Hypnotic Thinking: For Unleashing Potentials 1890001554, 9781890001551

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THINKING HYPNOTICALLY

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. 2020 -2-

© 2020 Thinking Hypnotically to Unleash Potentials L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved. No part of this may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, etc.) Without the prior written permission of the publisher.

NSP — Neuro-Semantic Publications L. Michael Hall, Ph.D., Executive Director ISNS — International Society of Neuro-Semantics® P.O. Box 8 Clifton, CO 81520 (970) 523-7877

Website:

www.neurosemantics.com

Sign up on the website for “Neurons” the weekly newsletter from Dr. L. Michael Hall. Free newsletter about Neuro-Semantics around the world. For Trainings in Neuro-Semantics, see “Trainings” and “Trainers” on the website. Audio and Video Recordings For a full range of recordings of this training as well as other cuttingedge Neuro-Semantic training, contact Tom Welch and his website: www.nlp-video.com.

A very special thanks to Kevin Eftekhari (Canada) for his extensive and high quality proof-reading and corrections.

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HYPNOTIC THINKING Foreword

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16. The Genius Trance Trance & Attention

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17. Metaphorical Trance Trance & Metaphor

184

18. Transformation Trances

191

19. Crucible Trance

205

Section I: Introduction 1. Of all the Ways of Thinking 2. The Hypnotic State

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3. Conscious or Unconscious? Part I: Distinctions

28

4. Conscious or Unconscious? Part II: Myths

37

175

20. Health Trances #1 216 Trances for Pain Relief 21. Health Trances #2 Trances for Well-Being

227

6. Everyday Hypnotic Thinking 58

22. Trances for Programming

238

7. Trances for Every Occasion Kinds of Trances

66

3. Creativity Trances

247

24. Let there be Trance

252

8. What’s a Trance Good For?

75

Section II: Trance Language 9. Meta-Model for Trance

84 85

Appendices Index Bibliography Author

257 266 268 272

5. Hypnotic Thinking as Meaning-Making

50

10. Milton Model for Trance

106

11. Meta-Level Linguistics

123

Section III: Trance Structure 132 Conversational Inductions 133 13. Trance: Up & Down

143

14. Relating Hypnotically

155

Section IV: Trance Applications 15. Trance Inductions 168

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FOREWORD Our mental life is a dialogue. It’s a dialogue between what happens to us, what we think about what happens to us, and what we think we should do or could do about it. Conscious and unconscious aspects of our inner intelligence (mind) is constantly working to figure out how to navigate life more successfully.

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his book is about thinking hypnotically. Yet a strange and paradoxical thing about this is that the focus here will not be on how to think hypnotically. And there’s an important reason for this. You already think hypnotically We all do. It is part and parcel of how our brains work when we think. You and I, inevitably and inescapably, already think hypnotically. In fact, that may also be the source of significant problems for you. You think hypnotically too easily and, in all likelihood, too sloppily. You have the power, but you may not have taken control of it, and if not, you probably don’t manage it very well. Here’s another strange thing about this book. To think hypnotically in a way that’s effective and empowering, as well as in a way that enriches your life, you may have to learn to stop thinking hypnotically in the way you have and learn entirely new ways. That’s the case with most of us. We have mis-used the hypnotic powers that we have and, usually, we have done so without even knowing that we have such powers. By the way, how are your hypnotic powers? How well acquainted are you with them? How well developed are they? How well do you use them to enhance your life? Actually, to think is to think hypnotically. The very process of thinking includes being able to go inside your mind and imagine all sorts of ideas, solutions, visions, values, ways of life, new possibilities, inventions, etc. That’s what it means to think hypnotically. Yet many people—scratch that— most people do not use this power very powerfully. In fact, most -5-

Thinking Hypnotically

Foreword

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

people misuse it. And that, consequently is the source of many personal problems. Most people who think hypnotically do so randomly, unintentionally, unecologically, and to their own detriment. I’ll address this in this book and offer ways to either undo the damage and/or to discover how to put that power to really good use. The phrase thinking hypnotically is a strange phrase, one we hardly ever use. Instead we talk about “hypnosis” and “trance.” We talk about “altered states of consciousness.” Instead we may talk about imagination and being imaginative, or our “unconscious mind” and intuitions. Yet all of these terms are problematic. They are imprecise, unspecific, and actually encourage unmanageable hypnotic thinking. Because, ultimately all of these terms refer to the core competency of thinking, and because they refer to a specific kind of thinking— transitioning with an intense focus to your inside world, I have chosen to use the strange phrase hypnotic thinking as the title of this book and as the theme of this book. As noted in Executive Thinking (2018), thinking begins with considering and questioning. And to consider things, you have to have a way to code your thoughts, which in the human mind, means beginning with the sensory systems (seeing, hearing, sensing, smelling, tasting, etc.). You use these to mentally represent your “thoughts.” Now you’re in a position to “hold a thought in mind” (represent it) so that you can consider it. As you do so, you may begin to question it— wonder about it, re-consider it, doubt it, play with it, turn it upside-down, and/or change it around in dozens of ways. Now you are actively thinking. Thinking is not the same as knowing. Knowing is the end result of thinking. It occurs when you complete the thinking process. When you know something, you have stopped the search, the curiosity, the wondering, the probing, and the questioning. Thinking, as the active mental processing of information, is an ongoing, never-ending dynamic of curious wonderment. Thinking starts with seeking to understand the world— What’s out there? What do you call this? How does it work? What can we do with this? What else? Is this valuable? For what? What is the significance and meaning of this? How can I achieve X?

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Thinking Hypnotically

Foreword

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Once you have a pretty good idea about the world that you live in (and there are as many worlds as there are domains, fields, and disciplines), thinking can shift gears and begin to push the boundaries as you imagine possibilities beyond what currently exists. Here thinking becomes “hypnotic” as you can play with ideas in your mind, even run prototypes of new inventions mentally, and use your visions of what can be to guide your translation into what is. Hypnotic thinking is not a luxury for the indulgent, it is rather an essential part of the fabric of science, creativity, innovation, “the world of tomorrow,” and the human passion for the unleashing of potentials. This kind of thinking is not for the hippies at Esalen or the gurus smoking pot in a meditative cave in the Himalayas. Hypnotic thinking is for all of us. It keeps you inspired with possibilities when you authentically think hypnotically. It will keep you on the creative edge of problem-solving. It will awaken you to the mystery of being a curious human being who comes alive to the degree that you encounter and solve problems. It enlivens you with an active imagination because you know how to use fantasy to effectively enhance your planning, preparations, and anticipations of the future. To think hypnotically is to experience trance states. As you turn inward with an intense focus, your singular concentration in an area enables you to achieve incredible things. This is the power of a learning trance, a creativity trance, a problem-solving trance, a well-being trance, etc. What you will discover here is how to access these kinds of empowering trances and have them available when you need them. Now on to thinking hypnotically.

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Chapter 1

OF ALL THE WAYS TO THINK Conscious thinking enables you to meet external constraints of the world. Hypnotic thinking enables you to discover your internal potentials as a person.

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here are so many ways to think. When it comes to thinking, while it seems simple and obvious and unquestionable, it is not. Thinking is so highly complex that we are still at the beginning stages of even conceptualizing how to program a computer to “think.” Now in human reality, “As a person thinks, so he is.”1 Thinking makes a man who he is. It makes a woman who she is. Thinking determines how you experience yourself, how you experience others, and how you experience the world at large. What does this mean? It means that thinking is not innocent. Rather, thinking creates your subjective reality. As you think things are—to a great extent, so you will find that things are that way— at least to you in your orientation to reality. That’s because as thinking creates your perceptual filters, it colors your world. With your thinking, you can create glorious brilliant solutions and you can create a hellish internal world of misery and destructiveness. When it comes to thinking, not all thinking is conscious. Some is unconscious. Now imagine that—some (or even a lot) of your thinking is actually unconscious. And if unconscious, then you will not even be aware of it! You are thinking ideas which are outside and below your ken of

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Thinking Hypnotically

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Of All the Ways of Thinking

awareness. Fascinating, yes? We will get to this incredible facet of human consciousness in the coming chapters. First, let me introduce the model in NLP that deals with all of the ways that we think, or can think—Meta-Programs. This refers to the programs you use in order to think. The most common one, the one that everybody knows, is the optimistic–pessimistic meta-program. Here you can look at a certain amount of liquid in a glass and perceive it as half-empty or halffull. Both perspectives are possible, both are equally valid. The only difference is the program a person uses to code the different perspectives. If you look for what is there—you will have the half-full perspective. If you look for what is not there, what’s missing—you will develop the halfempty perspective. So, how many ways can you think? To give you an idea of all of the ways in which we can think, the following offers you an overview of the many meta-programs that have been identified. What follows is not even an exhaustive list!2 These are ways that we think both consciously and unconsciously. Cognitively Probably the most obvious and simplest distinction is that you can think positively and you can think negatively. You can think optimistically processing the best possible scenario and you can think pessimistically as you consider the worst case scenario. One is the glass-half-full perspective, the other is the glass-half-empty perspective. You can think in terms of the big picture and you can think in terms of the most minute details. You can think in the sensory systems— visually, auditorially, and kinesthetically, and you can think using the various linguistic representational systems. You can think in the basic senses and you can think in words. You can think in terms of facts (sensory thinking) and you can think in terms of your meanings and experiences (intuitively). You can think digitally in terms of specific symbols and you can think analogically (non-digital) along a range of responses. You can think consciously being mindfully aware of what and how you’re thinking and you can think unconsciously from the previously learned information which has now “dropped into your unconscious” awareness. You can think slow (consciously) in an effortful way and you can think fast -9-

Thinking Hypnotically

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Of All the Ways of Thinking

in a quick “intuitive” way (Daniel Kahneman).3 You can think mindfully and with choice and you can think “unconsciously” from your programmed in-knowings (intuition). You can engage in divergent thinking “What lies behind us and going out to a thousand alternatives what lies before us are tiny (options) and you can engage in matters compared to what convergent thinking as you bring all of lies within us.” the possibilities back to a single view Oliver Wendell Holmes (procedure). You can think in terms of how things fit together and match and you can think in terms of how things do not match, but differ from one another. You can think looking for patterns that tie things together and you can look for distinctions which separate things. You can think in conformist ways as you try to fit in with others and you can think in non-conformist ways as you try to stand out. You can think in terms of why something happens (origins) and you can think in terms of how to achieve an outcome and get something done (solutions). You can think conceptually and philosophically and you can think practically and pragmatically. You can think in a highly focused way that disappears everything except the focused object you’re concentrating on and you can think in a highly diffused way that sees and hears everything occurring simultaneously. You can think like a laser beam and you can think chaotically. You can think in a highly structured way and you can think in an unstructured way that moves from one idea to another without any rhyme or reason. You can think with a short-term perspective and you can think using a long-term perspective. You can think focusing on immediate values and benefits and you can think in terms of consequences and consequencesof-consequences. You can think by foregrounding what you want and/or what’s important and you can think by backgrounding your wants and values. You can count as you think, validating even small steps of improvement, and you can discount in your thinking as you keep raising the bar and focusing on the next goal. You can think categorically in either-or terms and you can think using fuzzy logic, systemically, using both-and thinking. You can think in terms of polar opposites (polarized thinking) and you can think in terms of -10-

Thinking Hypnotically

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a continuum giving you distinctions of degrees (degree thinking). You can think linearly and you can think in terms of multi-dimensionality. You an think statically assuming that “things” are solid and real (reify) and you can think dynamically (non-statically) assuming that everything is fluid and in process. You can think in a highly focused way screening out everything that does not fit (screening) and you can think in an inclusive way that includes even irrelevant things (non-screening). You can think in terms of quantity, numbers, and measurements (quantity) and you can think in terms of quality, experience, and emotion (quality). Emotionally You can think by putting yourself inside of an experience or story (associatedly) and you can think by stepping outside of the experience (separating yourself). You can think emotionally and experientially and you can think analytically and objectively. You can think linearly as you posit that one thing causes another and you can think non-linearly and systemically by picturing many factors operating simultaneously and all of them contributing as in an interconnected network. You can think propositionally as you identify ideas, concepts, and truths and you can think non-propositionally using stories, metaphors, poetry, jokes, and analogies. You can think auto-biographically and you can think as if a disembodied objective reporter. You can think in terms of how many options you have and want (options) and you can think in terms of the right way to do something (procedure). You can think in terms of closure wondering how something will finish (even wanting it to finish) and you can think in terms of openness (nonclosure) leaving what comes next as undetermined and unknown. You can think energetically (with surgency) and you can think timidly and passively (with desurgency). You can think aggressively by feeling challenged to respond to whatever happens and you can think passively as you feel threatened to avoid and move away from whatever happens. When exposed to an idea or suggestion, you can think reflectively considering the pros and cons and you can think actively by jumping in and taking immediate action without much thought.

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Of All the Ways of Thinking

You can think from within your own “locus of control” wondering how it fits with your values and experience (internal authority reference) and you can think in terms of external authorities wondering how it fits for them (external authority reference). You can think about others in social situations in terms of how to contribute to others (other) and you can think in terms of what you will get out of it (self). When stressed and/or tired, you can think about how to get away and renew your energies (introvert) and you can think about who to call up, or what party to go join, to renew your energies (extrovert). With others you can think shrewdly and artfully about how to present to manage your social image in just the way you want it perceived and you can think in an artless but genuine way about how to be yourself regardless of what others think. When it comes to change, you can think about how to join the newest developments (early adoptor), or think if there are enough people to make it worthwhile (medium adoptor), or think you will adjust only when you have to (late adoptor). You can think in with a serious attitude (earnest and disciplined) and you can think with a playful attitude that sees humor in most things (lighthearted). Connately Conation — Choices You can think in terms of what you do not want as you move away from a disvalue and you can think in terms of what you want as you approach what you desire and fits with your values. You can think in terms of your evaluations and judgments and you can think in terms of just observing and witnessing without any judgment. You can think from the perspective of fitting in and adjusting yourself to what you find and you can think in terms of altering, changing, and fitting what you find to fit a more ideal understanding. You can think in terms of what’s possible and you can think beyond what’s possible to what is completely impossible. You can use fantasy as your filter to imagine the impossible and you can use everyday-reality as a filter to eliminate anything that is not tangible and concrete. With activities, you can think in terms of what’s required (necessity), what’s possible (possibilities) and/or you can think in terms of what you want (choice). When it comes to striving for a goal, you can think skeptically (“goals don’t work”), you can think perfectionistically (“I must do it right -12-

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and flawlessly”), and you can think in an optimizing way (“I’ll do what I can and learn from that”). When it comes to making a purchase, you can think in terms of cost, or in terms of quality, and/or in terms of time. When it comes to being convinced about something, you can think in a naive over-trusting way taking everyone at his word and you can think in a distrusting skeptical way questioning intentions and motives and looking for hidden agendas. When it comes to working with others, you can think competitively (who will win?) and you can think collaboratively (how can we both win?). You can think using the win/lose perspective and you can think using the win/win perspective. When it comes to communicating to and with others, you can think directly assuming that what is presented is all there is (low context) and you can think inferentially assuming a whole set of values, rules, rituals which make up a culture (high context). When it comes to managing people, you can think in terms of control, you can think in terms of being autonomously-supportive as you delegate and collaborate. When it comes to taking a risk, you can think fearfully (risk averse), you can think enthusiastically (risk embracer) and you can think anywhere on the continuum between the two. When it comes to making a decision, you can think cautiously and you can think boldly. Semantically When it comes to yourself and who you are, you can think of yourself as a thinker, a feeler, a chooser, a body, a role and you can think about these experiences as experiences without identifying with it or it defining you (dis-identified). When it comes to your relationship to instructions and rules, you can think of yourself as compliant and you can think of yourself as strong-willed, being “your own person,” and unwillingly to go along just for the sake of going along. When it comes to your sense of self-integrity, you can think of the incongruencies that generate internal conflict within (cognitive dissonance) and you can think holistically in a way that integrates your thinking, feeling, speaking, and acting. When it comes to responsibility, you can think in terms of who to blame and how to avoid responsibility (irresponsible), you can think in terms of how you’re responsible for what happens to others and assume responsibility for others (over-responsible), and you can think in terms of healthy responsibility (dividing what you are responsible for and who you are responsible to). -13-

Thinking Hypnotically

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Of All the Ways of Thinking

When it comes to acting morally and ethically, you can think in terms of doing what’s right and wrong and you can think about how to get around moral rules. When it comes to self-awareness (intra-personal intelligence) you can think in terms of monitoring your thoughts and emotions (high selfmonitoring) and you can think solely in terms of the outside world (low self-monitoring). When it comes to time and temporal awareness, you can think via past memories and references, you can think in terms of future imaginations, and you can think in terms of the here-and-now. You can think in terms of experiencing this moment and lost in this moment (in-time) and you can think in terms of the sequences of events (through time or outside of time). You can think randomly, and even chaotically, and you can think in an orderly sequential way. When it comes to the experience of life, you can think in terms of what you have, you can think in terms of what you do, you can think in terms of who you are. You can think in terms of being and becoming and you can think materially about what you have and own. There are indeed so many ways to think! And thinking is precisely what we do as human beings— we can do none other. In addition to all of these polar opposites, you can think anywhere along the continuum between the polar ends. Further, there are also many ways to kill thinking, to murder the thinking impulse, you can dampen thinking, reduce thinking by demanding simplicity, go on automatic and become zombie-like. You can give yourself to non-thinking. Yet thinking is your heritage, your destiny, and your ontology. It is inevitable and it is necessary. Hypnotic Thinking Given all of that, now you know why hypnotic thinking is not one specific kind of thinking. It can participate in all of these ways of thinking. Thinking hypnotically occurs within and beyond all of these ways of thinking. You can and do think hypnotically and many of these identified ways of thinking comprise how you think at unconscious levels. As everything habituates, so everyone of these facets of thinking habituate to become internal unconscious programs. What does it mean to think hypnotically? It means many things. One thing that it means is that you can imagine worlds and realities apart from the -14-

