What’s a placebo? I’d wager a good portion of all the people in the world know that word even if they don’t fully understand the meaning. And the generalized meaning that most people would probably give is something fake that works like it was actually real. It’s kind of a vague description, but the background meaning that it implies actually has some interesting value at a deeper level if you want to really think about it. After all, what’s the difference between fake and real? For something to be fake, the idea behind it still must be created and so at least some part of it is plenty real. Then of course there are many common beliefs that our experiences that we see in the world around us are just a skewed interpretation of our mind and that nothing is actually “real” in the whole universe.

Well, if we put all the extra stuff aside and just look at the basic concept of a placebo as most of the world would probably view it, we can see thousands of examples of it working with amazing results. Sugar pills curing various different diseases, simply because the person who took it really believed that it was a pill that was exactly the right combination of materials needed to cure whatever was wrong with them. I guess you “could” say that technically it did have the exact right combination of materials, but that’s just the fun way to look at it. But I think my single favorite placebo example is one I have heard about and researched a bit and read about many different times because it’s just so damn amazing. At some point there was an experiment done that included a number of patients with some pretty severe knee troubles. I can’t remember how many there were. The trouble was to the point that it was deemed necessary for them to have reconstructive knee surgery of some sort. Sorry for being so vague, it’s been probably close to a year since the last time I actually looked it up and read all the exact details. I am wanting to say that I remember there being three groups, but I can only recall two of them at the moment. Even without all the exact details it’s still an impressive tail, but I’ll probably do some research after I finish this post and include a link in the comments.

The obvious first group was the people who actually got the surgery that they “needed” and then the would was closed up and they were sent to heal. The second group is the placebo group. They Doctors cut open the knees and poked around, but they did nothing to actually “fix” the knee problem at hand. Then they closed up the knee and sent the patients off to heal. It was two full years before the details of which were in which group were shared with the members of the study, but they had all healed to basically the same level. Placebo patients were healed and running like they had been given back their youth just as well as the ones who were actually “fixed” even though they did not receive the actual surgery they thought they needed. The power of believing in the surgery was enough to allow them to heal themselves.

The last one is one I saw on TV while watching the Science Channel (best channel on TV!). It was on a show called “Dark Matters: Twisted but True” and it was about a man who was cursed by a voodoo witch doctor. The man became very sick and his wife sought help. The medical doctor that they went to see was very thorough and very stubborn. He studied the man and found him to be 100% healthy, and that all his issues were mental. But telling the man this had no effect. His belief in the voodoo curse was SO STRONG that nothing could shake it and his mind was killing his body based on a simple belief. The doctor finally decided to give up on traditional methods to try and cure the man and went for something that seemed really silly. He dressed himself in normal clothes and made himself up to look like he’d been in a fight. He then created a story about going to meet with the witch doctor and found out that the puff of smoke blown into the mans face was actually lizard eggs. And he told the man and wife that the one of the eggs had hatched into lizard, and that the small lizard living in his stomach was eating all his food and water which is why he was getting sick. He then gave the man some medicine (vomit inducer) that would help cure him that he “got from the witch doctor.” It wasn’t long before the man began severely vomiting into a trash can and with a bit of sleight of hand the doctor dropped a lizard into the can and showed it to the man, who started to improve quickly and by morning was completely healed. I’m sure I got a few details wrong on that story, but it’s been a few months since I saw it and I couldn’t find that particular episode on the Dark Matters website. Since most of the ones I did find were only partial episodes I stopped looking.

Well, you could say the birth of this post actually came from me listening to something this morning and hearing the placebo knee surgery story again. As I heard it, it got me thinking about the placebo concept and the Dark Matters story jumped into my mind. However, for whatever reason my mind didn’t stop there. I started thinking about the witch doctor aspect of the story and started thinking about old world medicines and stuff. It got me wondering just how many old witch doctor stories were true, since back in the old days there were a lot of beliefs that held supernatural activities as not only true, but even likely. Back when people believed in magic because they couldn’t understand the science behind why certain things happened the way they did, the placebo could have been the most commonly used magical tool of all. As I thought about it I really began to believe that it probably was. Spiritual healers, voodoo doctors, shamans, and all sorts of other magical beings are listed in history, but just how many of them were real? How many of them really existed and how many of them performed amazing miracles with their placebos based around the power of belief. Imagine if a “modern healer” of those types came up with a placebo pill that would “make” people gain control over their beliefs. This pill would give people the ability to choose how they wanted to view the world, giving them the power to master the Law of Attraction almost instantly as negative beliefs were shrugged off effortlessly.

