by Hubert Winston
December 24, 1996. While channel surfing the television at my parents’ place, I happened upon the Montel Williams talk show. The featured guest was a hypnotist, and by the time I tuned in, six or seven members of the audience were already hypnotized and acting out their particular hypnotic suggestions.
One man was wandering through the studio empty-handed, believing he was shaving. Periodically he would ask the hypnotist for another Band Aid to cover a spot on his face where he believed he had just cut himself. By the end of the show his face was covered with brightly-colored strips. Another man hopped around the stage believing he was a kangaroo anytime a certain music was played. An attractive woman became Madonna and serenaded one of the men when her music cue came on. Another woman shouted, “Abandon ship!” anytime Montel slapped his knee, and a third man became a policeman in a dangerous situation when music from “Mission Impossible” was played.
It took only a few minutes for me to realize what a magnificent demonstration of the power of transparent beliefs the group was giving. At the end of that segment of the show, each of the participants was asked to relate how long they had been on stage (approximately forty minutes) and what they remembered. Every one of the group believed only a few minutes had passed, and only one of the men had a vague recollection of what they had been doing. The group uniformly laughed, and they were amazed when a video of their antics was played back to them.
The transparent beliefs that most of us create are similar to the ones the show participants were given: they cause us to act and perceive in ways we don’t realize, and we’re usually not aware when we have them. Instead of a hypnotist, some other agent—quite often ourselves—plants the beliefs, and from then on we live through them until some other factor causes us to see them or suspect that they’re there.
The Transparent Belief Exercise (see next page) in Resurfacing is an excellent tool to uncover and bring to light our transparent beliefs. Some of the tools in Section III of the Avatar Course are quite effective at eliminating them.Hubert Winston, Raleigh, N.C.
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