Thinking Hypnotically

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Of All the Ways of Thinking

constraints of reality. You can think in terms other than facts, evidence, and what’s real. Hypnotically you can let your imagination run wild and invent all sorts of impossible worlds for yourself and others. You can think apart from the constraints of “the real world” as you free your imagination for thinking about new possibilities. This will enable you to be more creative and innovative. Thinking hypnotically is essential to all fiction. Some fiction is intentionally wild and wooly (sci-fi). Some is chaotic with the purpose of being playful (humor). Some is horrific, designed to scare the hell out of a person while others is designed to disgust and repulse (horror). Yet most is close enough to reality to be possible (romance, detective stories, etc.). Based on reality as we know it, that kind of fiction could happen. We could create it in our lives. Thinking hypnotically is at the essence of science and creativity. Thinking hypnotically is what allowed Einstein to consider impossibilities as possibilities long before he was able to work out the mathematics. This hypnotic kind of thinking has allowed thousands of scientists over the years to first conceive of revolutionary ideas and then use science to make their dreams come true. Hypnotic thinking is essentially the way human consciousness works. Thinking hypnotically is built into the way the human mind works. While thinking hypnotically is a different kind of thinking than many other kinds of thinking, it is one that we all do and we all do regularly. What’s unusual is that we usually do not even notice it as different. We assume that we are just thinking, imagining, day dreaming, pretending, etc. We engage in hypnotic thinking when we reflect, dream, pray, meditate, and engage and get lost in a highly valued activity. An interesting factor about hypnotic thinking is that it requires a trance state or perhaps I should write— it is a trance state. That is, as your thinking turns away from the outside world, it takes you into the inside world of memories, imaginations, possibilities, hopes, and resources. Now true enough, while hypnotic thinking can be an escape from the world, it can also be a refuge, a resource, and/or a preparation for encountering the world. With your hypnotic thinking powers you can create all sorts of things— on the negative side you can create ulcers, headaches, sicknesses, and mental -15-

craziness. When thinking hypnotically is not managed well it can become worse than useless, it can become positively harmful. On the positive side you can create healing, well-being, empowerment, focus, creativity, solutions, wonderment, etc. All of this depends on how you use your powers for hypnotic thinking. With hypnotic thinking you can more thoroughly prepare yourself for learning, remembering, developing skills, accessing chosen resourceful states, and much more. End of Chapter Trance-ition How well and how extensively do you think? Your conscious thinking in all of these ways establishes the foundation for your unconscious thinking. That’s because repetitive thinking inevitably becomes automatic, drop outside-of-your-awareness so you’re not even aware of it. As thinking is repeated and habituated, and as it drops out of conscious awareness, it becomes part of what we call “your unconscious mind.” This is true for both what you think (content) and how you think (process/ structure). This incredibly large resource of unconscious thinking establishes your base knowledge, your memories, your sense of self, and your mental maps about thousands of things. This is the foundation for hypnotic thinking. It is there— present within you and available for use. The only question here is how skillful are you now, and will you be in the future, in using it to enhance the quality of your life? The invitation here is to use this book as your trance induction with hypnotic thinking. Use it as your guide for putting hypnotic thinking to the very best use and in service of your enjoyment of life, your creativity, and the unleashing of your potentials.

End of Chapter Notes: 1. This quote comes from Proverbs 23:7 in the Old Testament. It asserts that as a person appraises things, calculates things, so that person is or becomes. 2. The ways of thinking are the NLP meta-programs and comes from the book, Figuring Out People (1997/2005). Also see, Words that Change Minds (1997) by Shelle Rose Charvet. 3. Slow and Fast Thinking (2011) by Daniel Kahneman..

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Chapter 2

THE HYPNOTIC STATE What is Hypnosis and/or Trance? “... all bona fide responses to suggestions are associated, ipso facto, with a hypnotic or trance state. From this standpoint there is no longer any distinction between ‘waking’ and ‘hypnotic’ suggestions... to respond adequately to a suggestion is to be hypnotized.” Andre’ M. Weitzenhoffer

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f this book is to be your personal trance into the art and skills of thinking hypnotically so you can awaken your potentialities as a selfactualizing person—let’s start by defining the hypnotic state. “Hypnosis—what is it? What is it not?” The term itself is actually a most misleading and unuseful one. For many people, the term itself is frightful, mysterious, and scary. Why is this? For one thing, Hollywood has done an excellent job in scaring people by connecting hypnosis with mind-control, devil-possession, psychosis, and doing things you would never do in your right mind. In Hollywood movies, the hypnotized lose control of themselves, are under the domination of the hypnotist, and don’t know what they are doing. They can be programmed during childhood with post hypnotic suggestions so that twenty years later they go berserk. Unconsciously, they murder a designated target -17-

Words & Terms: Hypnosis Trance Altered State Suggestibility Highly Focused Control Meaning-Making Communication

Thinking Hypnotically

Chapter 2

Defining Hypnosis & Trance

and then amnesically cannot remember doing that. That’s Hollywood for you! What then is hypnosis really? Where did that term hypnosis come from? What do we have to do to demystify the term and understand it scientifically? To explore this subject, we will examine the various terms and phrases used to describe hypnosis in this and the next chapter. In the next chapter we will examine another term that is just as equally problematic as “hypnosis,” namely, “the unconscious mind.” What is that? Nearly every book on this subject accepts and uses this phrase unquestioningly. They assume that it has a definite referent and that there is a thing called “the unconscious mind.” That is one tremendous assumption! It assumes that there is a single “unconscious mind,” it assumes that we do not have multiple “minds,” etc. That will be our exploration in the next chapter (ch. 3). Defining the Terminology “Hypnosis is the Hypnosis. evocation and utilization The word hypnosis, meaning “sleep,” refers to of unconscious what a person in a trance state looks like from learnings.” the outside. Typically one looks like a person Rosen, 1982, p. 28 who has fallen asleep. Yet you are not asleep. Yes, your eyes may be closed, you may be barely moving, you may be breathing lightly so that one could superficially conclude that your are asleep. Yet you are not asleep! This idea of being asleep explains the origin of the word (“hypnosis” Greek for sleep). To an outside observer, the trance state can appear as if you have fallen asleep. Inwardly, however, the person experiences trance as a heightened state of self-control and focus. The loss of orientation to the outside world, and that "funny feeling" of disorientation, is matched with that inner concentration and vitality. It’s one of the paradoxes of trance. Jeffrey Zeig (1986) defined hypnosis as “a context for effective communication” and presented reasons for this perspective. “From the subject’s point of view, hypnosis could be viewed as a state of focused awareness on whatever is immediately relevant, in which previously unrecognized psychological and physiological potentials are accessed to some avolitional extent.” (1986, p. 356) -18-

Thinking Hypnotically

Chapter 2

Defining Hypnosis & Trance

Erickson said “the hypnotic state is an experience that belongs to the subject and that derives from the subject’s accumulated learnings and memories.” (Collected Papers, Vol. I, 1976, p. 42). It therefore involves “leaving the reality world” and “entering another world reality.” This other world belongs to your life experiences—that inner world of references, memories, beliefs, understandings, etc. Rossi and Check (1988) defined hypnosis in terms of its effects: “Hypnosis does not change people nor does it alter their past experiential life. It serves to permit them to learn more about themselves and to express themselves more adequately.” (Mind-Body Therapy, 1988, p. 14)

Trance. The idea of trance, and the word “trance,” comes from how a person “passes away” from one state to another, a state of intense concentration. In a trance, a person transitions from being focused externally on the outside world to becoming internally focused, to seeing, hearing, and sensing the internal world. When you move from outside to inside, you make a transition. It is the experience of moving from one state to the other state that we call trance. This state may be one of your own making, one of responding to messages from another person, or to events in the world. However it happens, as you transition from here-and-now so that you are no longer here in the present moment—you are somewhere else. But where? You are in your mind visiting some internal world. Perhaps you are in the past, perhaps you are in the future, perhaps you are in a conceptual world, or the world of your imagination. Wherever you are, trance is now your “reality” —your phenomenological world. As a state, the trance state is actually where many people live most of their lives. It’s their mailing address. And for the rest of us, while we may not live there, we visit those inner spaces a lot. Actually, we spend more time there than in the see-hear-feel world of sights, sounds, and sensations. We do that when we are in a learning trance, a work trance, a playful trance, an anger trance, a fear trance— there are a thousand possibilities. Such trances develop as you attend more and more exclusively to internal stimuli such as memories, ideas, imaginations, problems, etc. As your senses subside and as you go inside, your focus shifts from the outside to the inside. Trance is the inner game. It is an inner focus of attention with little external focus. It is an intra-personal relationship with experiences you have recorded over time or which you are creating in the moment. -19-

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Given the problems with the word “hypnosis,” I will primarily and mostly use trance throughout this book. What is a trance? Stephen Wolinsky (1991) says that they are feelings, Therefore anytime you are in a feeling state, you are in a trance. Trances are states ... and so Milton Erickson regularly talked about “common everyday trances” such as driving, waiting for a stop light, standing in an elevator, etc. Because trance is not a single state, there are all sorts of trance states. The question now becomes, “What trance state are you in?” Trance also is not an option; you really don’t have a choice about not accessing a trance state. It is inevitable. It is a daily experience. It is actually a prerequisite for being human. The question isn’t whether you experience trance states or not. You do. The question is about the kind and the quality of those states. Are they functional or dysfunctional? Are they healthy or toxic? Do they bring out your best or do they inhibit you from your best? What is the purpose of trance? It all depends. There are actually many things you can do with trance. Primarily because an effectively and healthy trance is a state of openness, receptivity to suggestions, and focus— it is an excellent state for enabling your mind to discover new ways of thinking. Trance is for learning. Minds open up in trance to new ideas and possibilities as you consider and try on new ideas. In trance minds open so they can engage in new explorations and learn new things. What are the characteristics of a healthy and useful trance? There are several qualities. The primary one is focus— a concentrated focus which constricts perception so that you become highly focused and engaged in a singular objective important to you. Trance is essentially characterized by a narrowing, shrinking, or fixating of attention. “Trance is a condition wherein there is a reduction of the patient’s foci of attention to a few inner realities; consciousness has been fixated and focused to a relatively narrow frame of attention rather than being diffused over a broad area.” (Erickson and Rossi, 1976/ 1980, The Collected Papers of Milton H. Erickson on Hypnosis, Volume I, p. 448).

Secondarily, while trance is a choice, it feels avolitional. It feels as if it is something that happens to you, and not something that you purposefully or intentionally chose. It doesn’t feel as if you created it. This autonomous -20-

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avolitionary nature of trance means that trance typically strikes us as a passive and automatic experience, not a volitional one. “Trance is a way of de-automatizing an individual’s habitual modes of functioning so that dissociation and many of its attendant classical hypnotic phenomena... are frequently manifest in an entirely spontaneous manner.” (Ibid., p. 448)

Why does it feel avolitional? Precisely because it occurs automatically, because it is a “set” response to a context or trigger as a result of associative learning. X-response has become linked to Y-stimulus (or context) and it has been repeated so often, it is now an automatic unconscious response. Trance is also often characterized by a return to thinking more child-like. In trance your thinking is more literal, naive, fresh, and full of curiosities. And because you don’t know ... you reach out for understanding. Your thinking is direct and free— childlike. “Children are uncluttered by rigid conscious sets, therefore they can see what adults cannot.” (Erickson, Hypnotic Realities, 1976, p. 258)

Altered State. As you transition inward, you experience trance as an “altered state.” Here is another term for hypnosis— altered state. This is a much better term than “hypnosis.” Staying in the outside state of sensory awareness is actually rare and unique. When you are focused outside and in sensory awareness, this is the NLP uptime state. Monks often meditate for 20 to 40 years to attain that state of pure awareness of the outside world. It’s actually a difficult state to achieve and maintain. Fritz Perls, founder of Gestalt Therapy, famously expressed this idea in his oft quoted statement: “Lose your mind and come to your senses.” This is easier to say than to do. Yet true enough, that’s where we all began. We began as infants living in the sensory-state of the empirical world. Then as we develop human consciousness we began living in the mind—in the constructs of our mind. We went inside. We went down inside, hence the NLP term, downtime. As a result, we now have to learn how to return to the sensory world and how to be in the here-and-now moment. In hypnosis, we turn inward to access meanings, memories, imaginations, understandings, etc. We shift our focus to an inward focus of attention. To facilitate this we use non-referencing words and non-referring noun phrases. -21-

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Such words invite and elicit you to go inside to your internal worlds of meaning. "As you find yourself getting really comfortable as you sit in that chair, you can allow yourself to recall a time and a place where you felt thoroughly and completely relaxed and as you do, you can wonder about how valuable the engagement of reading this book with a singleminded focus will be whether you are at home, at work, on a plane, riding a bus...”

In generating an altered state, it can sometimes be as easy as altering representation systems. If a person lives her life in the auditory system as her favorite representation system to one less favored, say the visual or kinesthetic system, she will typically experience a different state of mind, and perhaps enter into “an altered state.” The NLP founders considered this a basic way to induce trance. They re-interpreted Erickson’s terms conscious and unconscious as referring, at least in part, to “the dominant hemisphere and non-dominant hemispheres of the human brain.” (Patterns of Hypnotic Language, Vol. I, 1976, p. 181).1 What is this altered state? Many researchers talk about it in terms of brain waves. In the normal waking state of consciousness wherein one is alert and aware, it is characterized by beta waves (14-30 hz). The shift to an altered state involves alpha brain waves (8-13 hz), a state of relaxation, passive awareness, composure, and tranquility. A more profound trance state occurs with theta brain waves (4-8 Hz). It is characterized by a very deep relaxation, restful alertness, and day dreaming.2 Suggestibility. When it comes to hypnosis, we often connect it with the idea of giving suggestions to a client. Typically we use trance to give ourselves or another suggestions that will be carried out in behavior by the unconscious. Yet what is a suggestion? Is it not an idea, a concept, a belief, a recommendation that is offered as a guide for someone’s behavior? Given that, what is the purpose of a suggestion in trance? Obviously, it is to bypass conscious mind limitations, to evoke potentialities, and to provide new and better mental maps for navigating life. Because of all of this, some of the original theorists in the field of hypnosis equated hypnosis with suggestibility. Andre’ M. Weitzenhoffer was one such person as noted in his quote at the head of this chapter. He said, “To -22-

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be suggestible is to be hypnotized.” Erickson took exception. He viewed it as a false comparison and argued that these are two different experiences. He asserted that suggestibility is not an essential feature of trance. “Suggestion, or rather suggestibility, is composed of two elements: ability to receive an impulse from without, and the ideo-plastic faculty. [The power that ideas possess to influence physiological conditions.] As these are absolutely independent of each other, we must distinguish between them.” (Hypnotic Realities, 1976, p. 310)

While these are not equivalent, we often experience a state of suggestibility when in trance. Yet why is this? Because trance is a special relationship of trust and rapport between speaker and listener. “Trance is a special state that intensifies the therapeutic relationship and focuses the patients attention on a few inner realities; trance does not insure the acceptance of suggestions. ... Erickson believes that hypnotic suggestion is actually this process of evoking and utilizing a patient’s own mental processes in ways that are outside of his usual range of ego control.” (Collected Papers, I, 1976, p. 450)

So even though we usually become exceptionally open to suggestion, which is why trance facilitates learning, change, and the development of various competencies, the two experiences are not the same. Erickson noted that some people in the waking are exceptionally suggestible, but that is a function of their personality structure, not a function of being in trance. True enough, trance is a "state of autonomous responsiveness to suggestion without any conscious understanding." (Erickson, Healing in Hypnosis, Vol. I, 1983, p. 10). “Hypnosis is the freeing of the unconscious from conscious dominance.” (Erickson, Hypnotic Realities, p. xviii)

Following a suggestion often requires putting in abeyance the egodefensiveness of the conscious mind. When that happens, then the person can act on a suggestion to freely develop in her unique way of acting. If a conscious suggestion is an idea for how to live your life, then an unconscious suggestion is an idea outside of your awareness that shifts your attitude and that automatically activates your potentials (Hypnotic Realities, 1976, pp. 19-20). Highly Focused State. If, as noted, a key characteristic of hypnotic or trance state is a deep and intense concentration, this gives yet another description. As a mind-body -23-

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phenomenon, when your perception in trance narrows, you increasingly enter into the engagement and you become one with it. As this happens, it is as if you are no longer here, but somewhere else, lost in the engagement. Highly focused states occur naturally, as when you become engrossed in a task, captivated by a "spell" binding speaker, lost in a movie or television program, etc. So anything that captures attention, enthralls the heart, and “casts a spell” (metaphorically), as when you hear a captivating story, describes a trance state. When you turn inward to access an internal world of images, sounds, sensations, etc. about a specific subject, you transition from the uptime state to an internal one, into a downtime state. Within this intense absorption, you experience a change of orientation. Erickson continually said that trance (hypnosis) offers "a different type of reality orientation." In trance you are no longer oriented toward external reality, but oriented inwardly to your own subjective reality. You are gone. But where did you go? What adventure have you entered into? The answer depends on the object of your focus. Mind-Control. One of the disturbing ideas about hypnosis is the idea that the person guiding the process “controls your mind.” You will even find in older books on hypnosis that the person guiding the process is called “the operator.” But controlling another person in hypnosis is one of the central myths about hypnosis. The truth is that in hypnotizing you can never “control” another person’s mind. And when you are the experiencer, you do not lose control of your mind. “Many people think that when you go into a trance, you lose control of yourself. Actually, you gain control. You gain the ability to control your heart rate, your blood pressure, your ability to remember, your ability to use physical strength or dexterity, your ability to control time and your perceptions.” (Bandler, Time for a Change, 1989 translated by Hall)

What you will do, if you do it well, is amplify the other person’s states. Amplification is a more accurate description of hypnosis. As an amplifier of human powers and skills, trance can intensify states of energy, numbness (pain control), alteration of time (time speeding, time going really slow), internal potentials, etc. Yet for all that, trance is not a panacea; you cannot do everything with it.

