Become all you can become by raising yourself higher on the Tree of Life

Jill Bolte Taylor’s Stroke Of Insight

Originally posted 2011-08-01 19:04:13.

Jill Bolte Taylor’s Stroke Of Insight, Or The Brain Is The Cornerstone Of Peace

Jill Bolte personal vibration: 245
her story and teaching: 296
truth value: 235

What is the term for the passages between the two hemispheres of the brain? Anyone knows?

I have been trying to find out what is the proper word to use when I am talking about the two sides of the brain working together… what are those circuits that light up when you actually “be” as a full-brain individual, where your whole brain participates in your life at the same time, and you have your analytical capabilities and your “intuitive” capabilities informing your actions and your feelings at the same time, not either one or the other.

In my search I was lead to this brain researcher’s speech on TED

I remember seeing that video once before, and I remember feeling that it was hokey… but at the time I didn’t know why.

Can I say today? Let’s see if I can succeed… though the audience ate it up, and I am risking (as usual) to be very unpopular.

Let me start with its conclusion, which is the biggest b.s. I have heard in a long time.

Continue reading “Jill Bolte Taylor’s Stroke Of Insight”

Raise Your Vibration: 4 Modalities That Can Work

Originally posted 2011-07-14 13:14:19.

Please remember that this case study is concerned with one aspect: does the modality raise your vibration permanently. That is the only question I answer here, that is my only concern.

Why? Because there are tons of life-coaches, lots of ‘transformational’ programs, lots of spiritual teachers, lots of meditation, yoga, brain-entrainment, etc. programs are out there that create a feel-good effect, but the effect isn’t lasting, and you have to go back for more.

What do I mean? Continue reading “Raise Your Vibration: 4 Modalities That Can Work”

Spirituality and Personality: The Psycho-Spiritual Controversy

Originally posted 2011-05-14 05:00:06.

If you have been involved in either therapy or counselling, or spirituality and meditation, in recent years you have probably encountered two basic, polarized viewpoints concerning personality. Essentially it amounts to this: therapists are pro-personality (and its improvement through healing neurosis etc.) while spiritual teachers proclaim personality a big waste of time, since neurotic or not, you are more than your personality.

This is not particularly surprising, since therapy and counseling tend to be concerned with the individual, while spiritual practices are concerned with higher matters. But it does lead the novices and beginners into a quandary where they are faced with the decision of what to do about personality. On the one hand, therapy could be an expensive, futile effort to better the personality, whereas, on the other hand, spiritual practice may offer an excuse to leave personal problems behind, with the justification that you are moving on to more lofty concerns.

In the extensive time I have been engaged in therapy and spirituality I can say that I have discovered the answer to this controversy! And I don’t say it without reluctance and a certain caution, since my answer is liable to offend both camps — therapists and spiritual teachers. Perhaps my answer is less a rejection or abandonment of one viewpoint for another and more of a synthesis. This may be an answer of the best kind – the kind that doesn’t marginalize or dismiss anyone’s experience or viewpoint. For my answer, while radically new and innovative, does not fundamentally disagree with either point of view, but considers each appropriate to the complex, total unfolding process of our human nature and potential.

My answer to the dilemma is to propose a third band of human experience. I call this “the authentic self” and since I am not using any unusual words I need to define this term, because I do mean something specific. The authentic self, in the way I use the term, is the bridge between the personality and the spiritual self. It is arrived at usually, but not always, after a lengthy period of intensive, deep, applied and consistent inner work. This inner work consists of a journey of self-discovery in which one circumvents the self, becoming increasingly aware of the conscious and unconscious material that comprises one’s sense of self, or ego. This involves character, which is essentially defensive strategy or an intelligent, protective reaction to early conditioning, which becomes increasingly calcified and adapted throughout adolescence and adult life. Character is composed of the way in which we survive and protect ourselves from inner and outer stimuli and ultimately avoid really meeting life. It creates a self-imposed prison — limitations in which we feel falsely safe.

Self-discovery also involves cultivating our awareness of personality, or the way in which character (defenses and strategies) is experienced. Both inwardly and outwardly we erect a barrier to experience — life events and other people — which is a mask, façade or persona which eclipses the real person, or our true nature.

We also raise emotional and behavioural patterns out of the murky stratum of the unconscious, out of unawareness, and see just how much our life is lived automatically, as an automaton without real human response, emotional feeling, resonance, empathy or even awareness.

The process of self-discovery involves witnessing, reliving and remembering, practicing awareness and releasing pent-up emotions, returning the bodymind, through self-regulating, self-healing and self-referral, to a natural state of balance, ease and relaxation, and opening to insight and experience. In the short-term the experience is enriching, enlivening and full of dramatic changes. In the long-term through achieving personal wholeness, soul nourishment and insights we reach a threshold, a bridge, a chasm – all variously transitional metaphors that signify a quantum leap, a fourth dimensional change that I have termed “the threshold of transformation”.

