Monsters Under the Bed: Real or Imagined…Send Them Packing!
by Marc Gilson, Director of Client Services, Centerpointe Research Institute
When I was four years old, I was convinced that there was a monster living under my bed.
I didn’t know exactly what he looked like or what he sounded like. But I just knew he was there, quietly lurking right beneath me while I tried to sleep. I knew he would reach out with a hairy claw and grab me if I carelessly allowed my leg to dangle off the edge of the mattress. I was careful to stay completely on the bed and under the covers to avoid such a dreadful fate.
Never mind that I had so many toys stuffed under my bed that no monster of any intimidating size could possibly fit there. Nor did it matter that during the day I would frequently retrieve a toy without once confronting a monster. And so what if my mother, the human being I have always trusted the most, assured me time and again that no monster lived under my bed (she even checked!)?
In spite of all that, I believed the monster was there.
The Power of Perception
So what was I afraid of? There was no concrete evidence of a monster. I had no direct experience of anything monster-like under my bed. In fact, there was a lot of evidence to show that there simply was no monster there at all.
Yet the fear was real.
Why was I afraid of nothing? It turns out that my fear was rooted, not in a monster, but in the perception of one. My belief in the monster was not supported by experience or evidence and was therefore flawed. But you could not have explained this to four-year-old me. This might seem like a quaint story from childhood. But many of us still worry needlessly on monsters that aren’t really there.
Often, what’s important in our lives has nothing to do with what really “is” but rather what we believe to be. We’ve all heard the saying, “We create our own reality.” And we do that based on our perceptions of reality.
But how often does it really occur to us that our perceptions of reality may not actually reflect the truth?
Fears Founded on False Perceptions
I’m not just talking about monsters here. What about your perceptions of your own reality? How much suffering are you enduring at the hands of monsters that aren’t really there?
How much of what you believe is possible in your life is limited by fears founded on false perceptions?
Perhaps you want to be financially successful but haven’t managed to achieve that. Why? Is there a monster under your bed? Is the monster a fear of failure? Fear of risk? Or perhaps even a fear of the changes success would have on your life?
Does the dream of having a fulfilling relationship elude you? Is there a monster lurking somewhere in your life that causes you to fear intimacy? Do you fear feeling vulnerable, or being hurt by someone you care about?
Perhaps you know that these fears aren’t rooted in reality.
You know better than to believe in them. Yet the fears keep you from realizing your dreams. The fears are every bit as powerful as the monsters they represent. They concretize in your mind as reality, even though they’re really just fear-based perceptions.
To get to what’s real in life, we have to simultaneously face and let go of our fear. Sounds tough. But it can be done.
Awakening to “Reality”
As people practice meditation, including the Holosync Solution program, they often awaken to the fact that much of their lives has been structured around these fear-based perceptions, and that much of their sense of self-worth, success, and satisfaction has been hindered by these perceptions.
In his landmark book, The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz speaks of the drive we have to search-out the truth and get in touch with something we can call, with certainty, “reality.”
“All of humanity is searching for truth, justice, and beauty. We are on an eternal search for the truth because we only believe in the lies we have stored in our mind.”
When you’re engaged in a deep meditation program it’s possible to get in direct contact with these “lies” Ruiz mentions. The problem is that we really don’t want to discover that the internal protocol–the programming inside our own minds–is untrue.
Although truth can set us free, coming to terms with the fact that what we thought was the truth simply isn’t true at all can shake our sense of Self. No one wants to discover that the core elements of their world view are rooted in false, fear-based perceptions. That’s why we inadvertently keep those false monsters alive and at work in our minds…
…preying on our sense of self-worth, our peace, and our happiness.
So we resist the very process that would lift the veil of illusion and show us what we claim to seek. In other words, we hide from monsters that aren’t really there.
Another reason we hide from our fears is that we don’t feel equipped to deal with them. We feel stuck, because even though we know we’re being held hostage by our own fears, we don’t always have the courage to face them.
Finding the Tools to Face Your Fears
So how do we go about equipping ourselves to face our fears? One way is to raise our threshold for what makes us feel fearful. That means challenging the status quo in terms of how we view life and the world around us. It also means being willing to risk the loss of our fear-based perceptions in exchange for a chance at true fulfillment.
Until we are able to recognize, accept, heal, and release our fears…
…a division will remain between the kind of life we wish to live, and the life we feel unhappily tethered-to. Deep meditation, especially when done using a powerful neural driver like Holosync®, can provide us with an opportunity to heal these fears.
Send the Fear Monsters Packing
Fear-based perceptions often line the path of personal growth work. But once we deal directly with the fear, the perceptions transform themselves from hideous monsters into gentler creatures. What it takes is an open-minded willingness to be in the same emotional and mental space with our monsters.
Invite them in. Offer them a seat. No self-respecting monster will stay long. More importantly, remember that these monsters are nothing other than fear-based perceptions on their way out of your life.
Carl Jung said, “We do not become enlightened by imagining figures of light but by making the darkness conscious.” We are often content to live our lives in avoidance or denial of our fears, not realizing that the key to our own advancement, as individuals and as humanity…
…is in recognizing, engaging, and releasing our fears.
Holosync® is a perfect tool for dealing with fear-based perceptions and “making the darkness conscious.” Beyond simply getting you in touch with them, Holosync® also drives up your threshold for finding the strength to accept and release them as well.
We all have some monsters under the bed. But by eliminating false, fear-based perceptions we can experience a true liberation of our spirit and an empowerment of our will…
…a will no longer stifled and kept hidden under the covers by monsters that aren’t really there.
About Centerpointe Research institute
Centerpointe Research Institute was founded by the late Bill Harris in 1989. The Institute produces as it’s flagship a product called ‘Holosync®,’ an audio program formulated to recreate the brain wave patterns of experienced meditators. If you use this program daily, you can achieve the same results in 8 times the time it takes for traditional meditation.
If you would like to get a free e-book called ‘The New Science Of Super Awareness’ by Bill Harris, please visit this web site.
When you sign up, you will also be able to get the audiobook version for free, as well as a free demo of Holosync®.