Is it a fact or just a long-held cultural belief?

“Withdraw your faith in distortions and invest in only what is true.”—A Course in Miracles

Web MD and other “authorities” will tell you that you need eight hours of sleep, that there’s a disease called seasonal affective disorder (SAD) that inflicts havoc every winter and that gaining weight is inevitable if you don’t rigorously watch what you eat.

But what if these beliefs are nothing but false ideas that we’ve made true by believing in them, by investing in them, by holding them as scientific fact?

If indeed consciousness provides the scaffolding for the physical world (and I, for one, happen to believe it does) then putting energy into any “belief” encrusts it into physical form. Quantum physicists can tell you “reality” is “curvy” or “straight” depending on what you expect.

Most of us can buy that we have some power over our own reality, but we don’t make the correlation that groupthink, those “facts” that our culture, our medical community, our media tout as true are also nothing but temporary forms of what we call “reality.”

One of the many things I love about my power posses (the groups I meet with on a regular basis) is that we share stories that defy “groupthink.” We share stories that the ancients might have called miracles. Hearing these stories opens my mind to accept a different reality.

Yesterday, Bettie told a story that shook me to the core. Being shaken to the core, by the way, is a good thing.

Bettie used to be a birthing assistant, what some might call a midwife. Giving birth, like most things, comes with a lot of “beliefs.” It’s painful. It takes hours. Pain meds and such things as epidurals are necessary and now days synonymous with the delivery room.

But one day, a new mom just going into labor informed Bettie, “I’m going to have this baby in less than 30 minutes.”

Bettie nodded and thought to herself, “O-kay! You obviously haven’t heard that first babies (and this WAS the young mom’s first baby) don’t usually pop out on demand.”

But this mom was insistent. “That’s how my mom did it and that’s how I’m going to do it.”

Bettie said there was some sitcom playing on the hospital room TV.

“And sure enough,” Bettie said, “that insistent mom gave birth before the credits rolled.”

I, who spent 17 hours in labor, loved this story. Why not take control over your body? Why not have a baby during an episode of “Friends?”

Another friend of mine from England told me giving birth to her daughter, Orca, was a spiritual, orgasmic experience? Why not?

Who’s to say what is and isn’t possible? Do we want to believe what the widely-expanding DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) tells us? Do we want to believe what pharmaceutical companies insist we need? Do we want to continue to believe that what happened yesterday is going to happen again today?

Or do we want to create a new day, a new reality, a new world?

In E-Squared, I told the story of yoga teacher Alan Finger who, when he was a teenager, lost 100 pounds in one month. It’s not the story we’re used to.

Many readers, in fact, had a hard time believing it. But it’s true. I called Alan Finger and I’ve talked to Katrina Repka who wrote the book that documented it.

And it’s as true as anything we continue to invest our thoughts and beliefs in.

If indeed consciousness is the clay, I hereby propose that we gather that Play-Doh back into a big ball and start all over.

What long-held “fact” are you willing to let go of? Or to at least consider that maybe, just maybe it’s not a “fact” but a flimsy belief.

Pam Grout is the author of 17 books including E-Squared: 9 Do-it-Yourself Energy Experiments that Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality and its equally-scintillating sequel, E-Cubed, 9 More Experiments that Prove Magic and Miracles is your Full-Time Gig