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Rather than controlling people, the person Rossi: The therapist is not in trance can always resist inductions, really in control of anyone. refuse suggestions, break state, and not Erickson: That’s right! allow their responses to amplify. In fact, Hypnotic Realities, 1976, p. hypnosis cannot make anyone do 263 anything which the person does not want to do. The trance experience provides stimuli that can allow the other person to respond if she chooses to cooperate. Both resistance and cooperation are demonstrations of the human ability to respond. What makes this ethical is to use trance exclusively for the benefit of the client. “... the use of the double bind has to be in favor of the patient, never in favor of you. In the use of hypnosis the very generosity of your attitude allows patients to feel utterly comfortable. I’m perfectly willing to put my patients in the double bind, but they also sense unconsciously that I will never, never hold them to it. They know that I will yield anytime...” (Rossi, 1983, p. 141, italics added)

Rather than controlling another person, trance is a way to empower the person so that she takes full ownership of her thinking, feeling, and responding. Another paradox. In trance, a person gains more and more control of his mind, emotions, and responses. People commonly say, “I heard everything you said, how could I be in a trance?” This statement indicates the opposite— being in a highly focused state, the person is hearing everything and responding as he needs to and wants to. If hypnosis was powerful to control people, Milton Erickson said “there would be a whole lot more healthy people in the world.” “You don’t control another person’s behavior. You recognize it, you aid patients in utilizing it, you aid patients in directing it to meet their needs...” (Healing in Hypnosis, Vol. I, 1983, p. 273)

Ideo-Dynamic Functioning At the heart of hypnosis is the idea that ideas dynamically influence and affect physiological functioning. This introduces two more words that more accurately describe hypnosis—ideo-dynamic and ideo-motor. Here the transformation of thoughts into actions, sensations, and movement can occur so quickly and so actively that the usual “intelligent” inhibition of the mind does not have time to stop it (Mind-Body Therapy, 1988, p. 5). This dynamic unconscious process eludes the reality testing, questioning, doubting, etc. of the conscious mind. -25-

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Ideodynamic processes show up in eye closure, hand levitation, rigid focusing of concentration, immobility in the body, and in all of the responses to suggestions. Nor is this something unique to trance, it is a regular, normal, and everyday happening. After all, our bodies are designed to act on ideas and to respond to thoughts. “As you think, so you are.” 1 Trance State Problems Given the nature and function of trance as a liberator of possibilities, as a concentration of your powers and focus, as a context for creativity, openness, playfulness, innovation, personality growth, etc, what problems could possibly arise with trance as a state or experience? There are several.3 One problem is that we can fail to recognize ordinary, everyday trances as trance states. Then failing to recognize that half of what we are thinking and experiencing is due to the fact that we have transitioned inside, we draw false conclusions about the world of external reality. Then, because our experience is only partially informed by the outside world and partly by our internal world of memories, ideas, etc., we can actually become deeply deluded and mis-oriented and not know it. When we are sure that our perception is accurate and real, we do not even question it. The interface between the inside and outside usually occurs so quickly and silently that we don’t notice it. You see a man suddenly brushed by someone so that it pushes him back. You immediately think, “How rude!” Immediately you think you have just seen rudeness. But being rude (and rudeness) does not occur “out there” in the world. These are meanings from the inner world—meanings which are intruding and therefore contaminating what you see on the outside. “Rude” and “polite,” and “nice,” and “thoughtful” are all human evaluations. They make up a trance—the Rudeness Trance. This is a trance involving the rules, expectations, and understandings regarding human interactions from the inner world of beliefs and expectations. When you see rudeness, you are actually experiencing a hypnotic hallucination. “Rude” is an imposition of your mind (with all of its evaluations, judgments, criteria, standards, understandings, learnings, beliefs, etc.) onto the outside world. In and of itself, this is not a bad thing (nor is it a good thing). It is an evaluation of the mind—it is an expression of hypnotic thinking.4 -26-

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Recapitulation about “Trance” What then is trance and what does trance involve? For beginners, it involves the following: 1) In trance you turn inward. You transition inside from the sensory-world on the outside to the internal world of mind and communication. There you can mobilize unconscious resources. 2) Trance is an inward search for meaning. It is an inward search for understanding, significance, resources, solutions, etc. 3) Trance is an active construction of an inner world of sights, sounds, and sensations along with meanings, understandings, beliefs, etc. as a person invents and arranges meanings in a particular way. 4) Trances are accessed and evoked through words, stories, language, metaphors, etc. which thereby build up meaningful, or meaningless, worlds. The words and language patterns of trance (hypnotic language patterns) give us the tools for inventing our inner worlds. 5) Trance is a relationship between speaker and listener which arises through rapport and trust. It is one in which one’s focus of attention is directed to access inner resources to empower the listener. End of the Chapter Trance-ition As you think about your day from morning to evening, trance is a common experience and one of your best resources if you know how to use it. If you don’t know how to use it, it can be a hellish experience and can destroy your life as well as your health. You already think hypnotically and you do so whether you are aware of it or not. Trance is one of your richest potentials and skills. When you are able to access and elicit trance states—you are working methodically with consciousness (yours or another) to get desired results. The only question is if you know how to use your hypnotic powers intentionally and creatively and have developed it to a high quality level. When you know how to access the best trance states, states you want to have more ready access to, and do so at your command, you can actualize your highest meanings and your best performances.

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End of the Chapter Notes 1. Many theorists, researchers, and investigators of hypnosis have suggested that during trance the right hemisphere is more dominant than the left hemisphere. 2. European Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, Vol. 5, no. 2. Review of Neuro Physiological Characteristics and Theories of Hypnotic States by Osama Elalamy, pp. 25-29. Between birth and two years of age, the human brain predominantly operates at the lowest EEG frequency (0.5 to 4), Delta waves. Children from two to six begin to spend more time at Theta level (4-8 hz) (Lipton, 2005, p. 163). 3. Section IV in Collective Papers, Vol. I. has several articles that Erickson wrote about the ethics of hypnosis. “Possible Detrimental Effects of Experimental Hypnosis,” “An Experimental Investigation of the Possible Anti-social Use of Hypnosis,” etc. pages 491542. 4. “Reading” what we think another is thinking, without learning that from the persons own explicit statement is mind-reading and a violation of a well-formed statement.

“People often felt scared of using hypnosis because it meant losing control. You know hypnosis can give you control. Various states of trance can give you control of things you didn’t know existed. ... you can control the flow of your blood and of your time, make wise choices. You can discover new worlds.” Richard Bandler, 1993, p. 190

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CONSCIOUS OR UNCONSCIOUS? The Distinctions “What is the unconscious mind?” “At one time in my life, I needed to use my conscious mind to tie my shoelaces. Nowadays, my ‘unconscious mind’ performs that function.” Richard Bolstad, Anchor Point1

W

hat we call hypnosis goes by many names and terms. As noted in the last chapter we sometimes talk about the hypnotic state as trance, an altered state, a highly focused state, downtime, suggestibility, meditation, etc. And while at times it may seem to be controlled by the person inducing the state, that is not how it happens. That does not accurately describe what’s occurring. What is occurring in trance is simply that a person is highly focused on constructing meaning within her mind-body system. It is in that sense that trance is a state of communication— intra-personal and/or inter-personal communication. In trance you inwardly focus—away from the outside sensory-world and toward the inner world of ideas. In trance you transition inside to develop mental structures (e.g., ideas, suggestions, beliefs, understandings, strategies, etc.) which, in turn, enable you to operate more effectively in the outside world. Thinking hypnotically is therefore engaging in the inner game so that you can succeed in the outer game. It is the inside-out dynamic that governs everything most important in human experience. 2 -29-

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Conscious or Unconscious? This brings us to the question about whether this inside transition is conscious or unconscious? And the answer is yes. It is both. Traditionally, we have focused on trance as primarily being unconscious. But what does this mean? Regarding hypnosis, trance, altered states, and hypnotic thinking, the term unconscious is a most undefined and confusing term. To address that vagueness, I have devoted two chapters to clarify it. James Grier Miller (1942) in Unconsciousness quoted H.K. Haeberline: “The notion of the unconscious is the most prolific metaphor that has as yet arisen in psychology.” (The Concept of the Unconscious)

The first, and most obvious, meaning of unconscious is that you are not conscious, that something is outside of your conscious awareness. To be unconscious is to be not conscious of things that are happening to you (experiences, ideas) or around you (context, environment, situation). You are simply not aware (unaware, undiscriminating, unrecognizing). Now regarding “the unconscious mind,” Erickson never defined what he meant by that term. In fact, he dismissed the idea of defining this term as “too familiar a concept.” “In hypnosis you use your unconscious mind. I’m not going to define unconscious mind for you, because it’s too familiar a concept— it’s too convenient a concept— for me to bother about defining. ... Our hypnotic trance is that of the unconscious mind, we give our attention solely to a particular idea ... in that kind of trance, you pay no attention to irrelevant surroundings, because they are not a part of the situation.” (Life Reframing, 1985, p. 225)

Philosopher John Searle struggled with the idea and definition of the unconscious as he worked out the structure of social reality. “I am very dissatisfied with those accounts. Since Freud we have found it useful and convenient to speak glibly about the unconscious mind without paying the price of explaining exactly what we mean. Our picture of unconscious mental states is that they are just like conscious states only minus the consciousness. But what exactly is that supposed to mean? ... To put the point crudely, I believe that in most appeals to the unconscious in Cognitive Science we really have no clear idea what we are talking about.” (1995, The Structure of Social Cultural Reality. p. 128, italics added).

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If consciousness refers to mind—to being aware, knowing, processing information, recognizing your contextual environment, etc.—when we apply “unconscious” to “mind,” we refer to one or more aspects of intelligence outside of conscious awareness. In this, you and I have many unconscious minds. The question now becomes—Which unconscious mind are you referring to?3 The “mind,” or intelligence, that we have in our body, and which operates apart from consciousness, is also part of “the unconscious mind.” Sometimes we describe this intelligence as “the wisdom of the body.” This is the intelligence which “knows” how to heal us, keep us healthy, keep our heart and lungs pumping, manage the release of hormones, adrenalin, etc. Consequently, this gives us numerous aspects of “the unconscious mind.” Each describes an inner intelligence which operates far from consciousness. Autonomic nervous system (heart, blood pressure, temperature). Sympathetic nervous system (activation for response). Parasympathetic nervous system (braking the activation). Immune system (distinguishing self and non-self). Endocrine system (messenger molecules, etc.). Physical structural systems: the brain anatomy which generates vision is one such structural system. Perception is another. That’s just the beginning. There are many more aspects of “the unconscious mind.” We use the phrase, “the unconscious mind” for many other aspects of mental functioning—facets which are closer to consciousness. In the following list the first five items make up what we all learn unconsciously — our background knowledge. Memory. The memory systems: auto-biographic memory, semantic memory, episodic memory, muscle memory, etc. Habituated skills. As skills develop through habituation and become competencies, they are incorporated in muscle memory. You now experience that “knowledge” and skill as “intuitions” about how to respond. Culture. Cultural “knowledge” is also ingrained through repetition so that “the way we do things around here” becomes available to us intuitively. Now the cultural rituals, rules, premises, etc. operate as habituated “programs.” We “know” what to do, when, and how and yet we “absorbed” most of this knowledge unconsciously. This is the knowledge that we “absorb,” without cognitive effort, from the -31-

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context that we live in. The contexts gave us the meaning for our words, language, and responses. Pre-conscious awareness— refers to your capacity to become aware of things that you are usually unaware of. You can easily bring back into awareness of any one of a thousand things. You can, for example, notice how your little toe on your left foot feels or where you attended fifth grade. Prior to mentioning these, they were outside of conscious awareness. Yet the mere mention of them brings them into awareness. Non-dominant hemisphere. If we are mostly conscious of what is in our dominant hemisphere, we are mostly not aware of what’s in our non-dominant hemisphere (typically the right hemisphere). Being less dominant that hemisphere is also less conscious. While the content of the right hemisphere (e.g., non-verbal expressions, sounds, music, etc.) is present and close to awareness, yet we are not aware of that content until it is elicited. Blind-spots. A domain of intra-psychic knowledge and awareness which concerns what you are and are not aware of about yourself. This area is developed via self-development and reflection. Whatever you are not aware of is your blind-spot. A “driver” metaprogram, which is both your towering strength is, at the same time, your weak or shadow side. Typically this is a blind-spot. Regressive Childish States. Under stress nearly everybody regresses. What do we regress to? To more primitive thinking-and-emoting patterns that we have not fully outgrown. The more stress, the more likely we regress to personalizing, awfulizing, over-generalizing, and all of the other cognitive distortions— which were the thinking stages we experienced as children. Erickson described this aspect of the unconscious mind as “very acute, alert, and primitive” (1988, p. 166). Narrative/ Autobiographical Thinking. We unconsciously hear and code the events of our lives in terms of a “story”—one that we invent or receive. This comprises our auto-biographical memory and how we create and sustain a consistent sense of self over time. Structural Systems. There are numerous structural systems deep within us that are beyond the reach of consciousness. There is the structural system of language itself which is unconsciously structured with all sorts of presuppositions. Fortunately, linguistics can enable us to detect and recognize these. -32-

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Figure 3:1 The Many Aspects of the Unconscious Mind — Conceptual Unconscious in the higher brain functions — 1) Memory — Episodic Semantic Muscle Memory 2) Habituated Skills 3) Cultural Knowledge: Contexts 4) Pre-Conscious Awareness 5) Non-Dominant Hemisphere: symbolic language: metaphors 6) Blind-Spots 7) Regressive Childish States 8) Narrative/ Autobiographical Thinking 9) Structural Systems: Language 10) Repressed Unconscious: Freudian memories — Organic, Somatic Unconscious in the lower brain functions— 11) Autonomic Nervous System 12) Sympathetic Nervous System 13) Parasympathetic Nervous System 14) Immune System: White blood cells 15) Endocrine System: Endocrinal hormones regulations 16) Structural Systems: vision, etc.

Repressed Freudian memories. “A dark and murky place filled with desires and memories and fantasies too disturbing for us to think about consciously” (Gladwell). Trance is the key for how you can work with ideas, stories, memories, etc., which are typically outside of cognitive conscious awareness. In inducing a “trance,” you work with the unconscious. If you do this intelligently, you can maximize the receptivity and potentials of the body and nervous systems for healing, well-being, pain control, developing potential capacities, creativity, etc. If you do not, you can actually create psychosomatic illnesses and all sorts of psychological pathologies. Why Unconsciousness? There’s a reason why most of our intelligent consciousness is unconscious. Namely, consciousness is a limited phenomenon. Only a small portion of -33-

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sensations and awarenesses are present to your awareness to any given point in time. In his famous paper The Magic Number Seven Plus or Minus 2, George Miller (1956) described that limitation as approximately 7+/2- chunks of information. This describes the difficulty—we cannot keep very much in our mind at any given time. That’s why we store the great majority of what we learn and know outside of the small spotlight of conscious awareness in other parts of our mind-body system. By encoding information in different forms, we store the information as memory (autobiographical, semantic, etc.), as muscle memory (kinesthetic nerve patterns), as skills, as habits, as reactions, etc. This comprises our knowledge base—the foundation of knowledge and understanding from which we operate. Figure 3:2 Differences between Conscious

Unconscious

Objective mostly Understanding Critical thinking: testing reality What’s possible? Aware of outside senses Exploring, experimenting Evaluating Deciding Thinking– being conscious

Subjective entirely Doing: A response system Activated thinking, implementing Accesses the impossible via “as if” Program of what’s installed Protecting: defense systems Noticing, observing Integrating sophisticated information Feeling — how something feels Memory of cold, warmth, tense, relax, climbing, falling, lying in bed, etc.

This knowledge base and background knowledge suggest something pretty incredible. Namely, you know more than you know that you know. What you “know,” and yet are not consciously aware of, operates as automatic “programs” within you. You respond to something as if you are consciously aware of what you are doing— yet you are not. Like reading these sentences, riding a bike, skating, driving a car, etc., you have learned a process and developed a skill so well that it has “dropped out of conscious -34-

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awareness.” It is now operational as an internal “program” of behavioral response. You have an unconscious competence— one which unlikely that you are able to describe. This aspect of your unconscious mind gives you both an extensive data base and skill base which becomes available in the appearance of the right context. Environment contexts will activate it. When the NLP founders discovered that most people have a favorite representation system— they realized that they use it to code what is in their conscious mind. What’s “unconscious” therefore is whatever is not in that sensory system. “What are you not aware of?” That’s part of your unconscious. Here you are processing information in all your systems, but unaware of some of them. “Unconscious” also designates “not knowing,” what you do not know— have not learned. This applies to blind-spots—what you have not learned or discovered about yourself and therefore what you are blind to. Here there is no automatic program, only a blank, an emptiness— waiting to be filled in. The Differences between Conscious and Unconscious While there are obviously differences between what you know consciously and what you know unconsciously, they are not as stark as the diagram (Figure 3:2) suggests. Think of the contrasts in terms of being on a continuum, then you can also expect that there will be significant slippage and overlap between these states. Is the Unconscious Good or Bad — Useful or Hurtful? If some aspects of what we call “the unconscious mind” knows what we don’t know consciously, what does “the unconscious” know? How does it “know?” How much does it know? What are the limits to its knowledge? Attitudes about “the unconscious mind” have varied over the years. Some, like Sigmund Freud, consider it to be the source of all problems. It only knows bad stuff— repressed memories, pain, humiliation, vulnerability, etc. Others, like Milton Erickson, went to the other extreme—“the unconscious” is the source of all good stuff— it is the wisdom of the body, it is the source of insights, creativity, solutions, potentials, etc. He argued that we should trust “the unconscious” and to not to trust the conscious mind, “We need to learn to relate optimally to the unconscious.” -35-

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“Your unconscious mind uses much better judgment than your conscious mind. ... There is a wealth of knowledge that exists in your body.” (Life Reframing, 1985, p. 117, 121)

The truth lies somewhere in-between those positions. Today we know that “the unconscious mind” can powerfully facilitate healing and well-being and the unconscious can also make mistakes—even severe mistakes. When the auto-immune system creates an allergy, that “unconscious mind” has made a mistake. An allergy codes a danger or threat that is actually no real danger or threat. Yet at the unconscious level, our body responds as if there is. Here the unconscious mind is simply mistaken—cognitively wrong. There are other myths about the unconscious. For example, the “unconscious mind” is not one’s “true self” nor does it always tell the truth. We can be deceived at the unconscious level as well as the conscious. What’s unconscious is not always true, right, or real. At the unconscious level we can be prejudiced, biased, and hold to fallacious reasoning. The solution is to know the cognitive biases and fallacies. Whereas some seem to think of “the unconscious mind” as a “god within,” it is certainly not that. Steven J. Sherman, a Social Psychologist, says that while he is “skeptical of Erickson’s true belief in the unconscious,” it may be an useful idea depending on how we use it. Namely, you could refer to “the unconscious mind” to free a person to communicate “unencumbered by worries about one’s self-presentation” in a way which might ordinarily be inhibited. For a therapeutic effect, you could use it to allow a person to feel less responsible for things because “a third person, so to speak,” has entered the conversation “because it seems to come from their unconscious and not from them” (Zeig and Lankton, 1986, p. 67). “It is now well accepted that quite complex cognitive processing goes on below the level of conscious awareness. Not only can information be received without awareness, but that information can be integrated and interpreted in the absence of conscious awareness.” (Developing Ericksonian Therapy, 1968, Ed. by Zeig and Lankton, p. 86)

Malcolm Gladwell in Blink presented a more balanced view of the unconscious. “Our unconscious is a powerful force. But it’s fallible. ... it can be thrown off, distracted, and disabled. ... It is possible to learn when to listen to that powerful onboard computer and when to be wary of it.” (2005, p. 15) -36-

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End of the Chapter Trance- ition Consciousness can be distinguished in terms of what you are aware of and what you are not aware of. One is conscious and the other is unconscious. Both are aspects of consciousness—of mind and intelligence. And both are still phenomena of great mystery. We can put each on a continuum to make even more refined distinctions.4 Doing this allows us to recognize differences which make a difference. Yet there’s more to say about the unconscious—our focus in the next chapter.

