I too am wary of "you need to believe" arguments.
When I was a kid, did I need to believe I could ride a bike in order to learn how? In so far as I believed enough that I could try, yes. There were times when I really believed I couldn't do it. After falling a number of times, I quit. A while later ... maybe a year? ... I tried again and succeeded after some time. Why? Because the laws of physics and the capabilities of my body enabled me to do so. Not belief. Do you need to believe in gravity in order to stay on the planet? No. All you need to believe is the remotest possibility that something will (or might) work for you ... enough to simply try. Someone who asks about photoreading, by the very fact they are curious, has at least a sneaking suspicion.
Now, some people have been crippled mentally from traumatic experiences and need to work through some things before they can learn some material. This is the dreaded mental block, but most people don't learn not because they can't, but because they don't want to ... they associate learning some things with pain and don't bother. But this is by and large not the case, I think. As a tutor I dealt with this, and it wasn't major therapy or brain-surgey to get someone to keep at it even though they might be frustrated.
One of the most attractive things about learning transcendental meditation was that my instructor after making a whole lot of claims said, "It's ok if you don't believe if it'll work or not. It doesn't matter! It works. Go ahead and don't believe it, just do it. You'll see." That made me laugh, and I thought, "Now here is a man who isn't scared of skepticism. This stuff must really work."
Did it work for me? Sorta.
I think photoreading definitely has its benefits. I believe that it could do a whole lot more for me if I attended a training, or maybe went through the self-study again. I bet there are some nuances to it that can be picked up very quickly from in-person training.
The people who say that it isn't working for you because you don't believe are doing both you and it a disservice. While well intentioned, I really wish this would stop, because it sounds a lot lot like bunko (shell game) to me.
I think you can take the whole self-hypnosis/belief argument too far. There are plenty of times where I've thought, "Woah! Don't trip!" and I didn't. I have thought, "Uh oh, feels like I am getting a cold" and I didn't. Why is that? Perhaps, maybe, that every phenomenon in the world and in human consciousness does not work by way of suggestion and belief. Maybe there is more to it than that? No description of the world exhaustively describes it, right? The map isn't the territory. Could this mean that beliefs about beliefs are abstractions about abstractions and, thus, delete and distort information two levels removed from that which they are suppposed to signify? Could it mean that there is more to the story? Do you need to believe it in order for it to be true? To come knocking on your door?
Some people believe if they don't believe in death they won't die. I wouldn't advise they they jump off of a roof in order to test that belief .... because I am pretty confident in the results they'd achieve.
[This message has been edited by babayada (edited April 06, 2004).]
