You Are the Placebo

by Joe Dispenza, Dr.

  Now . . . what was that second belief or perception that you wanted to change about yourself and your life? . . . And does it serve you to continue believing and perceiving . . . in this way?

  If not, it’s time to make a decision with such firm intention . . . that the amplitude of that decision . . . carries a level of energy that causes your body to respond to a new mind . . . and that the choice that you make is final . . . and that your decision becomes an experience that you never forget. . . . Come out of your familiar resting state and change your energy so that matter is lifted to a new mind. . . . Go on! Become empowered. . . . Be moved by your own energy. . . .

  And let the energy of the choice . . . rewrite the subconscious programs neurologically in your brain . . . and emotionally and genetically in your body . . . and make the choice be greater than the past . . . and let your biology be changed by your energy. . . . Be inspired. . . .

  And now . . . surrender that belief to a greater intelligence . . . simply let go . . . and give it up . . . to the field of possibilities . . . returning it back to energy. . . .

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

  Come on, move into a new state of being . . . and allow your body to be lifted to a new mind . . . and let the energy of this choice . . . rewrite the circuits in your brain . . . and the genes in your body . . . and allow your body to be liberated into a new future. . . . You must feel a new energy . . . to become some thing greater than your body, your environment, and time . . . so that you have dominion over your body, your environment, and time. . . . Become a thought that affects matter. . . .

  And can you teach your body emotionally . . . what it would feel like to believe in this way . . . to be empowered . . . to be moved by your own greatness . . . to have courage . . . to be invincible . . . to be in love with life . . . to feel unlimited . . . to live as if your prayers are already answered? . . . Come on, give your body, as the unconscious mind, a taste of your future . . . signaling new genes in new ways. . . . Your energy is the epiphenomenon of matter . . . change your energy and change your body . . . Come on, make your mind matter. . . .

  And how will you live, from this state of being? . . . And if you believe this, what choices would you make? . . . What behaviors could you demonstrate? . . . And what experiences can you observe from this state of being? . . . And how will they feel . . . to be healed, to be free, to believe in yourself and possibility? . . . Let yourself go. . . .

  Bless this future with your own energy. . . . Then it means . . . you’re connected to a new destiny . . . for wherever you place your attention is where you place your energy. . . . Investing in your future . . . and being defined by your future instead of your past. . . . Open your heart and allow your body to become moved by your own inward experience . . . and remember that whatever you truly experience in the unknown . . . and emotionally embrace . . . will ultimately slow down in frequency as energy . . . into three dimensions as matter. . . .

  And now let go and give it up . . . and allow it to be executed by a greater intelligence in a way that’s right for you. . . .

  And now . . . take your left hand and place it over your heart . . . and I want you to bless your body . . . that it be lifted to a new mind . . . and bless your life . . . that it be an extension of your mind . . . to bless your future . . . that it never be your past . . . to bless your past . . . that it turns to wisdom . . . to bless the adversity in your life . . . that it initiates you into greatness . . . and that you see the hidden meaning behind all things . . . to bless your soul . . . that it wake you up from this dream . . . and to bless the divine in you . . . that it moves in you . . . that it moves through you . . . and that it moves all around you . . . that it shows cause in your life. . . .

  And finally . . . I want you to give thanks for a new life before it’s made manifest . . . so that your body, as the unconscious mind, begins to experience that future now. . . . For the emotional signature of gratitude means the event has already happened. . . . For gratitude is . . . the ultimate state of receivership. . . .

  And just memorize this feeling . . . bring your awareness . . . back to a new body . . . to a new environment . . . and to a whole new time . . . and when you are ready, you can open your eyes.

  AFTERWORD

  Becoming Supernatural

  Some critics may categorize this body of work as faith healing. I’m actually fine with that accusation at this point in my life, because what is faith but when we believe in thought more than anything else? Isn’t it when we accept a thought—independent of the conditions in our environment—and then surrender to the outcome to such a degree that we live as if our prayers were already answered? Sounds like a formula for the placebo. We’ve always been the placebo.

