You’re listening to Brainwashed: Exit the Human Lie with Jim Fortin. This is episode number five in the Brainwashed series, and it is titled, You Were Brainwashed to Chase Power.
Okay, so in the last episode, I said we were going to talk about power. And if you look around, including you, most people, everyone wants power. They want what they perceive to be power: money, influence, respect, control over their own life, and many even want control over others. Despite all this, most people still don’t feel free. I mean, ask almost anyone and, you know, ask them what they really want and they will tell you freedom. But the question is, what if the reason that most people don’t feel free, even those who have 3D power, has nothing to do with how much power you have and everything to do with what you were taught and how you identify with power?
So last week I said we’d talk about power and most of you probably pictured money, politics, your boss, and external things in your life. Well, today I’m going to flip that and I’m going to tell you what real power is. Keep listening.
You’re listening to Brainwashed: Exit the Human Lie with Jim Fortin. After 30 years and millions of downloads in the personal development space, I recognize something most people in this field don’t know: personal development can keep you stuck and feeling bad because it sells you better ways to fix a self that was never broken. This show is different. It’s not about fixing and improving yourself. It’s about exiting the lie that you’re only human and all the limitations that go with that belief. Let’s get started.
Okay, so look around and look at those people who we call powerful. Maybe it’s the rich, the famous politicians, very, very wealthy people like Elon Musk, and the people in charge. And ask yourself, do they really seem free, or are they trapped in guarding? Maybe they’re guarding, defending, and many are afraid of losing what they think gives them power. Think about rich people who think money is power, and notice what a lot of them do: they spend their entire life guarding what they think is power.
What about politicians guarding power? Right now this week, we’re having the midterm elections in the U.S., a very significant time in American politics, and one side of the aisle is guarding power. The other side of the aisle is trying to take power away from the side of government, the political party, that’s guarding the power. And every bit of this, whether it be money or politics or whatever, it’s simply all external power. It’s external human interaction, which in and of itself is not power. And if you look out in the world, people chase, they steal, they fight for, they covet, and they guard power, but they don’t even know what it really is.
Something that comes to mind: look at, let’s say, for example, if you don’t know who he is, he used to be the Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell. And externally, you could say that man has a lot of power, external political power. When it comes to his body, the man has no power, very little power. Now, I’m going to rephrase that: he has power, but he doesn’t know how to understand, to call on, and how to use that power, which is the reason that his body is in the condition that it is in.
So when it comes to power, you look around. We all know someone that seems to have it all, but yet they still may be really anxious and afraid of things in the external world. And then on the flip side, you might see people that have very little external power, no political power, they’re not extremely wealthy, but yet they may be some of the most peaceful and content people and happy people that you know.
When you look at power, we were taught that power is metaphorically, air quote, out there. And we’re taught, I was taught, coming from a working class American family, we are taught that power is held by others. It’s held by other people, other institutions, and other circumstances. And so then what we do is we spend our life chasing it. And then what we do is we are asking for permission for power. This is something that I did many years ago in my earlier life, and many people do this: we fear people who have what we perceive to be power.
You know, if you look back over the years, I’ve done nearly 500 episodes, and you’ve never heard me talk about ever advocating that you chase money, status, prestige, and all these things that people think are power, all these things that people glorify. I’ve never glorified that because I know these external things, they are not power.
Consider this: we often say, and we often talk about, air quote, giving your power away. Now, we do that to some degree by literally acquiescing to these things that are artificial power, like money or prestige. We think that is power. And then we give ourselves to that, which could be some form of giving our own individual autonomy, which is power, our own individual consciousness, which is power. We could give that away. But the question about giving it away is, number one, did you ever really have it? Did it ever really leave you? And did you actually really give it away?
Hopefully, by the end of this episode, you may realize that you’ve been afraid of things that were never holding any power over you at all. Ponder that. Even ask yourself: have I been afraid of things? And if you’re afraid of money and status and powerful people and prestigious people and external things, then yes, you have been actually letting these things, literally you’ve been afraid of them, and they are holding power over you, but they never have had any power over you. You just didn’t know it.
