Living with reality requires a truthful heart and mind.

Tag: trance

hypnosis-pic-3
SharonBy Sharon Dalzell |

In service of survival we imagine ourselves but we mistake this dreaming to be our real self. This self concept can have many parts that have different jobs. It’s an adventure describing how a conscious noticing can be introduced into this habitual (unconscious) world of mind. The self we’re imagining and the many sub selves it juggles thinks and feels itself real. To introduce noticing this self is rather like listening to conversations among imaginary friends. Noticing, or paying attention to these imagined selves operating subconsciously is powerful. After spending couple of days talking to and mostly listening to my own different selves and inviting them to come forth, they spoke out loud and it went something like this…

The imagined self lays down the ‘law’ regarding what we allow as socially proper behavior, for me. But, wait, here comes another self, with another set of ideas. A self who wants out from under the pressure of societal norms and it insists on saying ‘yes’ to a nontraditional lifestyle. This self thinks she has a right to a juicier, more lively living experience. Another self sighs and shuffles in, a worn and torn mother speaking about how sick and tired she is of the struggle that goes on among these different selves. It is lively and energetically charged, how these different selves step into the conversation. The mother self seems a bit of a martyr, managing the squabbling and manipulative mind stuff of and child and adolescent selves. The mother self is stoic and forever worn out. She feels guilty that she has not been able to reconcile these warring and childish selves. She wanted her kids to have better than she had. She now  wants the kids to go away because they don’t listen, they’re unruly and refuse to co-operate. They know she’ll take care of them no matter how they argue and refuse to co-operate with one another.

There is a conscious awareness is in the midst of mental stories, a noticing of the perpetual cycling of these selves as they are being taken care of or belittled by another imagined self like the martyr mom above. But who notices  what or who  holds all of this that is circling within. The martyr mom would be out of a job if the kids ever reconciled. Who notices this play in the theater of mind?

As I play with and listen to these selves I become aware that these so-called selves are habitual systems, created in my mind, developed from some snapshot in the past where this thought of ‘I’ made a decision about how to get by in the world, that decision has since become automatic. I don’t have to think about it for the habit to work. I am convinced all of us formed such survival strategies that are a bit like my personal example.

A baby learns and adapts to whatever circumstances are present. Familial influences are present along with an onslaught of hypnotic advertising. These things influence a human being by six months of age. Whatever beliefs (systems of thought) influenced us from culture e.g. spiritual or religious influence, it seems a sense of self will be created and form strategies to cope with the world. With media influence especially with the advent of the internet reaches into us more powerfully influencing what an person or group comes to believe. Primitive and modern values converge forming the foundation of notions ‘about’ ourselves built out of all the information bombarding the mind. All aspects of this self presumes to do different jobs and even struggle with conflicting beliefs. Survival is presumably the goal of these beliefs.

As an experiment let’s let these selves come forth and speak. This changes things because we do it consciously instead of habitually. It is illuminating and begins to separate awareness from what is a magnificent complex of thought that is typically automatic. We see these routines are often emotionally charged and it’s quite astounding to see them as a kind of thought software as opposed to ‘who we are.’

To help this witnessing of the mind, creating an altered state like a mild trance serves as a tool to break us out of our habitual thinking. Hypnosis is similar to a meditative altered state of mind, except in meditation we are quieting the mind, in hypnosis we are consciously exploring it. Our own Awareness simply begins to see what’s happening within the mind BECAUSE we are not operating automatically we bring NEW conscious insights, facts and judgments to these previously habituated thinking and this dramatically changes how we value these ideas. We may see some habits no longer serve us, if they ever did. Our whole view of ourselves and how we see the world can change. In this way hypnosis works in favor of the individual’s conscious freedom to choose.

Finding our own capacity to redirect previously automatic processes of the mind counters and, often, breaks the ‘spell’ cast by the constant hypnotic influence of marketing, cultural and religious influence. Many of these strategies simply guide consumers to products or beliefs that serve outside interests.

Conscious use of hypnosis can undo the influence of hypnotic techniques that we’ve been exposed to our whole life.

We begin to use the mind more consciously and less habitually to direct our own choices. This can be playful too. It’s joyful to find out there is more to life than habits formed many years ago. Let’s create a life worth living and a world in which it’s a joy to live.

My name is Sharon Dalzell Schlotthauer CCHT. I help the process above. I use hypnosis to undo a lifetime of hypnosis that no longer serves a purpose, if it ever did.  