  Maybe it’s not so important that we pray rigorously every day to have our prayers answered, but that we instead get up from our meditations as if our prayers have already been answered. If we accomplish this daily, we are at a level of mind where we’re truly living in the unknown and expecting the unexpected. And this is when the mysterious knocks on our door.

  The placebo response is about being healed by thought alone. Thought by itself, however, is unmanifested emotion. Once we embrace that thought emotionally, it begins to become real—that is, it becomes reality. A thought without an emotional signature is void of experience, and thus it is latent, waiting to be made known from the unknown. As we initiate a thought into an experience and then into wisdom, we are evolving as human beings.

  When you look into the mirror, you see your reflection and know that whom you are seeing is the physical you. But how do the true self, the ego, and the soul see themselves? Your life is a mirror image of your mind, your consciousness, and who you really are.

  There are no schools of ancient spiritual wisdom sitting high on mountaintops in the Himalayas waiting to initiate us into becoming mystics and saints. Our lives are our initiation into greatness. Maybe you and I should see life as an opportunity to reach greater and greater levels of self so that we can overcome our own limitations with more expanded levels of consciousness. That’s how a pragmatist, instead of a victim, sees it.

  To abandon the familiar ways in which we’ve grown accustomed to thinking about life in order to embrace new paradigms will feel unnatural in the beginning. Frankly, it takes effort—and it’s uncomfortable. Why? Because when we change, we no longer feel like ourselves. My definition of genius, then, is to be uncomfortable and to be okay with being uncomfortable.

  How many times in history have admirable individuals who struggled against outdated beliefs, living outside of their comfort zones, been considered heretics and fools, only to later emerge as geniuses, saints, or masters? In time, they became supernatural.

  But how do you and I become supernatural? We have to begin to do what’s unnatural—that is, to give in the midst of crisis, when everyone is feeling lack and poverty; to love when everyone is angry and judging others; to demonstrate courage and peace when everyone else is in fear; to show kindness when others are displaying hostility and aggression; to surrender to possibility when the rest of the world is aggressively pushing to be first, trying to control outcomes, and fiercely competing in an endless drive to get to the top; to knowingly smile in the face of adversity; and to cultivate the feeling of wholeness when we’re diagnosed as sick.

  It seems so unnatural to make these types of choices in the midst of such conditions, but if we repeatedly succeed, in time we’ll transcend the norm—and we, too, become supernatural. And most important, by your being supernatural, you give others permission to do the same. Mirror neurons fire when we observe someone else performing an action. Our neurons mirror the neurons of that other person, as though we were performing the same action. For example, when you see a professional dancer dancing the salsa, you will dance the salsa better than you did before. If you watch Serena Williams hit a tennis ball, you will hit the ball bett
er than you did before. If you observe someone leading a community with love and compassion, you’ll lead in your life in the same way. And if you witness someone self-healing from a disease by changing his or her thought processes, you’ll be more prone to do the same.

  It’s my hope that after reading this book, you’ll realize that the ultimate belief is the belief in yourself and in the field of infinite possibilities—and when you merge the belief in yourself as a subjective consciousness with your belief in an objective consciousness, then you’re balancing intention and surrender. It’s tricky, though. If you overintend (that’s called “trying”), you’ll get in your own way and always fall short of your vision. If you oversurrender, you’ll become too lazy, apathetic, and uninspired. But if you combine a clear intention with an uncompromising trust in possibility, then you’ll step into the unknown, and that’s when the supernatural starts to unfold. I think that you and I are at our best when we’re in this state of being.

  When these two states merge, I believe that we drink from a deeper well. And when wholeness, self-satisfaction, and self-love truly come from within, because you’ve ventured beyond what you believed was possible and you overcame your own self-imposed limitations, that’s when the uncommon occurs. To be happy with yourself in the present moment while maintaining a dream of your future is a grand recipe for manifestation.

  When you feel so whole that you no longer care whether “it” will happen, that’s when amazing things materialize before your eyes. I’ve learned that being whole is the perfect state of creation. I’ve seen this time and time again in witnessing true healings in people all over the world. They feel so complete that they no longer want, no longer feel lack, and no longer try to do it themselves. They let go, and to their amazement, something greater than they are responds—and they laugh at the simplicity of the process.

