You’re listening to the Transform Your Life from the Inside Out podcast. This episode is titled “How You’re Brainwashed Like a North Korean and You Don’t Even Know It.”
What if I told you the only difference between you and a brainwashed North Korean citizen? North Korea is one of the most overtly brainwashed countries in the world. What if I told you the difference between a North Korean and you is not the brainwashing, but the name that it’s called and how it’s understood and executed. In North Korea, the brainwashing is overt, and it’s called Ten Principles for the Establishment of a Monolithic Ideological System. In the West, it’s covert, and it manifests as how you feel about yourself, keeping up with the Joneses, consumerism, patriotism, religion, and even being good enough, and concerned about literally what the world’s going to think about you. Relative to this podcast series, you’ve been brainwashed to believe, to feel, and to think that you are a human being. Basically, you think you’re a homo sapien. We learned that in school. And by nomenclature, you are that. But by human definition, you’re not that. Those are 3D classifications. You are so much more. And in this series, we’re going to go beyond the identity of being human and explore what you really are. Keep listening.
Hi, I’m Jim Fortin, and you’re about to start transforming your life from the inside out with this podcast. I’m widely considered the leader in subconscious transformation and I’ve coached super achievers all around the world for over 25 years. Here, you’re going to find no rah-rah motivation and no hype because this podcast is a combination of brain science, transformational psychology, and ancient wisdom all rolled into one to take your life to levels you’ve never thought possible. If you’re wanting a lot more in life, to feel better, to heal, to have peace of mind, to feel powerful and alive, and to bring more abundance and prosperity into your life, then this podcast is for you because you’re going to start learning how to master your mind and evolve your consciousness. And when you do that, anything you want then becomes possible for you. I’m glad you’re here.
Okay, I know that was a long introduction. Sorry about that. I’m moving right now. I mean, I did move to a new home. I moved to a new estate. I can’t even really move into my home for a couple of months. We’re going to put in new floors. I got to move back out again. The reason I’m telling you this, I’m doing the best that I can right now. Sound quality is a bit off. My lighting is off. My background is not even the proper background. But you know what? The show must go on, so to speak. Now, about the introduction, you may be thinking, Jim, what the hell? I listen to you for spirituality. And here you are talking about North Korea and political systems in your opening and introduction, really? Well, the truth is yes, because North Korea is a great example of how all of us have been brainwashed. We have been mentally imprisoned from birth, and this is because we learn that we are the identity of a human being, and that very identity is actually what keeps us trapped and weak, and sick, and broke, and lonely, and experiencing every other negative ailment of this experience that we call life. Now, if you’ve listened for any amount of time, you may recall an episode where I said you were the ultimate power in the universe. And my attempt, I believe this is going to be a seven-part series, my attempt is that I’m going to start opening up that truth for you. We’re going to start piercing the illusions, the limitations, and the brainwashing that we have when we identify as a human being. Because see, when you identify as a human being, this is important. When you identify as a human being, you then own every single limitation of the human species. The poverty, the illness, the loneliness, and all the aspects of the species.
I have a question for you. Who gave you all of your thinking? Ponder that. That is a profound question. Ask yourself this. Because see, right now, you may think that you are a free will, autonomous thinking being. And yes, you do have free will, but you’re not really an autonomous being. You might identify as an autonomous being, but the question is, ask yourself this, who or what gave me everything that I now think? Who taught me what I am? Who taught me who I am? Where did I learn that I’m a human being? And what does that even mean? You know, you can even think about your biggest fears. Maybe your likes, your dislikes, your preferences, your insecurities, maybe even your own name, who gave you all of that. Well, the truth is the world gave that to you. The human world gave that to you. The media gave that to you. Your mother, your father, your grandparents, your elementary school teachers, TV, socialization, internet, everything around you literally programmed you and brainwashed you based upon the environment that you grew up in.