So let me ask you a question: what were we taught that power is? And the 3D version of that, as we are taught, I was taught this. I remember my dad talking about air quote powerful people when I was a kid: the bank president, the president of the United States, political leaders, very wealthy people, doctors. I’ll talk more about that in just a moment. But as a child, we learned that 3D version of power, and that 3D version of power is money and titles and maybe a body and muscles and social media.
Look at how people, not even knowing it, they identify with the power. It’s pretty fucking ridiculous that people think they have any power because they have 500,000 followers on Instagram or 700,000. I’ve seen people literally, air quote, throw their power around because they think they’ve got all this power because they have social media influence. But yet, watch them get sick with what we might call a life-threatening disease and all their power, boom, goes right out the window.
But as a child, we learn that power comes in money and titles and muscles and a body and followers and being the one who decides: I am the boss, and the boss has all the power. You know, when you look at that, even the boss, I mentioned the doctor earlier or the banker, or here’s a big one: many of us give power to media, to the news. Many, if not most people, at least in the US, they give all their power to something external that we call the economy. Look here in the US, and it’s the same all around the world: many people give their power to the government or elected officials and elected leaders. And people literally look up to these people. And they acquiesce. They give all their power to these external things.
Ponder this. This is pretty profound when you get this: almost everything in our daily lives has a power label on it. And I’ve touched on those things: politics, money, medicine, social structures, the news, the economy, social media. Now take a step back and look at that. People give so much power to these external things, but recognize this as well: this kind of power, and you see it every day, can always be taken away. So it never really delivers any freedom, only basically a nervous, and more than anything, temporary kind of control and influence over people.
You know, thinking about power and how it can be taken away and how you can be extremely powerful one moment and then, boom, the next moment you have no power, I think back many years ago, I was watching some talk show and George W. Bush was on the talk show as a guest. The interviewer was asking him about what it was like to leave the White House. And he said, it was actually pretty comical to me, he said that his first morning out of the White House, because the interviewer was saying, what’s it like to go from being the most powerful person in the world to the very next day having no political power? And George W. was saying that their very first day back in Texas, he and his wife, Laura, were sitting there having breakfast. And he said, I sure would like a cup of coffee. And she said, great, get up and get it yourself. And I laugh at that because it exemplifies and exudes what I’m talking about. We literally think power is all these external things around us, but that is not power. So recognize this: if it can be taken away from you, it was never really power at all. It was simply borrowed influence.
Okay, now let’s look at this in a different way. You may have heard me before talk about sovereignty. And when I say sovereignty, I mean spiritual sovereignty. Most of us have never thought about, we’ve never considered places where we hand over our power and our sovereignty willingly, and we never think about it. Ponder this: every time you say, this blank is controlling my life—fill in the blank, this blank is controlling my life—in that moment, you have handed your power over to something else.
Now, what goes in the blank? Look at the amount of people right now in the US, and I’m sure around the world, that understandably are complaining about gas prices. And you could even put gas prices in the blank: these gas prices are controlling my life because I want to go on vacation, not me, I’m using this as an example, I want to go on vacation with my family, and I can’t because I cannot afford gasoline. In that moment, that person has handed over their sovereignty, their inborn power, to something external.
How about this: we give our power to bills, the economy, consumer price index, the diagnosis, the boss, the headline, and even people who hurt us by us continuing to focus on that. We give all of our power away to these external things.
You know, I mentioned multiple times, I want to mention again, Bob Cafaro. I think he was episode number 250 or somewhere in that range. And Bob was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, which kills a lot of people. And doctors told him that they wanted to write him a prescription for disability. Now, in that moment, if Bob said yes, they would have taken his sovereignty and his power away from him. Bob said, no, no. Bob said, as a matter of fact, even though you have diagnosed me with a terminal illness for most people, I’m going to be playing in the symphony again in six weeks. That is Bob hanging on to and living from his own sovereignty and his own power.