The significance of this threshold, and what distinguishes it from all the changes that have gone before, is that is effects are irreversible — it is a step from which there is no going back. Once taken, this step across the threshold will lead you to the condition of authenticity and intimacy with your own true nature.

This insight renders the controversy about personality redundant. But it does depend on our ability to clearly distinguish the psychological from the spiritual.

What Is Sleep Hypnosis And How Does It Work?

Originally posted 2011-05-05 02:00:09.

Hypnosis is mysterious and peculiar. It is not fully understood. Some therapists are taught a very diluted version of hypnosis and they market themselves with statements about hypnosis that are not true. They are true to the techniques they use, but not to hypnosis. Here are six common misconceptions about hypnosis and their relevance to effective change work. Some are encouraged by practicing therapists and some are just urban legends.

Hypnosis is a sleep like state

Hypnosis gets its name from the Greek God of sleep, Hypnos, which is misleading. Relaxation and sleep are two very common suggestions used in the induction process. The relaxed state you often see in hypnotised people is the acceptance of a suggestion, but it is not hypnosis. It is the effect not the cause.

In a stage show you will see the subjects slumped when the hypnotist is not using them, they look like they are asleep, puppets with their strings cut, yet as soon as the puppeteer gives them an instruction they jump to it – you do not do that when you are asleep. When they are doing what they are told as part of the performance – eating an onion or falling in love with a mop – in the reality that the hypnotist has given them they are in they still hypnotised and they are very definitely not asleep.

In therapy the client will spend a lot of time with their eyes closed in a relaxed state as in therapy the attention is turned inwards and so it makes sense to block out external stimulus, but they are not asleep, they are following instructions given to them by the hypnotist, rearranging their subconscious patterns and changing their lives.

A good therapist will ensure some sort of two way communication between themselves and the client so they can gauge the effectiveness of what they are doing as they go. This might involve talking with the client, asking for head nods or shakes or establishing Ideo Motor Responses which are tiny involuntary muscle movements – one for Yes and one for No. You cannot do that with someone who is asleep.

The most common phrase from a clients mouth when you wake them up is something along the lines of ‘that was weird’ – probably not the first phrase uttered each morning.

The Hypnotist cannot make you do anything you do not want to do!

Many hypnotherapists will claim this on their FAQ pages, they will tell you that you are completely in control throughout the session as many hypnotherapy schools teach this. Any therapist that claims this is not using hypnosis or they do not understand the tools of their own trade. Hypnosis is the acceptance of suggestion without question, without reservation, without inhibition and that is exactly why you go to hypnotist rather than a counsellor or psychotherapist which work with your conscious faculty at the pace you wish to go to try and get past problems – hypnosis removes your conscious critical faculty from the equation to get you fast results.

Let’s examine the term ‘want’. Let’s say you get a panic attack every time you are in a small enclosed space. You want to stop doing that but you can’t. If you really truly wanted to stop you would. So why is it not possible? Because there is a deeper want – part of your mind wants to keep you out of small enclosed spaces. Part of your mind, the part that is in charge, does not want to go into small enclosed spaces. Go and see a hypnotist though, and they can talk to that part of your mind and tell it that you will be okay if you go into small enclosed spaces without panicking. And you will feel fine after that. The hypnotist has made you do something that you do not want to do.

The same goes for any issue that you might want to see a hypnotist for – the process aligns your conscious desires with your subconscious resistance so there is no conflict.

It is a wonderful process that can do wonderful things for you but be sure you trust your hypnotist and chose them carefully.

Hypnosis is a completely natural state which you drift in and out of several times a day

For hypnosis to happen you need a hypnotist and a hypnotee. The thing that makes hypnosis hypnosis is the acceptance of the hypnotist’s suggestion without reservation, without inhibition. This cannot happen regularly throughout the day unless you are joined at the hip of a hypnotist who barks suggestions at you regularly.

Trance is often mistaken for hypnosis. Daydreaming is a form of trance. Autopilot that you slip into while driving a familiar root is a form of trance. Watching TV is a form of trance. Hypnosis is a form of trance, but trance is not hypnosis, not without a hypnotist there to drive it.

Hypnosis is when a hypnotist encourages your subconscious to become dominant over your conscious mind which is important because your subconscious can do anything, it does not know its limits, whereas your conscious mind has limits and it knows exactly where they are.

The hypnotist does not do anything to you, they just encourage the subconscious to come out and play, using your imagination and focus while persuading the conscious mind to sit back for a while. This does not happen several times a day. In a session with a good hypnotist you will have a new and different, weird and wonderful experience.

You can hypnotize yourself

Following the above logic, you cannot hypnotise yourself. You cannot bypass your own conscious faculty. You cannot stick your own finger to the end of your own nose without glue but a hypnotist can. It is very hard to consciously change a subconscious belief once it is formed as your conscious mind is a result of that belief – this is a bit like trying to pick yourself up off the floor. You need someone else to bypass that conscious mind for you.

Self hypnosis can be good to focus your attention, your energy and your self awareness, it can be good to really think about how you are seeing the world and to find new ways of seeing it, but it is not hypnosis – it is self-induced trance or meditation and it can do you the world of good, but it will not be as fast as hypnosis and is not the same thing.

