Now, am I recommending that you go to a stage-show hypnotist for healing? No. But learning and applying what they know about the mind is precious to healing. I too see no value in making a person believe that an onion is an apple, but how many people can be helped if changing perceptions of self-worth happens with the same ease?
For the record, I would never do a stage show routine. And my feelings toward these performers as professionals are mixed. For the thousands of hours that I have had to spend dispelling the fears and misconceptions created by these people prior to starting the real work in my office, I could choose some less than positive thoughts. But for the rapid and instantaneous induction techniques they have created, I thank them. For their gutsiness in proving the reliability of the subconscious mind’s usable power and influence over what we thought was non-manageable, I am indebted forever.
What have we learned so far? If you want to change a perception, don’t waste an ounce of energy creating change at a conscious level. Instead, work in harmony with the mind’s mechanics. Bypass the critical faculty and reprogram the subconscious goal-achieving mind! And voila! Too easy, right? What’s wild is that sometimes it can be that simple.
7: BEYOND HYPNOSIS
Regression to cause is another discipline of hypnosis. Here there is power!
The hypnotic experience itself doesn’t necessarily call for any kind of healing. The critical faculty swings open and shut freely and frequently throughout the day and night. That’s right. All of us go in and out of the hypnotic state in varying degrees throughout a normal day. We’re usually not aware of this because it’s a very natural feeling state. We also don’t have some little fairy buzzing around our heads waving a flag saying “You’ve arrived . . . Ah, you have just left.” It doesn’t work that way. And nowhere in formal education is this understanding of the mind taught.
So now we know that we have a critical faculty that separates the conscious and subconscious minds. We know that we can bypass the critical faculty, but we now learn that there is no actual healing in the bypass itself. Then where does the healing come from? That depends on the problem we’re looking to mend and our choice of techniques. Under the umbrella of hypnosis, there are many different disciplines. For now, we’re going to focus on two techniques--direct suggestion and regression to cause. Direct suggestion attempts to erase old perceptions and fill the remaining void with positive suggestions of transformation. You can also use it in a way that actually dilutes the crud of past thoughts by rinsing the mind with repetitious healing suggestions. Direct suggestion used in either fashion can be quite effective. Regression to cause is another discipline of hypnosis. Here there is power! Here we get answers! To start explaining how “hypnotic regression to cause” aids in healing, I’d like you to think with me about a stack of cans shaped in a pyramid, as you might see in a grocery store display. Let’s look at my stack of cans. The first thing we’re going to do is invert it.
What used to be the broad base now spans the top. We’re going to see that top row of cans as individual and seemingly unrelated symptoms. Symptoms as seemingly unrelated as bursitis, asthma and nail biting. This is the realm of medical doctors. Their training makes them symptom-oriented illness managers. If there’s a pain they’re going to numb it. If there’s a tumor, they cut it out. A virus appears and they throw antibiotics at it. A medical doctor sees only this top row of cans. As cans (symptoms) pop up, the doctor’s going to somehow dig them out.
Out of the medical doctors’ ranks developed the psychologists. They stood on a foundation that said: You can’t move a finger until you “think” to move the finger. Thought must precede action. If the body’s natural tendency is toward health, then it’s the mind that holds the key to disease. Hallelujah! Right? Wrong. Unfortunately, both of the university-developed mind sciences--psychiatry and psychology--were developed from minds already conditioned to illness management. They became illness managers of the mind. Psychiatrists became manipulators of the brain’s electrochemistry. Any computer technician would be embarrassed if caught messing with the computer’s hardware when trying to fix a problem that is obviously a bug in the software. But not the medical doctors! If that wasn’t bad enough, this obsession with the chemistry of the physical plant has grown into something called genetic science. The mind model will show us reasons to be concerned over the activities of genetic science.
Psychologists became the illness managers of man’s condition. They studied and became experts at explaining why we do the things we do (diagnosis). They often tell us there’s a name for a certain tendency. And that there’s a name for the people who do such things, and the fact that we do such things makes us one of them (that’s a label)! Now they look that label up in a book. Next, they and the book tell us what we should and should not do throughout life so we won’t be called one of them any more (prescription).
If I sound a tad testy, it’s because I’ve seen a lot of people hurt by this and it wears thin. Sorry. Understand, I am saying nothing about the individual healer. A student of psychology who blends back into his or her healing work an understanding of a “whole-mind model” will do wonderful things. It’s the institutions that need to change their tune. Often the institutions’ leaders and professionals brag about being state-of-the-art, but they’re still stuck in a cul-de-sac after a wrong turn made years ago. And I guess as they themselves would label this typically paternal energy, the leadership won’t stop and ask someone familiar with the terrain for directions.
Let’s return to our “mind map” and show them a different, sound course. And not to get too scientific, back to our stack of cans.
The top row represents symptoms. Each can represents some form of disease manifesting as a specific doctor-identified disorder. It can be mental and/or physical. Everything between that top row and the single can at the bottom we are going to call subsequent sensitizing events (SSEs). The bottom can represents the initial sensitizing event (ISE). What I’m saying is this: We come into this world knowing nothing of man-only the goodness of God. Time passes and with its passing, events occur. Human intent is to naturally let the infant be bathed in goodness forever. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions, as they say. So for most people, there is a moment when we go from knowing only the pureness of His way, to that first pie in the face that says, “Life’s not such a bowl of cherries down here, pal” In the Course in Miracles this is called the moment of separation. To the cause-oriented healer, it’s the initial sensitizing event. This is where the chance for permanent and complete healing lies. Let’s see why.
An orthopedic surgeon came to me for joint pain. (Think about that.) As I was explaining this same model to him, I asked, “Do you replace hips?” He did. I asked, “Out of 100 or so hip replacement clients, how many would end up back in treatment for some other joint problem of a serious nature in the near future following the surgery?” He replied, “Almost all of them.” That was staggering. I could have made my point if he had said 30 or 40 percent. But almost all of them? Wow! From this point he went on to explain that he had actually got his start in medicine via his own search for relief from bursitis. With all the teachings he received and all the years that had passed, and despite the gallons of cortisone injected, he still had the bursitis. He had heard me tell my own story of bursitis on the radio and said my explanation fit his life to the letter. Besides getting rid of his bursitis, I got confirmation on the power of this model!
We will use joint pain to take us to the next level of understanding--that the ISE of any negative symptom carries a subconscious calling for some form of self-mutilation. That calling is confirmed and reconfirmed through a sequence of SSEs. Straight from the adage “the straw that breaks the camel’s back,”