End of the Chapter Notes 1. Richard Bolstad, Anchor Point, Volume 18, #2, p. 10. 2. The Inside-Out approach is the approach that we consciously take in Neuro-Semantics hence the books, Inside-Out Wealth, Inside-Out Persuasion, etc. it is the basis for Winning the Inner Game and therefore all of the books and manuals on various Inside-Out games. 3. See the article, “Which Unconscious Mind do you Train?” www.neurosemantics.com 4. See Executive Thinking (2018) and the manual for Brain Camp (2019) for a continuum of unconscious and conscious thinking states.

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CONSCIOUS OR UNCONSCIOUS? Myths and Truths Whatever the unconscious mind is, it is a very different aspect of consciousness. It is intelligent, yet it is blind. It is powerful, yet it has its own hangups. It is expansive and complex, yet it can generate rigid responses at times. It is truly a mystery.

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ll consciousness is not conscious. In fact, the great majority of the things we “know” and “understand,” the great majority of our ideas and intelligence is unconscious. We know without knowing that we know. It is not in our immediate awareness although some of it can be easily brought into awareness. Yet most of it, given the nature of consciousness, cannot be brought into awareness. Conscious consciousness is far too limited. We experience it as a spotlight of awareness that we shine on one thing and then another. Unconscious knowledge, thinking, knowing, etc., however, is a very different phenomena. Conscious — Unconscious Relationship A great deal, maybe even most, of what is in “the unconscious” arrived there through conscious awareness. The normal process is that as we learn something, we store what we have learned as knowledge in memory (e.g., experiences, songs, poems, events, etc.). We over-learn something else and it becomes incorporated deeply in unconscious muscle-memory (e.g., how to ride a bike, type, the alphabet, etc.). In half-awareness we learn other things. In the context of home, school, church, etc., we pick up on hundreds of cues about “how we do things around here,” and they become part of the values and rituals that we “know” intuitively without having formally learned them (our cultural knowledge). -38-

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This describes the basic relationship between being consciously aware and learning things at the unconscious level. What’s in your unconscious—you put it there. You put it there through the learning process, the experiential process, and the copying and mirroring of what you saw others do around you. Other things got into your unconscious through the functioning of your brain-body. You learned to “see,” perceive, reason, speak, figure out language, etc. Another description of the relationship between conscious and the unconscious mind lies in the Gestalt Psychology foreground/ background distinction. I included this as a meta-program distinction in the book Figuring Out People (2005). That pattern is the foundation for the NLP Swish Pattern. Burton (2009) said that what is in the foreground is conscious—you are aware of it, and what’s in the background is unconscious. You are not aware of it even though it plays a significant part of the larger mental context and, in fact, makes up the background. “The ground is what the individual ignores but this ground is fertile in rich resources that can provide a solution. ... you could think of the figure as being the conscious mind, while the ground represents the unconscious mind.” (2009, p. 30)

That structure enables us to speak about conscious and unconscious minds in terms of what is in the front of the mind and what is in the back of the mind. As you foreground some information, you bring it forward and attend to it. This is the work of consciousness. It is effortful. Here you experience consciousness as a spotlight as you focus awareness on something. What is in the back of your mind is not conscious. A third conceptual understanding of the conscious–unconscious relationship relates the unconscious to context. When you first learn something, you learn specific content. And yet, that content can also operate as context as it can later set a frame for how to understanding things. This describes how “first impressions” can serve two functions—the content of the impression and context as it establishes an understanding and implies other things. Wolinksky has even suggested that “the concept of context” is much more useful than “the unconscious mind” because it does not compartmentalize mind as the conscious/ unconscious split does (1991, p. 59). Another conscious/ unconscious distinction comes from Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011). He based his distinctions on the levels of -39-

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brain anatomy and how “fast thinking” occurs at the lower levels which are closest to our senses and to the outside world. Kahneman then distinguishes the slow thinking as the function of the higher pre-frontal cortices. The slow thinking you do there involves thinking something through, carefully calculating as you come to your conclusions, and accurately reasoning in inductive and deductive ways. 1 What else? Is there any other set of distinctions that describe the relationship between what is conscious and unconscious? Here is yet another. Lucas Derks, organized the NLP Social Panorama Model to address how we “think” and code our social relationships. He says that our “social cognition is nearly entirely unconscious” (Anchor Point, 2003, p. 30). That is, while we code people as close or far, two-dimensional or three-dimensional, in color or black-and-white, to the side, behind, before, etc., all of this structuring is typically outside of awareness. It also generally requires training to bring this information into consciousness. 2 Symbolic thinking offers us yet another facet of the unconscious mind. When you think symbolically, you use one thing to consciously think about other things and in doing so, you accept various entailments at an unconscious level. The comparison, whether a metaphor, analogy, image, story, etc., inevitably carries many ideas not expressed in consciousness. (We will explore this more fully in Chapter 16, Metaphorical Trances.) How Does the Unconscious “Learn?” We say the unconscious mind “knows” X or Y. How does this intelligence outside-of-conscious awareness “know,” “understand,” or “learn?” What do these words mean in terms of you not being aware? In Learning Theory (Behaviorism), learning is linkage or association. Somehow in the experience of humans and animals an X-idea or an X-event gets linked to a Y so that X—>Y (X leads to Y) comes to operate as a unit, and as a programmed way of functioning. In studying that linkage, it was discovered to work by association. X gets associated with Y whether it is “logical” or not. Pavlov’s dogs associated the whistle with food so that the blowing of a whistle (X) prior to receiving meat (Y) were connected. X leads to Y (X—> Y). In the dog’s mind, this associative conditioning activated a connection or linkage so the dog would “think,” “whistle means getting food” and so “thinking” led to activating the dog’s saliva glands. -40-

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What is “learned” is the response pattern based on an associative “knowledge.” Knowing that when X occurs, Y will follow, one responds as if X is logically connected to Y. The dogs would salivate. In the dog’s nervous system, sound of whistle started the unconscious neurological preparations for eating. Similarly, Erickson noted that “the unconscious mind” learns by building up associations—one thing becomes associated with another thing (Life Reframing, 1985, pp. 11, 49). This “learning” occurs both through thoughtful checking out of cause-effect relationships and also sometimes through accidents. Sometimes the connection or linkage of X and Y are purely unintentional and accidental. In Mind-Lines I related the story of a five-year old boy sassing his mother and talking back. The mother responds, “Something bad will happen if you sass your mother.” At that very moment, an earthquake occurred. What the boy unconsciously learned instantaneously was when you “talk back” (X) “bad things” (Y) will happen. He learned to be fearful of being assertive. In his neurology, being assertive felt absolutely dangerous.3 Hypnosis as Bypassing Consciousness A very common myth about hypnosis and trance is that “in the hypnotic process we bypass the conscious mind.” The problem with this statement is that it assumes a linear, either-or, and polarized framework. Because of that, it is wrong and it is wrong on numerous accounts. First, it is wrong in its overall assertion that thinking hypnotically, or trance induction, completely bypasses the conscious mind. Actually, effective trance incorporates the conscious mind. After all, trances generally start with engaging and seducing the conscious mind into an intense and narrow focus. As a person’s conscious mind focuses more and more on the content of some entrancing story or idea, the person goes more and more into a trance state. You best induce trance using and employing the conscious mind, not avoiding or eliminating it. Simply give it something to focus its attention on. Second, every trance contains message, suggestions, or ideas which are conscious. In a phobia trance, the fearful object is almost always conscious. “I just do not like small tight places.” In the anxiety trance, it doesn’t take much to elicit the conscious content, it is typically very close to conscious awareness. “I’m afraid that I just will never amount to anything.” So also -41-

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in a negative identity trance, “I’m just a loser.” While with each of these trances there may be additional messages that the person is holding which the person is not aware of, the conscious mind is usually aware of, and has access, to at least some of the post-hypnotic suggestions that its programming is acting out. Third, conscious and unconscious exist on a continuum. What is called “the conscious mind” and what’s called “the unconscious mind” are not solid monoliths. Within each of these processes are multiple aspects. As chapter three demonstrated, there are many aspects of “the unconscious mind.” The same goes for “the conscious mind.” Which “conscious mind” are you talking about? The conscious mind that thinks inductively, accessing details and then drawing conclusions? The conscious mind that thinks deductively beginning with some conclusion and now applying it in various contexts? Every kind of thinking mentioned in chapter one describes yet another aspect of “the conscious mind.”4 Conscious and unconscious “minds” are not diametrically opposites. And every attempt to set them up as polar opposites creates a false dichotomy. So just as we say that “your unconscious mind” is listening in while we are having a conscious conversation, so “your conscious mind” is listening in when we are evoking some aspects of your mind which is not-conscious. “And your conscious mind can listen as I talk or not, it doesn’t need to remember things because your unconscious mind is here and can hear and remember everything said...”

To split conscious and unconscious minds apart and dichotomize them, presents the conscious mind as the interloper— the one creating all of the problems. In fact, in the literature on hypnosis, you will commonly find writers saying non-sense things like “all problems are created by the conscious mind.” In taking that position, two of the founders of NLP have thereby made “the conscious mind” the bad guy, the evil factor, and the problem.5 Stephen Wolinksy (1991) noted that Erickson also made this conscious/ unconscious split. For Erickson “the unconscious mind” was only good— “the storehouses of resources and creativity for healing.” He went to the opposite pole from Freud who saw it as only bad and the source of our problems. For him, the “unconscious mind” was an unsavory force — -42-

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irrational, ego-driven, wild, negative. Wolinsky suggested context as a better concept and referent than “unconscious mind” (p. 59). “Erickson seemed to value the unconscious mind more highly than the conscious mind because it was the conscious mind that concocted the limiting beliefs. Simply stated, this means that certain consciously held beliefs and thoughts stop people from searching for resources they may actually be able to use.” (Stephen Lankton in Zeig, 1986, p. 430)

In spite of this, Langton noted that Erickson worked with the conscious mind. “He worked with the conscious mind rather than through direct confrontation against it.” How? By using processes such as reframing, relabeling, and therapeutic metaphor (Zeig, 1986, p. 431). Erickson also frequently noted that various problems were created by misunderstandings of the unconscious mind. In dealing with various sexual dysfunctions, he often found that the source went to “an unconscious learning” that a young boy would make about himself, his sexual adequacy, his sexual identity, etc. The problems that resulted came from an error, not a conscious one, but an unconscious one.6 Carlos Zalaquett (in Zeig, 1986) made a similar point. First he acknowledged that “Erickson did not usually use insightful interpretations because of the limitations of the conscious mind.” He said that Erickson “often used the continuing activity of the conscious mind, casting aside the myth that hypnosis deals only with the unconscious mind” (Zeig, 1986, pp. 212, 216). Conscious and Unconscious Behaviorally When you are consciously mindful, you act voluntarily. When your knowledge, intelligence, understanding is outside-of-conscious awareness (i.e., unconscious), we characterize your actions as involuntary. You do things automatically. It is as if the learning has become programmed in, as if it exists autonomously as a “program,” which is fully capable of generating a behavioral response. You learn the letters of the alphabet and learn them so thoroughly that now you do not have to think to use them, to spell, to recognize a word. The learning is automatic so that you have, as it were, a mental and behavioral program for recognizing letters. In fact, it is so programmed in, you cannot

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not recognize letters and words. In trance, we offer a conscious task and look for and expect an involuntary action. “As you focus your whole attention on examining that picture on the wall, your eyes will tire and your eyelids will begin to want to blink and then close...” “As you recall when you first learned the alphabet (conscious) and what it was like to be so curious, so fascinated, so open, you can return to these states to enjoy that ferocious learning state ... (unconscious response).”

Symptoms, by definition, are involuntary. They are outside-of-conscious awareness and operate automatically as a programmed learning no longer useful. Some of the distress we feel about symptoms is that they come and go and don’t seem to respond to our instructions or orders. We do not seem to be in control of them. We wonder, “How do I get myself to stop doing X?” The unconscious program seems to be far stronger than conscious awareness or our will power. In that moment, we have a situation that first requires unlearning (de-programming) so we can then engage in some new learning. (We will visit this subject in chapters 18-19 on change.) The Question about Conscious Mind’s Limitations We know that our minds are consciously limited in amount of information that we can hold at any given time to the 7+/-2 chunks (Miller, 1956). That is one limitation, and it is a major limitation. Are there others? The answer depends on which conscious mind you’re talking about. For an undeveloped and uneducated conscious mind, there are all sorts of limitations! That’s where the human biases come in— and there are a great many biases which are inherent in the way we humans think. 7 Here’s the bottom-line: All of the limitations of the conscious mind can equally be limitations of the unconscious mind. That’s because as we consciously think, so we program our unconscious mind to incorporate that way of thinking. In turn, the unconscious then makes that thinking available to us automatically, even reactively. This explains the prejudices, biases, fallacies, and cognitive distortions which are programmed in us unconsciously and which remain there until or unless we update those programs. Conscious or unconscious? Yes definitely!

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Getting Around the Conscious Mind Given that it is true that sometimes the kind and quality of one’s conscious mind is the problem, what can we do? There are lots of things. Consciously we can work to facilitate the development of critical thinking skills.8 When a person is consciously biased, prejudiced, and ill-informed, uneducated— you can expect that that person’s “conscious mind” will create all sorts of problems as well as that person’s unconscious mind. They are part of the same system. Here you would not “get around the conscious mind” as much as you would update it. When a person suffers from cognitive distortions, fallacies, misinformation—that person’s problems are not hidden away deep inside. Actually, they are out in plain sight. They are in his conscious mind. The person may be stubbornly dogmatic, confuse map and territory, engaged in concrete thinking, know-it-all thinking, etc. In such cases we need to get around that conscious mind— we need to bypass it, and/or depotentiate it, in order to help the person solve things and/or find resources. This is also another value of trance. Given that consciousness normally dominates the unconscious mind, trance provides a chance to free the unconscious from the dominance of a limited and uninformed conscious mind. Trance gives you a chance to avoid the interferences of consciousness. One way to do this is via implications. With implications your suggestions can imply more than what’s recognized by consciousness. Double-binds can also be used to release latent potentials and confusions to depotentiate conscious sets—which then opens up trance states. Here you can use trance communication to speak metaphorically so that the person will not know what you are communicating to both his conscious and unconscious minds. Haley put the principle in these words: “It is difficult to resist a suggestion one does not know consciously that he is receiving.” (1973, p. 27).

Making What is Unconscious Conscious Making the unconscious conscious, was at the heart of Sigmund Freud’s focus. A mantra from Psychoanalysis was: “Where there is Id, let there be Ego.” Yet when it became so central, it eventuated in creating psychoarcheology, a never-ending exploration into personal history. Implied in this was the assumption that knowledge of history per se cures present-day -45-

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dysfunctions. Today we know that it does not work that way. History may help explain the source or origin of a problem, but usually does little to resolve it. Knowing how you broke a leg does not mend the leg. Erickson so completely disagreed with this approach that he called it both a misconception and a superstition. Another misconception is that you should make conscious the unconscious mind. I think it is imperative for all of you to realize that therapy of any sort ... does not depend upon making the unconscious conscious. ... It is necessary for us to have a great deal of our knowledge at the unconscious level.” “There is too much superstition about making the unconscious conscious.” (Mind-Body Communication in Hypnosis, 1986, pp. 74-75, 171).

To demonstrate that “It is necessary for us to have a great deal of our knowledge at the unconscious level,” he reasoned that we do not need to be conscious when it comes to such things as how to tie a shoe string or drive a car. It’s good that our habituated skills now operate at an unconscious level. And that’s true for all except for the person who teaches driver’s education. It’s also true that regarding the original source of some traumatic pain— we do not need to trace out when and where it began. Instead, we only need to identify how we keep the learning as a programmed response inside of us today.9 When it comes to thin-slicing, being able to pick up patterns in situations based on narrow slices of experience, this works when a person has plenty of experience and has developed expertise in that area. Gladwell (2005) describes how it worked for art experts examining a statue and John Gottman’s ability to predict couples who will make it versus those who will not. Here one’s unconscious intuitions have been thoroughly trained and can now pick up on critical action variables, “signatures.” Which Unconscious Mind is Listening? Erickson constantly reminded people that they were listening to him both consciously and unconsciously. He repeatedly delivered suggestions about not needing to listen to him consciously because their unconscious was listening. He would say, ‘and you are here and your unconscious can hear me now...” He also talked about “the thoughts in your unconscious mind” (Life Reframing, 1986, p. 130). That brings up several questions— What is the unconscious mind listening for? What does any given unconscious mind listen for? -46-

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The most general answer to these questions is ideas. As an unconscious or non-conscious mind or intelligence—it mostly operates via ideas—ideas that then influence responses. This refers to the ideodynamic nature of our mind-body system. You are a being who lives in a body which is highly idea-sensitive. That’s why ideas are not neutral or innocent in the mind or body. Present an idea, and not only does your mind work to process it, decode it, seek to understand it, give it meaning, so does your body. That’s why an imaginary worry can put holes in your gastric mucosa and give you ulcers. The ideodynamic response capacities of your mind-body systems establishes the capacity for translating ideas into physiological functioning.

The Unconscious Mind in its many forms

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What does this Unconscious Mind Listen for?

— Conceptual Unconscious— 1) Memory — Episodic Semantic Muscle Memory 2) Habituated Skills 3) Cultural Knowledge 4) Pre-Conscious Awareness 5) Non-Dominant Hemisphere 6) Blind-Spots 7) Regressive Childish States 8) Narrative/ Autobiographical Think.