Exploiting Trust

edit-exploiting-trust

By Sharon Dalzell-Schlotthauer

Hearing a commercial come on the radio, I turn the radio off. I am tired of being bombarded by suggestions that I probably have termites or rodents in the basement and I need an exterminator for my house that I can ‘refi’ as easily as falling off a log. These repetitive suggestions are meant to bypass our conscious recognition. The most powerful suggestions operate in the subconscious mind and become our prejudices, assumptions, and habits of thinking. These suggestions given to us from outside sources, such as radio tv, movies, operate like the way we chew gum without thinking about it, the way we reach for certain brands, and shop at particular stores. The method used is post hypnotic suggestion, or neuro linguistic programming, known as NLP, and is profoundly effective, especially with repetition. The idea is to implant the name of a brand into the subconscious mind. Then, when the roof leaks, we automatically think of that particular roofing company, the one that we always hear on the radio.

TV marketing or advertising uses hypnotic suggestion to encourage or lead us to whatever is being offered for sale.

Hypnotic marketing strategies sometimes if not oftentimes exploit our trust, utilizing suggestive evocative images and phrases meant to tug at our sentiments and inspire a willingness to buy whatever is being offered for sale. An introduction followed by some free information, or gift , or help is given . The marketing strategy is to ignite in the individual the spirit of reciprocity. The target market means a group or an individual being led to desire a product or process, that supposedly, will give that group or individual satisfaction. Through a gift being offered, the desire to purchase the product or process is being inserted into the subconscious mind . The strategy instills trust in the receiver. By this means, our, ( the target market ) sense of fairness is triggered because we think that the giver has shown faith and trust in us by giving us something, perhaps, truly valuable. And, we begin to show faith and trust in return by buying product from what we consider a trusted vendor, After accepting a free gift, we “take the bait” or trust and believe that what is being purchased will benefit us , meet our needs, and satisfy our desires. Sometimes there is some satisfaction, often times just the opposite. How many times has the consumer felt and actually been sold a promise in a product or service that fell far short of that promise.

How strange I felt when I realized that that marketing techniques, post hypnotic suggestion, guided imagery, NLP were the same techniques that I was learning in my study of hypnosis. The difference being that my intention was and is to use the techniques to benefit the individual as she or he decides. For instance hypnosis can be successful in it’s power to break habits that my clients no longer want, beliefs running automatically below the level of consciousness via the subconscious mind, sometimes the very beliefs put there by marketing strategies. Those advertising campaigns glamorizing junk food, cigarettes, or other legal addictive substances, using alluring images of good feelings , hypnotic suggestion that these products have great value .

It is clear that hypnotic suggestion is a double-edged sword.

It can be used to manipulate the subconscious mind destructively or constructively. It’s a tool that depends on the integrity of who is using it. Considering hypnotic suggestion that goes beyond even marketing strategies selling products to consumers, notice the absurd or destructive behavior in which crowds can be led by a hypnotic speaker, to offer huge amounts of money in return for some notion of abundance returning ten fold, or worse the hypnotic power of a speaker who can stir up a hate driven lynch mob. It is important to notice and to remember that suggestion is not a trifling matter.

Our ability to trust our perceptions and our environment is as vital to our survival as our ability to be learn from whatever events we have experienced as painful , sometimes traumatic. When our trust has been exploited, manipulated by outside forces, we either begin to refuse or become afraid to trust what is going on in and around us, or we become denizens believing and doing whatever we’re told. Either way, obedient or rebellious, we are still, more often than not, at the mercy of hypnotic suggestions coming at us and into our minds, from outside influence that bypass the conscious mind and influence our thinking without our being aware of what is being placed in our minds.

We can use hypnotic suggestion for our own benefit.

We can use this same set of hypnotic tools to undo thinking habits that have been inserted into our subconscious minds, provided we do it consciously. We can anchor the notion to disobey no longer useful or wanted old ideas that are running automatically in our subconscious minds and take advantage of a hypnotic trance to instill in our subconscious minds the notion of confidence, freedom of expression, freedom to make new and different choices. We can dislodge old fear based limits and anchor belief in freedom to make mistakes, engaging in trial and error to find new and better ways of living, creating a world in which we want to live. We can change the content of our subconscious minds, for our own benefit. We can break free of what has been inserted by in authentic authorities. We can move beyond whatever limits in mind that keep us frightened of the unknown, of failure of success. Finding we can change and clear our minds for our own benefit is an awakening of our creative power. It s a genuinely valuable use of the mind.

 

© 2024 Self Honesty

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