We are conditioned to accept what we are told- without question

When we are growing up, we are taught to respect our elders, that the “big people’ know what they are talking about. We are taught not to question authority- that we will get in trouble if we do. And this is a seemingly useful message to pass on, as a parent or teacher because it makes kids more manageable. As long as we are conditioned not to question authority, we won’t push back against rules, and we will do what the teacher tells us. It makes us good, complaint, well behaved citizens.

But have you ever considered the bigger ramifications of being taught not to question authority?

Let’s have a look, shall we?

As a hypnotherapist, I get a lot of clients who are struggling with some negative message they received from a critical or abusive parent because they were taught to believe what the big people said to them. If you are a child and you have been conditioned I this way and you then have an adult tell you, through their words or behaviors, that you are unlovable, unworthy or not measuring up, those messages stick and they contribute to poor self-esteem, poor self-worth and a variety of other issues.

As kids, due to this conditioning, as well as the fact that kids are egocentric, we don’t have the ability to depersonalize those messages. We don’t have the ability to look objectively at the other person and recognize that perhaps they had their own trauma, or their own self-worth issues that caused them to act as they did. If an adult says we are unlovable, we believe it and that message persists over time.

The work I am doing with my clients is often about getting them to question that authority in the sense that I am getting them to think about what must have been going on within the adult to say something like that. Was it a bad day? Bad mood? Projection? Passing on the same criticism they received growing up? By being able to understand what was going on within the adult, my clients are able to de-personalize the message given and repair the damage done as a result.

But let’s look at this through an even broader lens.

When we are taught not to question authority, it goes beyond our parents and teachers. It extends out to the media, the government, the medical profession, the messages we get from society at large.

We are taught to respect authority and not question it. And so, we believe what the newscasters tell us, without question. We don’t think to look at who chooses what news we receive or who decides the angle or narrative that will be presented. We don’t think to question if anyone benefits from us being told what we are told. We don’t think to look into what is happening in the world for ourselves. We don’t seek out alternative news channels to see if there are different perspectives. Nope. We just blindly accept what we are told because that is what we have been taught to do.

When we don’t feel well, we go see a doctor because we have been conditioned that doctors are an authority and therefore will have an answer. We accept the labels we are given by the doctor and we take the medications they prescribe. It doesn’t enter into our minds to question if the doctor gets any kickback for giving us the medications they give. We don’t look into the medical research ourselves to see if the medication is useful or dangerous. We don’t ask who wrote the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual that is used to diagnose us. We don’t look at alternative methods of healing ourselves (because authorities have made it clear that alternative health is not the accepted standard—something else we never question.) We never consider that perhaps the medication we are given is designed to keep us sick so that we can continue to put money into the pockets of the companies that create them. We just follow the doctor’s advice because we are good, complaint boys and girls.

We observe the politicians on tv and we think they are working in our best interest—because that is what we have been told. We don’t question if the politician has a personal agenda or who really benefits from decisions politicians make. We don’t question of the politician is really in charge or is the puppet for a hidden source. We don’t think to look into the alliances politicians have made, the societies they belong to. It never enters into our mind that everything from the speeches that are written for them, to the color of their ties to the angle used to capture their events to the music playing in the background are all chosen in order to have a specific affect on the viewer. We just accept that we have been told from the time we are born—these big people know what they are talking about. They are the authorities, and we are in no position to question.

At the Ascension Center we are all about expanding your awareness. Whether it is our hypnotherapy training that will get you looking at your own belief system and give you tools for removing that conditioning for yourself and others, or our Remote Viewing training that will enable you to really see for yourself what is going on out there in the world, we have courses and tools to help you.