Manipulation of the Mind

Empowerment is the stepping away from the manipulation of the mind.

I was pretty small, a tiny kid in fact, when I figured out that my mind and the way I perceived the world was different to the way other people saw the world.

This included both other children as well as adults. But when it came to children, at the time, most of them did have an expanded sense of awareness. They did see more of the world, experience, and subtle worlds around us. They saw more than adults did. 

It occurred to us that all those adults had been children at some point, and we wondered, endlessly, how it happened that they had lost their minds.

I distinctly remember my brother, cousins and I sitting on the red tiles of the back patio of our house in Valparaiso, Chile, and swearing, a blood oath in fact, that we would not forget, and that we would not become like all the adults around us whose minds and awareness were small and crazy.

As the years went by, I noticed first my brother, who is about 4 or 5 years older than me, and then my cousins, who were closer to my age, slowly and surely becoming dumb in their senses, and narrow in their thoughts.

When I would remind them of their oath, they would look at me like I was crazy.

As an adult, I have not seen this level of awareness in children. Mostly, they are interested in playing with their devices, think they are cleverer than their parents, are self absorbed, and boring.

Were my cousins and brother altered in their mind and awareness due to my presence? Possibly. There is no way to find out. 

As an adult I am fully conscious of the fact that other adults are indeed affected by my presence when it comes to awareness. But only in a very proactive way. A person can be with me for many years and zero change in consciousness will happen. A person can be with me for a day and their awareness field expands for the rest of their life.

This knowledge led to the observation that all people manipulate their own minds all the time. And much of that manipulation is a free will choice to being manipulated by others on their behalf. In other words, allowing others, or inner programs placed there by external forces, to dictate what they think, believe, and experience in the world.

In this essay I explore some impinging moments of manipulation of narratives, authority, and control of perception which may expand the understanding of how it all functions.

Manipulation

Manipulation means “to handle”. The dictionary definition is: 

manipulate
mə-nĭp′yə-lāt″
transitive verb

1. To move, arrange, operate, or control by the hands or another body part or by mechanical means, especially in a skillful manner: synonym: handle.

2. To influence or manage shrewdly or deviously.

3. To tamper with or falsify for personal gain.

Mind is used in this article to mean the stream, comprehension and awareness of data inputs. Here is a good definition that fits the word as I am using it:

mind

1. the element or complex of elements in an individual that feels, perceives, thinks, wills, and especially reasons.

2. the conscious mental events and capabilities in an organism

3. the organized conscious and unconscious adaptive mental activity of an organism

Manipulation of the mind underlines who is in control of reality for the target person, often created and enhanced through a series of feedback loops.

We can manage and create those feedback loops, or we can let others do it for us.

When I was 14 and in school in Spain, one of the teachers decided to do a social experiment that was doing the rounds in schools at the time. 

The experiment went something like this:

1. Separate two children from the class. While the children are not in the room, the other children are told to treat child A as though they are the most clever and intelligent person in the school. While child B is treated as though they are the least clever or intelligent person there.

2. The teacher has chosen the kid with the highest grades and the one with the lowest grades for the experiment, and their “roles” are socially reversed. 

3. After less than an hour, the experiment has yielded results. The kid with the lowest grades but who is being treated like they are the best student, suddenly starts knowing the material, answers the questions on a test correctly and helps other students. The kid with the good grades, fails their test, becomes sad, and unable to answer simple questions.

As a class of students, we thought the experiment was amazing. The teacher then told us we had to treat everyone like they were the best student, and our class would succeed. The top student, the one with a history of top grades, left the school the next day, never to return.

The children in the class discussed what had happened and promised each other that we would never agree to such a thing again. 

As a matter of interest, the kid who had bad grades did not drop their new excellent grades. Her life changed for the better and was very happy about the experiment.

This experiment demonstrated how the way in which others perceive us can have a massive influence in how we live that life and how we experience it.

At the same time, it is our own body language, the way we dress, walk, sit, and interact with others that dictates how others treat us. In a way it is like a never ending circle or behavior and feedback.

How others treat or see us doesn’t have to dictate our perception of reality if we keep control of the narrative.

As a kid I loved science. When I was 16, I was living in England and went to school there. Our physics teacher was promoted to Assistant Principal, and the school hired a new Physics teacher. I was very excited to see that the new teacher was a woman, for about an hour.

At the end of the first class with this woman, I had a question about one of the formulas she had lectured us about. I went to her and asked her if she could explain one of the sections of the formula that didn’t make sense to me. She turned to me and said that I shouldn’t worry about not understanding Physics because I was a girl and girls didn’t have a mind for it. To do my best and not to expect to do as well as the boys. Not to worry at all as Physics would never make sense to me.

I stood there in absolute shock. 

After that, although I attended her class, I did not bother to ask her any questions. And even though I completed all my homework, when it was time to hand it in, I would say I didn’t do it. Basically, I did not want anything to do with this woman.

This continued for two years. At the end of the second year, we were given homework that none of the kids were expected to successfully complete. She set a problem that had taken physicists decades to formulate.