And I think back about me. I want to share this. It’s a little personal. I think I’ve shared it before. But when I had the stroke in 2020, I remember sitting with the neurologist about 10 days after the stroke, after I got out of the hospital. And that neurologist had been a neurologist now for, at that point, I believe about 40 years. And my thinking was, which was automatic, my thinking was, okay, this guy has been doing this a long time. He is a neurologist. He’s a professional. He must know what he’s talking about. And so everything he said to me, I listened to.
And I remember having dinner a couple of nights later with a shaman that I worked with at that time. And he said to me, you gave all of your power to that doctor. And I said, what do you mean? And he goes, well, that doctor who hasn’t been in medical school recently and is not up to date with anything currently medical, that doctor was in medical school 40 years ago. What he learned is true about a stroke 40 years ago is not true today. So he told you all these things that are 20 and 30 years old; they’re outdated today—which by the way, I did my own research, and he was correct. A lot of things that I was told were outdated. And he said, meaning the shaman that I worked with said, you gave all of your power to that neurologist. And in that moment, I’m like, shit, you know, yeah, I did that.
So what we tend to do, I remember as a kid, and many of us probably have had something like this: have any of your parents ever told you like mine did? My mother used to constantly say, always listen to the doctor. Now, as I move forward, 50 years later, when I had the stroke, you know, my mom said that when I was a small kid, four and five years old. 50 years later, I had a stroke. And what was I brainwashed to do? I was brainwashed to listen to the doctor.
My dad used to constantly say when I was a kid, he would say, which I don’t agree with at this point in my life because there’s a lot of corrupt people in the world, he would say, always listen to policemen. This day and age, I know that many policemen literally abuse their power. And I was taught to be a very compliant individual. I was brainwashed to be a very compliant, pliable follower. And most of us really are. And the thing is, we become automatically, we become that follower and it feels normal to us. It feels like our truth. It feels like everyday reality: yep, I just give my power away, I listen, and that’s what I’m supposed to do.
And you know, when it comes to everyday examples, as you may or may not know, I don’t know how long you’ve been listening, but I grew up without a lot of money. So money used to have power over me, and anything related to money, especially, and I didn’t get a lot of it, but I did one time many years ago, especially the IRS, the Internal Revenue Service here in the US. You get this little envelope from them and you’re like, holy shit, I don’t want to open this, I don’t know what’s in here, this scares the crap out of me. But something outside of us, meaning the government, money, then controls us emotionally. And we give all of our power to this thing that’s external and it’s outside of us.
So recognize this: you didn’t consciously say one day, hey, you know what, I’m going to give up my power to most things in my life. You were trained to, like I mentioned about me. You were brainwashed to give up your power, not even understanding what power is, based upon what you thought power was as a kid.
You know, in the last episode, I also talked about your feelings being a liar. Notice this: we have feelings about power, and we have feelings about who or what power things and people and circumstances have over us. And then what we do, because we have the feelings, which is why I said in the last episode your feelings are liars, we follow the feelings. And many times in the last episode I talked about feelings being accurate and being valid. Many times our feelings are always valid, but they’re not accurate. And then we have feelings about powerful things that are not accurate, and we give up the power. So what we do is the feelings show up, we believe the feelings, we think they’re true, and then in that moment, boom, there goes our power.
So recognize this: we are not powerless. We are just actually misidentifying with what power is and then being subservient to this definition of what we think power really is when it’s not that thing.
Okay, I just mentioned what power really is and what it’s not. But let’s talk about what power really is. And this is a turning point for a lot of people in this episode. What if the things we fear are actually effects, not causes? We often give all of our power to the effect, meaning when somebody’s broke, that is an effect, and then they let that effect control them, and they give all their power to that effect. But you know what? Where the real power is, is in the cause, because the cause comes before the effect. So we have to recognize that the power is in the cause, but, and we’ll get there in a moment, what is the cause?
