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I got an e-mail from Asoka Selvarajah the other day, (see below)
and amused myself with its appropriateness. Although I've never met Asoka, we
seem to be mostly on the same wave length, at the same time. I've printed some of his articles in
the past.
The irony was how well his e-mail matches the theme of my new
book, and how well my new book echoes the principal message of The Phoenix
Centre. There’s awake and aware, and there's whatever you want to call the opposite
state. Hypnotized. Zoned out. Numb from the neck up. Asleep at the switch. Unc.
(I saw that in a book once, it's short for unconscious.)
Now, and this is the tough part, the opposite of Unc is not
"enlightened." I know several people out there who are now throwing their hands
up in despair, whining, "But…but…I'm so…highly…developed!" As if this is some
kind of static process. As opposed to a dynamic one – one that exists moment by
moment.
Yeah, there's the rub. Paying attention is fine, but most want
to figure out how to do it, and then be done with it. Asoka makes that point at
the end of his article, when he indicates that waking the woman up from hypnosis
simply allowed her to settle into her normal, waking trance. Waking up is an
interesting process, achieved in this moment, (remember the title
of my book, This Endless Moment? Get it??) and then it's endlessly repeated. There
is no, "Oh! Now (and forever) I get it!" No, "I've been to Haven or The Phoenix Centre, and I
learned how to communicate!" No you didn't. Because there is a difference
between learning to communicate and actually communicating.
The reason it's so tough for many is that the concept is dead
simple, and the application is endless. I may know an amazing communication
model, but I can only use it instance by instance. And using it when all hell is
breaking out requires discipline as opposed to "enlightenment."
The norm for most people is to stop at the identification (or
learning, or thinking) stage.
A colleague of Dar's typifies this. I've known her for years. She owns hundreds
of my business cards. She's never been in for a session, however. Lately, she's
surviving her typical dramas by persuading her doctor to give her pills. I
suggested she come for a talk, and she said, "I already know what you'll say.
You'll say I have low self esteem and am insecure."
In a sense, she may be right in her self-diagnosis, although I
don't necessarily think so. I'm into a much more fundamental question. I've
known her for 15 years, and she seems to be stuck in the same place.
She's
happily living her life as the world's most unhappy person. In other words, she
has lots of explanations for why she is stuck. She is unwilling to invest
anything in
seeing her life differently, or perhaps more precisely, is unwilling to do her life
differently.
So, her body is giving out on her. More headaches. More pain.
More sadness and anxiety. More stress and sadness.
What would be required here, as with all of us, is for her to pay
attention. She needs to learn to listen to her body and to watch her mind. She
has bad habits that lead her to misery, and these have become default
behaviours. They never work, but they keep getting repeated.
Were she open to it, I would propose 3 months of weekly sessions
of Bodywork and talking. I would suggest that we strategize ways for her to
notice, or wake up to, her Unc thinking. I would help her to identify the
feeling as she slides away from awareness to the hypnosis of mindlessly
repeating old habits. I would help her to
re-acquaint herself with her body – both the signals of pain it's sending, and
help her to meet herself physically when the pain is absent. I would then look
at how she is living her relationships, and see what we could come up with for
her to be clear and honest, open and vulnerable, without being angry, sad or dispirited.
Please note the last word in the last sentence. Dispirited.
I would explore her spirit with her – what motivates her, what calls her, what
has the potential to set her free. She is, as the old cliché says, a human doing
instead of a human being. Being is about finding one's spirit, one's essence,
and living from there. Spirit is all that there is, when one looks at what is
both
"real" and lasting.
This is what I suggest for each of you. Find someone to talk to
and do Bodywork with. See how you are stuck, what patterns are happening on
autopilot. Decide, one moment at a time, to come into awareness and
consciousness. Feel your feelings, find your body, and free your spirit.
Anything else is a walking trance. You can practice that after
you're dead.
In the end, being awake and aware is all we ought to be striving
for. And we should be moving mountains to be there. If you are not, ask yourself
what you are waiting for.
Life is short. Get on with it!
Are You Hypnotized & Don't Even Know It?
_________________________________
by Asoka Selvarajah, Ph.D
When I was at university, an astonishing thing happened one
evening. There was a hypnosis show on campus. It was several
hours later that night, long after the show had ended. One girl,
who had been hypnotized, was found in considerable distress in
her room. Nobody knew what the matter was, but the hypnotist was
called on the telephone. It seems that the girl was still in a
hypnotic trance! Anyway, he said a few words to her over the
phone, and all was well.
The amazing thing is that the girl had seemed perfectly normal to
both herself and her friends for hours after the show had ended.
Nobody imagined that she was still under the influence, not even
the hypnotist himself. Yet, she was.
So, how do you know if YOU are in a hypnotic trance right now?
"Easy", you retort, "I have never been hypnotized". Oh, but
you HAVE!...