The next day, she took her book and copied the solution on the blackboard. I had the answer in my homework book. It was the same as the blackboard. She giggled at the class and asked them who had solved the problem. 

I looked around and no one had put their hands up, but me. I quickly put my hand down, remembering that I had a game going that said “Inelia doesn’t do homework and doesn’t understand Physics and the teacher is a pathetic loser who doesn’t deserve my engagement.”

She saw me, though. And asked to see my homework. 

Three things happened.

1. She saw it and immediately accused me of cheating. She said I must have a physics book at home and demanded I admit it and give her the title.

2. She sent me to the Principal’s office with a prefect and a note telling him I had cheated.

3. She kept my homework book.

At the Principal’s office, I was told to wait for the bell. After the bell, the teacher, the Principal and the Assistant Principal arrived to talk to me.

The woman, the teacher, was furious. For some reason I really, really triggered her. Which was understandable because I had spent two years trolling her at every opportunity. You see, part of my narrative was that this woman was a loser and failure as a teacher, and a living embarrassment to women everywhere. A narrative I would express in very clever ways during every class she gave.

This was her moment of revenge.

The Principal could see the teacher was triggered and as she said to him that there was no way I was able to figure out the formula myself because I was not good at physics, unable to do any of the tests or homework, ever, and was probably as dumb in all other classes too. I smiled and told her I got straight A’s in Chemistry and Mathematics.  

She demanded to see the Chemistry teacher, who she was friends with.

The teacher arrived and without knowing what was happening, when they showed him my homework and asked him if he thought I had come up with the solution myself, he said, “oh yes. Absolutely. This is her work. She’s always doing stuff like this in Chemistry.”

It was not the answer the Physics teacher was expecting. At which point, the Principal, who I could see was trying to give the Physics teacher an out, asked me if I would be willing to solve a physics problem  in front of them, without any books for reference.

I agreed.

They gave me a nice complex formula, which I proceeded to solve while talking through my mental process. The end result was nearly correct. I had two figures turned around, which gave me the wrong answer, but the entire process was correct. 

The Physics teacher looked at me and said, “oh, don’t worry about that bit, it often happens. Here is something you can remember next time so that it doesn’t happen again.” And she actually taught me something.

All was well, so I asked for my homework notepad back. She said she wanted to look at it and the Principal agreed she could keep it overnight.

The next day she called me to her desk and went through two years of homework which was marked as undone in her ledger. Most now had A’s. It really pissed me off.

She asked me why I had done that. Why had I pretended not to do homework and had never shown any indication that I was understanding the material. Why had I been sarcastic, rude and mentally tortured her for two years.

I reminded her of our little conversation that first day when I had come to her for a further explanation of a formula, and what she had told me.

She looked at me and nodded. She then asked if I could change my attitude toward her and treat her in a better way. I told her I would as long as she treated the other two girls left in the class, and me, with respect. 

You see, most of the girls who had been mistreated, invalidated and discouraged by her had left the class, which was an elective, except for the two others who planned on a science based University career and could not avoid her. The other girls had mostly moved out of the science department, which this teacher saw as proof of her belief that girls didn’t have a mind for science. It was a self validating circle.

We shook on it.

Do we control what we perceive or is the world solid and equal to all?

“Who controls narrative, controls the world.” “Who controls perception, controls the world.” “Those who have the perception of controlling their own lives, succeed.”

These are sentences I have heard in my life. To me, they are accurate. Let’s start with the first one.

“Who controls narrative, controls the world.”

Recently I wrote an article about narratives. In fact I have written about narratives a few times already. 

A “narrative” is the telling of a story and it doesn’t matter whether that story is true or not, it is still a narrative.

The word “authority” comes from the word “author”. When we give authority to other people, they become the author of our reality and our lives. In the story above, the school one with the Physics teacher, if I had given that woman authority, or seen her as an authority, I would not have stayed in her class and would have dropped science from my education. She would have been allowed to write the narrative of my life.

Instead, I kept my own authority and created a new one. I would tell the story within the class of a teacher who was incompetent and useless. She could sense and see that I was undermining her in every class, but she could not put her finger on it, could not name it or punish me for it. So, when she saw something she thought could get me in deep trouble and out of her class, she ran with it. It took her over, actually. She was completely out of control. She tried to take the authority in the class back. She tried to take her narrative back.

I doubt that she became more intelligent in her treatment of girls in the future, but at least for the three girls left in that class, including me, she was decent, open and civilized for the rest of the year.

For the two other girls in that class, whom I had a great time telling the whole story, the narrative, of what had transpired after I was sent to the Principal’s office, it was life changing. Their perception of themselves and the teacher changed forever. They realized that they were good at Physics and that the only reason they were struggling was because the teacher was undermining them and not helping them understand the material.

Let’s check the next one, “perception”.

“Who controls perception, controls the world”

Most people have heard of Plato's Allegory of the Cave. But in case you haven’t I will give a short summary of it:

In his allegory, Plato describes a group of prisoners who have lived chained in a cave for all of their lives and the only thing they can see is a blank wall in front of them.

