Opening Statement
What do you think of if I say to you “Don’t think of a rainbow?” You think of a rainbow don’t you. I might as well have said “Think of a rainbow.” You see, the subconscious mind doesn’t get the “Don’t”. “Don’t Worry” to the subconscious mind means “Worry”. “Don’t Forget” means “Forget”. Now I’ve introduced the subconscious mind. You know the subconscious mind is this deeper inner mind. You know it handles and deals with all our memory, all our habits, all our personality and all our self image. 88% of the mind. The conscious mind is only 12% of the mind. And you know, it’s the conscious mind that we’re told about and taught about and taught to use. But the subconscious mind we’re not even taught to use. So one of the things we’re going to do today is more work with the subconscious mind. And active meditation is going to be one of the ways in which you’re going to be able to do that.
Self Talk
Did you know that we talk to ourselves 50,000 times a day? Deepak Chopra reckons 65,000 times a day. Now I’m sure you’ve heard of Deepak. Well some people say up to half a million times a day. Depends how fast the mind works. You know if you’re talking to yourself negatively can you influence yourself negatively? Nod your head … yes … because it’s the truth. And if you’re talking to yourself positively can you influence yourself positively? Absolutely, you can. And you know, after adversity or after trauma it is so easy to slip into negative self talk isn’t it. And you know when negative self talk becomes a habit it drives you down and down and down and you know they reckon that negative self talk is one of the prime causes of depression. So you know what the key is? Listen. Listen to your own self talk. If you become aware of what you’re saying to yourself that will really help.
An Outline of the Seminar
So what we’re going to do today is, I’m going to go through about how I learned about the power of the subconscious mind and my journey in doing that. And then after that I’m going to do an exercise and this exercise will develop visualisation and guided imagery, through a discussion – exactly what is the meaning of that. And then after that we’ll talk a little bit about positions of active meditation. And then we’ll use guided imagery and visualisation to be able to build our Peaceful Place (PP) inside our mind. And PP inside our mind is that spot we can go to whereby we can relax and release stress straight away. And then after that we’ll have a break – there’ll be tea and coffee.
And then the next step after that is – we’ll come back and go to our PP faster.
You see, the first time it takes about 17 or 18 minutes, but the second time it only takes 3 minutes to be able to relax and release stress in less than 3 minutes.
Then we talk about the science of the mind and after that we talk a little bit more about active meditation and what you can do with active meditation. And then we physically do one.
After that I’m going to show you a little DVD of my brainwaves. It’s just a little bit more proof, because I love proof. And then we’ll have another little break – just 5 minutes or so and we’ll come back with Question, Answer and Discussion and we finish off at 5.30. So that’s the direction we’re going.
My son, Andrew, he taught me.
Asthma
My son Andrew was 18 years old and he had had asthma since he was 2 years old. At this time it was 1982. So with his asthma, he was doing everything that the doctors had said to do. 00:05:15.3 And he was getting worse and worse and worse. And then one day he ended up on a cortisone drip in hospital. Now you know, that’s near death’s door. And I said to Andrew “Mate, we don’t know a lot about cortisone but we’re going to have to do something different about this. I’m going to take you to a different kind of doctor.” So, I took him to a different kind of doctor and that doctor’s name was Kali Anasundram – an Indian doctor. And he started talking about the subconscious mind. I’d never heard of the subconscious mind at that stage. He taught Andrew how to use the subconscious mind so that what Andrew could do was instead of panicking, relax between each bout of asthma. Do you know, within a couple of weeks after that Andrew was handling his asthma attacks. The fiercest attack he got was one that he could handle with just a little bit of his puffer rather than those strong cortisone tablets. It was a miracle as far as I was concerned. Notice I haven’t said “He cured asthma.” Notice that – he hasn’t cured asthma, he’s handling it. Doing something himself which is very, very powerful.
