AND SO YOU STILL NOW TODAY GO ON AND FEEL MISERABLE EVEN THOUGH THERE IS NO REASON TO. So now you go to Work here today, tomorrow and continue to undo that fundamental suggestion , and begin to enjoy the things that life is giving you today. Can you do that?

(It's not easy.)

I didn't say it was easy. It's very simple, but can you do it? You can do it. Why not be able to enjoy the rest of your life. You don't need to listen to or allow that misery because you had some unpleasant suggestion way back there in the past that you were for a little while: deprived of certain things. That's understandable; but it's not necessary that that fundamental suggestion goes on for the rest of your life, does it? So you work at it. If you want assistance, I'll be happy to work with you.

How about you, little lady? What's your basic suggestion that carries with you that no matter what anybody tried to do for you, it's always going to come back to poor little Suzie?

(I'm a victim.)

Suzie Is totally a victim of what, circumstances?

(No, these are conjured inside.)

Suzie's a victim of a lot of different things, right? Now where did you start off being a victim? A victim of what? Way back down the road somewhere? Let's go for some of those. it doesn't have to be a long time ago?

(I think it was when I was little.)

Ok, you were a victim.

(Yes, and I always felt bad.)

You always felt bad, so Suzie never feels good.

(Never felt good. If she did, it's was short lived.)

Suzie never felt good; and so no matter what, it can't last very long because the little Suzie's got to feel crappy or she's not being the little one, is that right? So the little one never feels good; and that was said over and over. The little one never feels good--the little one never feels good--and Suzie bought the suggestion--agreed to it; and have you managed to act that suggestion out most of your life?

(Most of my life.)

So you think it's about time you could change that? Well, let's sit down and see that there's no such thing as Suzie has to feel bad just because she's seeing herself as the little one, ok?

John, you got one here? What have you got back there?

(Well, I know one that I bought into-the suggestion that I have to work hard; and it's not easy--I got to really………..)

Struggle!

(So you really got to struggle.)

to make a dollar--and more than likely when you get it made, you'll lose it.

(That's right.)

(If it's too easy then………………..)

Ok, if it came in easy, it's bound to take wings and fly away, is that right? Can you start working on changing that one?

(You bet.)

Ok let's change it, ok?

That's all for today. We'll have another talk very shortly.