Only the weak minded can be hypnotized

This misconception was quite possibly started by bad hypnotists who just wanted people to comply. It is not true. Hypnosis is more of a talent of the hypnotee than the hypnotist, it is a skill to be able to take someone else’s words as your own reality. It is a skill that some people have naturally, others can learn to be better at it and some people will never be able to do it. So what determines how good a hypnotee you are?

In a study by J. E. Horton et al entitled ‘Increased anterior corpus callosum size associated positively with hypnotizability and the ability to control pain’, he discovers that someone’s ability to be hypnotised depends on the size of the rostrum which is part of the brain within the corpus callosum which links the left and right hemispheres, the rational and creative parts of the brain. The bigger the rostrum the better a hypnotee you are; if your rostrum is small it may be that you cannot be hypnotized.

The best way to find out how hypnotizable you are is to spend some time with a hypnotist and try some things and this would be wise to do before investing a full amount in treatment. Do some tests and you have an idea how likely it is to work and a good hypnotist will give you the opportunity to find this out as this determines if and how they are going to be help you.

The other things that may get in the way on the day are: mood, rapport with the hypnotist, setting, things going on in your life and choice of inductions to name but a few, but a good hypnotist will work with you to get past these variables and if you can be hypnotised, you will be.

You can get stuck in hypnosis

If the stage hypnotist dies in the middle of the show, will you live the rest of your life in love with a mop? If the therapist walks out in the middle of a session and never comes back will you never ‘wake up’?

To take the therapy scenario first, your subconscious is bright, it is in control of so much all the time, it will realise that the hypnotist is gone and allow you to either fall into a comfortable sleep or ‘wake you up’ of its own accord.

In terms of your showbiz love affair with a mop, you may stay in love with the mop for a while, but your mind can still learn and there is more evidence that the mop is not actually a person worthy of your love than there is to the contrary and so you will process this and fall out of love quite quickly.

This is why the hypnotist needs to be clever in therapy as the effects in the session need to last. The suggestions that are designed to effect the rest of your life must be put in a way that will remain congruent with the way you experience life or the work that is done in the session will be undone over time. The change needs to be made and then your subconscious prepared for potential challenging times ahead so that it can run the new pattern even when the going gets tough rather than reverting habitually to the old pattern. The therapist cannot stop life from happening, but they can give you the tools to cope with whatever is thrown at you.

How to prevent a new project from disrupting your life?

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How do you keep your focus? Keep your focus in spite of adding new tasks, new projects, new activities to your schedule?

How do you prevent it from disrupting your life? How do you become one of those people who can do more and therefore have more?

This is the question many of you have asked me.

Most people are unproductive. period. So this article is mostly for people who are productive in their main occupation, until… Continue reading “How to prevent a new project from disrupting your life?”

The Seven Boulders that you need to concquer

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When you decide on a new direction for your life, you suddenly find yourself with obstacles blocking you, even your view of the horizon, let alone your path.

Your reaction to it will be one of two kinds… in my experience. Continue reading “The Seven Boulders that you need to concquer”

Are you a successful person or just a not unsuccessful one?

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What’s the difference between a successful person and an unsuccessful one?

This article is really important. If you read nothing else on this site, read this. I’ll do my darned best to make it simple, and to reach your dense brain. How do I know it’s dense? Because successful people don’t read articles like this, or not often. Skinny people don’t read how to lose weight articles either… got it?

If you take two people, maybe even twins, and watch them, their results in life, most likely, will be different. Their actions will be different. Their likes and dislikes… Continue reading “Are you a successful person or just a not unsuccessful one?”

Fighting a train for the right of way at a railway crossing

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I woke up at 3 am with a start from a deep dream about principles spinning so hard that I could only follow them with full concentration…

I stared into the dark for a few minutes still seeing the images of the principles, and I got the words that go with the images: Continue reading “Fighting a train for the right of way at a railway crossing”

How To Be A Sacred Lotus: Unfrazzled And Happy?

How to be a sacred Lotus, untouched by the rain, the suffering of others, the noise of others: what’s the secret of people that stay on the path and are happy?

Untouched by hunger, cold, lack of food… anything.

What is the reason you are pulled into everything, that you are trying to help everyone, that you are a do-gooder? Continue reading “How To Be A Sacred Lotus: Unfrazzled And Happy?”

What the Nobel Prize winning physicist’s story teaches you

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What can the Nobel Prize winning physicist’s story teach you? OR What did Frank Kern learn the hard way?

First, before I get into the story itself, let’s ponder the meaning of teaching so we are on the same page, OK?

As someone who attempts to teach, let me tell you what it’s like for me. I find a thousand different ways to say, demonstrate, frame what I want to teach. And I invent thousand and one stories. I find books that hint on what I want to teach. Often I sing it, I make it a comedy, make it a tragedy. And I make you read. I make you practice activating your eye muscles and the related brain areas… Continue reading “What the Nobel Prize winning physicist’s story teaches you”