Let’s look at that in a different way. Let’s use a metaphor here: your hand. Now, your hand, you can literally, you can comfort somebody with your hand. You can gently stroke someone’s hair. You can offer a helping hand to pull them up if they fall down. Or you can use your hand to strike someone, hit someone in the face, break something, or build something. But recognize this, and here’s the foundation of the entire episode: the hand has no power of its own. Ponder that. The hand has no power of its own. Why? Because the hand is moved by something. But what moves the hand? What directs the hand to comfort, to strike, to stroke, to caress, to build, or to break? Something precedes the hand doing all that. But what is that something? What is that power? Well, that power that moves the hand, are you ready, is your consciousness.
Let me give you another metaphor here. Let’s say that we have a lamp. Now, the lamp doesn’t make the light, and you know that, right? The lamp doesn’t make the light. It only shows you what the electrical current is actually doing. Yet, no one fears a lamp. Why is that? And the same thing: so when we look at a bank account, we look at a body, a boss, or a bad week, are we looking at the source or are we looking at the metaphorical lamp? The source would be the current. But we all focus on the lamp. And the lamp, again, metaphorically, would be the boss or the circumstance. But we have to focus on the current. And the current, the electricity, is consciousness.
Okay, so recognize this, and we’ll talk more about it in just a moment. There is only, and I’m going to slow down and say this very carefully and very slowly, there is only one source of power. Repeat: there is only one source of power, and it is not out there, it’s in here. And we’ll get to that in a moment. But understand this as we move on: many of you, you’ve been afraid of the lamp when you really should have been focusing on the electrical current. Repeat. Again, the electrical current is not the effect; it’s the cause that causes the lamp to light up. But the electrical current is your sovereignty. It is your consciousness as a soulful being on this planet.
Okay, so let’s talk about power and freedom for just a moment. Understand this: fear. Because most people experience anywhere from a little bit of fear to a lot of fear. And recognize what I’m going to say here. You might even want to write it down if you’re not driving: fear is what it feels like when you’ve handed your power to something outside of you. I’ll say it again. Think about that for a moment. Everything you fear is something that you fear happening to you. Ponder that. Everything you fear is something that you fear happening to you. And fear is what it feels like when you’ve handed your power to something outside of you. So if you’re afraid of something, you’ve got to believe that something outside of you can hurt you. You take that fear away, that belief away, and guess what? Fear has nothing to attach to.
So freedom isn’t getting more control. Many people think if they controlled more money, they would have more freedom. If they controlled more people, they would have more power, which would mean they would have more freedom. If they controlled more, I don’t know, assets or whatever, then they controlled more, and then because they controlled more, they were more powerful and they had more freedom. But think about it. Look at Wall Street. Look at politics. True power is needing less control, not having more control. But society believes that the more control you have, the more power that you have. And that is not true power. That is artificial 3D human power.
And while we’re speaking of control, have you ever noticed this: trying to control everything, and I did this many years ago in my life, trying to control everything, and I don’t know about you, but for me, trying to control everything is exhausting. Not having, and I exhale there for a reason, for a fact, not having to control anything is relief. And that is freedom.
The person who thinks in your everyday life, if this fits, explore this: the person who thinks, I have to do everything, I have to do all of it, this is the person who feels like they’re trapped in a world with no choice. And a world of no choice is a world of no freedom and no emotional power.
So exiting the human lie: exiting the human lie isn’t about doing more. It’s about seeing what you’ve been giving your power to. And please understand this: freedom isn’t what you get when you win or you control things in life. It’s what’s left when you stop fighting things that never had any power over you in the first place. Ponder that. Freedom isn’t what you get when you win or you control things in life. It’s what’s left when you stop fighting things that never had any power over you.
All right, something worth noting here is nothing out there has any power. There’s no power in your bills. There’s no power in your doctor or any of that. But what I do want to point out is it’s not about ignoring those things. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m not talking about ignoring your bills. And in particular, and I want to make very clear, I am not talking about ignoring your healthcare practitioner. I’m not talking about ignoring your doctor.