Even your own thoughts, and this is pretty mind-blowing when you think about it, even your own thoughts, candidly, 99% of your thoughts, they’re not even yours. Basically, the majority of your thoughts are regurgitated thoughts coming from your brainwashed human identity. You know, an example would be, I remember seeing this image of this Ku Klux Klan grandmother. Now, where did she learn to be who she is? This was like a Life magazine picture. Where did she learn to be who she was? Because she learned it somewhere. And then she was holding her grandbaby. What was she teaching her grandbaby? Now, her grandbaby many years later could be in her 50s at this point or 60s. And may or may not be a racist, but probably is because they were bent that way. They were brainwashed that way. They were indoctrinated that way. And we never stop to think, wait, why am I this way? Where did I learn? Who taught me to be this way? So as I said earlier, we don’t even think our own thoughts, even about our own identity, because most of our thoughts are regurgitated thoughts coming from the brainwashed human identity slash ego.
We’re doing our final TCP right now. We are on week number, I think, number 10. Not that that’s relevant here. There’s a young man in the program, and he’s a very gifted young man. And he wants to do what I do for a living. Mainly, I do it for impact and help change the world. And I believe in his heart he wants to do it for the same reason. But he’s afraid to be on camera, or he was, and he was afraid to be seen. And he’s quite wise and mature for a young man of his age. He’s probably 23 years old. And it stumped him a couple of days ago when I asked him, who downloaded their reality into you? Because I had explained to him about his fear of being seen, being judged, being good enough. I started talking about his mother and he started nodding his head right away. And he’s like, oh my God, you were describing my mother. Now he wasn’t even aware that was her identity. She downloaded, so to speak, that into her baby child when he was a little bitty boy. He acquires this. Now he lives in that containment or lived until I got ahold of him and started working with him in TCP. He lived in that containment, not even aware that he was living in that brainwashed containment. This is why I say we’re brainwashed. Our thoughts are not even ours, but we don’t know that they’re not our thoughts. So we’re going to dive deep into that, into this series.
Here’s a profound and simple truth. And this is really where I want to go. You were given thoughts. I was when I grew up in a small farm town. When I was a young man, a young boy, even when I can remember five, six, seven years old, during the summer, I was taken to vacation Bible school at a Southern Baptist church. Now, I went because I got to finger paint and play with other kids, and I got candy. But we were brainwashed into Christianity and all the trappings of Christianity, traditional Christianity, and actually fundamental Christianity. So what I want to do in these episodes is the simple truth is that you were taught thoughts that separated you from the higher essence of you. Now, the word that I’ve used before, and I want to toss and put this out there because we’re going to talk about it in this episode. Maybe, and I could say you have been separated from God. You’ve been separated from divine mind. You’ve been separated from universal intelligence, supreme force, source, whatever you want to call it. But see, the brainwashing that you were given, it separated you from the cosmic essence and power of you. When I was going to vacation Bible school, I was taught that Christianity is, which this was not used, these words, is a dogma outside of you. You believe the dogma, you’re indoctrinated with the dogma, and then you have to live up to the dogma. What I was never taught is the divine essence myself.
So the question I have for you, or what I want to state here, is you were taught to be you. You learned to be the container, the human identity, that bag of skin. You learned everything. When you look in the mirror, you define that as you, and you learn to define that as you, and you learn to define and understand you as a 3D being. You learn that, okay, I am this physical being, and I am all of the thoughts of this physical being. I am the identity of this physical being. And then you identify with the physical being and think that is you, when that is not you. That is the conditioning. That is the brainwashing that that container, I’m going to use that word a lot, that container has learned to be.
Now, where I was going earlier, these words that I’m talking about, whether it be God, divine mind, universal force, supreme intelligence, whatever, going forward, we’re going to start using the word, I’m going to start using the word life force. And the reason I’m going to use the word life force is because this word, all the other words above, the word God has a lot of baggage. You can ask 10 different people, you get 10 different interpretations of that word. Or source, or universal intelligence, or whatever. But the word life force seems to carry the least amount of dogma and human conditioning.
So here’s what’s important to understand right now at this point. Most of us, we’re living what I call our autonomous illusion. And what we think that is, is basically, we think that we are autonomous beings. And we think we’re mechanistic, as I said, containers. But really what we have become when we identify with the container, the bag of skin, the human identity, what we basically become is a conditioned, habituated thought system that runs in your biological nervous system.
