What you feed yourself in food, in thought, in word, and in deed, becomes you.
In the same way that your diet effects your body, the language you use and the thoughts you have influence your psyche – your psyche being the sum total of your conscious and unconscious, mental and emotional life. Your Soul if you like, which, I would like to add is not the counterpart to your body, but rather, the flip side of it.
You may have heard me use the allegory that consciousness, and, by extension, life, as being like standing on a shore between two great oceans; one within and one without.
The ocean without is all of the cosmos that we can perceive, and, as importantly, all of the cosmos that we cannot.
Mystery in other words, of all that lies beyond.
The same is true for what is on the ‘inside’ of us.
The contents of your psyche, of which you remain unconscious, are a significant part of who you are. This, I refer to as the mystery within.
Within and without are vast oceans. Vast oceans we shall never know the totality of with our conscious minds.
What you need to know of these oceans, your psyche has a tendency to regulate, in an attempt to keep your life in balance. It delivers into awareness that which is ripe for you at a rate and a pace that it deems appropriate.
One important factor regulates this.
The experience and the idea of who you are.
When someone has an idea of who they should be, or could be, that is not in alignment with the deeper truth that the psyche knows, then the psyche will do all it can to bring to the attention of the individual – often via crises – the error of the conscious will. The conscious will being the thing that is causing them to stick to a path that is not actually right for them.
In this sense it can be the strongest willed individuals who suffer the most. In clinging to identities that they believe they either can, or should be, they continue to fight their way through life. As opposed to surrendering to guidance from within.
Such people are often what we call, ‘unconsciously driven’, and, to be fair, there are few who are not driven in this way to some degree.
The test and challenge of life is to allow into consciousness the truths that we are ripe to know, and then to live them.
Sometimes these truths comes as insight or inspiration.
At other times as abrupt or jarring emotions, sometimes as a reaction to something in the wider world; a person, a place, or a thing.
Whatever its intention, it deems necessary to wake up a part of you from unconscious slumber. That part it feels needs to be woken.
These truths wash up on the shore from both sides – one often being linked to or triggered by the other.
Upon this shore the tide flows both ways. Meaning that, while the unconscious can be bought into consciousness, the conscious mind can suggest things to the psyche. It can invite the psyche to reframe experience, to unblock issues, to release old habits, to create a new identity even.
The degree to which one should suggest is a matter for personal consideration.
That you, and the world are constantly living out earlier suggestions, is a principle that it cannot hurt but to recognise, because even if one does not actively practice self hypnosis, knowing how it works, and recognising when someone, or an organisation is attempting to do it to you, can put you at a great advantage in life. Becoming conscious of your own patterns of negative suggestion can be enough to stop repeating them. Becoming conscious of others doing it to you and help you sidestep any suggestions aimed at you that might not be designed for your favour.
Affirmations and self talk are one form of suggestion that can be used on the unconscious with varying degrees of success.
‘I am strong. I am wealthy. I am happy.’ Such statements, if spoken with conviction, can lead to positive outcomes, IF they are believed.
Emotion is a key component in suggestion, as is belief, when approached via the conscious mind. If you don’t believe that you can or will be any of those things then the likelihood is that you won’t.
Remembering that emotion trumps reason will get you a long way however.
In terms of affirmations the better approach might be to consider the feelings outside of identification ‘Strong. Wealthy. Happy.’ These then become states that we imagine and in our imaginings feel the emotion in the moment.
Emotion and clear intent are key.
In hypnosis, the rational part of the mind is sidestepped. This is why, for some, self hypnosis can be tricky to get their heads around – or to get their heads out of the way of.
When it comes to self hypnosis it is as much about your relationship to your unconscious as it is to anything else, and your relationship with your unconscious is just that, a relationship; A dialectic, a conversation, an exchange, a two way street. Information flows in both directions, and what’s more, the unconscious has its own language, and, if you are to succeed at self hypnosis you are going to have to recognise just what it is. More over, there are no accurate manuals because it is your unconscious. So. No shortcuts. Just relating.
Listening is a good place to start. Paying attention to what you notice, where you feel guided. Let yourself be led sometimes.
It is a flow between X things:
What you know of yourself
Your knowledge of aspects of yourself that you have yet to know
and
The world that lies beyond; again all that you know of it and all that you do not.
In terms of self hypnosis then, it is as much about the relationship that one creates between these elements as the act of suggestion itself. Yes, of course, auto suggestion IS a significant part of it. But it is not the totality of it. It is what you invite your unconscious to deliver into consciousness, what the unconscious actually delivers, and then the act of making sense of it. It is a live cycle, not really a single act.
As the language of the unconscious is not the language of the conscious mind it can take time to decipher. The resulting dialogue can open one up levels of change and transformations never before believed realisable. This is possibly where some of its greatest treasures lie, but they are not there to be dug up and hauled out across the burning sands, they are to be offered. Led too along a path through fertile jungle whose leaves and branches part when you know the right song.
Those who dive into the ocean with a desire to fix or change themselves often miss this point. They may prise a pearl free from a shell or two but they will never see that the true treasure is in the ocean that surrounds them.
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