That takes me back to Bob Cafaro, because Bob was diagnosed with a terminal illness. Now, Bob said to me, literally, I’m trying to think back here what he said, he said: accept the diagnosis, but not the prognosis. The second we accept the prognosis economically, in terms of our love life, our physicality, our health, whatever, the second we accept the prognosis, the economic forecast, whatever it might be, the external thing, the second we accept the prognosis, in that moment, we have given our power away. What we want to do is recognize the diagnosis and then not accept the prognosis.
So this isn’t about you ignoring life. It’s about you not being run and managed by the externals in your life. Hopefully that makes sense. I’m going to say it again because it’s so important: this is not about you ignoring life. It’s about you not letting the externals run your life and control your life. So you pay the bill. You follow the medical advice if you choose. Just stop letting, just stop letting the doctor, the medicine, the economy, and other people, stop letting them tell you who you are, and stop giving them your sovereignty and your inborn spiritual power, which is your consciousness. So remember, stop letting what you were taught as power define your life. Sit with that for just a bit.
Okay, so a little practice here, a way to start creating some small micro changes in you. This week, catch yourself if you should say, for example, XYZ has power over me. Let’s say you’re complaining about gas prices. In that moment, boom, you’ve given all your power to something external: the economy, politicians, gas prices, the straightforward moves, whatever it is. The second we say, I can’t do XYZ because I don’t have money, or I don’t have XYZ, or I don’t have these resources, in that moment, we have given the external power over us. So recognize when you find yourself in that spot and then simply ask yourself: well, is that the lamp, or is that the electrical current?
Now, what you do not want to do is don’t try to fix it. Just notice. Specifically, just notice where you give your power away to external things, which again, to be repetitive, could be your doctor, could be the news, it could be a professor, a teacher, a mom, a dad, a parent. It could be anything outside of you. Just notice when you acquiesce, and I’m not telling you to be rebellious either, but notice when you acquiesce when they say something, and then boom, you automatically buy it and you respond to it. In that moment, you have given your power away.
All right, so earlier I said, remember this: we’re taught to chase power outside of yourself. And again, the examples I used were Washington, D.C., or money, Wall Street, whatever it might be. We are taught, and we’re actually rewarded as kids, we are rewarded for chasing power. Because the more we catch in life, people praise us for accumulating more, thinking more is power, and then we are rewarded for that. But here’s the truth. You may want to write this down. Write it down in any kind of way that feels good to you and seems to fit for you. But you can never be free when you believe everything out there in the external world holds power over your life.
Recognize this: you were never powerless. You were simply identifying with power in the wrong way. So the lie in this episode, the lie is that you were brainwashed to chase power, as I just mentioned. And I started sharing, well, what it really is, because the whole lie is these things, the money and the political power and the stature and the prestige, these will all give you power and they will give you freedom. That is the lie, because all power is internal. All power, I’m going to slow down here, all power is in your consciousness. Real power is the awareness of your consciousness and that living sovereignty inside of you.
If you want to see how much power you’ve given up, you’ve heard me talk multiple times about the Brainwashed quiz. Go to jimfortin.com/brainwashed. There’s a free quiz there. Take the quiz, and as you’re going through the quiz, it’ll become obvious to you how much of your power has been taken away from you by societal conditioning, by social conditioning, by your school, by media, by parents. All these things outside of you have taken your power away from you.
Next week, I think that’s going to be episode number five in the Brainwashed Power series, and the lie that we’re going to dispel is that your worth is tied to what you produce, what you build, and what you conquer.
As we wrap up this episode, I’d like to request, if you really enjoyed this episode, number one, please share it with other people. And secondly, if you would, and you got value here, go over to Apple iTunes and leave me a five-star review. Anything less than a five-star review is not going to help me whatsoever. So again, thank you for listening to this episode. And please remember, there is no power outside of you. All power is in your consciousness. You were born with that power and that sovereignty. You have it in you today. You’ve just simply been brainwashed over the years to give it up to the external things, and we’ve got to bring all that power right back into you and then create the awareness inside of you that guess what? Your consciousness is the only living power in the universe, and that living power is living within you. Thanks for listening, and I’ll catch you over on another episode. Bye-bye.