Then he Smashed his Leg
He was on a motorbike, argument with a bus, and his left leg between the knee and the ankle was trapped between the wheel of the bike and the wheel of the bus, and you can imagine what it looked like. It was shattered. The bone was sticking out, it was real bad news. Back into hospital. Back on cortisone because cortisone’s the only thing that would work for him. You see, once you’re on cortisone, you’re almost always on cortisone. That was certainly the case in 1982. The professor – and you only get professors when it’s really bad news don’t you – the professor at the hospital said “Andrew we’re going to have to cut your leg off .” Good heavens, why Professor? “Well Andrew, we don’t want you to get gangrene and you have to be on cortisone to keep the infection down – it’s the only thing that will work for you. But, what cortisone does is it impedes the growth of bone marrow, so the leg won’t heal. So let’s cut it off now.” Hang on a minute ….. let me go and get Dr Kali Anasundrum again. So I went and brought back Kali Anasundrum and I asked him if there was anything he could do to help Andrew. He said “Well, I can teach Andrew about that subconscious mind and how to use his subconscious mind so that he’ll be able to deal with the infection in his leg, with his mind. And he can also help to increase his immune system and increase the healing in his leg. And not only that, what he’ll be able to do is help with handling pain as well.” Wow! Guess what?! The Professor then reduced the dose of cortisone and he did the operation on Andrew’s leg and Andrew’s got his leg today. Well, as far as I’m concerned, that’s miracle number 2. I mean, that’s fantastic!
Scientific Proof – Psycho-Neuro-Immunology and Sports
I had to look up and take notice. You know, I’m this very left brained, analytical, sceptical person and I hadn’t heard of subconscious mind before. But it was around you know. Think of ways in which it was around ….. Sport. That’s where we hear about it isn’t it – the subconscious mind. And it was first used in sport at the Olympic Games by East Germany – and that was in 1960. And then in 1964 it was used by East Germany and Russia at the Olympic Games. By 1968, all the countries that had attended the Olympic Games their athletes and swimmers had heard about the new secret weapon – the subconscious mind. And they started using it. Look at it today. Every major athlete, every major swimmer, every major sporting team, they’ve all got their own Sports Psychologist haven’t they. In fact it’s all taught at the Institute of Sports but I didn’t know that back then. Incidentally, another thing I didn’t know back then – did you know that what Andrew was doing with his leg back then is today called psycho-neuro-immunology. That’s what it’s called. In other words, what science has done today has proved that we can, with our mind, increase the T4 cell count which is the fighting cell in the immune system with guided imagery and visualisation. So all of this is taught, for instance, in the cancer wards in Sydney that I’m aware of. But you know, it should be taught to everybody. It’s so powerful we can take some action ourselves, tapping into our own inner strength. We can do that. We didn’t know about it 25 years ago but that’s what it’s called now. Some doctors know about it and some doctors don’t know about it because they’re not taught about it.
Have we got 2 Minds?
Anyway, to move on. I was this very left brained, analytical, sceptical person, and my background didn’t help at all. The attitude I had towards the subconscious mind was …. What? We’ve got two minds? Conscious mind and subconscious mind? That sounds like a lot of baloney to me. 0:11:30.0 And yet Andrew had proved it – to himself. But my mind went along the lines of … can everybody do it? This sort of thing. OK Andrew, teach me, I want to know about it.
My background didn’t help. I went to high school in Tasmania – in Ulverstone and also in Devonport. From there I went to Duntroon Military College and spent four years there in Canberra and came out a lieutenant in the regular army. And from there I went to Sydney University and did Civil Engineering and then I was into the Corps of Engineers. Now, I tell you what, I don’t think you could get a more left brained, analytical, sceptical person than a military engineer. But you know what? It keeps us alive as well. It really does – especially when you work from first principles and that’s what all engineers do. But that scepticism didn’t help me and Andrew said to me “Dad, I think you’d better go and see a consultant.” A consultant? Hang on a minute, what kind of a consultant? He said “Well, a psychologist.? And I said “A shrink?” And with all due deference to shrinks, that’s what I used to call them back then.
