Now, the environment did not choose the meaning any of these people placed on the information it was offering. And if the environment did not choose, then each individual created his own experience out of the situation that was presented to him. There were a number of alternate experiences available and each alternate experience would correspond to the type of belief someone would have about the possibilities.

BELIEFS Beliefs create definitions, make distinctions, and shape our perception of environmental information by programming our senses to hear, see, and select information that corresponds with what we believe. Our experience of the environment will correspond to the choices we make, and these choices will correspond to the information that is perceivable. What is perceivable to each individual, however, may not have much of a relationship to what is available or possible from the environment's perspective. Each person in the illustration of free money would claim that what he experienced was, in fact, the true reality of the situation. What would cause them to believe anything different? People think of their beliefs and subsequent experiences as a fact of reality instead of a belief about reality. This is natural because beliefs create a relationship with the environment that is best described as circular or a closed loop.

What I mean by a closed loop is that every component part in the process of how we experience the environment supports every other component, making everything seem self-evident or beyond question. These closedloop systems that beliefs create are extremely difficult to open up. The belief controls the information coming into the mental system, the information that is actually perceived will be consistent with the belief, the course of action taken will be consistent with the information perceived, and the subsequent experience will support and reinforce the validity of the belief. This is a closed system that will not allow for the possibility of other alternatives because the experiences keep on reinforcing the beliefs, making the beliefs seem increasingly more self-evident and beyond question. Unless we are open or even know how to be open to new information that could lead to new experiences, we will experience the closed-loop nature of our beliefs every moment, assuming the whole

The people who walked by the man giving away free money didn't know they were completely oblivious to the possibility of the environment expressing itself in such a manner, even though the sign said "Free Money." And if confronted with the same set of environmental conditions