You Are the Placebo

by Joe Dispenza, Dr.

“What do you mean?” he repeated, confused. So I waved at her. And still sitting with her back to me, she reached above her head, turned her hand backward, and waved back. It was amazing. The proof was right on the scan: Sophia was seeing without eyes. Her visual cortex was processing information, just as though she were seeing, but it was her brain that was doing the seeing—not her eyes.

  As I said, if you focus on the unknown, you get the unknown. Ready to see for yourself?

  Chapter Twelve

  Changing Beliefs and Perceptions Meditation

  In this chapter, I’m going to walk you through a guided meditation designed to help you change some beliefs or perceptions about yourself or your life. I recommend meditating while playing a recording, either of this meditation (which helps you change two beliefs or perceptions and lasts about an hour) or of a slightly shorter version (which helps you change one belief or perception and lasts 45 minutes). Both meditations are available for purchase on audio CDs or MP3 files from my website (www.drjoedispenza.com). The one-hour version is called You Are the Placebo Book Meditation: Changing Two Beliefs and Perceptions, and the 45-minute version is called You Are the Placebo Book Meditation: Changing One Belief and Perception. Or you can make a recording of yourself reading the text of either version of the meditation (both of which you will find in the Appendix).

  Remember that beliefs and perceptions are subconscious states of being. They start with thoughts and feelings that you think and feel over and over, until they ultimately become habituated or automatic—at which point they form an attitude. Attitudes strung together become beliefs, and related beliefs strung together become perceptions. Over time, this redundancy creates a view of the world and of yourself that’s largely subconscious. It affects your relationships, your behaviors, and really everything in your life.

  So if you want to change a belief or perception, you have to first change your state of being. And changing your state of being means changing your energy, because in order for you to affect matter, you have to become more energy and less matter, more wave and less particle. That requires you to combine a clear intention and an elevated emotion—those are the two ingredients.

  As you’ve read, this process involves making a decision with a high-enough level of energy that your thought about the new belief becomes an experience that carries a strong emotional signature, which alters you on some level in that moment. That’s how you change your biology, become your own placebo, and make your mind matter. We all have had experiences that have affected our biology to some degree or another. Remember the Cambodian women, from Chapter 7, who developed vision problems because of the horrors they were forced to witness when the Khmer Rouge was in power? That’s an extreme example, of course, but you can use the same principle to make a positive change.

  In order for this to work, the new experience has to be greater than the past experience. In other words, the internal experience you have when you meditate has to have a greater amplitude—greater energy—than the external past experience that created the belief and perception that you want to change. The body must respond to a new mind. So you have to put your heart into that elevated emotion; you really have to get goose bumps. You have to feel lifted, inspired, invincible, and empowered.

  I’ll be giving you the opportunity to change two beliefs and perceptions about yourself in this meditation. So before you begin, decide which two you want to change. You can select one of the common limiting beliefs listed in Chapter 7, or you can come up with something else on your own—such as, I’ll always have this pain or condition, Life is too hard, People are unfriendly, Success takes a lot of work, or I’ll never change.

  Once you decide, get a piece of paper and draw a vertical line down the middle. On the left side, write down the two beliefs and perceptions you want to change, one on top of the other.

  Then think for a minute: If you don’t want to believe and perceive these things anymore, then what do you want to believe and perceive about yourself and your life? And if you did believe and perceive those new things, how would that make you feel? Write down the new beliefs and perceptions that you want to have on the right side of the paper.

  As you’ll soon see, this meditation is in three parts:

  — The first part is the induction, in which you will use the open-focus technique you read about in the last chapter to get you into more coherent alpha or theta brain-wave states where you’re more suggestible. This is vital, because the only way you can truly influence your heath and become the placebo is when your own suggestibility is enhanced.

  — In the second part, you’ll find the present moment and linger in the quantum void, where all possibilities exist.

  — And in the third part, you’ll change your beliefs and perceptions. Here, to walk you through what you’ll be doing when you actually sit down to meditate, I’ll give you some direction at the beginning of each part, and then the text of the meditation will follow in italics.

  If you’re an experienced meditator, feel free to do the entire meditation the whole way through during your first time. If you’re new to meditation, you may want to practice the first part every day for a week, then add the second part the second week, and progress to all three parts the third week. Either way, keep doing this same meditation on a daily basis, until you see some changes happening in your life.

  If you are already practicing the meditation that I outlined in Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, I want to point out that the meditation in this book is entirely different, even though you’ll find some similarities in the way in which both meditations begin (the induction phase). If you can do only one meditation per day, I recommend trying this new meditation for a few months so that you can fully reap the benefits. Then you can decide which meditation you want to continue with, or you can switch back and forth between the two as you wish.