My Training to be Left Brained and Analytical
So, I want to see a psychologist. Bill Robertson was a wonderful man and he and I shared many things in common. He was in fact an air force psychologist and I thought … well OK, he’s a military psychologist. We talked a lot about my exploits in the army. For instance, after I entered the Corps of Engineers I went to New Guinea, and that was all construction programs. And then I went to Vietnam – I took the first troop of Engineers to Vietnam – that was back in 1965 and we were supporting the First Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment. Our tasks over there were the normal military tasks – we were taught very well in this, but we had to work things out. For instance we had been taught about booby traps, but had we been taught about the VietCong booby traps? Oh no! We had to come across them, we had to delouse them, we had to work with them and you do all this from first principles you see, working it out. And then, take something like explosives. There were explosives all over the country. Well we didn’t want the enemy to get the explosives so therefore we’ve got to blow them up and we’ve got to handle them. Well there was ordinance that was French – ordinance is explosives – there was Russian, there was Chinese, there was Bulgarian – all this sort of stuff which we didn’t know about, so we had to work it out from first principles and do it.
Continued – Tunnels in Vietnam
And then, tunnels! Well, we’d never been taught about tunnels, but you know we were the original Tunnel Rats. 3 Field Troop – my troop. What happened was that we were supposed to be the cut-off force for a big divisional operation looking for all these tunnels in the HoBo Woods within the Iron Triangle. You may have heard of the Cu Chi Tunnels. These tunnels, we came across them accidentally when two of our guys were wounded and then the 2 stretcher bearers were killed when retrieving the bodies. So, after the area was cleared we found out where the shots had come from. And the shots had come from a thing that looked like a very big ant-hill, but hollow inside and with a couple of slits which was where the shots had come from. That’s when the Engineers came in. We blew it in and there’s the tunnel. Now these tunnels are pretty small and you’ve got your shoulders touching on either side. You’re on your hands and knees and you can’t turn around until you get to a big turning point or something like that, so you’ve got to keep on going straight ahead. You’ve got a bayonet in one hand and a pistol in the other and then you’ve got to carry a light, so we needed 3 hands and the enemy’s somewhere down there. What we actually did was blow in smoke and blow in tear gas which helped and then we wore tear gas masks which helped. We cleared miles and miles of tunnels and we pulled out of those tunnels over 100,000 sheets of paper – Intelligence, because we were on the Headquarters. And then there were hundreds of weapons and explosives and stuff that we pulled out of that tunnel. We were the Originals. Up until that time the Americans hadn’t gone down tunnels. The American General Westmoreland – who was the boss of all the forces in Vietnam – said at the end of this operation that from now on we were going to form the Tunnel Rats and go down tunnels. That’s what he said. Well we’d already been doing it before that order was issued. I received the Military Cross for the tunnel work in Vietnam and I got the Bronze Star. I came back to Australia, stayed in the regular army for a while, then the Army Reserve, retired as a Colonel and then all my civil work was engineering – mining engineering. So what hope did I have other than being a left-brained, analytical, black/white, sceptical person? So I was discussing these sorts of things with my old friend Bill Robertson and he said “Sandy, you know there are a couple of hard things to do. One is to lose weight and you could certainly do that.” And it’s true – I was pretty big. No tunnels for me then that’s for sure. And he said the other thing which is hard is to is to quit smoking. Well I didn’t smoke, so I worked on weight.
“The Power of Your Subconscious Mind” by Dr Joseph Murphy
He gave me a little book which was called “The Power of Your Subconscious Mind” by Dr Joseph Murphy. This book was written in 1953 and it’s still around today. It’s a fantastic little book. In this book there are lots of things you can do and on this particular page on weight release. Actually, he called it weight loss. Now that I’ve just said that …. If you lose something in your life …. What do you want to do? Get it back! If you lose anything you want to find it and get it back. The weight loss industry is self perpetuating. Lose a kilogram or two then find it again; but the weight release industry is about letting it go – it’s gone. So you see “loss” is one of those negative words that I mentioned. “Release” is much, much better.
