Weight Reduction Session III
Although sometimes we are quite fearful of change or something new, we are well aware there is no chance for improvement unless there is change. If we have had difficulty in some area, we must change the old patterns. So today, I am suggesting that we do something entirely different from what we usually do. Something that may be quite new to you. Although it is likely that you have done it sometime in the past. Today I am proposing that you let yourself see yourself in perspective. See yourself as others might see you or as you might be seen in history.
When you are away from yourself, even for a few moments, you begin to see yourself in an entirely different light. Temporarily, if you separate yourself in time as well as in physical distance, you can see yourself not only as you are at the moment, but as you were yesterday or even far back in childhood. It is quite possible for you to see yourself proceeding through all the stages of growing to the present time, and even projecting your view of yourself into the future. You are capable of doing this. It is a safe procedure. It is possible because your subconscious mind calculates time and distance differently from the subconscious mind. In the conscious mind, everything is very concrete. The minutes progress in orderly fashion to form hours and days, weeks and years. The subconscious mind works very differently. You live in the present, but if you are suddenly, greatly stressed, you call forth experiences from the past. Your defenses and reactions respond instead to the similar stresses of last year or five years ago.
In other words, in the subconscious mind, your frame of reference is entirely different. You can be in the present, but if something provokes or excites you, in a fraction of a second you can revert to childish or infantile behavior and relive an incident with all the sound, fury and emotion you had the first time you experienced it. In other words, in a fraction of a second you can span the years and relive an incident as vividly as you did the first time.
In exactly the same way, it is possible for you to see some of the future. See yourself as you might be behaving a year or five years from now. Predicting the future is possible because the attitudes you hold about yourself determine your behavior, the friends you choose and situations you create. Even though you may not be able to fill in the names of other people or the precise location, you can predict the kind of situation you will place yourself into because of the attitudes you hold about yourself.Time and place in the subconscious mind is only relative. Your attitude and defenses remain almost unchangeable and they interact with the environment in very much the same way throughout you life.
You can quite easily project yourself temporarily outside of your body as if you were a third person and look back at yourself and your surroundings freed of the usual physical limitations. It is very safe to project yourself in spirit out and beyond your normal physical limitations so you can look back at yourself and understand exactly where you are. This projection is entirely at your under your control. You will find it quite easy to separate much of your spirit and intellect from your body so that you can momentarily be free from your body limitations. From this vantage point, you can see yourself in prospective from birth to present. You will become acutely aware of the program you had to adopt to keep your physical body alive in a world that is so threatening. You will be able to understand the family's interactions with you as you have never before been able to understand.
Best of all, from this detached, safe, vantage point, you can plainly see the defenses that you needed when you were very small. You have now outgrown them just as you have outgrown the need for nursing bottles and diapers.
Projection experience is common to everyone who dreams, for dreams change all the usual limitations of time and space. A good example is awakening abruptly from a very sound sleep and being momentarily confused about where you are. You have had the experience of looking in a three-way mirror in a clothing store and seeing yourself in profile and back view and getting an entirely different perspective of yourself. Another way to get a projection of yourself is to look into a mirror that shows your reflection in another mirror. Then, by changing the angle slightly, you can see one mirror reflecting in another in a whole row of mirrors, almost on to eternity. Now to this picture, you add photographs of yourself in the same pose, but each at a different age of your life. You line them up so that you see yourself in these mirrors at all ages from infancy to the present time. Depending on the angle of the mirrors, you can see yourself projected either into the past or into the future.
Now picture yourself intellectually outside your own body with a clear view of your whole life in perspective. You have in your possession all of the wisdom, all the learning and all the understanding that you have ever gained. In this position, you're now able to influence your own destiny by re-programming and upgrading your attitude and defenses. You let yourself change wherever you see the need for growth and maturity so all your reactions may come up to your expectations as you relinquish your hang-ups.
Hear yourself encouraging your whole being to accept yourself and approve of what you do. Especially see yourself reinforcing the normal eating patterns, to eat only when you are hungry, to see that your appetite is easily satisfied. Picture yourself enjoying food immensely but only in quantities you need to fulfill normal physiological requirements. See yourself overcoming the temptation to eat any extra food. As you observe yourself it becomes easier and easier to pass up unneeded food and drink. Especially note carefully how your need to seek approval from everyone else is disappearing very quickly and progressively. More and more you are approving of what you do.
See yourself also using self-hypnosis as a very powerful and safe force for you. Its effectiveness increases as you let part of yourself be projected beyond your usual body limitations so that you can give yourself suggestions much more effectively as if you were a third person. Again and again you are accepting the suggestion that you eat only when you truly need food and that you are satisfied with basic nutrition. See yourself being increasingly happy with your eating pattern and showing approval of what you do.
