If yes, Time passes, weather changes, sun rises higher, coincidence patterns shift.
If no: Move on.
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Next suggestion: Complete the preflight inspection.
Ignore suggestion for now.
Accept suggestion, instead, to think about this seems-insane-maybe-isn't picture:
Every suggestion of every second, he thought, every decision we make or don't make is poised on the pinpoint of the decision that's gone before; the decision before was poised on the one before; each one elected by which suggestion I-nobody-else-I decide is true for me. No one ever makes a decision for me: when I accept advice, I'm the one chose to act on it. I could have said no, a thousand different ways.
Call suggestions “hypnosis” and all of a sudden here's a label you've been looking for, here's the pattern—the puzzle fits together. Every day, everybody in the world's going deeper into their own trance, everybody's got their own story they're believing about themselves.
My story today, he thought, is Guy on a Journey: Jamie Forbes flying through a cloud of decisions which leads to different changes which lead to a different life than he would have known if the left main landing gear tire had one-sixteenth inch less rubber on the tread than it happens to have this moment.
Each incident pressed alongside the one just-past just-to-come, he thought, every one a co-incident.
Seen from above, our life's this vast field of coincidents, flowers blossoming from the decisions we've made based on suggestions we've accepted based on our belief that the appearances that surround us are true, or aren't.
The left main tire may blow out next landing; it may be good for another fifty landings, gentle ones . . . I don't need a new tire at all.
Which is what Jamie Forbes decided, that morning, kneeling by the landing gear. This tire's fine. I'll land softly. So long, different lifetimes just declined.
What's she done to me?
Never knew one airplane from another before I learned to fly. Now I do. Never noticed handwriting before I studied graphology. Now I notice. Never saw rolling cloudbursts of suggestions before Dee Hallock mentioned it's where this world comes from. I see 'em now!
Even what they call the Law of Attraction, he thought: “Whatever we hold in our thought comes true in our experience,” that's a suggestion. Every time I try it and it works, there's a suggestion. Every time I try it and it doesn't work, there's another. When I ignore it, nothing happens . . . my life doesn't change, second by second, until the instant I do something because somehow I think it's a good idea.
Preflight finished, the pilot stowed his bag in the airplane, opened the aircraft canopy, and slid down into the cockpit.
Like everyone else on the planet, he thought, the world I see around me is my own trance vision, materialized out of whatever gazillion suggestions I've accepted along the way. Soon as I say go, it moves ahead, molasses or lightning.
So my whole world is propositions accepted, and those become beliefs become assumptions become my very own personal private executive truth.
My positive truths: “I can . . .” open the way for further suggestions, ways to go. My negatives: “I can't . . .” close the way, lodge themselves as my limit.
I'm a citizen of a psychosomatic planet, he thought.
So what?
Then the pilot pressed the starter switch to START, spun the engine awake, and accepted his own suggestion: let's hold off reorganizing the universe and go flying for a while.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Southeast at low level over deserted land he flew, rivers and forests and wilderness, patches of old farm fields flashing below, turned to meadows.
This is what it looks like, flying in dreams, except in dreams you're not thinking where do I land when the engine quits.
So I'm a hypnotized citizen of a psychosomatic planet, he thought. So's everybody else. So what difference does it make?
That moment, for the first time, the pilot heard a new voice in his mind. Not the monkey-chatter voice that had been with him always, not his co-pilot I'll-fly-the-airplane-for-you self, not his let's-figure-this-out-together rational self; it felt like a whole brand-different mind, within, a higher self than the others.
So what? Here's what, it said. You're the one who's hypnotized yourself into the life you live every day.
Here's what: You can de-hypnotize yourself.