  Induction: Creating Brain Coherence and Slower Brain Waves with Open Focus

  When you move into the open-focus meditation, you’ll be going from particle to wave, from the narrow focus you usually have on people, places, and things in the outer world to a more open focus—where you’ll be concentrating not on any physical thing, but on space. After all, if an atom is approximately 99.9 percent energy and we’re always focusing on the particle, maybe it’s time we paid some attention to the wave, because our awareness and our energy are intrinsically combined—putting attention on our energy is what amplifies our energy.

  When you use this technique, your brain naturally recalibrates, because to do it correctly, you have to let go of your analytical mind (which is very busy thinking in high beta as an identity). That identity, who you know yourself to be, is connected to the external environment, to your emotional addictions and habits, and to time. The moment you get beyond those elements, you’re nothing but pure consciousness, and as you read earlier, the different compartments of your brain begin to communicate better and your brain waves become very orderly—they start sending a coherent signal to the rest of the body, just as you saw in the workshop participants.

  Stay present during this meditation; don’t try to figure anything out and don’t try to visualize. Just sense and feel. If you can sense where your left ankle is, if you can feel where your nose is, and if you can sense where the space between your sternum and your chest is, then you’re resting your awareness, your consciousness, and your attention in those places. You might get a picture or an image in your head (say, of your chest or of your heart), but you don’t have to strive for that; you just have to become aware of the space within and around your body in space.

  This first part of the meditation should last for approximately 10 to 15 minutes.

  Meditation: Part One

  Now . . . can you rest your awareness . . . in the space . . . between your eyes . . . in space?

  And can you sense . . . the energy of space . . . between your eyes . . . in space?

  And now . . . can you become aware . . . of the space . . . between your temp
les . . . in space?

  And can you sense . . . the volume of space . . . between your temples . . . in space?

  And now . . . can you become aware . . . of the space . . . that your nostrils . . . occupy in space?

  And can you sense . . . the volume of space . . . that the inside of your nose occupies . . . in space?

  And now . . . can you become aware . . . of the space . . . between your tongue and the back of your throat . . . in space?

  And can you sense . . . the volume of space . . . that the back of your throat occupies . . . in space?

  And now . . . can you sense . . . the energy of space . . . around your ears . . . in space?

  And can you feel . . . the energy of space . . . beyond your ears . . . in space?

  And can you become aware . . . of the space . . . below your chin . . . in space?

  And can you feel . . . the volume of space . . . around your neck . . . in space?

  And now . . . can you sense . . . the space . . . beyond your chest . . . in space?

  And can you feel . . . the energy of space . . . around your chest . . . in space?

  And now . . . can you become aware . . . of the volume of space . . . beyond your shoulders . . . in space?

  And can you sense . . . the energy of space . . . around your shoulders . . . in space?

  And now . . . can you become aware . . . of the space . . . behind your back . . . in space?

  And can you feel . . . the energy of space . . . beyond your spine . . . in space?

  And now . . . can you rest . . . your awareness . . . in the space . . . between your thighs . . . in space?

  And can you sense . . . the energy of space . . . connecting your knees . . . in space?

  And now . . . can you sense . . . the volume of space . . . around your feet . . . in space?

  And can you feel . . . the energy of space . . . beyond your feet . . . in space?

  And can you become aware . . . of the space . . . around your entire body . . . in space?

  And can you sense . . . the energy of space . . . beyond your body . . . in space?

  And now . . . can you become aware . . . of the space between your body and the walls of the room . . . in space?

  And can you sense . . . the volume of space . . . that the entire room occupies . . . in space?

  And now . . . can you become aware . . . of the space . . . that all of space occupies . . . in space?

  And can you sense . . . the space . . . that all of space takes up . . . in space?

  Becoming Possibility:

  Finding the Present Moment and Lingering in the Void

  In this next part of the meditation, you’ll find the sweet spot of the present moment, where all things are possible. To do that, you must lay down your identity and disconnect from your body, the environment, and time, because the longer you linger in the unknown, the more you draw the unknown to you. And if nerve cells that no longer fire together no longer wire together, you’ll be silencing the circuits in your brain that are connected to the old self. As you’ve read, those circuits maintain a hardwired program, so if you successfully disconnect from them, you’ll also be disconnecting from the program. You’ll no longer be emotionally signaling the same genes in the same way. And then as your body moves into a more balanced and harmonious state, you’ll find yourself in the sweet spot of the present moment, and that’s where all possibility exists.

  If you find your mind drifting to thoughts about people you know, various problems you have, events that happened in the past or that are coming up in your future, your body, your weight, your pain, your hunger, or even how long this meditation will go on, simply become aware of those thoughts and then bring your consciousness back to the blackness or the quantum void of possibility. And then, once more, surrender into nothing.

  This second part of the meditation should last for approximately 10 to 15 minutes.