Weight Release – 49lb or 22 Kgms
So, I made a tape for myself, with Andrew’s help and with the help of this little book, and I listened to this tape breakfast, lunch and dinner; breakfast, lunch and dinner; breakfast, lunch and dinner for six weeks. And you know what happened in 6 weeks? Nothing! Absolutely nothing! Or so I thought. You see, I wasn’t going to do dieting – that wouldn’t be the subconscious mind would it. I wasn’t going to do things like exercise – that wouldn’t be the subconscious mind. However I’m a pretty persistent person, so what I did the next week was, I meditated again and I kept on going. And you know, that 7th week 2 pounds went – that’s about a kilo. The next week, another kilo. The 9th week another kilo and so on with the 10th week, the 11th week. And so on until 22 kilos had gone. Well, now I felt a whole heap better.
Blood Pressure and Pulse Strength
Now I really want to get into this subconscious mind and find out what it’s all about. So I read this little book and you know, in there are a couple of ways shown to use the subconscious mind quickly. Now we all like to do things quickly don’t we. What he said was that you could bring down your pulse strength so that nobody could feel it. You can bring down your blood pressure. In other words, you can control all these things. So I practised doing what this little book said. I really practised, practised and practised. And because I love proof, then I went along to the doctor and I said “Hey Doc, feel my pulse please.” So he felt my pulse and said it was a good strong pulse. Then I did what I’d been practising and 30 seconds later I asked him to feel it again. But he couldn’t find it. I could make it disappear in 30 seconds. And then, a machine doing the measuring. I asked him to take my blood pressure. So he did. And then 30 seconds later I asked him to take it again and it was 20 points lower. Now you know, if you can control your body’s mechanisms with your mind then surely that’s got to be good for longevity doesn’t it? I wanted to live longer so I thought …. Right, I’m really going to get into this subconscious mind business as it’s really powerful stuff.
Accelerated Academic Learning
So, I started studying about it and I studied many different things including books that I got from the UK and USA. Anything that had anything about subconscious mind in it, I just studied all about it so much and I certainly knew that I’d never be bored again that’s for sure. And then what happened was that I came across the subject of Accelerated Learning and Dr George Lozanov. This was an of the application of the subconscious mind to learning faster – in the education area. This was right up my alley and I thought I really wanted to know more about this. Dr George Lozanov was from Bulgaria which of course back in 1965 was behind the Iron Curtain. Well he was in Bulgaria and he was teaching more about learning languages – 3 times faster, 5 times faster, 10 times faster than anyone else in the world. Well you can imagine what the West said can’t you? They said it was rubbish and they just didn’t believe it or believe that anything good could come from a Communist country behind the Iron Curtain because they don’t tell the truth. So do you know what they did? They sent a team of people over there. Lydia Cassone was one of the people in the Team and she came out to Australia in about 1995 and in her talk she gave she said that they had gone there to put him down. She said they were there for 6 weeks and they saw all the things that Dr George Lozanov was doing. She said it was amazing and he definitely taught faster. She said that some of the things he was doing they just couldn’t understand. There were groups of people having little plays every day. There was dressing up and lots of fun and laughter. Then sometimes there would be music – fast music and slow music, so they’d end up dancing. Then they were throwing balls to each other and calling out words to each other. And if they dropped the ball they’d race over to the side and put something up on the wall in colour. And there were these coloured charts all over the walls. And she said it worked – they learned faster. But what on earth has that got to do with learning? What’s it got to do with the subconscious mind? You see, the subconscious mind has got in it all our memory, remember. All our personality, all our habits, all our self image. All our memory was the key.
The Start of Brain Research and Some Findings
So Lydia Cassone said that they all went back to their respective scientists and asked what on earth this had to do with memory. And do you know that since about the late 1960s and early 1970s we have learned more about the mind, more about the subconscious mind, more about the body, more about the mind/body connection than in any previous 2000 years in our history. Look at just what we’ve learned. Look at the genome stuff that we’ve learned. Do you know that proteins are being investigated. They say that there are 6 million proteins in the body and when we know all the proteins in the body, we will be able to cure anything in humans. It’s frightening isn’t it, but that’s where it’s going. We’ve learned a lot in the last 40 or so years.