Events, episodes of life. Meanings, beliefs, ideas. Procedures, ways of doing things. Repetition, procedures. Cultural mores, right and wrong. Everything. Visual, musical, art, etc. Nothing or threats. Danger and threats. Plots, characters, “reasons,” etc.

— Organic, Somatic Unconscious— 9) Autonomic Nervous System 10) Sympathetic Nervous System 11) Parasympathetic Nervous System 12) Immune System 11) Endocrine System

Survival issues. Danger and threats. Safety, “okay,” normality, familiar. Self – “me” and “not me.” Danger and threats.

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The Unconscious Mind in its many forms

Chapter 4

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Unconscious Myths

Shall we Make it Conscious?

— Conceptual Unconscious in the higher brain functions — 1) Memory — Episodic If traumatic, then reframe. Semantic Yes, for availability of access. Muscle Memory Only if you want to teach the skill. 2) Habituated Skills If dysfunctional, for updating. 3) Cultural Knowledge: Contexts If dysfunctional, for updating. 4) Pre-Conscious Awareness Yes, for availability. 5) Non-Dominant Hemisphere Yes, for availability. Symbolic language: metaphors 6) Blind-Spots Yes, for self-awareness and update. 7) Regressive Childish States yes, to update with adult thinking. 8) Narrative/ Autobiographical Think. Yes, if “story” is traumatic. 9) Structural Systems: Language 10) Repressed consciousness Yes, if repression is blocking. — Organic, Somatic Unconscious in the lower brain functions— 11) Autonomic Nervous System Yes, to manage physiology. 12) Sympathetic Nervous System Yes, for emotional management. 13) Parasympathetic Nervous System Yes, for emotional management. 14) Immune System Yes, if a mistake has been made. 15) Endocrine System No, beyond making conscious. Endocrinal hormones regulations 16) Structural Systems: vision, etc. Not for some like vision. Yes for assumptions in language. 16) Structural physical systems: No, not possible. Vision, Perception, etc.

An idea can cause you to flush as blood rushes to your face. Another idea can cause you to turn pale as blood rushes out of your face. An idea can stimulate your heart and lungs to pound in excitement or panic. One word can cause your blood pressure to rise. And precisely because ideas powerfully affect your soma (body), they can also generate all sorts of psycho-somatic illnesses and psycho-somatic wellnesses. Ideas can be semantically loaded. No wonder then that at all of the dimensions of your -48-

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unconscious mind, what you listen for are those which concern meaning, dangers, threats, safety, etc. Such ideas are coded as statements, as implications, expectations, and beliefs. Simple statements that have far-reaching implications are especially powerful to activate one’s physiology. “I’m filing for divorce.” “I pronounce you guilty.” “Here’s a letter from the IRS about your tax return.” “It looks like cancer.” Today the field of psycho-neuro-immunology is working out an understanding of how mind translates information-substances and peptide receptors into physiological functions and effects. It now seems likely that mind (meaning, understanding, belief, intention, etc.) is mediated by peptides given that brain cells, immune cells, and other body tissues share receptors for these peptides.10 All of the dimensions of the unconscious mind are also listening for experiences and associations from which we draw conclusions and/or jump to conclusions, develop realistic or unrealistic expectations, generate empowering or limiting beliefs, etc. End of the Chapter Trance-ition While these two chapters on conscious and unconscious minds are not, by any means, the last word on this subject, they do open up the conversation about what are we actually talking about when we use the phrase, “the unconscious mind.” Today there is still more mystery to all of this than clarity. It is part of the mystery of consciousness itself. That you learn unconsciously, know things unconsciously, remember things unconsciously, respond to stimuli around you unconsciously is well established and can easily be confirmed experientially by noticing what happens in your everyday life. Trance is an experience that taps into the rich resources at the unconscious level so that you can keep updating your model of the world, learn and unlearn at your command, and unleash the reservoir of resources that lie deep within you. In trance, you store your meanings, construct meanings, learn and unlearn meanings, and actualize meanings. And that’s where we go next.

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End of the Chapter Notes 1. Thinking: Fast and Slow (2011). Daniel Kahneman. 2. The Social Panorama refers to a model by Dirk Lucas which considerably adds to the NLP Model. See the book by that title, The Social Panorama. Also, there is a chapter on it in Innovations in NLP (2011). 3. See Mind-Lines (2005) for a description of associative thinking and meaning-making. 4. See Executive Thinking (2018) and the manual for Brain Camp (2019) for a continuum of unconscious and conscious thinking states. 5. Both Richard Bandler and John Grinder have made “the conscious mind” the problem calling it a “dickhead” (Bandler) and the part that is not to be trusted (Grinder). The other founder, Frank Pucelik, did not go in this direction, but maintained the original focus of enabling and strengthening conscious awareness. 6. See Collected Papers of Milton H. Erickson, Volume IV, pp. 343ff, 374ff. 7. See Executive Thinking (2018) and the manual for Brain Camp (2019) for a continuum of unconscious and conscious thinking states. 8. The best tool for critical thinking is the Meta-Model. See chapter 8 for a description of the Meta-Model, also The Structure of Magic Vol. I & II (1975, 1976) and Communication Magic (2001). 9. This approach of not needing to unearth all of the historical factors involved in the creation of a problem or trauma distinguishes the Humanistic Psychology approach that Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers initiated. It was also within the approach that Milton Erickson founded. 10. This kind of thinking is non-dualistic and non-Cartesian as it is not based on the mindbody dualism that still frames most of our thinking. If brain activity both regulates bodily function and generates conscious/unconscious experience, then we do not have to choose between mind or body. We see them as interactive and collaborative.

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Chapter 5

HYPNOTIC THINKING AS MEANING-MAKING Hypnosis is not just a way of thinking, it is a way of constructing meaning (reality) —a meaning that becomes one’s reality orientation. “Hypnosis is a means of communicating ideas; it is a means of asking people to accept ideas for examination, to discover the intrinsic meanings, and then to decide whether or not to act upon those particular meanings.” Milton H. Erickson1

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ypnosis and meaning—what is the relationship between the two? How are they connected and to what extent? Because hypnosis is so intimately connected to communication, trance inevitably plays a central role in how we create and communicate meaning. The meanings that we construct become the inner contexts by which we then interpret things. As you evoke or create contexts within your mind-body system, you then use those contexts in trance to facilitate unleashing human potentials for understanding, solving problems, and becoming your best self. Thinking hypnotically about this “inner world development” which is driven by your meanings enables you to construct a more effective outer world in which to live. Now you can use your ability to think hypnotically to become more human, more civilized, and more functional in every aspect of your life. That’s because you are inventing more effective inner-world

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phenomena (e.g., values, meanings, understandings, etc.) as the trances through which you see and hear both the inside and the outside worlds. An interesting thing about how you experience believing and meaning is that you experience your internal structures as external realities. How does this work? It works because you easily forget that your hypnotic thinking is yours. It seems to come from the world, from the stimuli and triggers of the outside world, not from you. This highlights a problem with many trances —identification. To the extent that you identify the outside world, or facets of that outside world, you identify your map about the world with the territory. You are confusing map and territory.2 This is not good because when you do that, it dis-empowers you. What happens when you forget what you are doing in your mind (e.g., the mindbody-emotion system) and that you are doing it? When you do not realize that you are imposing rudeness or kindness, or whatever, onto the world—you are framing the cause and power of your experience as outside of yourself. In this way, you become blind to your role, your responseability in the matter, and your power of choice. Here the trance, and the hypnotic thinking, has you rather than you having your trance. So, let’s reverse this. Let’s take ownership. Meaning-Making as Hypnotic Thinking For the question, “Of all phenomenon in human experience, what is the most essential one?”, the answer is meaning. When I construct meaning in my mind-body-emotion system, that meaning (and the thinking that creates it) induces a trance and that becomes my trance state. That meaningconstruct then makes up the content of my inner matrix. It is my frames of meaning which I hold in mind and operate from. This construct of frames of meaning, frames of mind, frames of reference—is how I understand and orient myself in the world. Every time I create a meaning about something, I construct (at least) a piece of a trance, and induce myself (at least partially) into a trance state. While it is that simple, it is also an incredibly profound experience. Meaning is trance. It creates trance and trance is the experience of meaning. If I view reading and studying as meaning “resource development, becoming more intelligent, one of the great joys of life, the key to success,” etc., I can then easily enter into a learning trance state. Whenever I’m in a joyful learning state, I’m living and experiencing the meanings which I have created. It is that simple. -52-

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Yet meaning is not that simple. We are just beginning to understand meaning —its nature, construction, components, dimensions, levels, etc. The complexity arises, in part, because meaning is comprised of both “mind” and “body.” Because we construct it within our brain, as part of our nervous systems, it does not “exist” in the same way that our neurons exist or our neural-pathways exist. When we operate on the brain we never find chunks of “meaning” in the brain anatomy or in the neurons. We cannot measure meaning with a MRI reading. We cannot even find “mind” with the tools of medical science. In spite of meaning being non-physical and non-localized, meaning does arise in the mind-body-emotion system as an emergent property. It arises from how you “hold in mind” (the literal definition of “meaning”) and hold it within yourself and in your body. What something means to you depends on what you connect to it, and how you think it over in your mind, how you connect words, referent events, or associated emotions with it. Meaning is an association of referents, a blending of multiple references. Now as a meaning-maker, you are always constructing meaning. You do that by associating one thing with another, by defining it in the words you use, by evaluating it, by comparing it to other things (via metaphoring), by setting intentions about it, by experiencing the world of your senses, etc. Meaning does not, and cannot, exist outside of these inner meaning-making processes. If you do not know the symbolic system of another person or group, you will not understand what they mean when they speak or write. It will all be gibberish to you. It will sound like noise— meaningless to you. The trance states they live in may seem foreign, alien, and strange to you. You may be scratching your head trying to figure out what they mean and what they are trying to communicate. And during the dis-connect, you will be using your symbolic systems of words and meanings, your memories and imaginations as you try to figure it out. And while you may get some of it right, you will undoubtedly get a lot of it wrong. Meaning is not in the event or word, it is the understanding in the mind of the meaning-maker. It is the meaning-maker’s trance state.

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Communication and Hypnotic Thinking Meaning, as in what something means to you, first arises as your communications to yourself, then to others. If meaning lies in the mind of the meaning-maker as that person’s understandings, then you never know what you have communicated to another or what the other person is attempting to communicate to you. You can know what you intended to communicate, and what you said, or how you said it (if you video-tape it). Yet the interpretation the other person makes of your communication is governed by that person’s meanings— the understandings he attributes to it. That’s what you don’t know. To know that you have to keep checking the communication: “What did you hear in what I just said? What did that mean to you?” Then, if you keep checking, receiving feedback about the other’s meanings, and giving feedback about what you think you have heard, eventually, you can adjust and align the sending-and-receiving of messages so they correspond. At that point you gain a sense that you “understand” the other person. Your trance states closely correspond to each other. Erickson repeatedly defined trance and hypnosis as a matter of the communication of ideas as one elicits trains of thought within a client. Here he also emphasized that the ideas are already inside the client and that with regard to communication — you never know what you’ve communicated. “When trances are so elicited, they are still a result of ideas, associations, mental processes and understandings already existing and merely aroused within the subjects themselves.” “So it is with the stimuli, verbal or otherwise, employed in induction techniques, and no one can predict with utter certainty just how a subject is going to use such stimuli. One names or indicates possible ways, but the subjects behave in accord with their learnings.” (Collective Papers, Vol. I, 1976, pp. 326, 327, italics added)

How does all of that influence the trance states that we and others go into? It crucially influences them! We induce ourselves and others into trance states by the words we use. We do so by the stories we tell, the ideas we present, and the meanings we create. When we imply, when we suggest, and when we create word pictures about our referents, our listeners use our words, gestures, tones, and all of the facets of our communicating to go into trance states that fit their understandings. This explains the phenomenon -54-

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of “hypnotic language patterns”—the language patterns and languaging structures by which we create meaning. And the more you use these, the more you can learn to be “artfully vague.” And with that, then the more trancy or hypnotic your communications become. “At the most general level, the goal of a hypnotist is to change the behavior, sensory response, and consciousness of another person. A subsidiary goal is to extend that person’s range of experience; to provide him with new ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving.” (Haley, 1973, p. 21)

Frames of Meaning ——— Failure ——— To speak about meaning is to speak about / x, y, z \ frames. These terms— meaning and frames— are synonymous. Accordingly, every meaning establishes a frame or category for understanding. To describe an example of a failed attempt at doing something (“failure”), is to simultaneously create the category of “failure.” Now into that category you can put various events (e.g., x, y, z). Doing this means you view that event through the frame or category of “failure.” That’s what those examples mean to you, what you understand about them. But you didn’t have to do that. You could have created the frame of “experiment,” so that x, y, z are viewed through the meaning of “finding out what works and what does not work—an experiment.”

/

——— Experiment ——— x, y, z \

The power (and the problem) with frames is that they involve tacit and covert meanings as understandings. They exist beyond the level of consciousness as “unconscious” contexts or categories. Then outside of awareness, they exert an inertia on us— a mindset that is deeply entrenched. And because we have unconsciously put them into some category, they establish the attitude we take to specific items. When the category isn’t effective, it typically creates unconscious limitations and biases. As meanings are generally unconscious, resting in the back of the mind, so also your conceptual categories, classes, referents, frames, and beliefs. Here are your assumptions, reasoning style, explanatory styles, unquestioned

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premises, old patternings, absorbed cultural habits, etc.—several aspects of your unconscious mind. Meaning Frames In and Out of Trance Let’s now go back to the beginning of meaning construction and ask, “What does anything mean?” “When you take any thing, action, statement, event, etc.— what is its meaning?” The answer is unique to every person and depends on each person’s associative processes. It depends on that person’s life experiences, learnings, references, mental-emotional processing, etc. To examine a meaning, ask what that particular human mind has created: What do you call it? (identification) How do you think it works? (cause-effect) What is its value? (complex equivalence) What will you do? (intentions, purpose, direction, agenda) The answer to these questions gives you the basic mindset of that person and his or her particular meaning trance. It gives you the person’s reality orientation. While the way we talk about “meaning” may seem to suggest that it is solid and permanent, it is not. Meaning as a process is quite fluid. That’s the reason we can re-frame meaning. When you reframe a meaning, you make a shift between two or more possible meanings. The format of a reframe is simple: "X-behavior does not mean A, it means B." By creating a new frame-of-reference in this way, you transform the meaning and significance of an event, behavior, or word. This kind of reframing is typically conscious. “Your sixteen year old lying about on the couch watching TV doesn't mean ‘Our son is lazy.’ It means that ‘We have a son who has developed an exquisite ability to relax.’" “Cussing doesn’t mean he is a bad person, it means he has a vocabulary deficit.”

Sometimes, however, when you so reframe by shifting to a higher logical level, you move above the previous meaning and establish a frame that transcends the first category. This higher reframing operates at a level outside of consciousness. "Yes, at this level he lazes around in front of the TV, seeking to avoid taking on challenges, but that is because he wore himself out in the soccer practice yesterday.” -56-

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“This is not stubbornness, this is the ability to know one’s mind and take a stand against opposition”

Conversational reframing involve establishing a new category which, in turn, enables a new perspective to emerge. Sometimes reframing involves a play on words— “Yes, procrastination may be a problem and it also may be a solution. For example, as you imagine procrastinating on your procrastination, what would that lead to?” Then at such times the word play may accomplish what seems like magic as it works at a level above and beyond conscious awareness.3 “Cancer is not a death sentence, it is a wake up call for attending to your health and changing diet and life-style.”

End of the Chapter Trance-ition The meaning-making and meaning construction that you do consciously as you take account of the world you live in, and seek to understand it, continues as it informs your unconscious facets of mind. Because you can’t keep all that you have learned or know in conscious awareness, you store it away in your “unconscious” mind. Yet you are not storing a “thing,” but a process, so it doesn’t stay there unchanged. It keeps changing, and is continuously altered as you continue to learn, to experience, to process, and to construct meaning. While nearly all of your “unconscious” learnings come through your conscious mind and “drop” out of consciousness into the non-conscious, some learnings are learned and stored exclusively outside of conscious awareness. This is especially true of experiential learnings. You did not learn “red” or “blue,” or any color, consciously. You did not learn most of your behavior functions (standing, walking, balancing, tying a shoe, etc.) consciously. You “learned” it in your body, and with your body, and you stored it as a resource kinesthetically and/or biologically. These “unconscious learnings” are part of an unconscious storehouse of resources. How do you learn to swim? You certainly did not learn it from reading a book. After all the reading and verbal instructions, you still had to get into the water. Then you had to figure out how to breathe under water, lift your head, hold your breath, move your arms, etc. You “learned” it in your body experientially.

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Learning to raise your blood pressure by 20 points is also an unconscious experiential learning. You’ve learned that. But you probably do not have that ability at conscious control. Yet when a professor announces an unexpected test, one that will determine 50% of your grade—you may find that you can raise your blood pressure by 20 points. That is an unconscious potential that we humans have. Both consciously and unconsciously we also mis-learn things. Most are childish mis-understandings, false conclusions drawn in contexts where we had too few resources to handle. We also mis-learn things in our body experientially and as with anything repeated and encoded, they become part and parcel of our functional “programs” for how to operate and how to do things in the world. What is your take-away from all of this? When you construct meaning— you construct a trance state, you go into a trance state. When you give, appraise, invent, etc. meaning— you enter into a hypnotic state. And that’s why and how you do hypnotic thinking everyday— the subject of the next chapter.

End of Chapter Notes: 1. The quotation at the end of the chapter comes from Healing in Hypnosis, p. 183. 2. Alfred Korzybski (1933/ 1994) took the view in Science and Sanity that all hypnosis involved identification which he described as an animalistic way of using one’s nervous system. Given that view, he turned General Semantics against hypnosis. 3. Mind-Lines: Lines For changing Minds (1997/2005)

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EVERYDAY HYPNOTIC THINKING “And I suppose you think you are awake even now? And thinking that, how comfortable are you feeling, how relaxed, and as you think about that thinking, you can now begin to plan how to really learn to think and speak hypnotically, because it is a rare and wonderful opportunity to expand your skills and to communicate to your unconscious mind about things of importance to your health, your well-being, and the unleashing of your potentials ...”