Let’s talk a little bit about how this happens to us. Let’s go back to North Korea for a moment. Now, even though it’s a brutal dictatorship, the conditioning mirrors a lot of your own life, but you don’t even see it. In the capital, Pyongyang, it’s what I call a state-mandated and systematic brainwashing. You probably don’t think that applies to you, which I just alluded to, but it does. So let me give you some examples about North Korea. And then, you know, you can sit here and go, well, we don’t do that in Australia or Great Britain or the US or wherever. Oh, yeah, we do. But we do it in a different way. We do it in a more covert way, whereas I said in the introduction, in North Korea, it’s an overt way. But make no mistake, it’s still conditioning and brainwashing of the container.
Okay, so in North Korea, I’ll give you a couple of examples here. All children over there are schooled in what’s called the 10 principles of this system. And these principles, get this. These 10 principles are for the establishment of a monolithic ideological system. That’s what it’s called. And my thought is, what five-year-old, even in Korea, North Korean, can even say those words or even know what they mean? And this principle that children are taught in North Korea, that children and people, everyone, they must revere the great leader and treat his teachings… That’s absolute law. The teachings of the great leader are not allowed to be questioned at all. Otherwise, there’s punishment.
Something else that happens, and I find this mind-blowing, is mandatory portrait care. Every home, every school, every office must display a portrait, a picture of the Kim dynasty, the Kim leaders. And people are legally… not kind of like, oh, dude, that’s a good idea. No, they’re legally required to keep these pictures spick and span immaculately clean. And on top of that, state inspectors will randomly just enter the home unannounced and they will inspect the portraits and the pictures looking for dust. And if your pictures are dusty or the frame is scraped or scratched or whatever, you’re going to suffer severe punishments and fines because you did not take care of the pictures, the portraits of the great leaders.
You know what’s even crazy? The news media praises people for this. If there’s a disaster like a fire or a flood or whatever, if somebody risked their life to save a picture of the dear leader, the great leader, and his father, meaning the grandfather of the current leader of North Korea, the state media, they heavily publicize that, and they reward people who risk their own lives just to save a freaking picture from a flood or a fire or an accident or whatever. I mean, talk about crazy. And these are four of many different ways, but it’s required.
It’s mandatory self-criticism. Everyone, including children, they participate in a weekly self-criticism session. And what they’re required to do is confess ways that they failed to live up to the state’s ideological expectations or they showed less than 100% devotion to the dear leader. Can you imagine how this could deeply, deeply and profoundly indoctrinate and brainwash people from the time they pop out of the womb almost all the way until their golden years?
Now, you listening right now, you’re like me probably thinking, wow, that’s pretty harsh. That’s pretty crazy. And many years ago, you would think, well, that doesn’t happen to me. I mean, I grew up in the U.S. That crap doesn’t happen over here. But the truth is, yes, it does. And again, you could be listening saying, well, that doesn’t happen. But the question I have for you, are you sure that you have not been brainwashed? Are you sure that you have not been indoctrinated?
Here in the West, most of us, we think about the term brainwashing. And we think about North Korea, as I just talked about, or Russia, or maybe Iran, maybe parts of the Middle East. And we think, oh, those people are brainwashed over there. But again, how are you any different? You could be different in the way that, for example, you were not coerced like what happened in North Korea, because there’s penalties for not having pictures of the dear leader and all that kind of stuff. But you could think, well, I wasn’t coerced. But even if you weren’t coerced and you probably were not, it doesn’t mean that you were not brainwashed.
You know, when it comes to the concept of nationality, this podcast is not about nationality. And I want to make that very clear. But it’s about understanding how we become, the ways that we become. And how we are, which is where I’m really going to go, how the higher essence of us, the life force of us, is separated from the container. Meaning we were taught that we’re the container, but we don’t recognize that we’re not the container. We are the awareness of the container. We are the awareness and the consciousness that thinks about the container. The container is your physical 3D body. But we don’t think that because we’re not taught that.
Now, I don’t know where you are in the world, but even all of us were brainwashed as a kid. Every morning from kindergarten forward, all the way through high school till my last day of high school, I recall this. Every single morning, we were marched out and we had to put our hand over our heart. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. It’s brainwashing. And you know the interesting thing? Unlike North Korea, where many do it willingly because it’s a great service to the country and the culture and the great leader, but they also do it because they’re coerced. But here in the West, we do it willingly. We don’t even think about it. Yep, going to put my hand on my heart and pledge allegiance because that’s what everyone else does. And that’s what a good person does.