One of the things that we’ve learned, I use in seminars and I think it’s really interesting. You know tears that we have. We can have tears of sadness and we can also have tears of happiness. Well do you know that they have a different chemical composition? So in other words we’re doing something different to our body when we have tears of sadness and tears of joy. Now that coupled with another research scientist, Rappaport, is fantastic information.
You see, Rappaport showed emotion is memory for the subconscious mind. Emotion is memory and this was proved in 1971. What was actually proved was that emotion is not only involved with memory, it is the very basis on which memory takes place. Now, when you think about that, a quick demonstration is that you could go back in your mind right now to something that you didn’t like – something that was an adversity, a trauma ….. OK, no need to go any further as you’ve probably got it already. Don’t think about it any more. But you go there easily, you know what the occasion was, you know what hurt – all that sort of thing. And I could also ask you to go back to a really fantastic event in your life. You might for example go back to when you were riding your two-wheeler bike for the first time, or maybe your first kiss, or maybe a fantastic result at sport or in school, or something like that. We have so many good, joyous occasions in our mind and they will come up. Now, how did you remember them? That’s the key – how did you remember them? To remember either the negative event or the joyous event, did you have to tell other people about it? Did you have to write about it again and again? Did you have to make a mind map about it? Did you have to do all those sorts of things to remember it? No, it just stuck fast didn’t it. It’s right there. So, in other words, the emotion of the event made it stay in your memory.
Remembering With Emotion
So now, if we can remember with both negative emotion and positive emotion, do we use negative emotion to enhance imprinting on our memory? The answer is no, because of the tear stuff. Tears of sadness, tears of joy – different chemical constitution. We know we’re doing something different to our body with negative stuff and the negative stuff doesn’t make us feel good. So therefore we only use positive, joyous memory connections to enhance memory within the subconscious mind. So that’s something that came out of this science a long time ago.
OK, so I was on this journey – you can imagine. I loved the journey. And then, the next thing that happened was that tragedy in my life whereby my 3 daughters and their friend were murdered. I want to tell you about my journey of grief during this time. There may be some things there that can help. There are certainly some positive aspects that come out of it, so I’ll tell you about my journey of grief … and you know what? Everyone of us here are going to have to go through grief. Maybe many of us have already been through grief, and there’s going to be more. We’re all going to go through some adversity at some time. The key thing out of adversity and out of trauma is learning. What is there that you can learn from this event, because you know, those learning experiences are experiences for our soul and it’s the soul that needs the experience.
My Life Turned Upside Down
So, Jenny and Kirsty, they were twins at 19 and Lexie, she was 16 – the next day. And the date was 23rd January 1987. They were living with their mum in the northern Sydney suburb of Pymble and a friend of theirs, Lisa was there as well, so there were 4 of them in the house. I was living about 5 kilometres away in Lindfield, married to Sandra and at that time we had a little 5 year old girl, Lara and a little 3 year old boy, Ian. At about 7 o’clock that Friday night I rang and spoke to Lexie and also spoke to Jenny and Kirsty and I tell you, the mirth and joy in that household was fantastic. They were all preparing to go camping for the Australia Day long weekend. And we taught them about camping, so I was really pleased about that. They were going to be joined by a group of friends to go camping. In retrospect I am so glad I was able to speak to the girls at that time, because at 10 past 9 that night Richard Madrell arrived at the door and professed his love for Jenny who of course had not had anything to do with him for 12 months and all of them wanted to keep him away with their mother even trying unsuccessful to take out an AVO on him. But he arrived at the door and shot her. He then shot Kirsty, then Lisa and then shot Lexie. All over in ten minutes.
