By George Thompson, MD

Remember the holidays when you were a kid? My favorites were Christmas and Easter. My family would go to church, but back then the big thrill was in opening presents and hunting for colored eggs. Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny were where it was at. They brought a wonderful, innocent feeling of goodness with potential, warmth and caring.

I was about six years old when I found out that Santa Claus wasn’t real. I remember standing in front of my house when a big kid from down the street filled me in on the whole trick. I can still feel the let down, a mild nausea like something precious had died. I created the belief that some things are too good to be true. So in 1993 when my best childhood friend told me about an amazing course he had taken (Avatar) I was already on guard.

Even though I had the highest love and respect for my friend, I brushed off his recommendation with a “that’s nice” kind of attitude. I had been to medical school and trained in a prestigious psychiatry program. He was an artist. I knew that I knew more. I was the big kid and he believed in Santa Claus.

My sister Teal wasn’t so puffed up, so when he talked to her, she signed up for the course right away. And she told me the same thing he did, “It’s a powerful exploration – right up your alley.” Sad to say, I brushed her off too. I knew I was an expert in human behavior and persuaded myself that she was a novice.

Five years passed and I felt even more like an expert. I was now the director of the psychiatry program I trained in. I was succeeding in my career, was married and had a nice house. And yet I felt empty.

By then my sister was having a blast: getting her songs on TV, doing voice-overs for French documentaries, living in a really cool place. Her life was magical.

Comparing her adventure to my emptiness finally made me humble enough to relax my expert identity – at least for a few minutes. So I called and asked her for her secret. As it turns out, it wasn’t a secret. She said, “It’s that Avatar course I have been telling you about for the last 5 years.” Oops!
I had more than 10 years of training in why it is difficult for people to change. Biological and psychological theories that said that changing your attitudes takes time and hard work and even then might still not be possible. I had evidence from my work with my patients and from the four years I spent on my analyst’s couch. Changing was hard.

But my sister’s experience went against that grain. She had changed quickly and was having fun doing it. I listened to Harry Palmer describe his course on the West Coast tour tape, and I heard something in Harry’s voice that I had never encountered. He had a quiet confidence that didn’t boast or convince. He spoke simply of his experience from a sense of KNOWING. Listen to this tape and see if you can hear it for yourself.
Some switch must have gone off in my brain, because I couldn’t wait to get to Avatar.

The Avatar course brought me to a new place, opened a new awareness. I could change my sense of “This is how I am. This is how the world is.” And with each new “This is…”, I felt the same KNOWING that I had noticed in Harry. I created the truths that I experienced. And I could discreate them.

Now I am a pretty scientific guy. I like facts. I like numbers. I tell my friends interesting but useless trivia about the world. I make charts for fun. But nothing in my scientific training had prepared me for this capacity to KNOW which I learned in about a week. I could change what I knew to be true in seconds. And I could know something else to be true a few minutes later. With the right tools, we have the ability to experience whatever we want to experience.

Sometimes I take a few minutes in the Avatar course room and just feel what is happening there. I’ll say to my wife AnnMarie Glodich, who is a PhD therapist, “How long do you think it would take for people to get the results they are getting here if they were to come to our office?” We both just shake our heads and usually say, “Five to ten years, if they ever got there at all.” This is why I closed three-fourths of my medical practice to make time to teach Avatar.

Now I feel like I should say that therapy and medications are still recommended for medical and psychiatric disorders. Go see a doctor. But if you are like I was, searching for something more from life, Avatar will give you answers to questions you didn’t even know you were asking.

A few people I talk to worry that doing Avatar is like believing in the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus. They can feel how Avatar connects them with the majesty of their potential, but they don’t want some big kid to come along and tell them it was all a trick. I think more people would do Avatar if I told them that it’s a pretty good program and that they could use the tools to get some changes within a year or two. That would be more believable.

But here’s the deal. There are worlds waiting to be explored within you if you have the courage to look. Feel inside to see if you are more than you have been thinking. Then sign up for the next available Avatar Course wherever it is. Discover the grandeur of who you really are.

George Thompson, MD, Lawrence, Kansas

 

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