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iven that there are so many ways to think, and thinking hypnotically can utilize any one of those ways, what is thinking hypnotically? What does that mean? What are the many ways that we can think hypnotically? Given that hypnosis or trance involves an intense inner focus which takes a person inside to the inner world of meaning— how does thinking hypnotically show up in everyday life? Before answering that question, let’s expose a myth. The myth is that thinking hypnotically is rare, strange, or unusual. It is not. It is actually one of the ways that we all think every single day and, in fact, a manner of thinking that you and I cannot avoid. We think hypnotically whether we want to or not. It comes with the package that we call “thinking.”

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Thinking hypnotically refers to any and all “thinking” wherein you and I go inside and do more than see, hear, smell, taste, and feel the external world. It refers to when we see and hear and feel things that are no longer in our immediate environment, but which we recall or imagine. To reactivate a memory from a previous experience so that you re-experience it today is to enter into a trance state— a state that you create by thinking hypnotically. And you and I do this about all sorts of things— which explains why there are so many different kinds of trance states. Also to see and hear and feel what you imagine will occur in the near or far future is similarly another kind of trance state. It is a state generated by thinking hypnotically. Every time you predict what you’ll do in the future, a trend that you think will occur in an industry, what your friend will do next year on holiday—you are thinking hypnotically. You are age progressing and imagining yourself moving forward in time. If you are visiting your past, then you are age regressing as you revivify a memory. Doing this kind of hypnotic thinking is easy. It is also inevitable. All you have to do is to think about a past or future experience. In this way, you can take all sorts of momentary or extended “daily vacations” by doing such in your mind. Any form of hearing, imagining, or creating a story is another expression of thinking hypnotically. The same applies to going to the movies, listening to a narrative on the radio, reminiscing with friends, hearing a sermon, listening to a lecture, planning a business project, etc. A higher and more complex kind of thinking hypnotically occurs when you go beyond merely representing something that is not immediately present. When you evaluate, calculate, draw conclusions, create or work with categories, classify things, think in terms of metaphors, etc.—now your hypnotic thinking moves you to a higher level of abstracting and conceptualizing (high level meaning making). Now you are constructing an inner map about ideas. You are tapping into your creativity and inventing concepts. And in doing these things, we humans are really in our element. Here you are hallucinating meaning and projecting that meaning onto the world. At the first level when you are thinking hypnotically you may imagine an animal or event so vividly that you can “see” it. In hypnotic language, you may hallucinate a cat, a lion, King Kong, or just about anything. It happens regularly and naturally when listening to a story especially if the storyteller -60-

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speaks in a vividly dramatic way with word pictures that make the story come alive. It also happens whenever you are in a hypnogogic state. That’s the state you access just before going to sleep and when just awakening from sleep. It’s also the state you experience when napping in the middle of the day. It can happen when you’re really tired and sleepy and driving on a long, seemingly unending highway. Then it can be hard to tell if you are dreaming or actually seeing something. Then two worlds interface—the dream or semi-dreaming world and the world of “reality.” Once, having driven all night, in the early morning hours, 4:30 to 5:00 a.m., I found myself slamming on my breaks to avoid a giant trash can in the middle of the interstate. I suddenly awoke to the sounds of horns blowing as cars zoom around me. In a state of shock, I wondered, “But what about that 50 foot trash can?” “Say, where did it go?” We usually use the word “hallucination” for times when we hallucinate objects like that. Yet most hallucinations are of a different kind entirely. Instead of people, things, and activities, we mostly hallucinate ideas and concepts. We hallucinate kindness and rudeness. We “see” it in people around us. We hallucinate responsibility, irresponsibility, stupidity, disrespect, and all sorts of conceptual realities. These do not exist in the outside world, and yet we seem to see and hear and feel them as if they were externally real. More positively, we engage in thinking hypnotically when we learn a discipline and pass tests at University that qualifies us to now function in certain roles and careers. Psychotherapists do this when they see various structures that define personality or one of the hundreds of dysfunctions in the DSM IV. Architects do this when they see possibilities with a piece of property or a certain environment. Interior decorators, and those who buy and flip homes, can see financial rewards in removing a wall, upgrading the kitchen, making the living space to fit a more “open space” concept. Obviously, thinking hypnotically occurs in a wide range of activities, activities that actually make our lives human and which enable us to create and innovate possibilities— often those that far exceed our ability to imagine. -61-

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Mathematicians do it, scientists do it, and news reporters do it. Politicians not only do it, they overdo it. They overdo it to such an extent that ultimately it becomes harder and harder to believe anything they say. Thinking hypnotically explains ongoing progress in every industry and discipline. And it is responsible not only for our best use of “thinking,” it is also responsible for our worst use of thinking. With thinking hypnotically you can worry yourself sick, imagine horrible things that make your life miserable and that spread the misery to others. You can hallucinate ill-will in others, plan to take revenge, and terrify others with acts of destruction and mayhem. You can believe that people are out to get you, that the CIA and FBI have targeted you— and with that belief you can make yourself paranoid and a nervous wreck. Or when you think about public speaking, you can fill your body full of fear believing that people will mock and reject you. In the process you can give yourself an ulcer. Thinking hypnotically becomes a toxic experience when you let cognitive fallacies dominate the inner space of your mind-body system. So also when you don’t outgrow the cognitive distortions of childhood and torture yourself by personalizing, emotionalizing, catastrophizing, etc. And it is thinking hypnotically which also creates most mental illnesses, addictions, and personality disorders.1 Thinking hypnotically is ubiquitous in human experience— an ever present reality and inevitable aspect of thinking. Given that, the solution is not to get rid of it, but to ensure that you use it productively and ecologically. The solution is to understand it and manage it effectively. It is to program yourself for thinking hypnotically in a way that is accurate, precise, and meaningful. When it comes to thinking hypnotically—a key is knowing when to do it and when not to. When is it appropriate and when is it not? Most people think hypnotically randomly, unintentionally, and to their own detriment. This occurs when they— Confuse their inner map with external territory and don’t distinguish what’s inside from what’s outside. Are unconscious of the state they create with hypnotic thinking along with the emotions and somatic symptoms. -62-

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Fail to ground their thinking in reality with the result that it becomes unconnected with real life. Fail to develop robust hypnotic thinking so that it activates unconscious potentialities. When your hypnotic thinking is weak– you will not be able to access your desired states and experiences. You think hypnotically when you experience instant forgetting. You meet someone, set your intention to remember his name, and a moment later, you can’t remember the person’s name. Similarly, you can design amnesia for certain things in trance to protect a person so his conscious mind doesn’t criticize, doubt, or tear it apart. You think hypnotically also when you experience hypermnesia, when you remember something in minute details of something that others have long forgotten. Something else you can learn to forget in hypnotic thinking is pain. Do that and you can create analgesia and/or anesthesia. (See Chapter 20, Trance for Pain Management.) From Everything Thinking to Hypnotic Thinking & Phenomena The point here is that underneath all hypnosis and hypnotic phenomena is everyday hypnotic thinking. What is the relationship between regular thinking and many of the bizarre phenomena that we consider hypnotic phenomena? Hypnotic phenomena, the features of trance states, are hypnotic dynamics. And while these features are commonly present in trances—age regression, hallucinations, post-hypnotic suggestions, dissociation (splitting of self in various ways), time distortion, etc.—they are also present in everyday thinking. Age regression, traveling back in time to an earlier age, arises from the ability to remember and re-experience events. A positive use of age regression is returning to the past to reclaim a resource —childlike curiosity, playfulness, creativity, etc. The misuse involves cascading back into a trauma, and getting stuck at a certain age, due to an inability to integrate something. Pseudo-orientation in time refers to age progression— putting yourself into the future. A resourceful way to use this power is to create a what-if scenario to prepare you for future possibilities. This process is fundamental whenever you future pace. Erickson often used it to assist a client to gain emotional balance and a broader perspective, especially when a person felt a current pressing emotional urgency of a situation. A way to misuse this -63-

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power is to flee into the future in flights of fantasy to escape today’s world and get lost in various unworkable magical solutions. Dissociation speaks about a splitting off of oneself or creating a separation. Here a person may split off a part of oneself from something overwhelming or fearful. Doing that is a way of distancing oneself from something. But what? Are you distancing yourself from a feeling, an emotion, a part of the body, an external trigger, resources, or a concept? A light version of dissociation may be “spacing out” which often occurs in times of stress or overwhelm. A misuse of dissociation could lead to setting up a prohibition and taboo against an emotion so that you disallow feeling what is otherwise a normal human emotion (i.e,, fear, anger, sadness, sex, etc.). An extreme opposite of dissociation is identification, a total association. Post-hypnotic suggestions refer to the ideas, pictures, or words that a person holds in mind, yet outside of awareness. These re-induce old trances— usually to the person’s detriment. The internal dialogue becomes so automatic that it also becomes unconscious. What an ability this is! Amazingly, you can set up a message that will run on automatic for years, even decades, which will keep re-eliciting the trance state. Negatively, many people live out childhood post-hypnotic suggestions with no conscious awareness that a limiting or self-sabotaging message is creating symptomatic problems. Amnesia is a special kind of forgetting. Forgetting occurs naturally as a way to protect us from being overwhelmed. When you withdraw meaning from something, it becomes easy to not notice, not to attend it, not care about it, and therefore to forget. Unuseful amnesia means establishing a forgetting around something you need to face. Both remembering and forgetting ultimately involve a level of decision which you make and put on automatic. “Remember a time when you forgot something...” What happens when you begin to imagine that you are unable to remember? Here is an induction for amnesia adapted from Wolinsky: “You can feel like a breeze, a breeze flowing through the woods and as a breeze goes through the woods, so ideas can flow in one ear and out of the other, and where are they now, and where does the breeze go as it just disappeared as it flowed through the woods... And you can remember to forget those things which do not serve you well because

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Thinking Hypnotically

Hypnotic Phenomenon

Facets of Everyday Thinking

Special Hypnotic Experiences

Thinking imaginatively, creatively Vivid imaginations

Positive hallucination (seeing what is not there) Negative hallucination (not seeing what is there) Light to Deep Trance Hypnotic deafness (not hearing what is there) Catalepsy (hand levitation)

Fixating attention, attending exclusively to X (a subject, person, experience) Forgetting purposefully Intense memory

Amnesia (instant forgetting via a compelling attraction) Hypermnesia (remember intensely many details)

Forgetting pain Absence of pain, distraction

Anesthesia Analgesia

Beliefs about body functions

Ideomotor, ideodynamic effects

Remembering the past Imagining the future

Age Regression Age Progression

Separating or disconnecting self in various ways

Dissociation

your unconscious mind already knows how to let things go which it doesn’t need.” (1991 p. 133)

Hypermnesia refers to an abnormally sharp memory. It arises as an act of vigilance within a context of danger, instability, confusion, etc. Forensic psychology may access this to recover critical information. When misused, a person may become obsessive-compulsive about certain unpleasant information and repeatedly go over and over minute details. Negative hallucination does not refer to something being negative, it refers rather to not seeing or hearing something which is present. The keys are on -65-

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the table, yet when you look there for them, you can’t see them. That’s a negative hallucination. Then the next time you look at the table, lo and behold, the keys are there! This phenomenon can arise in the mind at times when we may not want to see or hear something or not prepared to see. So we negatively hallucinate that something is not there. Positive hallucination refers to seeing or hearing something present which actually is not there. This is what a many children do when a child’s imagination creates an imaginary friend. The positive use of this is to use fantasy creatively to serve your emotional needs—to imagine what could be and which you could work to create in the real world. The misuse would be to imagine or fantasize people who are out to get you and feel paranoid. Time distortion is a trance phenomenon because time itself is a major feature of trance. Time distortion involves the many ways that we can alter our psychological sense of time. While time itself is linear, experiential time can be altered so that you experience it as non-linear, or slow it down to freeze a moment in time so it seems to last for long time. Not only can we experience time as lengthened, but also shortened— fast time. 2 End of the Chapter Trance-ition Trance is so ordinary and at the same time so incredibly extraordinary. Arising from thinking, it gestalts into phenomena that seem other-worldly, mysterious, magical, and inexplicable. Yet ultimately hypnotic phenomena are functions of the mind-body system—and as such, they offer potentialities for healing and well-ness, memory and learning, creativity and problem-solving. They are part of the larger mind which is unconscious and yet which grow out of the conscious mind. Hypnotic thinking differs from everyday conscious thinking mostly in that it involves an intense inner focus. While it may start with something in the external world, it transcends that world and builds worlds of meaning and significance inside. In itself, as a process, it is neutral although it can be used to limit and diminish a person. It can also be used to expand and unleash one’s potential powers. End of the Chapter Notes 1. For the cognitive distortions, the thinking patterns of children, see Executive Thinking (2019). 2. See Adventures in Time (1997). -66-

Chapter 7

TRANCES FOR EVERY OCCASION The Many Different Kinds of Trances A hypnotic trance “is based entirely upon the learning processes within the subject.” It is “a process of learning within” you. Milton H. Erickson1

A

ll trance states are not the same, not by a long shot. There are a great variety of states which we could call trance states. They differ in depth, intensity, focus, use, and nature. Kay F. Thompson commented on the many different kinds of trances. In Developing Ericksonian Therapy she proposed setting out the different trance states on a continuum. "If trance is an altered state on the continuum of awareness, should there not then be the possibility of different states of trance? Since theorists generally accept multiple states of awareness, why is trance designated as only one of those states, when it can represent a number of degrees on the scale of awareness? I propose that the term trance can be used to characterize a subset of states along that continuum of altered states of awareness and that the differences in these states may be accounted for by differences in the motivation of the subject." (Italics added) "When we examine the concept of the purpose of trance, we realize that there are numerous possibilities. There are trances that have a hidden agenda, those that defend from other trances, trances for relaxation, -67-

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trances for fun, trances for exploration, for physiological uses, for habit control, and so on. ... The basic difference I see is motivation." "Examining trances from the point of view of the client's motivation leads to a proposal of six distinct types of trance: 1. Clinical— the chief motivation: self-control or self-help 2. Experimental— the motivation: money, mankind, learning 3. Demonstration— the motivation: learning, or teaching 4. Entertainment— the motivation: to entertain 5. Forensic— the motivation: recall past events 6. Spontaneous— the motivation: self-control, self-help." (p. 153)

Strictly speaking, an altered state is any shift in consciousness away from an ordinary, baseline state. If your waking state is the baseline, then sleep, dreams, drunkenness, meditative absorption are a few of the many altered states that we regularly enter and experience. Within the normal range of consciousness, there are innumerable discrete states: fatigue, excitement, sexual arousal, anxiety, rage, fear, etc. Each of these are a discrete state, each unique as an experience and as a pattern of brain arousal. All of these are within the normal ranges. When a shift overleaps these limits, it becomes an altered state. A normal waking state refers to one in which you can report accurately what happens in your environment and you can use this information to manage or change your behavior. This is the uptime state. When in an altered state, we generally are not able to effectively orient ourselves to the reality of the outside world (i.e., sleep, drugged, delirious, etc.). We are now in a downtime state. The Trance Continuum Given the idea of a continuum of trance states, I have created the following continuum as a proposal of various states which would be on the continuum. Figure 7:1 Conscious Conscious Tip-of-Tongue awareness Hypnogogic Mindfulness Lucid dreams Light trance

Trance Continuum Body Knowl. Non-focal Lost in thought

Medium/deep trance Entranced by story Entrance by dance/music Drug State

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Unconscious Autonomic system Immune system Sympathetic system Parasympathetic “

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Conscious to Partially Conscious The idea of being conscious is that of being aware, alert, sensitive to the environment, sentient. In 1956 when psychologist George Miller formulated the extensiveness of consciousness with his famous paper “The Magic Number Seven Plus or Minus 2,” he estimated that five to nine “chunks” of information as the amount of information which we can hold in conscious awareness at any given time. When we are fully conscious and aware, we are in sensory-awareness of the world and mindful of how we are thinking. The area where we are on the edge of “The principal purpose of consciousness and unconsciousness is hypnotic language ... is to illustrated by several subjective assist clients into a trance experiences. The tip-of-the-tongue for the purposes of phenomenon is one. You know a word or examining the contents of a name, but you can’t say it. You just can’t particular focus, allowing seem to find the word that you know. You the client to then adjust the know that you know, and it feels as if you contents, meaning, and are about to say it at any moment, yet it influence in their life.” does not come out. Not yet. It is close to John Burton being conscious. Yet it is just outside-ofAdvanced Hypnotic your-conscious awareness. Then there are Language Patterns the hypnagogic states. These are the states that you experience prior to going to sleep and upon coming out of sleep. You are awake, well, kind of, but not fully. You are somewhat still asleep, well ... kind of ... It is a twilight zone between awake and asleep. It happens with naps also, or moments when you’re tired, and perhaps listening to a lifeless lecture. Lucid dreams describes yet another one of those edges. In the lucid dream you are asleep and dreaming and you know that you are dreaming. This awareness then enables you to alter the dream, change things around, access resources, etc. as you edit the dream. You can edit the dream while inside the dream. Here consciousness is inside of unconsciousness or so it seems. Light trances also are also usually right on the edge between conscious and unconscious. These light trances can occur momentarily while driving on a long highway, stepping into an elevator, stopping at a stop light, hearing a story, reading, watching a movie, following along a guided fantasy, etc. -69-

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You go into a trance-like state, lightly, and perhaps only briefly, and then you are out of the trance. Body knowledge refers to information, knowledge, and skills that have become incorporated into your physiology and neurology so that such information is available to you behaviorally. When your body “knows,” then your knowledge has moved deep inside and become “intuitive.” We use the term intuitive to describe thoroughly ingrained information. As “intuitions” are learned, we are certainly not born with them, they indicate past experiences and learnings.. Non-focal awareness describes the ability to be aware of something apart from conscious awareness. Firemen are often aware of fire, its source and direction, and can “sense” where it is going.2 Nearly everyone has times when they have a “sense” of something (e.g., time, space, environment, trends, etc.) without being conscious of how they know. Conscious awareness comes when we draw attention to what you have not been attending, of which you were only minimally aware. For example, how does your left foot feel? Lost in thought as when you are day-dreaming, in a reverie about something, momentarily captivated by a passing thought. The “lost in thought” trance occurs almost on a daily basis for all of us. Full Hypnotic states Medium to deep trance states are those states where most of the hypnotic phenomena, mentioned in the last chapter, occur. Here your consciousness has narrowed so much that most, or even all, of the outside world has disappeared, and you are “lost” inside of whatever is engaging your attention. These trances occur whenever you are entranced by a compelling story, reading a book of fiction, a guided fantasy, by the music and dance of a primitive type of ritual which works participants up into a frenzy. Drug induced state of trance can occur with any psychoactive drug from alcohol to prescription drugs. This includes the drugs used in surgery and dentistry. It includes “recreational drugs,” alcohol, etc. Completely Unconscious states There are physiological states which are often referred to as “the wisdom of the body.” These states are mostly or entirely outside-of-consciousness. In -70-

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spite of this, these physiological systems can incorporate what a person learns, believes, values, etc. Conscious misbeliefs can also be sent to these systems for activation. Autonomic nervous system. This system runs your body temperature, heart and lungs, and other survival processes. Via bio-feedback, people today regularly learn how to speed up or slow down their heart beat, lower or raise their blood pressure, raise or lower their body temperature. In that way these unconscious processes can be brought under some conscious control. Associative conditioning as an aspect of experiential learning affects these aspects of health and vitality. Sympathetic nervous system. This system runs your fight/freeze/flight responses to threats and dangers. When it is activated, blood is withdrawn from brain and stomach and sent to the larger muscle groups providing you energy. Here your focus allows you to survive a particular threat. Here the danger messages in the brain activate heart and lungs, skin sweating, it elicits hormone responses to the thyroid, releasing adrenalin into the blood stream. The problem with this nervous system is that today it is typically activated by psychological threats rather than physiological threats. As a result, the raging energy that it releases in the body has nowhere to go and nothing to do. Yet because it raises your stress level, it can intensify illnesses and diseases and is at the heart of psycho-somatic illnesses. 2 Parasympathetic nervous system. This system counter-acts the sympathetic system, it brings relaxation to the mind and body. Here you relax. Here your breathing and heart rate slow down and you experience an inner peacefulness.3 Immune system. This system provides an inner intelligence that distinguishes “me” from “not me.” Generated in the bone marrow and stomach, the white-blood cells roam the body providing a basic defense against what is “not me.” Yet the immune system can make mistakes as it does in allergies— attacking non-threatening things as if they were threats. Confusions about self and boundaries can also lead to any one of the 90plus auto-immune system diseases.

