Here’s an interesting question: Is it possible that the reality we experience is of our own personal creation? If so, how much control do we really have over the world around us? Do we influence who or what we encounter? Are there limits on our creativity? Tonight, we delve into some deep questions like these.

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Welcome to the PEEP Podcast. I’m your host Nicolle Morock, and on this episode, let’s consider the question of how our consciousness might affect the world around us.

But first, I want to thank everyone who has given the show positive ratings on Apple podcasts. Seeing those stars really just makes my heart so happy!

I also want to ask you to please get in touch if you have any type of paranormal story you want to share. Just use the contact form at peeppodcast.com to make sure it stands out in my inbox from all the marketing email we get daily.

I promise that I will have interviewees on the show again, but I need your help to make that happen. It’s so much more fun and interesting to listen to your stories than to listen to myself talk. I have been working on lining up some good guests, but two fell through and one recording session was plagued by technical issues and had to be rescheduled. I mean it sounded like drunk robot mice chasing each other around a tin can on an analog TV channel with spotty reception. Just not up to my standards, or anybody’s standards, for that matter. Just get in touch and share your story! You can be as anonymous as you like!

Okay, now on to the subject that’s had me thinking hard lately.

It’s been said that we create our own reality, and I think to an extent that it’s true. But how much of it are we responsible for on an individual level.

If you listen to the self-help New Age law-of-attraction speakers, we can create a life of peace, abundance, and happiness just by focusing on those things and being grateful for them in advance. But like I said in Episode 37, you must put in the work to really make it happen. Otherwise, we’d all just win the lottery by thinking about it, right?

But what kind of work am I talking about? There are having a career, building a side business, and networking with like-minded people, but there are also spiritual and emotional work… and faith and belief.

Let’s talk about faith and belief first.

Dictionary.com offers eight definitions of faith, and for the purpose of this episode, I’m focusing on this one: confidence or trust in a person or thing. I like this one because it’s not tied to any religion or overtly spiritual idea. So, the person or thing it refers to could be your preferred deity or the Universe or the Divine Spark, or bringing it back down to this early plane, it could just be belief in yourself.

The definition ultimately depends on you. What do you trust in?

There are four definitions for belief, and we’ll go with this one for this discussion: confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof. This could be God, angels, aliens, the Force, the Matrix, ghosts, or whatever. Something that the more skeptical-minded may dismiss because they can’t hold solid evidence in their hands.

What do you have faith in? What do you believe? As humans, what we believe influences how we perceive the world around us.

If you believe in miracles, then you’ll see them everywhere.

If you don’t believe in ghosts, then you’ll find any possible explanation no matter how implausible to dismiss an experience with one. (I’ve seen it happen over and over with my skeptically minded fellow investigators.)  

There’s nothing innately wrong with either example. The point is to be aware of how your own mindset influences your perceptions. Basically, just be intellectually honest with yourself.

Now let’s talk about emotional work. If you’re not feeling emotionally well, if you’re feeling off-balance, frustrated, angry, or worse, your perception of the world around you is massively affected by those emotions. You might think that someone else who’s having a rough day and is a little blunt in an email might be out to get you. A coworker offering constructive criticism just hates you. The flat tire you had this morning proves the Universe is conspiring against you.

But are they really?

We tell ourselves these little stories about other people and events based on our perceptions. Our internal dialog fills in the gaps in what we truly know about them, and without checking in on our emotions, that can lead to some detrimental consequences. I think we’ve all had those moments, but the goal is not to get stuck there.

Emotional responses are like muscle memory. If we lived with trapped negative emotions from past traumas, we can easily get into a rut of responding to present and future traumas in the same, unhealthy way. We have to learn to let them go. We have to learn to process those emotions and respond to the world in a healthier, more positive way. Whether we choose counseling or the Emotion Code or any other form of therapy or healing modality, opting to change your emotional responses and habits can completely alter your perception of everything and everyone around you.

Moving from a place of negative emotions to a place of positive emotions – gratitude, love, compassion, empathy, and forgiveness can transform your life!

