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Choices and Illusions – a book for awakening humans

Personal Growth through the Akashic Records, Past Lives, Human Design and more with Sarah Lawrence

Choices and Illusions – a book for awakening humans

choices and illusions

choices and illusionsChoices and Illusions

The road to spiritual awakening can take many paths as we work with our own choices and illusions.

Visions and energetic experiences can drive us to ask why these experiences are happening to us.

Or, like Eldon Taylor, the author of Choices and Illusions: How Did I Get Where I Am, and How Do I Get Where I Want to Be? you can begin to question how human perception truly works in order to answer some of these questions.

Just as importantly, we can all learn more about how other people in the world are influencing us at the subconscious level to enable us to awaken.

Learning more about how we see things habitually is an important part of the spiritual journey.

How we respond to certain triggers can be a big awakening for many people.  One of the ways we can do this is to become aware of our hard-coded neurological programs.

We can begin to understand our habitual responses by identifying unconscious processes

How can we awaken to subconscious processes?  Subconscious processes are below our conscious awareness in the first place!

I was fortunate to learn to explore and experience different states of mind with NLP™ work (neuro-linguistic programming).

On the first day of the course, I was unable to wake fully from a hypnotic state at the end of the day.  At the time I thought I was having visions!

I found myself stuck in one of the exercises, so when we left the class for the day everything in my middle distance looked flat.  Even the lamposts on the street looked like they were laying down on the ground,

It wore off after a while, but my business partner had to help me walk to a local restaurant and sit down. Finally, I began to reconnect my perceptions with my body.

Our perception is changed purely through the temporary adoption of thoughts and ideas.  What I was experiencing was deep hypnosis.

Eldon Taylor in Choices and Illusions has studied the workings of our minds and mental energy.  He has done this to help us all on the path to self-actualization and awakening.

One of Eldon Taylor’s favorite questions is: –

“What was your last truly original thought?”

He relates in his book that many people struggle to answer this!

What are Choices and Illusions – definitions

We have lived long enough as a species that it can be hard work to find new ideas that are not related to something else already in existence.  Most ideas already exist in some form.

We are also all subject to many of the same repeating thoughts, leading to choices that create similar circumstances over and over.

Choices are actions and decisions that we make in life.  All choices ultimately have consequences for our lived experiences.

Illusions are widespread negative ideas that do not serve us, yet we often take them on without realizing the consequences.

We are all programmed, as Eldon says, to obey rules and to accept negative ideas.  It’s part of human nature to desire to become more alike and conform for safety and wellbeing.

Yet the spiritual truth is that we are all as individual as our fingerprints, from the physical level all the way through to our souls.

How did I get where I am?

Eldon Taylor’s book is a great help here!

He asks us to become mindful and gives us practical and actionable ways to do this.

By mindful he literally means “learn how your mind works and how you respond to others“.

Here are three examples of how our minds work

1. Our Beliefs do dictate our reality

Beliefs are ideas and concepts that as humans we buy into.  Many beliefs work very well and create success and progress in our lives.  Other beliefs can affect us negatively, even creating karma.

In Choices and Illusions: How Did I Get Where I Am, and How Do I Get Where I Want to Be? Eldon Taylor explains how beliefs can directly affect our health and wellness.

Using Eldon’s subliminal InnerTalk program, he conducted a survey in 1991.

Patients in an InnerTalk study worked to support their own beliefs in the mind-body connection to health.

A control group of patients had no access to the InnerTalk work.

The result – what physicians say is extremely important to a patient’s healing – even survival!

The data points to the fact that not only is the patient’s attitude may be helpful to healing.  What is most important though is that the physician’s attitude to health really matters.

It was highly important that the physicians believed in the power of the mind/body connection.  This resulted in greater recovery rates in terminally ill patients.

