The advantages of living in the paradigm of pleasure are obvious to you by now. Despite this, you may have a small voice (or chorus of voices) telling you how difficult it would be to live like that, or even that you don’t deserve to happy every day. For some people, they even say it is bad to live in pleasure.
No matter what your personal voices tell you, it is not your true self telling you these things. We are all perfect just as we are. What we hear in our heads is what I call "imprints." These imprints are actually holographic equivalents of people in our lives. They were created while we were growing up and during significant emotional events, both bad and good. They are created by a process that the scientific community calls "modelling."
I discovered the existence of these imprints while working with some of my more difficult clients. The clients understood the necessity of changing paradigms, but
something was undermining them. Each time they tried, they would find themselves sabotaging their own efforts. It was as if there was some part of them that did not want them to make the switch.
I learned through working with the client’s unconscious that, indeed, the imprints did not want the person to be happy. Part of the individual wanted to sabotage the person. It wanted to sabotage, not because of some malicious need (though in some cases I did find a malicious intent - such as in cases of abuse and/or violence), but because in most cases the imprint simply did not agree with the idea of the client living their own lives.
Because of our ability to model so well—that is, to copy others' behaviour traits-- it soon became apparent to me that my clients had actually internalised, within
themselves, copies of significant people. These copies included the beliefs of the
modelled person, the ideas of right and wrong. In short, the thinking and belief patterns were copies of the original person. Because the imprints had been made when the person was very young--and in most cases while the client was in a subservient position--the client believed that the imprint had power over them.
What that meant is that, when the imprint "spoke up," the person whom it
occupied had no choice but to follow the imprint's instructions. This was regardless of the fact that the instructions or behaviour had negative consequences for the individual. The individual was programmed to listen and obey the imprint. In fact, most people operating under the influence of imprints actually say they that it is as if they had no control over their own behaviours. (Abusers, many smokers and many people attempting to lose weight are prime examples of how imprints control us.)
Each of us has experienced the power of imprints when we find our mothers or fathers "telling" us--inside our heads--that some specific behaviour must be or must not be carried out. Most of us would agree that we learned many negative ideas about ourselves when we were young. Even though we have grown and now know—
intellectually—that the things we learned can’t be true, the nagging voice of the inner critic (imprint) still exists to torment us. Even in cases where the parent is dead, imprints continue to ridicule, berate and destroy our self-confidence.
A model of the imprint exists in our minds as a holographic construct, and continues to control our behaviours . In working with hundreds of people, I have found that in almost every case, any person who professes to have no control over their behaviour they want to stop (or start) is actually under the control of an imprint.
The significance of this is paramount in switching to the pleasure paradigm. Most often imprints (derived from our parents and others who do not believe that pleasure is a positive thing) have no understanding the benefits of switching to the pleasure paradigm. Thus, if an imprint does not want you to be happy because of old religious beliefs or the idea that pleasure is somehow bad, they will attempt to sabotage your efforts to step into the pleasure paradigm and to live your life in pleasure.
Here's an example of how powerful an imprint can be: Take for instance a person who has been abused as a child. Research has shown that someone who has been abused is more likely to abuse. From a logical approach, it makes sense that someone with the negative experience of having been abused should be less likely to abuse. But because the abuser is "imprinted," the subject of the imprint will abuse.
Let's take a look at other situations where the person does not get a chance to imprint the individual. If a person is attacked in a park, they are more likely to avoid walking in a park than to go out and attack people. The same would be true if someone was in a car accident. It is far more likely that the person will be afraid of riding in cars than to jump into a car so they could ram someone. But, if we add the component of imprinting, the story changes dramatically. In the abuse example, as the person is being abused, they imprint their abuser. This imprint includes the power the abuser has over them. This abuser then exists at the unconscious level as an imprint waiting for the right stimulus to bring it to the surface.
When the circumstances are right the imprint uses the "host's" body to do what it wants to do. Because of the power difference that has been modelled at the time of the
imprint's creation, (the imprint, as I mentioned, was modelled to be stronger than the host) the host is powerless to stop the imprint from controlling his or her actions.
I have found in my years of working with imprints that when a person uses a language pattern that indicates dissociation combined with loss of control, imprints are almost always present.
For example, if a person said they were unable to control their weight or smoking I would strongly suspect imprints at work. On the other hand, if the person said they really liked smoking and didn’t want to quit, that would indicate that they were in control. When imprints are present, people often describe it as if someone else has taken control of their bodies or minds and they are forced to sit powerlessly by while the "controller" uses their body.
This is what makes it so difficult for many people to change. It is not because the shift is hard but because a part of them is sabotaging the shift.
Over the next few pages we will explore in more detail how imprints have stopped us from moving easily into a pleasure paradigm. More importantly, you are going to learn what to do about it so you are free at last to step into the pleasure paradigm. You will learn what it means to live without your inner critic, and to be free from the incessant chatter that goes on in our heads.