So let’s talk about, and it’s not over like North Korea, but let’s talk about how you’ve been covertly brainwashed. Questions for you. How has consumerism in the Western world indoctrinated you? Lifestyles? Money? Clothes? Ideas? Neighborhoods? Think about how you have been conditioned to think about these things, but you don’t even recognize you’ve been conditioned to think about these things, which again is brainwashing.
You know, I think back to my high school years. And I remember, you know, as I’ve talked about before, we didn’t have a lot of money. And I remember when the polo brand was launched. And there was a wealthier kid at school who was wearing polo shirts. And my thinking back then when I was 16, 17 was, I want those shirts. I want a polo shirt. I want that little polo player on my left, whatever, side lapel, whatever you want to call it for your shirt. Why? Why? Why did I feel compelled? No one forced me. Why? Because I had learned about money. I was indoctrinated, as you have been, about lifestyles and money and clothes and ideas and neighborhoods and how we feel about ourselves. And we have been bombarded that, you know what, to be a complete and whole person, you need to have these things. You need to have the big eyelashes like Maybelline commercials, and you need to have the polos and you need to have the Air Jordans, and you have to belong to a particular social class, and you have to go to a particular high school or a particular college, or you’ve got to have this background. And if you don’t have that, guess what? You’re less than. You are less than others, and you will not be accepted.
So we learn very early in life, and in the West, and particularly in the U.S., consumerism is mind-blowing off the charts all over the place. I don’t know the exact numbers, but I read back like around the 1970s, you might be exposed to something like 300 advertisements per day. Now it’s something like 5,000 advertisements per day. In the West, we are bombarded. We’re bombarded with to get ahead, to have more, to be more, to be envied, to be respected, to be as good as other people. We have to have these products or live in these ways. And it happens to all of us. Like I mentioned, Polo. Look at kids that want to wear Nikes and Air Jordans. Look at cars. The company Abercrombie and Fitch, they built their entire multi-billion dollar brand off of this very concept. Here is what the beautiful and cool people wear. And if you don’t wear these clothes, then you are not a beautiful and cool person. So then we see that and we think we are less than. But examine the truth in this. We don’t even recognize that it happened. It was so subtle and so pervasive, but yet it’s all around us. It’s rubbing off on us and we don’t even see it.
So what I want to do here is I’m just giving you these as examples. I want to go beyond nationalism, which I’ve been using that as an example. I’ve been using consumerism as an example, but my mission is not about what clothes you wear or what country you live in. My mission, my dharma, is to assist you in your spiritual evolution and your spiritual growth. And in the world that we live in, with religion out there and religion is pushed heavily, you’ve been brainwashed that you don’t even remember who you are. I’m going to say that again. You’ve been so pervasively brainwashed that you don’t even know and you don’t even, yes, I’m using this word, remember who and what you are.
If there was a clock ticking on the wall and you could hear the tick, tick, tick, just be silent. And I let the clock tick as you ponder the solemnity of that and the truth of that and you let that soak in. You know, think back to a former episode. It was about six months ago. A former episode was titled, You Are the Ultimate Power in the Universe. If you’re new here, you might not have listened. But if you’re not new, did you listen? What’s changed? Because see, I guarantee you, that you probably understood that analytically, but most do not know it at a soul level. You know, we know ourselves as a human, and we know ourselves as all aspects of being human, but that’s because the conditioning. It’s not because that’s what we are. That’s what we are taught. That’s how we are brainwashed. That’s how we are conditioned to think. And we have been conditioned, as I said earlier, who gave you your thoughts? We’ve been conditioned to think everything about ourselves that we think. Even you thinking about that, your thinking has been conditioned to be a critical thinker or maybe even not a critical thinker, but it’s all been conditioned.
And in the West, in the 3D world, I call it collective, cultural, consumer hypnosis, whatever you want to call it. But this here defines our life. And we’re taught, if you want a successful life, then you must work through the parameters of achievement and competition and status. And when we live from that place where I did for decades, and most people do, in that very moment, we become, metaphorically speaking, we become a prisoner of our own cell and we become the guard of that very cell and we keep ourself in prison. And this is all 3D conditioning.