The study results were: –

  • If the physician did not believe that the patient’s involvement with the InnerTalk program could affect cancer, the patient died.  The result of the lack of belief from the physician was the same no matter which treatment program was used.
  • If a patient’s physician agreed that to some degree belief played a role in the patient’s health — then the survival/remission rate increased to 46%.
  • If physicians strongly agreed that the mind or the attitude of the patient was important to health, the survival/remission rate increased to 60%.
  • Where both the patient AND the physician believed strongly that the mind played a role in wellness, the survival/remission rate increased to 100%.

This is just one small study!

What else can our beliefs do if they can help us heal?

This study demonstrates that it is imperative to incorporate mind-over-matter healing into medical practice because it helps people overcome terminal illness.

It’s highly important for physicians to support their patients in believing in the effect that self-belief can affect healing! 

2. Our psychological defense mechanisms affect what we see and perceive

Now I know that when something offends me, these particular muscles in my face go tight, in my cheeks.

There’s nothing I can do about it, it just happens!  I may not even know WHY I’m offended– those muscles react anyway!

In Choices and Illusions, you can learn more about your own natural psychological defense mechanisms.

These are essentially our knee-jerk responses.  If left unaddressed by the conscious mind, these responses can have us running a program and zooming off in the direction of an emotional response.

Learning to be mindful can enable us to take a breath and question our initial emotional reactions and triggers.

Knowledge about how we are subconsciously triggered gives us power over the process

Here’s a short summary of our psychological defense mechanisms, more in the book.

Isolation – avoiding the connection of ideas to avoid discomfort.
Projection – projecting blame or responsibility onto another.
Regression – reverting to a younger or less vulnerable state to avoid discomfort in connection with current reality.
Repression – an unconscious filter to stop us from recalling or experiencing stored emotions, or presently uncomfortable emotions.
Sublimation – the substitution of activity, usually a diversion, to stop us from responding or reacting in ways that could be perceived as negative.  For example, deep breathing when we are angry.

3. Subliminal Messages DO Influence Behavior

Eldon Taylor says in Choices and Illusions

“The effects of subliminal stimuli on humans, including behavior, is so robust…you have got to wonder where individuals who deny it have been in the last ten years.”

Eldon created a pilot study where two groups of people listened to the sound of the ocean.  Subliminal messages were layered underneath the ocean sounds.  The messages were about one minute apart.

The two different subliminal messages were:-

Group A: “DANGER, DANGER, DANGER, WATCH OUT!–AH-H-H-G-H! DANGER!”

Group B: “People are walking”.

Body responses were monitored for both groups.

The first group had responses with gross reactions or changes in the measurement of body functioning.  This was a direct result of the “danger” message.

What influences our subconscious mind?

The bodies of the subjects in Group A responded as if danger existed.  Some individuals reported visions of being killed or killing someone.

One person was very upset and zoned out completely,  These are all very different yet valid responses to the fight or flight response.

This is one reason why subliminal messages have been banned from online advertising.

The brain processes subliminal messaging as part of our survival response.  This happens whether we are consciously aware of this information or not.

How Do I Get Where I Want To Be?

It’s possible to study the nature of preconscious information or subliminal messaging.  I began that process with NLP™ and then continued my personal study by focusing on psychic development.

We can all learn to get where we want to be.  Learning to become aware of our choices and our illusions is a good start.

I’m firmly convinced that if we learn to grow our conscious connections to how our unconscious minds work, we can all evolve.

In conclusion, if you are on the awakening path and want to know more about how your mind (and others’) work, Choices and Illusions: How Did I Get Where I Am, and How Do I Get Where I Want to Be? is a great choice.

choices and illusionsBio: Eldon Taylor is considered to be an expert in the area of preconscious information processing and has served as an expert trial witness with regard to both subliminal communication and hypnosis.

With a background in criminalistics and lie detection, Eldon’s approach has always been very down-to-earth, science-based, and pragmatic. He is a New York Times best-selling author and the subject of his books ranges from exposing the darker sides of mind programming and brainwashing to the spiritual search for life’s meaning.

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