  Meditation: Part Two

  And now . . . it’s time . . . to become no body . . . no one . . . no thing . . . no where . . . in no time . . . to become . . . pure consciousness . . . to become an awareness in the infinite field of potentials . . . and to invest your energy into the unknown. . . . And the longer you linger in the unknown . . . the more you draw a new life to you. . . . Simply become a thought in the blackness of infinity . . . and unfold your attention—into no thing . . . into no body . . . into no time. . . .

  And if you . . . as the quantum observer . . . find your mind returning to the known . . .to the familiar . . . to people . . . to things . . . or places in your known familiar reality . . . to your body . . . to your identity, to your emotions . . . to time . . . to the past . . . or the predictable future . . . simply become aware that you are observing the known . . . and surrender your consciousness back into the void of possibilities . . . and become no one . . . no body . . . no thing . . . no where . . . in no time. . . . Unfold into the immaterial realm of quantum potentials. . . The more you become awareness in possibility . . . the more you create possibility and opportunity in your life. . . . Stay present. . . .

  [Allow 10 to 15 minutes here for you to linger.]

  Changing Beliefs and Perceptions about Yourself and Your Life

  In the final section of the meditation, it’s time to bring up that first belief or perception about your life that you want to change. I’ll ask you if you want to continue believing and perceiving in that way. If your answer is no, then you’ll be invited to make a decision with such firm intention that the amplitude of energy related to that decision is greater than the hardwired programs in your brain and the emotional addictions in your body. Your body will then respond to a new mind, to a new consciousness.

  Next I’ll ask you, “What do you want to believe and perceive about yourself and your life, and how would that feel?” Then your task will be to move into a new state of being. You’ll have to change your energy by marrying a clear intention with an elevated emotion—and lift matter to a new mind. You should get up feeling different from when you sat down. If so, then you changed biologically.

  At that point, the past will no longer exist, because that higher-amplitude experience will have just overwritten the program of the old experience. That’s why making that choice becomes an experience that you never forget, because now it’s a long-term memory. You’ll be making an unknown possibility known, which takes you out of the past-now and puts you into the future-now, where the event has already happened. Remember, it’s not your job to figure out when or where or how it’s going to happen. Your job is merely to move into a new state of being and then see the future you’re creating.

  Then you’ll be guided to change the second belief or perception, so you’ll repeat the same process all over again.

  This final part of the meditation will last for approximately 20 to 30 minutes.

  Meditation: Part Three

  Now . . . what was that first belief . . . or perception . . . that you wanted to change about yourself and your life?

  Do you want to continue to believe and perceive in this way?

  If not . . . I want you to make a decision . . . with such firm intention . . . that the amplitude of that decision . . . carries a level of energy that’s greater than the hardwired programs in your brain . . . and the emotional addictions in your body . . . and allow your body to respond to a new mind. . . .

  And allow the choice to become an experience that you’ll never forget . . . and let the experience . . . produce an emotion with such energy . . . that it rewrites the programs . . . and changes your biology. . . . Come out of your resting state and change your energy . . . so that your biology is altered by your own energy. . . .

  Now it’s time to surrender the past back into possibility . . . and allow the infinite field of possibilities to resolve it in a way that’s right for you. . . . Give it up.

  Now . . . what do you want to believe and perceive about yourself and your life . . . and how would that feel?

  Come on . . . it’
s time to move into a new state of being . . . and allow your body to respond to a new mind . . . change your energy by combining a clear intention with an elevated emotion so that matter is lifted to a new mind. . . .

  And let the choice . . . carry an amplitude of energy . . . that’s greater than any experience of the past . . . and let your body be altered by your consciousness, by your own energy. . . . and shift into a new state of being . . . and make this moment define you . . . and let this intentional thought become such a powerful internal experience . . . that it carries an elevated emotional energy, which becomes a memory that you never forget . . . replacing the past memory with a new memory in your brain and body. . . . Come on! Become empowered. . . . Be inspired. . . . Make the choice a decision that you’ll never fail to remember. . . .

  Now . . . give your body a taste of the future by showing it how it will feel to believe this way . . . and let your body respond to a new mind. . . .

  And how would you live from this state of being? . . . What choices will you make? . . . How will you behave? . . . What experiences are in your future? . . . How will you live? . . . How would it feel? . . . How will you love? . . . and allow infinite waves of possibility to collapse into an experience in your life. . . .

  And can you teach your body emotionally what it is to be in this new future? . . . Come on . . . open your heart . . . and believe in possibility. . . . Be lifted . . . fall in love with the moment . . . and experience that future now. . . .

  And now, surrender your creation to a greater mind . . . for what you think and experience in this realm of possibility . . . if it is truly felt . . . it will manifest in some future time . . . from waves of possibilities to particles in reality . . . from the immaterial to the material . . . from thought to energy into matter. . . .

  Now . . . surrender your new belief into a field of consciousness that already knows how to organize the outcome in a way that’s perfect for you . . . planting a seed in possibility. . . .