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Figure 7:2 The Feeling of Trance Feelings that lead to Trance

Feelings of Trance

Relaxed, breathing, stretching Passive Experiencing Sense of Control/ Mastery Entranced with an Idea Meaning, Imagination Hope, Dream, Desire Stress, surprise, shock Confused, Ambiguity, Not-Knowing

Relaxes, Calm, Stillness Confusion, Bored, Repetition, Power, control, proactivity, initiative Involved, Engaged in activity Engaged, Curious, Wonderment Desire, Longing, Passion, Excitement Overwhelmed, Delight, Wonder Confusion, Anticipation, Curiosity

What does it feel like to experience Trance? To the question, “What does trance feel like?” the answer is broad and varied. That’s because there are so many different kinds of trances and each has a different feel (see Figure 7:2). Inasmuch as any and every emotion can be a trance state, the feeling of trance can range across the range of all of the emotions. There is no singular feeling that we can attribute to trance. Hypnotic Play As a natural process, hypnosis occurs everyday and to everybody. As a basic human mechanism, everybody goes into states of “hypnosis” daily, and do so regularly. Whenever you are not immediately present with external sensory awareness, you are in a trance state. Deep thinking, concentrating, praying, meditating, etc. are commonly occurring hypnotic states. That you seldom notice these naturally occurring hypnotic states doesn’t make them any less hypnotic. That you do not know how to use them systemically to induce preferred altered states that enhance your lives doesn’t make them any less a trance state. Hypnotic experiences are not only not rare, they are—to the contrary—the most common of experiences which we all have. What’s unusual and rare is sensory-based consciousness (mindfulness) being in the here-and-now. That’s what is not so common and it is also what requires more effort—the effort to stay present in the here-and-now.

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Conversely, the hypnotic experiences which we do have are often of low quality and, as often as not, dis-empowering, rather than empowering. That’s because, being blind-and-deaf to the hypnotic thinking and speaking which we are doing, we lack control of how we are using (or misusing) hypnotic patterns. Consequently, we usually do not even recognize when we are in a hypnotic state, acting out post-hypnotic suggestions, or lost in a hypnotic induction of our own making. Kind and Quality of Trance States In addition to the distinction between different states, we can distinguish trances in another way. The state experience itself differs in each one of these which explains why different trances will have a different feel. 1) Emotional state trances— Love trance, anger trance, fear trance, jealousy trance, etc. There is the curiosity trance, the pleasure trance, the courage trance, the flexibility trance, the mindfulness trance, and the list goes on and on including a thousand different emotional states. In fact, any emotional experience can become a trance state. Then the experience of the emotion isn’t just the emotion, say anger, anxiety, love, joy, etc. It is a full-fledged trance state. 2) The identity trance state. When you pick a focus and thenconsciously and intentionality narrow your consciousness to fully enter into that state, you typically lose a sense of yourself. You become one with the engagement. The rock climber becomes one with the wall. The tennis pro becomes one with the ball. With the fusion of self, you lose the boundary between object and subject. You could do that with your job, your title, your position, etc. 3) The meta-trance state. Here as you narrow your focus, you simultaneously expand your focus which allows you to see the frames behind the focus. In this expanded perceptual state, you simultaneously see the frame and then focus of attention inside that frame. As you enter into a state of heightened mindfulness, you are able to meta-detail—to focus on relevant details within a higher (meta) frame.4 4) The self meta-trance state. Here also you both narrow and expand your awareness. You narrow your focus to a specific activity and expand your awareness of the Self behind and above the experience. A bigger self emerges as you sense yourself as the creator of the activity, and not solely identified with the activity. By dis-identifying yourself from the experience, -73-

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you discover your self beyond that experience and all other experiences you engage in. You discover yourself as person—a self-determining person who can express yourself in many ways. 5) Skill trances. When you identify any skill or performance that you can do with competence, you have detected another set of trance states— skill trances. These are trances of focused engagement where you become fully absorbed in an activity. Examples include the tennis trance, golf trance, chess trance, oratory trance, coaching trance, etc. What we call “genius” states in NLP and Neuro-Semantics are often skill trances—a reading trance, a writing trance, a coaching trance, a training trance, etc. 6) Dysfunctional trances. The blaming trance is one of the first trances that children learn. As they learn that “being responsible” is often connected with suffering unpleasant consequences, they naturally seek to avoid being responsible. Blaming, as a subjective state, “helps the individual maintain a feeling of control” (even though a false one). It is a quick but inadequate solution (Kershaw, 1992, p. 33). 7) Self- Development trances. Given all of these kinds of trances, we can have self-actualization trances, unleashing human potential trance, flexibility trance, etc. End of the Chapter Trance-ition The hypnotic process and experience is not mysterious, cultic, superstitious, or new age woo-woo. As a subjective human experience, it is part and parcel of being human and having a brain which allows you to consider things not present and ideas never thought of before. It is as common as the weather, yet as special and awesome as a sunrise. Everybody thinks hypnotically, but not equally well. Most misuse this incredible power and, worse, do not even know that they are misusing it. It’s very subtle. A few use it for developing a laser-beam focus of attention, and thereby develop expertise in a chosen field. Those who know how to use it do so to access optimal states of high quality for persistence, resilience, creativity, leadership, well-being, healing potentials, and much more. The difference lies in recognizing the power of hypnotic experiences and developing the skills whereby you can direct the hypnotic processes toward -74-

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desired objectives. Once you can direct the powers, you will be able to form your personality and relationships. All of this requires hypnotic skills and sub-skills. Knowing these grants you the keys to this kingdom— your inner kingdom of tremendous potentials.

End of the Chapter Notes 1. From Collected Papers Vol. I, 1976, pp. 342, 349 2. Malcolm Gladwell writes about the stories of when a fire-fighter has to make a tough, split-second decision about what a fire is going to do and where to position people. See Blink (2005), pp. 122-124. 3. The parasympathetic system mobilizes the body in protection against external threats. It does so by the HPA axis (Hypothalamus-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis). When activated a simple cascade occurs, “the hypothalamus secretes a corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) which travels to the pituitary gland. CRF activates special pituitary hormone-secreting cells causing them to release adrenocorticotrophic hormones (ACTH) into the blood. The ACTH then makes its way to the adrenal glands, where it serves as the signal to turn on the secretion of the ‘fight-flight’ adrenal hormones. These stress hormones coordinate the function of the body’s organs, providing us with great physiological power to fend off or flee danger.” “Once the adrenal alarm is sounded, the stress hormones released into the blood constrict the blood vessels of the digestive tract, forcing the energy-providing blood to preferentially nourish the tissues of the arms and legs that enable us to get out of harm’s way. Before the blood was sent to the extremities, it was concentrated in the visceral organs.” Tipton (2005, p. 148). 4. Meta-detailing refers to a synthesis of perceiving in a global and detail way. As a characteristics of genius, it is the way Walt Disney thought and operated. See SubModalities Going Meta (2004) for an extensive description of meta-detailing. It is a subject which I also explored as one of the secrets of wealth creation in Inside-Out Wealth (2010).

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WHAT’S A TRANCE GOOD FOR? Uses of a Trance “We all have many more potentials than we realize. Hypnotherapy consists of the evocation and utilization of these hidden potentials. Patients have problems precisely because they do not know how to utilize all of their abilities.” Milton H. Erickson1

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f we ask, “What is trance good for?” the answer is—lots of things! There are multiple benefits which trances can provide that can enrich your life and the lives of others. These benefits range from the psychological to the personal, social, and behavioral. After all, every trance is an intense focus which internally concentrates and amplifies your mental and emotional powers. The challenge therefore is to make sure the trance you choose does your whole system good. To do that, aim to be intentional with your trances: For what purpose do you want to learn to think hypnotically? To learn the art of hypnotic languaging? To induce hypnotic states? What trance state do you want to experience? For what outcome? To Trance or not to Trance Before we ask these questions about trance, let’s answer another question. “Why not just de-hypnotize ourselves from all trances and stay in sensoryawareness with the world?” The short answer is simple—that option is not available to us. It is not possible to solely experience the uptime state of sensory awareness. As much as you might want to stay exclusively in sensory awareness, the human mind is not capable of doing that. You -76-

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inevitably create meaning (ch. 5). It is inevitable that you will enter into various “states of mind” as trances which take you away from the objective outside world. After all, to think of anything not physically present is to think hypnotically. Given that, you might as well pick really good trance states—states which support you, bring out your best, and empower you. Doing this will enable you to achieve your hopes and dreams and contribute to making a difference in the world. Of course, to do that you have to know the states which will be good for you and how to access them.

What’s a Trance Good For?

Values of Trances Relaxation Empowerment Life Enhancement Self-Awareness Freedom Health & Energy Insight for challenges Detecting frames Breakthrough from past Creativity for solutions

Basic Trances Here are ten of the most basic uses of a trance. This list establishes some of the most fundamental values and/or benefits for developing and accessing positive trance states. 1) Relaxation, stress management, calmness, and an inner sense of serenity. 2) Empowerment, sense of control over your mind, emotions, and responses, at choice in your life about your direction, responseabilities, being proactive in taking the initiative, assertive in communicating your ideas, etc. 3) Enhancement of life, improved quality of the inner world of your mind, so that it enhances and enriches your sense of self and your responses to others. The unleashing of potentials via evoking and mobilizing resources. 4) Self-awareness. Developing a greater knowledge about yourself in terms of knowing yourself, appreciating yourself, knowing your strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities with selfknowledge you will be able to make wiser choices in which to devote your energies. 5) Freedom. Sense of being free to allow individuality to flourish via discovering your uniqueness, getting free from old dysfunctional trances and post-hypnotic suggestions from family and childhood. 6) Health and health enhancement, pain management, resourcing your best emotional states for health and vitality, for developing a robust quality of well-being (chapters 19 and 20). -77-

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7) Insights and creativity. Ideas, understandings, and strategies for handling various challenges of everyday life. Trances for clearly defining and solving problems, creating solutions, innovating new ideas, etc. This makes for creativity in solving problems and enriching one’s imagination for innovative products and services (chapter 22). 8) Meaning. Detecting, framing, reframing, and outframing the meanings that frame your understandings, to create more choices, better categories, more empowering meanings, etc. 9) Break-through. Release of old frames, beliefs, and experiences that no longer serve you. To gain personal freedom from past memories, to outgrow learned limitations, to depotentiate habitual sets. 10) Entertainment. Trances can be fun. From this perspective, the artistry we see in plays and movies are usually the result of trance states. For one to act as an actor in a play or movie, one has to be able to go into a character, identify with a real or imaginary character, and credibly play out that role. Thinking and speaking hypnotically essentially enables you to put yourself into resourceful states. You can also elicit and evoke others into more loving, insightful, and effective states. Trance states are useful and Figure 8:1 The Trance State Getting Lost in Our Internal Movies

The Cinema of the Mind

powerful for people helpers in the fields of medicine, health, psychotherapy as it is for consultants, coaches, mentors, trainers, teachers, and parents. It is the realm of any good storyteller as the person induce trances for both learning and fun. It is also useful for people in marketing, sales, screen-play writers, fiction writers, non-fiction writers, and anyone wanting to influence others. -78-

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Actually, truth be told, you and I live mostly in trance states. Then, from time to time we come out and get back to reality, to the sensory world. It is easier, and more common, to live inside the world of your mind and your meanings and in trance states, to think hypnotically, than not. The trance experience is quite normal, it is not something special or mysterious. You only think it is mysterious when you forget that thinking and constructing meaning inevitably creates trance states. It only seems special or unique to the extent that you don’t realize that it is you who is inducing yourself into the trance and that you are doing it via the way you are thinking and inventing meanings. Functions of Trance Trance creates experiences. Whenever you or I transition into an inner world of imagination, wonder, memory, etc., we enter into a trance state. Something excites a memory and suddenly we are back in that memory experiencing it as if we are there again. Then something triggers a hope or an anticipation, and presto! You are transported into a future experience. To be experiencing anything that is remembered or imagined is to be in a time trance. Trance amplifies experience. While an experience, in and of itself, does not necessarily require your full attention, you can give more of your attention to it. Typically you have lots of experiences where your mind is somewhere else. Trance amplifies an experience by narrowing your focus so you mentally and emotionally concentrate on what you are experiencing. In this way, your state of consciousness amplifies the experience making it more intense and vivid. Trance offers you a powerful tool for engaging in the special kind of thinking whereby you can access an exceptionally robust state. Because trance produces intense responses, in trance you are able to access potentials which you may have no clue you have within. Trance operates as a bio-feedback mechanism. As a relational dynamic, as you match or mirror a client, you become as it were a human bio-feedback mechanism to your client. Your words and non-verbals give your client immediate feedback for her experience and thereby enable her to assume more control in her life. This is how the trance experience itself facilitates a person to learn to assume more self control. Hypnosis gives you more control in running your brain, states, and neurology. By providing you feedback which you typically do not have, it enables you to activate -79-

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powerful resources with are usually unconscious (Patterns Vol. I, 1976, p. 13). “The wonder and fascination of hypnosis is that it enables us to control these responses that are usually mediated by unconscious mechanisms outside the normal range of consciousness.” (Hypnotic Realities, 1976, p. 309)

Traditional hypnosis has long conceptualized trance in terms of depth— how light or deep is the trance?2 The fact is that we are all frequently in light trances. Focusing exclusively on anything evokes a light trance as you go down inside—intensely thinking and feeling and yet you may not be far from conscious awareness of your immediate environment. The light trance enables you to go in and out with ease and without needing to be fully aware of what you are doing. In a deep trance, the focus becomes so intense that you are no longer responsive to the outside world. You are “lost” in the inner experience. Erickson explains a fundamental difference: “In waking responsiveness, the experiential background of learning and conditioning has been one of receiving ideas and understandings out of a total reality situation ... Hypnotic responsiveness is, however, of quite another character. The reality situation in which the hypnosis occurs is, in itself, essentially an extrapolated reality sometimes deriving only from experiential processes within the subject and having little to no relationship to objective reality.” (Collective Papers, Vol. II, p. 192)

In trance you alter your conscious experience as you focus exclusively on one thing. In a light trance you hallucinate ideas and concepts which we usually call "thinking." Engineers go out to fields and hallucinate freeways and dams and even measure their imagined constructions. When they see a freeway where there isn't one, they categorize it as creative "work," not hallucinating. Key Trances for Enriching Life What are the best trances which enrich life? What trances will enable you to actualize your highest meanings and values? Here are ten that I recommend. The Learning Trance. Trance is a great place for learning. That’s because in a trance state you are comfortably relaxed, mentally alert, playfully curious, and flexibly open. If there’s any trance to be sure to access—it is the learning trance. Trance facilitates a robust learning state because trance enables you to be far more attentive to a single focus of attention. Doing -80-

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this also has the effect of depotentiating your conscious biases. In trance you allow yourself to be more receptive and suggestible to the ideas you are considering.3 The Resource Trance. Probably the One person’s normal state may first trances to facilitate will be those be another person’s trance.” wherein you build up the strategy and Trance-Formations, 1981, p. 60 resources for how to do or experience the activities you highly value. This actually describes the very purpose and structure of any Guided Imaginary trance. Once you know the pieces of the strategy— the ingredients, the components, and how they relate to each other, you can invite a person to imagine and experience it. Here they think hypnotically to construct a reality so that they have a specific movie in their mind of what and how to do something.4 The Healing Trance. The trance experience is also eminently useful for healing and well-being. If our neurology is designed to do (activate) what we think (the ideo-dynamic principle), then a healing trance is an ideal place for communicating to the body to do what it is designed to do. For a healing trance, access a state of relaxed expectation, positive anticipation, and healthy believing. The state that accelerates illnesses and diseases is a state of stress. We will explore the theme of healing in chapters 20 and 21. The Change Trance. Given the openness, receptivity, freedom from conscious mindsets that might limit a person, trance provides a wonderful place for facilitating change. Given that we change best when we feel safe, open, and in a state of learning, trance offers an ideal place for engaging in personal change and transformation. We will explore the transformation trance states in chapters 18 and 19. The Wisdom Trance. Gregory Bateson warned the “mere purposive rationality unaided by such phenomena as art, religion, dream, and the like, is necessarily pathogenic and destructive of life” (Steps to an Ecology of Mind, 1972, p. 146). Because these trance states are foundational aspects of thinking hypnotically, together they facilitate us to create a balance rationality. “In a word, the unaided consciousness must always involve man in the sort of stupidity of which evolution was guilty when she urged upon the dinosaurs the common-sense values of an armaments race ... Unaided -81-

