Reality creation through thinking: that's what this is about, compared with everything the body delivers as signals. Two different systems!
The longer I think about it, the more fascinating I find the question:
What influence do hormones really have on my reality creation?
Of course, there are hormones.
Of course, there are physical states.
Of course, there are nerve signals, exhaustion, hunger, pain, adrenaline, cortisol and all the other things that happen in this incredible human organism.
But do these things create my psychological reality?
For me, this is the crucial question.
Take pain.
If pain automatically determined our experience, how could people undergo medical or dental procedures under hypnosis with a markedly altered perception of pain? How could self-hypnosis work at all?
Hypnosis is an extreme example, I know! But even without hypnosis, psychological experience is always different from person to person and from moment to moment.
Obviously, the signal isn't the whole story.
There may be a physical signal. Nerves fire. My brain processes something. Something hurts.
But then something completely different comes in:
What do I make of it?
Maybe nothing.
Maybe I think: Ouch.
End of story.
Or, within seconds, I build an entire universe out of this one signal:
Shit. What is this? What if it gets worse? Hopefully it's nothing serious. Why does this have to happen to me, of all people? I can't stand this. What if it never goes away?
And suddenly I don't just have pain.
I have created a world.
A reality.
My little universe.
For me, this is the huge difference between pain and suffering.
Pain is a physical sensation. A signal. Something happens in my body and is processed by my nervous system.
Suffering, on the other hand, is experience.
And this experience is not simply identical to the signal.
It arises from what comes alive in my thinking.
This is exactly where it gets really exciting for me.
Because the same is true for hormones.
Hormones can change something physically. They can change activation, tiredness, hunger, alertness, sensitivity, attention, and maybe even influence which thoughts offer themselves more easily. Maybe!
But a hormone can't think for me.
It can't decide which thought becomes truth for me.
It can't give my thinking meaning on its own.
Meaning arises in my own process of creating reality.
And that is exactly where an incredible freedom lies for me.
Out of something that didn't exist before, I create an experienced world.
A thought comes up.
I give it meaning and power.
Consciousness brings it to life.
And suddenly I'm standing in the middle of a universe that didn't even exist seconds before.
This is my little quantum field.
Not in the physical sense of a quantum field, but as an image for this incredible creative space in which a whole experienced world can suddenly arise out of nothing.
Master of my Universe.
Not because I control my body.
Not because I can stop hormones from being released.
Not because I can decide whether my nerves send pain signals.
But because none of this determines which psychological world I create from it.
That, for me, is the real power.
I can give a thought power.
And the moment I do, a whole universe can arise from it.
Fear. Hope. Catastrophe. Freedom. Despair. Possibility.
All from something that didn't exist a moment before.
And maybe that's why freedom isn't about having no more pain, no hormones and no intense physical sensations.
Maybe freedom lies in seeing more and more clearly:
The signal is a signal.
The world I create from it is my creation!
It is the universe I'm living in right now.
My personal experience of reality.