We have seen that the key to changing your Life Experience is to receive an idea that goes beyond your present understanding. Where can such an idea come from? There are two options:

The idea might come from a teaching that is already in the physical world, such as a book or this website. This can be very helpful, but such ideas are usually fairly general and it can be difficult to relate them specifically to your psychology and situation.
The idea might come from inside your mind, meaning it comes through your intuitive faculties from your higher self. Such ideas will usually be directly related to your personal psychology and thus more powerful in shifting your awareness.

Regardless of where an idea comes from, it must pass through your subconscious mind in order to reach your conscious mind. As it does so, it will be affected by your subconscious selves. We have seen that these selves are programmed to defend your current world view, so they form a perception filter that can either stop an idea from reaching your conscious mind or the filter can distort the idea.

In order to illustrate this, let us use an earlier analogy. If you put yellow glasses on, the sky will appear green. Obviously, this is not because the sky has changed color but because the glasses actually change the vibration of the light going through them. There is an interference pattern between the light rays and the lenses, and this changes the vibration of the light rays before they hit your retina. Your retina sees light of a certain color, but it is not the actual color of the sky.

Likewise, the subconscious selves can either block out or distort an idea coming through your subconscious mind. The idea will be distorted before it reaches your conscious mind, meaning that what you become conscious of is different ´from what actually came to you.

Subconscious selves and your world view

As we have discussed, there are subconscious selves that were created based on your world view. These selves see it as their task to defend your world view because if it was threatened, you could go into panic.

For example, if a Christian is presented with a new idea, the subconscious selves will very quickly compare it to the ideas in the subconscious database. There are three main divisions of ideas:

Ideas that are safe
Ideas that are dangerous
Ideas that are neutral

Obviously, for the Christian, the only safe ideas are those that conform to and validate the Christian beliefs. Such ideas will be let through to the conscious mind, but they obviously will not shift the person’s awareness. They will only affirm that he or she does not need to change awareness.

For the Christian, a very large number of ideas would be labeled as dangerous, and the subconscious selves would either block them from the conscious mind or distort them in such a way that they seem dangerous.

Take note that blocking an idea from the conscious mind does not necessarily mean it is completely blocked out. It is possible for us to read an idea in a book, yet the conscious mind doesn’t really notice the idea and doesn’t see what it means. In other words, the idea does not shift our world view, it sort of goes in one ear and out the other.

Neither safe ideas nor dangerous ideas will shift our world view. Only ideas that are considered neutral have the potential to do so. Yet people who very firmly believe in their world view will often have very few ideas that their subconscious selves consider neutral. Most ideas will be either safe or dangerous. Thus, for such people, there is little possibility that their world view will change. Obviously, this cannot lead to growth

The great projection game

The perception filter created by subconscious selves is about much more than your world view. The perception filter is made up of subconscious selves that are programmed to see the problem as being outside yourself.

As explained, a self does not have self-awareness. Thus, it cannot change itself, meaning it cannot see the need for you to change yourself. A specific self was created in response to a particular situation, and it is based on a particular belief about yourself in relation to the world.

As an example, consider that as a young child you were bullied by an older child. The situation causes you to create a subconscious self. The self is based on a feeling of being powerless to defend yourself, and it is based on the belief that the problem is out there because it was another person who hurt you.

While this is an understandable reaction for a child, the effect is that you now have a subconscious self that projects that the problem is outside yourself. This means the self cannot see that as an adult, you might change yourself so you are no longer powerless to deal with aggressive people. You no longer have to react to them as you did when you were a child.

There are many people who have created a self as children, and the self is projecting that they will feel safe only when other people or the world change. So they go through life projecting that it is other people that need to change. They either work actively on getting other people to change or they wait passively for this to miraculously happen.

The effect of this is that these people are projecting the the problem is “out there,” meaning they don’t have to change themselves. They are constantly seeking to change something outside themselves (something they have very little power to change) instead of seeking to change something inside themselves (something they as adults do have the power to change).

Such people are spending a lifetime seeking to change other people in an attempt to change how they feel inside themselves. This is because they are driven by subconscious selves:

The problem creator self projects that other people are causing the feeling of insecurity that people cannot live with.
The problem solver self projects that the only way to establish a sense of security is to change other people and that this will one day happen.

If you don’t want to spend the rest of your life seeking to change your mind by changing other people’s minds, you need to decide to change your approach. This of course is what HAP is all about.

The deeper effect of the perception filter

The deeper effect of such selves is that they form a perception filter that blocks out specific types of ideas, namely ideas about how you can change yourself. To the selves, this is either impossible, unnecessary or they simply do not see it as an option.

The reason for this is, as we have discussed, that a self has a survival instinct:

The self knows it was created by you and that you can at any time choose to uncreate it.
The self knows it needs energy from you in order to survive and expand its power. Thus, it wants you to continue giving it energy by feeling what you originally felt when the self was created.
The self knows it was created based on a certain belief. The self cannot see that it was an illusion, it simply knows it must defend it as if it was a matter of life and death for you to defend the belief. In reality, it is a matter of life and death for the self.

The effect of this is that your subconscious selves will project that you can solve outer problems without having to change yourself, without having to look at your own psychology. After all, the problem is “out there” so it can be solved without changing anything “in here.”

From a superficial viewpoint, it might seem as if the selves are simply seeking to help you feel secure. If your Christian or Materialist world view has so far helped you feel secure, why not defend it? Yet for the self, it is not a matter of defending any world view, because the selves cannot evaluate whether something is true. They can only act on their programming. So for the selves, it is not a matter of defending truth (as both Christians and Materialists tend to believe). It is only a matter of defending themselves.

The reason the selves project that the problem is out there is that they know their survival depends on you not seeing the selves. Even the selves that seemingly defend your world view are actually defending themselves. They simply know that if you came to see a limitation in your world view, it would threaten their own survival.

There are many people who have found a self-help or spiritual teaching that talks about raising your consciousness or changing your psychology. Yet they have allowed their subconscious selves to distort the message so that it seems like you can raise your consciousness without having to look at yourself.

For example, some self-help teachings recommend a specific practice, such as meditation. Many people have believed that if they study the outer teaching and understand it intellectually while faithfully meditating, then one day they will “automatically” reach a higher state of awareness.

HAP is based on the realization that there is no automatic or mechanical way to raise your awareness. Higher awareness is your natural state. What blocks it is your subconscious selves. These selves were created by you. In many cases, they were created without you being consciously aware of what you were doing. Yet the only way to become free of the selves is to take a conscious look so you see:

There is actually a self, a separate entity existing inside my subconscious mind.
This self is limiting me by taking over my reactions and distorting the ideas that could help me grow.
I no longer want this, I want to be free to choose a better reaction.
The self pulls me into a fear-based energy, and I no longer want to feel this way.
The self is based on a belief, but I am willing to see the limitations of this belief.

Yet how do you come to see this? This is the catch-22 of human psychology. In order to change your Life Experience, you have to come to see a subconscious self and dismiss it. Yet not only this self, but other selves as well will aggressively seek to prevent you from seeing the self. They will use whatever power they have over your conscious mind to keep the self below the levels of conscious awareness.

How do you break through this catch-22? By consciously making a decision to change the equation. You can consciously decide that you will no longer be on this automatic path to salvation. Instead, you are willing to consciously look at your own psychology and come to see a reactionary pattern that points to a subconscious self. HAP will of course give you many tools for accomplishing this.

Yet in order to really lock yourself on this path to higher awareness, you need to overcome two subconscious selves that will seek to block you from walking the true path by making your believe there is a false path. Selves based on the inferiority – superiority dynamic.