The police hammered on my door at about 2 o’clock in the morning and told me what had happened. My first reaction was that this was impossible … I mean I had only spoken to them several hours earlier. For me it was complete disbelief and I questioned about being shot with a shotgun as I knew something about guns from the army. I questioned the fact that it must have been impossible because with a shotgun you have to load it, fire and then re-load it, re-load it again …. Surely one or two of them are going to be able to get away. Surely not all 4 of them, not all 3 of my girls. On the way to their home in the police car I was still arguing with the police and I was asking if they had seen their bodies. “Oh, so you haven’t seen their bodies … you haven’t actually been there …. You’ve only been told about this over the radio … so you don’t really know this for sure.” Always thinking and hoping that it’s not true. And then a little bit of doubt would come in and it would be like this: “God, how could you let this happen. No, no no, you haven’t let it happen. But …. If you have … what have the girls done? What have they done to deserve this for goodness sake? There is no God.” And so that’s where my denial phase started.
Initial – Anger, Hatred and Revenge
I arrived at the house and the girl’s mother, Bev, and I were holding each other. We were shaking, we were crying, and their bodies were being brought down out of the house. So we knew it was true. That’s when shock started. I think that was the beginning of shock. And shock was a strange thing for me – it really was. I was like a zombie a lot of the time. I was unable to think. I never even went back into my office in the City and I had a partnership in the City. I never went back there. I couldn’t face it. It wasn’t a decision, I couldn’t think about it. You know the zombie like state I’m talking about is like shell shock which you may have seen in some war films where someone who is shell shocked is as though they are frozen. They don’t know where the friendly forces are, they don’t know where their mates are, they don’t know who their mates are even. They don’t know where the enemy is, they don’t know where their pit is. In fact they’re a bit of a nuisance. Someone has to go out and take them by the hand and bring them back in and that can be dangerous. That kind of shock, just like a zombie. And then I’d come out of being like a zombie and I’d think hatred thoughts and anger thoughts and revenge thoughts. And this would consume me and then I’d go back into being a zombie again. You going to take the kids out today? Kids? What? What kids? Where? Out? Couldn’t think. And then, hatred, anger and revenge until the hatred, anger and revenge were such a part of me that they were habits within me.
What Helped Me?
I had two things that helped me. One was – I had a group of people around me who kept me talking … talking … talking. What did we talk about? We talked about everything. We talked about my life with the girls, my life without the girls, we talked about the girls, we talked about me, we talked about my family, we talked about my family before. We talked about every possible thing you could think about. You see, the thing is, if you don’t talk about things what do you tend to do? That’s right isn’t it – bottle it up, push it down, keep it internal. The conscious mind doesn’t handle it any more. But which mind is handling it now? The subconscious mind, and the subconscious mind is like the dream mind as well. So now the subconscious mind has got to handle it. How does it do that? Hot sweats, nightmares, unexplained anger, irrational action. What have I just described? Post traumatic stress disorder … PTSD, that’s what I’ve just described. And you know, a lot of it we do to ourselves. We’ve learned a lot from our Vietnam Veterans. When the Vietnam Veterans came back home, we came back into the country at midnight, wearing civvie clothes so that nobody would recognise us – slinking into the country. Don’t congregate in groups guys, don’t talk about this and we were given the advice to forget about it all and just get on with our lives – don’t even talk about it. Well of course now we all know that this is the completely wrong thing to do, so that’s where it started. But we now know that all Forces – 2nd World War, 1st World War, the Korean War – all wars and actually not only wars. What about things that happen to us daily like accidents, like knifings, car accidents … and what about divorce? Divorce can be huge. Post traumatic stress disorder is amongst us and one of the key things to do is to talk about it. We can take a leading role here, other than the counsellors that are in our society today, we can take a leading role by making sure we talk to our friends – nag them until they start to talk about it. They’ll thank you one day. Did you know that in the Australian Forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, East Timor … any hotspots … we have psychologists and counsellors in position. Hopefully to nip PTSD in the bud by getting to the soldiers straight away. A sensible strategy.