So in this series, I want to start breaking you out of the human conditioning and the human brainwashing. Got a couple of questions for you, and I’ll be bringing you some meaty questions in every one of these episodes. Take your time with these questions and just let them marinate and percolate and rattle around in your head for a bit. But the first question is this: If your environment and your brainwashing programmed your fears and life before you were about the age of seven years old, then why do you still introduce yourself to the world using your blueprint from that outdated, brainwashed cage, prison? Next question: Who were you the millisecond before the world gave you your name and told you what you had to achieve, and do, and seek to be worthy of existing? And the final question for now is, if you’re an expression of the words that I used earlier, and again, I’m using life force, but if you’re an expression of God, divine mind, source, or what I’m going to generically call life force, why are you spending your life energy trying to decorate and promote an ego personality that didn’t even choose the design of the life.
Think about that. I’m going to give you a… I loved watching movies and I’m very good at recalling scripts in movies. I want to go back to the movie. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a really good comedy called The Devil Wears Prada. Actually, I was walking in the streets of New York. I was visiting New York. I didn’t live there anymore. And I watched Miranda Priestly, the main character, get out of her car, walking into that building, which ironically, I worked in that same building 30 years ago. Anyway. In the movie, they’re in this room getting ready for a fashion shoot, photo shoot, whatever, you know, something having to do with clothing. And the main character, Miranda, asks for a belt. Two stylists grab a belt, and they look the same color. And the other character in the movie kind of snickered because she wasn’t big in the style. And the boss, Miranda Priestly, said to the person who snickered, “Oh, I see. You don’t think this stuff pertains to you.” Now, this assistant that snickered also was not in the fashion. So Miranda, who literally was like head of Cosmo magazine or something, said, “when you fished in your closet for that lumpy blue sweater, you thought you were immune to all of this stuff. But that color you’re wearing, it’s not lapis. It’s not blue. It’s cerulean. It started first in the correction of Yves Saint Laurent, and then it went to another collection, and then to another collection, and then on down to the bargain basement bin that you fished that lumpy blue sweater out of. When in fact, you think you’re immune to all of this fashion stuff, but that sweater that you’re wearing right now was chosen for you by the people in this room.”
Question: Who chose your reality for you? And no, it’s probably not you. It’s the brainwashing. This is why people don’t want to be doctors, and they are. And they don’t want to do certain professions, and they do it. And they don’t want to live in certain places, but they do. Why? Because someone else brainwashed them and chose their reality for them. Even though you think you’re a free-thinking autonomous being, yes, you are an autonomous being to a degree. But recognize this. And you are. You do have free will. But your life was chosen for you by your family, by your society, by your world. And they built your prison for you. And yet you think you’re free. And you are free to operate within the identity of being human. But this identity of being human… a prison that was built for you by other people, but you don’t even know that other people built your prison for you.
So where’s all this going? I call this series, I think it’s going to be seven or eight episodes, I call it Brainwashed Exit the Lie. And the lie is that you were first a human being. The truth, that’s not the truth, is that you’re a first human being. The truth is that you were first consciousness that inhabits a human body. I’ll say it again. The truth is that you are first consciousness that inhabits a human body. And right there is your power. Your power is not in the identification of identifying as a 3D human being. As a matter of fact, that takes your power away from you.
Recognize this. Know this. Sit with this. You’re not a body that has consciousness. You’ve been brainwashed to believe that. You are consciousness first that has a body second.
So in this episode, we started laying the foundation. And I’m getting you to start thinking about, oh, okay, I thought I was an autonomous, free-thinking being. And even though I have free will, I’ve been brainwashed and I have autonomy within the brainwashing and the cage in the prison that has been created for me by other people that I’ve downloaded that they brainwashed into me. And that’s what we’re going to be looking at and exploring in this series. So keep listening.
I do ask if you found value in this episode, please share. If you would, please as well, go over to iTunes and leave me a five-star review, providing you’re getting great value here. And if you weren’t getting great value, then I’m not sure why you would stay. Anything less than a five-star review is not going to help me out. So stay with me because on this seven weeks, I’m going to take you for a wild ride that’ll shift your perceptions of reality and your awareness and observation of your true self. Thanks for listening. I’ll catch you over on another episode. Bye-bye.