What does hypnosis really do? By accessing your subconscious
mind, it changes, either temporarily or permanently, some part of
your world view. This can be as simple as making you forget your
own name. However, it can also be as profound as causing a
long-standing severe allergy to vanish while you are in trance,
or cause you to paint and draw with a talent you are incapable of
during normal waking consciousness.
Now, this type of thing, amazing as it may seem, is fairly common
and the change so dramatic that it is easy to detect. However,
you yourself may be experiencing a much more subtle trances.
These were created in a similar way, but over a longer period of
time, and in a less deliberate fashion. Who was the hypnotist in
this instance? None other than your environment, your parents,
your peers, and even your TV set. Through a process of
repetition, you slowly became "conditioned", i.e. hypnotized"
into accepting a certain view of reality. It sinks deep into
reality, and becomes part of "what is", and therefore is no
longer questioned.
Think about this for a moment. Where did your view about money
come from? Or of the opposite sex? Or religion? Indeed, where
did MOST of your deepest beliefs, i.e. what you consider to be
irrefutable FACTS, actually come from?
If you are honest, you will agree that most of them did not come
to you through a process of rational thinking. Most people get
their ideas about Money, for example, directly from their
parents, through a process of osmosis. From the time they were
young, they were indicted into a hypnotic trance, where
suggestions were repeated over and over about money, until they
became the very beliefs of the person in question.
The same is true of many other deeply held beliefs. We are
walking around in multiple trances - the victims of countless
hypnotists, and we don't even know it. We think we are fully
awake, just like the girl in the earlier story, but we are
actually in trance.
When you are asleep and dreaming, you don't usually know it.
However, when you awaken, you can say "Oh, it was just a dream".
Yet, when you were asleep, you could not really tell. It all made
perfect sense at the time, no matter how bizarre it seems on
awakening.
BUT, when you are awake, how do you know that you are not really
also in some other kind of dream? Actually you do not. And
actually, you ARE!
That is precisely what Buddhism and many of the other esoteric
traditions teach when they describe the world as illusory, and
a condition to be woken up from in order to achieve
enlightenment. They are really talking about trance breaking.
Indeed, the name the Buddha gave himself, "Tathagata", means "The
Awakened One".
In more ways than we can count, we are in the grip of hypnotic
trance. At present, political powers seek to condition the minds
of the masses and enclose them within the hypnotic trance of
FEAR. It seems to be working, mainly because people are not awake
and aware, and do not guard the doors of their minds. Rather,
they let anything come in without due examination. As each person
participates in the trance, they reinforce its reality for
everyone else.
Do you find yourself unable to break out of certain frustrating
tendencies or habit? Do you find the same situations cropping up
for you wherever you go, even though the people and places
change? Do you "know" that you are incapable of certain things
that other people find easy - drawing, making money, meeting
people, public speaking or whatever? If so, the chances are very
strong that you are hypnotized, but don't know it.
The whole point of personal growth teachings is to help you
examine yourself and see what is really there, i.e. to see the
trances that have been imposed upon you by unknown hypnotists and
break free of them so that you can live truly and authentically.
Otherwise, you are living someone else's idea of the way you
should be.
The worse thing about a hypnotic trance is that you can't tell
you are in one, and neither can anyone else. Moreover, each
person has their own set of trances to deal with, so how can they
be of much help to you? As Jesus said, if one blind man leads
another, the only thing that is certain is that they will both
fall into a ditch!
The way to break out of your trances is through rigorous
self-examination and study of materials that can help you awaken,
bit by bit. Question yourself. What ARE your attitudes to Money?
Jews/Moslems? Relationships? Women/Men? War? Sex? And so on.
Where DID you get these ideas? Are they really your own,
developed through a process of careful study and examination. Or
did you imbibe them from the hypnotists of Society, parents,
friends, culture? Are they helping you, or causing you to be much
less than you could be?
If you seek, you shall find. Indeed, you shall discover that many
of the beliefs you hold sacred were placed in your brain before
you could even speak. Yes, the hypnosis began that early!
Going back to the original story, they eventually managed to
awaken that girl from her trance. Arguably, when the
hypnotist brought her back to her senses, she simply returned to
her more conventional everyday hypnotic trance - the one she was
familiar and happy with. In a sense, she merely awoke from one
hypnotic trance into another.
So, what is it going to take to wake YOU up?.....
Copyright Asoka Selvarajah 2004. All Rights Reserved.
__________________________________
Asoka Selvarajah is a writer on personal growth and spirituality,
and the author of "The 7 Golden Secrets To Knowing Your Higher
Self". His work helps people achieve their full potential, deepen
their understanding of mystical truth, and discover their soul's
purpose. You can subscribe to his FREE ezine, and get his FREE
e-book "Inner Light Outer Wealth" by clicking:
here
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