Realisation – I Didn’t Want to be an Angry Hateful Person
Well, that’s how the subconscious mind handles it. So, I was lucky. The other thing I had was meditation as taught to me by my young son Andrew – wow, can’t we learn a lot from our children. Andrew taught me meditation, and I was meditating – endeavouring to get some sort of peace, some sort of clarity … that sort of thing and I knew it was good for relaxation, stress release, anxiousness and all that sort of thing. So I already knew all of that, so I did it. And you know what? I got the greatest wake up call that you could ever get. It was like a whack across the head … and this was it: “Hey, if you persist in being hateful, angry and vengeful … then you’re going to end up like that! Wow! In other word, if I talked to myself 65,000 times a day, then I am going to be another victim … and who has done it to me? Me … haven’t I. I’ve done it to myself. So I did some work on this and I changed that question I’d been asking myself … Why the girls? Why me, their dad? You know, if you ask yourself a question, any question, what do you get? Tell me what you get? Yes, that’s right, an answer. Ask yourself a question and you get an answer. If you ask yourself the wrong question, what do you get? The wrong answer. I tell you what, that’s the wrong question, because you know where your mind goes? Think about it – I’ll re-phrase the question: What have the girls done to deserve this? What have I done to deserve this? And then of course the answers come up – all the negative answers in the world. You’ve been a rotten Dad; you should never have got divorced; you could have been there to prevent this. In other words I’m blaming myself aren’t I. That’s what’s happening – so how am I beginning to feel? Guilty. But it wasn’t just that, it was everything in my life that I’ve ever done wrong came up for me and I’ve been no angel, so a lot of things came up. Right back to being a kid. You stole cigarettes from your mum and smoked them when you were 9; you stole money out of the cookie jar; and so I am feeling rotten, and guilty. And who’s done it to me? Yes, me – I’ve done it to myself. You see, that’s the wrong question. OK, Why not me? Stick a not in front of there – that’s a pretty hard question to ask isn’t it – why NOT me? Well, let’s re-phrase that too. What is there that I can learn from this event?
Changing to Acceptance, Love and Forgiveness
What is there that I can learn and pass onto others? What is there that I can learn for myself from this? That’s a better question. It’s a positive question. A positive question will lead to positive answers…. so remember that… Any time we’re going through trauma or adversity it is worthwhile to ask that question – what is there that I can learn from this event? Do not go down that guilt road and if you do every now and again, it happens, right? … it happens, and you say “Ah, I’m not going down there, I’m not going to feel guilty I don’t want to do that” and this is what I say to myself, “Now that I know more, I’ll do better next time”… or “Now that I’ve learnt more in my life, I’ll do better next time”. That’s a good way of handling it, because you know guilt leads to blame, blame leads to judgements, and none of them are any good for us, none of them. So that was one thing I really worked on, and then I worked in meditation…. Changing the anger, the hatred, the revenge. They had become habits within me so I got some help, and in active meditation I changed hatred, anger and revenge into acceptance and letting go, and into unconditional love. I didn’t even know the meaning of the word at that time. And then, forgiveness, wow, forgiveness. You know, I just want to say a couple of quick things about forgiveness. Forgiveness, is for the forgiver, not for the forgiven. So, forgiveness is for me, not for the other person. Forgiveness is also a very personal thing – you keep it to yourself. In my case I haven’t kept it to myself, but if you’re doing a process of forgiveness in meditation then who else knows about it besides yourself? Perhaps your maker and that’s all. Forgiveness is a very personal thing and the reason I tell other people about it is because it’s one of the subjects I teach about…forgiveness. So, forgiveness is for the forgiver, not for the forgiven. And, there’s one more thing, forgiveness never condones the event, it never gives anyone permission to go out and do it again.
Getting Through to Inner Peace
Well after I’d worked on all this meditation I then went through into that spot inside my mind that I would say would be inner peace. How did I know that? Because, I was ready to get on with my life again. I was ready to work again. That’s what I knew.
