Disciplined Denial

We usually think that we are at the mercy of an independently existing, external physical world, imposing all of its conditions upon us. Neville’s worldview holds that, by contrast, manifest reality is a reflection of the psyche of man. The apparent world is derived from our state of mind.

Self-observation can reveal a stream of frequently chaotic and negative thoughts coursing through the mind. We can see, then, why much in the outer world seems nonsensical. To meet this, Neville advises “disciplined denial”, one of twelve disciplines of the mind. It means to look upon the outer situation as only relatively real, not as an absolute.

I was excited to read that someone else had reached, independently, a similar conclusion. Investigative reporter Jon Rappoport interviewed an innovative hypnotherapist (he remains anonymous) who invited clients to engage in extended monologues; that is, verbal descriptions and musings about their desired ideals. These exercises of creative imagination, undertaken in a wakeful, yet relaxed state, tended to resolve the patients’ ailments and disorders.

The therapist intuited that the actual cause of his clients’ troubles had been, precisely, to “accept reality as it was”. They had taken a chaotic world purely at face value, as most of us do! Their deliberately spoken scenarios, fuelled by creative imagination, did not, as one might guess, divorce them from “reality” or render them dysfunctional. To the contrary, it gave them the means to practice “disciplined denial” and healed them.