The Importance of ‘Certainty’

July 3, 2018 AURELIS Coaching, General Insights No Comments

With ‘certainty’ I mean something that you can see as a kind of open surrogate for the belief in a placebo. This is to say: the action of believing in it (so the power, without the lie of it).

It is a ‘certainty’ that you can basically take up yourself and that makes many things possible. And if you are lucky, it’s a door that leads to another, even better world.

How can you open this door from within?

Not simple. To begin with:

many of us use their ‘being critical’ as an obstacle to opening this door.

One does then not want to see oneself ‘being certain’ before one really is certain, without making any distinction between both (with versus without quotes). In other words: one attaches more importance to how it looks for oneself than to what it really is. OK. In that case it’s better to experience the ‘being critical’ until it’s all used-up. This is of course no relativizing view upon being critical. It rather is a relativizing view upon the relativizing itself.

The environment is also important.

For example, placebo in medicine evokes the following:

If no one even slightly believes in it, there is no placebo-effect.
If the patient believes in it, then there is some placebo-effect.
If the doctor also believes in it, then there is more placebo-effect.
If everyone believes in it, then there is still (much) more placebo-effect.

One can see this clearly in all kinds of things that were only revealed subsequently as pure placebo.

For instance, an operation on the arteria mammaria, in order to prevent pain in the cardiac region, in the fifties. Several placebo-elements were present at large: invasive surgery, the entire medical community believing in the procedure… Result: 90% of the patients were asymptomatic after surgery. Until a double-blind trial took off the mask and the surgery immediately disappeared in the lower abdomen of medical history. This happens now and then. You could ask yourself which modern interventions are down this road right now.

Acupuncture comes from an ancient culture where just about everyone believed in it. Also the West seems to be ready for it. This is food for thought: the fact that everyone believed in it is thus no ‘proof’ for the power of acupuncture itself, but for the placebo effect of acupuncture that was and is absolutely very big. Acupuncture has it all in this direction.

Darwinism doesn’t only apply to organic material.

For example: in an unscientific culture, various parties are fighting for the biggest placebo effect. The winner will be the one who can dig the most attractive pit which simultaneously has sufficiently steep walls. After a while (well, sometimes it takes a long time), people do understand it, or someone points it out to them. Time for another pit… Oh well, and even what one may name ‘science’, can be used as such a pit. But that’s not to say that one should throw science itself in this pit of course, because then one would even be further away from a serious solution

AURELIS places the following at the heart of its vision: no pit, no placebo.

No mask. That is difficult, especially because people are simply accustomed to the fact that such catapult throws them further on the road (to where?). If this doesn’t happen, one risks to keep waiting… for Godot.

All Darwinism aside.

So let us make Godot getting a face. This is to a very large extent possible, I think, by making sure that AURELIS will be scientifically investigated, thoroughly and under the right circumstances (this is to say: as seriously as possible. It’s in any case very intriguing J.

And let us briefly fly forward in time.

Suppose AURELIS will be ‘accepted’ by the entire medical community.

Weird situation: would it also get a very large placebo effect? Perhaps it would. Should this then be opposed? I would say: of course it should! This is to say: not on an active basis, but from the very nature of the beast… Though this can sometimes resemble fighting with a sword without a sword, it’s just the only way. Of course there is the other side of the coin that would be positive for AURELIS and for each user of AURELIS. That is:

active disbelief would be much less present.

This would be very positive, because just as belief can work to make something ‘work’ that doesn’t work, so can active disbelief work in the opposite direction. I even think: If AURELIS can be used in full for what it is, then it’s quite possible that an additional placebo effect contributes little to nothing anymore. Inner strength is already being used optimally.

Ha! A world one can dream of 😊.

Additionally, and this can of course be already done at this very moment, it’s interesting to do an exercise in ‘certainty’.

For example, the ‘certainty’ that IF one can optimally use one’s inner strength, one may expect a clear effect of it. It’s an exercise that is well worth the effort. And astonishingly but true: one can work on this ‘certainty’ by… being critical. Depending on the extent that you invest in it through an original and serious quest, this ‘certainty’ can be helpful as a form of autosuggestion. In equal measure, it’s also a deep motivation, without manipulation.

Doesn’t it all come together nicely?

Ultimately it’s an ongoing quest to feeling involved. Does this make sense to me? Does this feel meaningful to me? Do I feel involved?

Eventually it’s an appreciation of oneself as ‘total person’.

What does this mean?

As a coach, you do not do this by simulating a certainty or by tending to get authoritarian, but by experiencing yourself, by really being critical, yourself, by going a personal way in order to be able to ‘witness’. You are witness to what you’ve been through. That does not have to be all AURELIS of course, but nevertheless: the possibilities of your own inner strength.