Analysing – What Had I Done?
And you know what, I did that analytical bit then, and I’m a very good analyser I can tell you, left brainers are. So I analysed. How come? What have I just done? Well, I’ve just been working in the theta brainwave state, that’s the meditation state and I’ll tell you something more about that soon. So I’ve been working in the theta meditation state changing hatred, anger and revenge into acceptance, love and forgiveness. Active meditation, yes oh that’s the same way I got new weight release habits and took off 22 kilo’s. Yes, that’s right. So theta brainwave state…well, hang on I’m using the subconscious mind deliberately then in meditation. Yes, that’s right. How come? Well, because as soon as you relax you’re into the subconscious mind. You see, what happens is that there’s a filter in the centre of our head in our limbic system which opens up, it’s known as the reticular activating system, and this opens up, and we can, with relaxation, get through into the subconscious mind and start communicating with the subconscious. Right! OK … well I know all about that but you know what? I can also do things in 30 seconds … yes …. I can bring down the strength of my pulse, I can bring down my blood pressure, I knew a system of focussing very fast, very quickly and relaxing in 30 seconds. I also had worked on a system of goals, doing goals in the subconscious mind in 30 seconds. That’s not the Theta state, that’s the Alpha brainwave state. So in other words I can use both the Alpha state and the Theta state to work with the subconscious mind. Yes, deliberately. Wow!
Well why doesn’t everyone do this?
Why isn’t this taught? So that was when I resolved to work in this area and I started doing every possible thing I could – reading every book, doing any seminar. Every time there was a seminar that mentioned subconscious, I was there. I worked at it for a couple of years and I finished up in the United States and I was there for 6 weeks doing a seminar – it was a facilitation seminar – how to be a facilitator. And at this seminar there was a man who came and presented, to 65 people in the room, and he said he was going to teach us about the subconscious mind. My ears really pricked up. His name was Steven Snyder, and you know what he did? He taught everybody in the room how to relax and release stress in less than 30 seconds, and he taught them all in 3 hours. Now you know how long it had take me? Twelve months ! And yet here’s this guy teaching it in 3 hours … and I thought Wow, this guy’s fantastic – I want to work with him. And I did … I brought him to Australia and we did some 22 seminars together and did a lot of really good work. And then I went on my own. I started doing seminars on my own in 1989 and now I’ve done hundreds, in fact thousands of seminars and I love doing them.
My Life Goal
Part of my real goal in life is to have people aware of the power of the subconscious mind and then have the tools to be able to use the subconscious mind deliberately.
Reaching Other’s With My Books and CDs and DVDs
And to be able to do that I’ve had a lot of help with a few books. The first one I want to show you is “No Need for Heroes”. Now you know this book has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with this subject. It’s about Vietnam and what my soldiers from 3 Field Troop got up to. And then there’s “Piece of Mind”. There are over 100,000 copies of this book out there and it’s also been published in Indonesia, translated into Bahasa Indonesian, and many more sold there as well. This is a book about using the subconscious mind and being able to quickly access it – so this book is about Alpha. And then there’s “Switch On To Your Inner Strength”. This book is more about meditation and quite a bit about my own journey as well. There’s quite a bit about pain release, healing and working with things like creativity and forgiveness. And this book “Students Steps to Success” is to do with when I went on that little journey about study, so it’s also about accelerated learning. The Foreword of this book is written by Professor David Smith who was the professor of Education at Sydney University at the time it was published. It’s an interesting book because when you look at it it’s really two books – one on the left hand side which appeals to the left side of the brain and then the right hand side of the book – for the right brain. And when you look at the page numbering there’s page 101 on the left hand side and page 101 on the right hand side – so it’s like 2 books and you can choose which side appeals to you more and which side of the brain you want to use to get the information. And then there’s “Creating Happiness Intentionally” – notice the acronym – C-H-I – using your own energy to be able to determine your life’s purpose and all the goals that go towards your life’s purpose. I do a five-day live-in seminar which is the CHI Seminar.