Then there’s the spiritual work, and this includes meditation, yoga, prayer, and self-discovery, among other things. It follows from the emotional work. It’s a form of self-care on a higher level. Many of the healing practitioners I’ve interviewed so far, have journeyed from a place of disease or unhappiness to a place of emotional and spiritual well-being on their spiritual paths. And for all of us, it’s a continuing process. The journey doesn’t end because there’s always more we can learn and more we can experience. There’s always a chance to go deeper.

But is it possible that creating our own reality goes even further than all this? I’d say yes, it’s possible. But it’s also very hard to prove by a skeptic’s standards. However, there are many stories and case studies that provide some evidence.

I’m linking to a YouTube video in the show notes that I’ve watched several times now and took the lesson to heart. It’s about a Hawaiian prayer called Ho’oponopono, and in the video, writer and speaker Joe Vitale shares the story of Dr. Hew Lynn and how he used the prayer to change the lives of convicted, mentally ill criminals. The story is absolutely astounding, and there are records to prove it true. I won’t rehash it here. Please just watch the video.

What I will say is that after learning the power of that prayer, I’ve used it and I’ve felt the change it can create. Whether that change is all in my head or truly to the world around me, doesn’t matter. The fact is that its effect has been profoundly positive on my perception of reality.

For example, I spent two minutes everyday for 30 days saying it while focusing on something I wanted to heal in my life – my relationship with money. And since then, money has been much less of a source of stress for me and more of the neutral tool that it should be. Just weeks after that practice ended, I was spending the night in the ER waiting to have a CT scan on my lower abdomen and then waiting for the results. Anytime I felt my stress level rising over the cost of the ER visit, the impending bills, and the potential for major surgery, I said the prayer and calmed down quickly. I also said it for the people around me who were dealing with their own health and money issues.

I went into the surgery with the mindset of gratitude – thankful that my appendix had not yet burst, thankful for my health insurance, thankful that my guy sped to the hospital to be there for me when I needed him at 5 o’clock in the morning, thankful for the doctors, nurses, and techs who were providing my care. I had faith that all would be well.

My chiropractor told me two weeks later that he’s never known anyone who recovered as quickly as I did from two surgeries requiring anesthesia within a week of each other, and I believe my faith and belief and the emotional and spiritual work I’ve been doing over the last year helped speed my recovery.

Here’s another personal example of how we might create our own reality:

On Sunday, I drove to Target to pick up a prescription and do a little shopping. I parked far from the door and was not bothered by walking across the big parking lot despite the mid-afternoon July heat. That’s where I witnessed the beginning of a road-rage incident. A young woman wanted to leave her parking spot, but a man was in his car taking up space in the lane behind her with his flashers on – just sitting there. She honked a few times to get his attention, and he ignored her. His window was rolled down, so I know he heard the honking. I was farther away and heard it loud and clear.

Annoyed, she got out of her car and started walking toward his, and he started yelling at her that she shouldn’t have gotten out of her car. She yelled back that he should move his car. He’s blocking people from going where they need to go.

At this point, I was walking between her and his car, observing but not getting involved because you never know what kind of wacko has a gun and an itchy trigger finger these days. But as I passed them and felt their tension and flaring tempers and heard their voices get louder and their words become more colorful, I started saying in my head “Peace. Peace. Peace,” over and over and imagined that feeling projecting behind me toward them.

Just as quickly as it escalated, the argument suddenly stopped. Both of them moved along. No one was injured. No one had to call the police.

I felt like I was walking through a lucid dream, and by the time I got into the store, I felt completely drained. As an empath, high tension situations naturally take a lot out of me. But when I got home, I had to wonder if my strong thoughts and intention for peace might have influenced those two people in that moment. Did I Jedi mind-trick them, or did I inadvertently call in angels to help them calm down and go on their way? Or maybe they both cooled off at the exact same time for no apparent reason? That seems unlikely given their anger toward each other and the words they were using, but it’s possible and probably just as plausible as my thoughts influencing the situation. But I have to wonder.

So, what do you think? Have you ever had an experience where you might have influenced your own or someone else’s reality with your thoughts? Is it like Joe Vitale says in the video that we can take ownership of our lives to the extreme and truly heal ourselves and the world around us? It’s worth considering, especially at a time when it feels like the world needs healing more than ever.

My challenge to you is to think deeply about these ideas, put in the work for your own mental and emotional health – whatever form that may take as long as it works for you, and try to be a positive influence on your world and your reality.

Thanks for listening!