Of course this scenario is extremely unlikely as most people’s beliefs are very strong, and if they believe for even an instant that a placebo is actually a placebo, it immediately stops working. But it does raise a very fun little thought. If the power of belief is really this strong, which it is, wouldn’t it be neat to just change your beliefs yourself and turn them into what you want them to be as a conscious choice? I’ve heard stories of people curing cancer because they refused to believe that it could kill them, and paralyzed men and women learning to walk again even after being told it was impossible. The best example I can recall of the latter is Morris E. Goodman who crashed an airplane and was so severely damaged, the ONLY thing he could do on his own was blink. He couldn’t even breath without a respirator and was assumed to be a vegetable for what would be left of his assumed to be short life. But his mind still worked too, and in his mind he refused to believe that he couldn’t recover. Today he walks and talks and breathes on his own, despite his diaphragm having been destroyed in the crash. His power of belief brought him from impossible to realized fact. What could the power of belief do for you?

That’s the Trick of the Dave for today, because everyone can benefit from working on their Power of Belief.

Bubbadave

Imagine you find yourself waking up in a room that is pitch black. You can’t tell how big or small the room is, but you hear an unfamiliar voice occasionally say, “Find the light switch.” It sounds like a recording, but you’re not quite sure. You slowly climb to your feet, it’s a bit harder than expected due to the complete absence of light. As you start walking forward slowly with your hands out, you realize that the room must be huge. It feels as though you’ve walked more than 20 feet without reaching a wall. You wonder if it might be a hallway so you start shuffling your feet from side to side, reaching out to see if there might be a closer wall but find nothing.

Finally, you reach a wall. You start reaching to the wall at about the height you would expect to find a normal light switch and then begin to work your way around the room. Boy this room is huge, it must be at least 50 feet across. As you make your way back to what you think is about where you started, you begin to wonder why you didn’t feel a switch anywhere yet. “Could the switch be at a strange height on the wall?” You make your way around the room once again, but even slower this time as you feel up and down the wall to the floor and as high up as you can reach. Still there is no switch to be found.

“Where could it be,” you ponder with the strange voice still occasionally repeating the phrase, “Find the light switch.” It’s starting to get annoying. But then you start to think about unexpected scenarios for some reason and you wonder about the idea of the switch being on the floor. “Why would a switch be on the floor?” You ask yourself as you dismiss the idea as being foolish and impossible. Yet after many hours of searching the wall and finding nothing, you start to ponder the floor idea again. Perhaps it is possible. Then it happens. You find a small rocker switch right next to the wall, mounted in the floor a couple of feet from one of the corners. It was hidden behind a small trap door with a single finger hole to open it.

The lights come on the moment you flip the switch and bright white light fills the room. It’s blinding, but the pain is almost a welcomed feeling as you adjust to the light and begin looking around. As you make your way to the middle of the room to inspect something you see written on the floor, the lights go out and your surrounded in pitch black once again. Then you hear the voice, “Find it again.” Without a second thought, you turn around and walk back to the corner, open the door, and flip the switch once more. The lights turn on again and you walk back to the middle of the room to read the message. “The first time’s always the hardest.”

Of course this story is completely fake and straight from my imagination. But I want you to think about what you just read. Would you have done anything different if it were a real scenario and you were stuck in the dark? Hours and hours to solve a simple problem. Just turn on the light switch. It’s a very simple thing that most of us do several times a day. But lights are not the only switches out there. Just about anything that is simple will have an on/off switch. And this story is intended to show the truth behind a very common switch that most people don’t know about.

I can’t give a solid number, so anything I say is only a vague guess, but I would bet that less than half the people on the planet have a firm grasp of the concepts behind the Law of Attraction. And I’d guess that probably less than half of those have any level of mastery of it. It’s such a big, yet simple concept. And it has a switch of its own. My view of the Law of Attraction is a lot like the story above, it’s vast and dark. Complex and a bit challenging to understand, but once you figure it out, AKA find the switch, you can go back to it easily as often as you like because you know exactly what to do. And with just about anything, practice makes perfect, so don’t give up on finding that switch. I promise it’s there, and once you’ve found it you’ll be glad you never gave up on yourself. And that’s today’s Trick of the Dave.