  This book and my research are, hopefully, a beginning and not the end. I’ll certainly be the first to raise my hand to confess that I don’t know it all. My greatest joy, though, is when I’ve contributed to someone’s personal growth in some way. I’ve seen transformation on many faces, and I can say that independent of culture, race, or gender, we all look the same when we’re freed from the bonds of our own self-limiting beliefs.

  There’s a principle that I adore in biology called emergence. Have you ever seen a school of fish all breaking in the same direction at the same time? Or a flock of hundreds of birds in flight, all moving together as one consciousness—as one mind? When you look at this phenomenon, you might think that all the individuals in the group are following one leader who’s showing the way. It appears that the synchronistic movements of hundreds or even thousands of individual organisms all doing the same thing at the same time is a top-down phenomenon. But that’s not what’s really happening.

  It turns out that this level of unity takes place as a bottom-up phenomenon. The group actually has no leader; everyone is leading. They’re all part of the same collective consciousness, doing the same thing at the same time. It’s as if the whole is connected in a field of information beyond space and time. One community is presenting as one mind. One organism is created from each individual becoming one. There’s power in numbers.

  We’ve been programmed and conditioned into a subconscious belief that if we lead with too much passion and change the world, we’ll surely be assassinated. Most great leaders who’ve altered the course of history with a profound message “get it” in the end. Whether we’re talking about Martin Luther King, Jr.; Mahatma Gandhi; John Lennon; Joan of Arc; William Wallace; Jesus of Nazareth; or Abraham Lincoln, an unconscious stigma exists that suggests that all visionary leaders must give their lives for the truth. But maybe we’ve finally arrived at the time in history when it’s more important to live for the truth than to die for it.

  If hundreds, thousands, or even millions of human beings embrace a new consciousness based on possibility; align their actions with their intentions; and live by greater universal laws of love, kindness, and compassion, a new consciousness will emerge—and we’ll experience true oneness. Then, we might just have too many leaders to remove.

  So if, on a daily basis, you’re committed to demonstrating your personal best and you’re overcoming selfish states of mind driven by stress hormones—and I’m doing the same—then together, we’re changing the world by changing ourselves. And if enough of us are tempering ourselves into more whole human beings, then as the individual communities we live in emerge around the world, they’ll eventually consume the present mind-set of reality based on fear, competition, lack, hostility, greed, and deception. In time, the old will be completely consumed by the new. A particular concern of mine is that we now live in a world where scientific research is commingled with self-interest and often influenced by profits, so I question whether we’re being told the truth about the way things really are. It’s up to us, then, to discover the truth for ourselves.

  Imagine a world inhabited by billions of people, just like a school of fish, living as one—where everyone is embracing similar uplifting thoughts connected to unlimited possibility, and these thoughts allow people to make more inspired choices, demonstrate more altruistic behaviors, and create more enlightening experiences. People would then no longer be living by the survival-based emotions we’re so familiar with now: feeling more like matter than energy, separate from possibility. Instead, they’d be living by more expanded, selfless, heartfelt emotions—feeling more like energy than matter, connected to something greater.

  If we could do this, then an entirely different world would emerge, and we would be living by a new credo based on the open heart. That’s what I see when I close my eyes to meditate.

  — Dr. Joe Dispenza

  APPENDIX

  Script of the Changing Beliefs and Perceptions Meditation

  If you want to make your own guided-meditation recording, instead of purchasing one of the prerecorded audio CDs or MP3 versions from my website, feel free to record yourself reading one of the following two scripts. The first script is for the hour-long meditation, which involves changing two beliefs or perceptions, and the second is a 45-minute meditation that involves changing just one belief or perception.

  If you are recording your own meditation, pause for a second or two at each set of ellipses, and pause for at least five full seconds between sentences. As you’ll see, I’ve added a note after the second part of each meditation, reminding you to include a period of silence on your recording so that you can linger in the unknown before you begin the last part of the meditation, where you’ll change either one or two beliefs or perceptions.

  Hour-long Version of Meditation (changing two beliefs and perceptions)

  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 temples . . . 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?

  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. . . .