People behind them project shadows on the wall. These shadows are the only thing the prisoners see. One day a prisoner escapes the chains and goes outside into the real world. He sees that the world he perceived while chained was false and limited. He goes back to the cave and tries to explain to the other prisoners about what he saw and experienced, telling them that the wall and shadows were not the real world.

They don’t believe him and think he has gone crazy.

Among many interpretations of what this allegory teaches and illustrates, is one that states that Plato wanted to illustrate how other people control the perception of the prisoners and therefore control what those prisoners think the real world is.

It is just a story, of course. Some believe the allegory doesn’t show external control of realty but that it represents what Plato experienced life was like for a philosopher who tried to explain the nature of reality to the uneducated masses. In this case, Plato would be the man who got free, saw the world and then came back and tried to explain that world to the others in the cave.

At this point, I want to tell you a little made up story, a narrative, imaginations of what may have inspired Plato to write such an exquisite and thought provoking allegory. Here goes:

Plato was a young and intelligent man who worked and exercised endless research and dialogue to try to figure out the reality of the world. 

One warm summer’s night, after tirelessly working on a question of extreme importance, he walked home. 

His mind was still busy and he felt the frustration of the resistance his thoughts were stimulating in his fellows minds and their belief systems while he walked through the dark streets of Athens.

As he turned the corner, he saw shadows of paper cutouts upon a large wall. In front of the wall, sat adults and children, all deeply engrossed in the story unfolding in front of them. He walked toward them and sat at the back, next to the shadow maker and his cut out figures. 

Plato smiled and for a few minutes he too became engrossed in the story being told. He laughed and gasped as the story enfolded. For those few minutes, he forgot all about his troubles, arguments, frustrations and life.

As the story finished, and the shadows bowed, and the fire was put out, making the wall into just a wall, he looked around and saw the people chatting and still deeply savoring the experience they had just had.

In that moment he came back to reality and his life, his thoughts, his frustrations and reality crashed into him.

In that moment, he saw that he was different to all these people, some of whom were convinced that the story that had been told was real. Or at least talking about it like it was indeed real and not just a bunch of shadows on the wall.

He wondered, as he saw the audience walk away, how much of the world he was experiencing was simply shadows projected by some other hand onto a wall he called reality. And how fast he had replaced it, albeit for a few minutes, with a simpler, black and white, two dimensional reality. And how much simpler, easier and less stressful that two dimensional world had felt when he was in it.

He bought a couple of roasted chestnuts from a vendor who was packing away for the night, and walked the rest of the way home filled with the inspiration of explaining what he had just experienced to all those who would listen.

At this moment in time there is no blank wall with shadows on it but a computer screen in front of you. Or a television on a wall in most of the homes in the Western world showing two dimensional shadows filled with fear, helplessness and codependent narratives.

Whomever controls what is on that computer or television screen (or phone screen), controls your daily perception of the world.

You can turn your television off, and many people who have woken up to the mechanizations of the power over others leaders, have done so already. But you are reading this on a screen, which means that you are still perceiving as dictated and allowed by The Man. Or are you?

Well, actually, not all the way.

You see, my writings, videos, classes, websites, and face are heavily shadowbanned by The Man. And you found my essays anyway.

The fact that you are reading these words means that you are in control of your perception. Partly at least. And therefore, because you control your perception, you control your world.

There is a bloody battle for the perception of the masses right now. We are not part of that battle, but we need to be aware of it so that we don’t fall prey to it.

Know that big money is being paid to control your perception.

Let’s look at the next statement, which to me is very interesting indeed:

“Those who have the perception of controlling their own lives, succeed.”

This sentence is very interesting because it only expresses part of the truth. However, the result is indeed accurate.

Let me explain what I mean by “part of the truth”,  by changing the sentence a bit further: “those who perceive that they are in control of their lives, even if they are not, succeed.”

It is super fascinating, really.

When a person feels that they have no control of their lives, that everything they do is because they have to, they have no choice, and are forced to do it, they tend to be sheep-like. Those people often complain and expect the government or other people in their environment to fix their lives. They also blame others for everything, never taking responsibility for their lot.

A fast and effective tool to step out of sheepiness is to change one’s vocabulary and be very diligent about it. The way we change it is very simple. Whenever we say the words, “I have to”, we correct ourselves and say “I chose to” instead.

“I can’t go to the beach because I have to go to work,” then becomes, “I choose to go to work instead of going to the beach.” At this point you can give your reasons of why you choose to do it, such as, “because I love having a nice house for me and my family.”

Because, you see, everything we do is done because we choose to. Nothing is actually done because we have to. 

Which means we are naturally wired for success and everything else is bs (belief systems) made up of shadows on a wall.

I hope you enjoyed this essay and choose to share it on all your platforms. 

When I thought about Plato’s allegory, and it went on to the bit when the man who had gotten free went back to the cave and tried to tell people what he had seen without success, I couldn’t help but think that all he needed to do was to take some wood, make a fire, cut out some shapes and tell them what reality was using a reality they already understood and believed in. He could have told them about the world using shadows on the wall.

And with that final woo for thought, I leave you for now.