Use your power of making choices

The human body-mind is part of a conscious thinking field of intelligence. In every second of our existence, the body-mind exchanges energy and information with the universe and this happens on a subconscious level. The average person thinks about sixty thousand thoughts a day. This is not surprising. But it's a little disconcerting that 95% of the thoughts we have today are the same ones we had yesterday. Every day we subconsciously create the same energy patterns that give rise to the same physical expressions of the body.

Imagine that you could change the bricks of a building once a year, but through force of habit or because you didn't know any better, you were stuck with the notion that there was only one way to create the building. So you'd put the bricks in the same places year after year and you'd get the same kind of building. So if you have the notion that the body is supposed to weaken, age, or become ill with the passing of time, this notion is translated into those energy patterns.

Every interpretation we make in every moment has an effect on the energy patterns of our body. And we can change our interpretations because we made them in the first place. We have the power to make choices. But most people are victims of societal thinking; they are under the hypnosis of social conditioning. Our senses take in less than one billionth of the stimuli available to us, and our social conditioning reinforces what we think is possible. We have to wake up and go beyond social conditioning to a deeper level. How can we do this? By witnessing the whole process and becoming conscious of it. Then we realise that there are choices.

Imagine your nervous system is the hardware, and all the chemical changes that occur in your body are the software. The software changes according to your thoughts, feelings, interpretations, and desires. But there is a programmer. Who is the programmer? The programmer is the inner self, the silent witness, the ever-present awareness that witnesses everything. And when you get in touch with the silent witness, this gives you the ability to rewrite the program.

by Deepak Chopra