Believing is Seeing

Dawson says the saying "I'll believe it when I see it" has things backward. His idea is that passionate belief comes first and you notice your goals showing up afterwards. He links this to self-directed neuroplasticity: repeatedly sending a signal through the same neural pathways strengthens them, so skeptical thoughts build more skepticism and believing thoughts build the opposite.

It's his example of believing without evidence. The doctor Willem Einthoven was sure the heart has its own electromagnetic field, failed to measure it, and built a more sensitive galvanometer each time. In 1903 he measured it, and he won the Nobel Prize in 1924. The story shows what holding a belief before anyone can see it looks like.

You tap lightly on your heart area with your fingertips and breathe in for five seconds and out for five seconds, counted aloud. Then you relax your tongue onto the floor of your mouth and picture a big empty space behind your eyes. Those three things, slow breath, soft tongue and open space, are the anchors he returns to near the end.

You begin on the karate chop point, the outer edge of the hand. Then you tap where the eyebrow meets the nose, the side of the eye, under the eye, under the nose, the lower lip, the collarbone and under the arm. In the first round you say "I release" resistance. In the second you say "It is so," "It is done," "It is here now," "It exists," "I believe it, I see it," and finally "And so it is."

Choose one thing you want to see in your outer life. He suggests meeting a great teacher, a car or house, a better relationship with a spouse, parent or child, or an improvement at work. Then imagine it as if it is here right now, with its sights, sounds and smells, even though nothing is there yet.

Dawson suggests keeping a journal where you write down your desires. Then give the thing space and time, and notice what happens as you believe strongly and continuously. He also invites you to replay the meditation often, until you believe it.