Bubbadave

It is said and believed by many people that we are all linked together by an unseen force. This connection is believed to be strongest when extreme love is involved, like a mother and child. An example of this is a story my own mother shared with me about when I was a baby. She was watching a very scary movie, and I guess I was asleep or supposed to be asleep in the other room. Well the story states that at a very scary moment in the movie, my mom jumped but did so without a sound. Yet even though she was quiet, at the very moment she was scared I began to cry uncontrollably. Mom’s told me that my crying did not stop until she was the one to come in and console me. She said that the moment I saw her face, all was well. As if I felt her fear and was worried about her.

Well, I’m sure it’s obvious that I have no memory of this event. But I feel that having a personal instance of the old story about moms having a 6th sense about danger to their children is pretty cool. I’m sure most people has one somewhere in their life, if not many. I have also heard of instances of this happening with friends or family that are not blood related. So what does this mean? What’s the purpose of sharing this? Well, I think it’s just proof of the strong connection between ALL people. I’ve read about a study done with a group of monkeys that were being tracked in captivity as well as in the wild. Now please forgive me if I get parts of the story wrong, but as I remember it, something happened to one of the groups and their food supply was affected in a negative way. I don’t remember all the details, but one of the groups had food that could not be eaten without being cleaned and they learned to wash the food in water first. At around the same time, the other group, which I think was more than a thousand miles away also started using the new method to clean their food. This higher level connection is very real, and very powerful.

But just how does this higher level consciousness work? Well I am no where near an expert in the field yet, but I have come up with a few discoveries that I feel quite strongly about. The connection is not blood required, and it is not human exclusive. I believe it is a connection between all things, living and non-living. On a side note, this connection supports how the Law of Attraction can make things with no life force feel like they are searching for you when it goes just right. But here is the thought that starts to get interesting. IF we are all connected through this force, and the connection holds strong even when we are not aware of it, then it also holds a logical standpoint that all of the actions of EVERYONE else in the world has some impact on us. And the inverse would also be true, with all of our actions, thoughts, and emotions affecting everyone and everything else.

While it is true that I am still in the learning phase, I have discovered something called Ho’oponopono and it fits right along with this way of thinking. According to my understanding of Ho’oponopono, we are to take 100% responsibility for our lives and EVERYTHING that is a part of our life. “Someone stole my wallet and beat me up,” would be a fine example, and because of the connection we all share, I would need to take 100% responsibility for this situation. A problem that I have within myself is what affected the mugger and caused him/her to do this bad thing. It isn’t their fault, but mine. An interesting way to look at life, however another thing to consider is this. Have you ever had a STRONG feeling about something, yet everyone else felt it was basically a nuance? How could something hold such a strong pull on you, and yet have no effect on everyone else? Well, it’s actually simple. There’s some thing in your mind that makes it so. Do you know someone who has an odd phobia with no explanation? What about people with phobias caused by past events in their life? It’s all the same thing.

So here comes the fun part. If I am choosing to take 100% responsibility for everything that shows up in my life, even if it’s actually a part of someone else’s life, then I feel bad for causing these “negative” events that show as a part of my reality. And I feel sorry for causing this “issue” because if I shared it through the connection with the person I see it in, I also shared it with the rest of the universe. What this means, in an intense but still true way, is that every negative event that is happening in the universe, even the ones I don’t know about, are my fault. Quite the burden to shoulder, however, they are not my intentions. Which means I can forgive myself, and apologize to the rest of the universe for these things. Which leads to the 4 phrases that I’m learning hold some serious power. I love you, I’m sorry, please forgive me, and thank you.

Believing in this or not holds no actual value, since saying these things has no negative impact in any scenario. So no matter who you are, or even where you are, today’s trick of the Dave is to constantly share these four thoughts and really feel them as well.

I Love You!

I’m Sorry.

Please Forgive me.

Thank You!

Bubbadave

P.S. I am currently reading the book Zero LimitsBy Dr. Joe Vitale and Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len if anyone feels like learning more about this very interesting subject.