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consciousness must always tend toward hate... The sort of world we live in— a world of circuit structures — and love can survive only if wisdom ... has an effective voice.” (Bateson, 1972, p. 146)

The Quality Trance. Given that —— Calm —— —— Joyful —— not all states or trances are of / Anger \ / Learning \ equal quality or even high quality, it is important to intentionally texture a state with the qualities that you desire. Do that by taking the thoughts-and-feelings that you want to set at a meta level and apply them to the primary experience. Doing this you invite a client to transcend one level of thinking and feeling so that the primary level comes to live inside of a higher level frame. This constructs a new strategy, a new way of thinking, feeling, perceiving, and responding.5 The Empowering Trance. A basic human need is the need to be able to control functions which are in your control. “Control” or “power” is the second level of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and speaks to the human need for safety and security—stability. This refers to how to protect oneself and to stabilize life. By learning your innate and inescapable powers (your thinking, emoting, speaking, and acting), and by owning them as yours (an ownership state), you create a response-potential center out of which you can operate. Over time you will develop both confidence and self-efficacy. The Self-Awareness Trance. To play to your strengths and not be tripped up by your weakness, one of life’s most significant challenges, requires the ability to “know thyself.” This is not easy. It requires pushing beyond selfdelusions and fantasies. Yet as a self-reflective trance, it can be learned and developed. It requires the ability to discover and speak your truths to yourself—a commitment to authenticity. We will explore this in chapter 18, The Crucible. The Playful Trance. You were born with the need and the ability to play— to explore, discover, play around with things, experiment, laugh, etc. As you develop your capacity to play, it can evolve into the scientific attitude of objectively exploring and inventing. You may even consider becoming an everyday scientist who treats the world as a laboratory for experimenting and finding out what works best and what does not. When you learn to operate form the Playful Trance, you will never work a day in your life

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again. Instead you will be regularly astonished that you get paid to do what you love to do.6 The Love Trance. You undoubtedly already know this one. You experienced a form of it when you first experienced adolescent infatuation love as a teenager. Now it can evolve to a much more mature form of love, a love that gives the best of you for the best of another. A love that looks at others through the eyes of care and possibility and respect. While these are not the only trances that will enrich your life and enable you to self-actualize, they do offer a great place to begin. They also provide an understanding that trance is not just for closing your eyes and relaxing, it is a way to move through the world using a rich inner world set of meanings to inform and inspire you. The Installation of Trance After you design a desired trance state, install it. The installation process is essentially a meta-stating process where you turn inward and upward to set the meta-levels which will, in turn, texture your primary experience. Doing that means that the higher frame, which normally operates outside of conscious awareness will now begin to qualify the experience. All of this texturing by layering occurs in the mind and can occur at multiple levels, some in the person’s awareness and some outside of awareness. End of the Chapter Trance-ition Knowing what you can do with the trance process gives you a lot of big whys for using trance as an enhancer of your daily life. The trance experience of an inward focus is uniquely powerful for achieving numerous objectives. All of them also enable you to actualize your potentials as a human being. Therefore they are all about personal growth and development, about tapping into innate capacities, and evolving as a person. All trances are not the same. There are many different kinds of trances —there are speciality trances which you can develop and use for specific outcomes. As you do, make sure they fit your values and your vision for life.

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End of the Chapter Notes 1. Quotation comes from Innovative Hypnotherapy, Vol. IV, 1980, The Collective Papers of Milton H. Erickson, from Introduction. 2. Depths of trances: while Erickson, and the originators of NLP, talked about light, medium, and deep trances, they did not follow that line of thinking about depth in terms of measuring it. The idea of depth was more general for them. 3. For more about learning and the learning trance, see Learning Genius training manual; also Restore the Joy of Learning, Don Blackerby. 4. The practice of NLP itself can productively be viewed as multiple Resource Trances. After all, every pattern in NLP essentially develops one or another such resource state. In this sense, the two volumes of The Sourcebook of Magic essentially provide a whole set of hypnotic inductions. 5. This is the meta-stating process and will be explored more fully in chapters 10 and 12. 6. This is one of the key learnings I discovered in modeling wealth creation and wrote about. See Inside-Out Wealth (2012).

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SECTION II TRANCE LANGUAGE

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META-MODEL LANGUAGE FOR TRANCE The Linguistics of Hypnotic Thinking

“Hypnosis needs to be recognized as a science of inter-communication.” “Hypnosis is a state of intensified attention and receptiveness and an increased responsiveness to an idea or to a set of ideas.” Milton H. Erickson1

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ltimately “hypnosis” is communication. That’s why, when you hypnotize, you communicate ideas to affect one’s entire neurolinguistic being and reality. For this reason where there is hypnosis there is hypnotic language and, of course, prior to the language comes the thought— thinking hypnotically. Accordingly the best way to think and speak hypnotically is to learn hypnotic language— the linguistics of trance. As with all languages, hypnotic language is communication with words and gestures. It involves what you say and how you say it. When the NLP founders modeled Milton Erickson’s expertise in medical hypnosis, they identified the general structure of hypnosis as he practiced it and many of his patterns (Bandler and Grinder, 1975, 1976). In honor of Milton Erickson they named it the Milton Model. -86-

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Meta-Model Hypnotic Language

The Milton Model consists of two sets of distinctions. First, there are the specific hypnotic language patterns that have been formulated from Erickson’s work (Chapter 10). Second, there is the reversing of the MetaModel—turning around the linguistic distinctions and questions of the Meta-Model. Instead of challenging (questioning) a person’s unspecified and vague use of language, you use that vagueness to speak in an artfully vague way. For that reason, to truly understanding the Milton Model, you have to understand the Meta-Model. That’s what this chapter is about. The Meta-Model The Meta-Model was the model the NLP founders created which described “the structure of [communication] magic” as found in the therapeutic work of two world-class therapists, Fritz Perls and Virginia Satir. The model consisted of a dozen linguistic distinctions (taken from Transformational Grammar). Using those distinctions they showed how to identify vagueness in a person’s language and then question its unspecific nature to co-create with the person precision and specificity. In doing this, you break old hypnotic trances— you de-hypnotize. Conversely, to reverse of the Meta-Model, simply do not question the language for specificity. Instead, use it. Leave the vagueness and ambiguity of the language intact (and the thinking which generates that impreciseness) so that the person “makes sense” of things by going inside (transitioning inside) to her own references. This creates a hypnotic state of internal focus. As the imprecise thinking is coded in general terms, it invites a person to construct his own unique experiential reality from those words. In this, speaking hypnotically is using vague language in a precise way to induce an internal search for meaning and clarity. Think of the two communication models—Meta-Model and the Milton Model—as inverse opposites. The Meta-Model identifies vagueness in expressions so you question and challenge them to evoke precision. The Milton Model uses vagueness and ambiguity to enable a person to create her own meanings. One model takes a person to the outside world and extensionalizes the references. The other model takes a person to the inside world for an inside experience to create inner references. This treats words intensionally rather than extensionally.2 By highlighting the presence of unspecified nouns, verbs, references, nominalizations, etc., the Meta-Model pinpoints the language which -87-

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inevitably hypnotizes. Unspecified language consists of the constructed references and meanings which are inside the speaker and reflects the speaker’s current trance state. If you use the unspecified language to send a person inside, you employ the Meta-Model to facilitate hypnosis. Using vague, ill-formed language, the listener has to fill in the missing pieces from his own personal history and imagination. In this way you can use the Meta-Model to identify natural trance states which a person unknowingly creates by his use of language. When and How the Meta-Model De-Hypnotizes While the Meta-Model can be used for thinking and speaking hypnotically, that is not the design of the Meta-Model. Primarily its function is to identify ill-formedness in language (the structure that induces trance) and de-hypnotize. It does that via questions. By questioning vague language, the Meta-Model brings a person out of trance and back to the sensory world. By questioning the lack of specificity and asking for more precision, the Meta-Model calls a person into a sensory-aware, uptime state. This has the effect of de-hypnotizing the person from the old trance. Doing this dispels generalizations which have become outdated, rigid, and/or inflexible. Accordingly, when you know how language works its so-called “magic” to entrance, you also know how to break negative hypnotic trances.3 This description gives us two ways to use the Meta-Model. You can use it to hypnotize and you can use it to de-hypnotize. You can put yourself or others into resourceful trance states; you can bring yourself and others out of unresourceful trance states by breaking old post-hypnotic suggestions. On the one hand, you can use the meta-modeling questions to reduce the complexity and vagueness of expressions to pull apart linguistic constructions. This de-frames. Using the Meta-Model in this way slays and tames the dragons of ill-formed language, thought viruses, erroneous thinking, cognitive distortions, biases, and fallacies. De-hypnotizing brings people out of negative trances.4 When and How the Meta-Model Entrances You can equally use the meta-modeling questions to create constructive trances because language can move your thinking so you move up the scale of abstraction and map a richer conceptual reality. Moving up enables you to build new generalizations (e.g., meanings in the form of beliefs, -88-

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understandings, paradigms, etc.). You move to a higher meta-level of awareness. When you so use the Meta-Model, you meta-state yourself and others as you set up new and more powerful frames. That is, you bring a state and set it above the primary state.5 By creating those internal frames—you enter into a framed “reality”—a trance state. You move up into a constructed “reality” of your own making—a matrix (literally a “womb” or birthplace) that corresponds to the frames of meaning and frames of reference you have accessed or invented. Thinking Hypnotically With the Meta-Model To speak hypnotically, use the linguistic “violations” of the Meta-Model. 6 That is, take the linguistic distinctions of the Meta-Model and use them to construct an unspecified description. As you are artfully vague, you invite your listener to fill in the details from his own history. 1. Deletions/ Simple and Comparative. "You are curious and you are becoming even more curious as you think about all of the ways you can use deletions to induce yourself into an accelerated learning state ..." The object of that sentence is entirely vague. It requires the listener to fill in the subject. "And the more you do this, the more you will increase your effectiveness as a professional communicator...” Here we

have an unspecified comparison. A comparison is made (“more”), yet it's not specified as to what or whom it was made—again a listener has to supply her own meanings. Comparative superlatives. “I’m doing the best I can.” “No one does more than I do.” “I’m the least respected person around here.” With comparative superlatives it is easy to lose perspective, over-exaggerate, and to catastrophize things. That’s the negative side. There’s a positive side. “With each reading you are becoming a better learner and discovering more than you have ever before... and this will open up greater opportunities for you in the coming years...”

2. Lack of Referential Index. This refers to phrases which do not pick out a specific portion of a listener's experience. It leaves it up to the listener to select something in his experience. Words like “this, that, it” are unspecified referential indexes. “That won’t work.” “It never succeeds.” -89-

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"One can, you know, learn more when you feel relaxed, since the ability to relax, can activate a certain sensation of comfort ... growing and increasing... in just the right places... so your learning becomes truly robust..."

You can also use -ly words such as clearly, obviously, factually, etc. to similarly present a lacking of a referential index. With the -ly the word communicates vaguely: “It is clear...” ‘It is obvious...” While vague, it sounds meaningful and specific, but clear in what way and to who? “As you take a deep breath, you can clearly learn even more thoroughly than ever before because you are obviously in a curious and receptive state... for a greater intensity of your focus than ever before...”

3. Unspecified Verbs. An unspecified verb is any verb indicating an action without specifying how the action is occurring (e.g., do, fix, solve, move, change, wonder, think, sense, know, experience, understand, remember, become aware of, etc. ). None of these words specifically describe the actions indicated. For example, how is the person thinking? Is he questioning, considering, doubting, repeating to himself, reflecting on its meaning, evaluating its usefulness, solving a problem, etc.? There are lots of ways to think. So when a word is relatively unspecified, it leaves space for a listener to supply her meanings—meanings which the speaker could not have anticipated. “When you learn, really learn, you focus almost exclusively on your subject, perhaps on how trance really works, and as you get lost in learning and understanding, you don’t know that you are learning, you only know that you know more about your subject and can feel confident that you are learning and able to be more responsive and able to perform effectively...”

4. Nominalizations. Nominalizations invite you to interpret a term that seems like a noun (but is not), to assume its meaning, then to project it onto a given content. This linguistic form actively invites and engages the mind of a listener to fill-in the missing references. "This is to provide you with new insights and understandings..." Here the italicized words sound like nouns—concrete things. But they are not. They are process words describing actions, yet those actions have frozen the process in time. -90-

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“Nominalizations are one of the most serious limitations that people use to constrain themselves.” (Ericksonian Approach, 1999,p. 71).

The innocent sounding question, “How’s your self-esteem today?” uses a nominalization side of an assumptive frame. The assumption is that selfesteem is conditional and rises and falls. The nominalization self-esteem sounds like a solid thing. Underneath it, however, is a verb—esteeming. Who is doing the esteeming? When, where, about what? If it is about “self”—what self? Self as a human being or self as an employee, a musician, a wife, a father, what? "We all have potentials we're unaware of and you usually don't know how your potentials will be expressed." Here “potentials” sound like a real noun,

“person, place, or thing.” But no. It is a verb turned into a noun. This one is tricky because you have to go back to another nominalization (potent) and then back to French (potens) and Greek for “power, powerful” suggesting latent power or possibility. Common to hypnotic inductions are such terms as curiosity, hypnosis, learnings, love, awareness, etc. These nominalizations are effective for hypnotic inductions because they require the listener to search for and supply their own meaning. “The learnings which you have made about trance, understanding how it refers to going inside to your inner world as your focus deepens and your potentials awaken, this is a learning you can take with you for the rest of your life...”

One way to turn the nominalization back into a verb is to add “...ing.” Hence, depression becomes depressing, relationship becomes relating, etc. Then, back in verb form, you can ask who is doing the action, what the action looks or sounds like, where and when, etc. Sometimes you have to get an etymological dictionary to find the hidden verb. 5. Lost Performative. "And it's a good thing to wonder..." This statement is a value judgment and

is being asserted by someone about something at some time. But none of that is specified. Who made the value judgment? When? In what context? "It's good that you can relax so easily." The one who created that mental map (the performer) is lost in the presentation.

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“Trance isn’t a weird or a strange thing, it is how language works because you have heard it said, ‘Nothing is hypnosis; everything is hypnosis,’ and as you wonder about that saying...”

6. Universal Quantifiers. Words that make a universally true generalization, a statement that is true for all times and places, and which contain no specific referential index, are called “universal quantifiers” in Transformational Grammar (e.g., all, none, everyone, no one, forever, always, never, everywhere, etc.). "And now, before you go all the way into a learning trance, a learning trance which is deeper than you've ever gone before, one which exemplifies your learning so that you can take your learning everywhere with you and for the rest of your life, I want you to learn one more thing...”

7. Modal Operators. "You can learn, really learn...and learn in ways that will enhance your learning..." Words which indicate a person’s mode of operating are called “modal operators.” They indicate one’s modus operandi, which is Latin for “style of operation.” They indicate the rules which govern one’s modus operandi. These kinds of words can indicate a number of states—necessity or choice, possibility or impossibility, demand or desire, etc. (i.e., need, choose, possible, can’t, must, desire, want, etc.). “When you truly learn about trance and how it works, you can then begin to choose how you want to learn and what to learn and you can decide what to unlearn, because that now is possible for you in a way that it has not been before ...

8. Mind-Reading. When you claim to know the thoughts, feelings, or intentions of another person without specifying how you obtained that information, you are “mind-reading.” A mind-reading statement assumes knowledge of another’s internal state and experience. "I know that you are worrying due to your uncertainty about what will happen and ..." Positively, as a hypnotic language pattern, this can build credibility. That is, if the mind-read is a good guess and fits for the purpose at hand, it builds credibility. If it is not a good guess, the listener will typically find it controlling, manipulative, disrespectful, and therefore insulting.

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“Because you want to become more proficient as a learner, and want to use enhancing trance states for yourself and others, I know you will read and reread this book with care and excitement, because you care for others and want to give them the best which you can, this will increase your confidence and effectiveness ...”

9. Cause-Effect. Linkage words like "because, make, force, cause, and, etc." imply a cause-effect relationship between something that's occurring and something you want to occur. It invites a listener to respond as if one thing causes another. This also occurs with every present tense verb—because such verbs create a cause-effect relationship. There are also implied causatives (e.g., if ... then, as you... then you, and, during, while, as, when, makes, causes, forces, requires, etc.) which set up contingent relationships which imply causation. “Associating suggestions in such interlocking chains create a network of mutually reinforcing directives that gradually form a new self-consistent inner reality called ‘trance.’” (Hypnotic Realities, 1976, pp. 116-119)

Figure 9:1

Meta-Model Categories & Distinctions Deletions Nominalizations Unspecified Verbs Unspecified Noun Simple & Comparative Deletions Generalizations Universal Quantifiers Modal Operators Nominalizations

Distortions Mind Reading Lost Performative Cause-Effect Complex Equivalence Presuppositions

These words take an external event or behavior (X) and set up a format so that it causes an internal experience (Y). We can write this as a formula: X —> Y (“X leads to or causes Y.”). As a form of associative thinking, it is a simple and primitive reasoning pattern. The issue in this language form is not one of logic, but one of association. A particular X-thing is now being associated with a Y-result. Nor is this new or strange, both you and your client are already doing this. As you wonder about this, seek to -93-

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discover, “How does this person organize (put together) his experiences? What are the rules in her way of linking things together?” "As you are sitting and reading this text about the language of trance, you can take a deep breath, and in the knowledge that what you are learning is creating the foundation of your competency in using trance language in elegant ways, you can relax even more as you appreciate what you are doing and how it will enrich your life ...”

One form of cause-effect statements are contingent suggestions. These are statements that position one thing contingent upon another thing. “Your eyes will tire and close as you watch that spot on the wall.” “As you feel a deepening comfort, you can realize that you can learn more quickly and thoroughly than ever before.” “I don’t want you to enter trance until you sit all the way down in that chair.”

10. Complex Equivalence. When you equate an external behavior or event so that you consider it equal to, and the same as, an internal state of thinking, feeling, intending, etc., you have created a “complex equivalent.” Now you mentally equate an external behavior (X) with an internal experience (Y). We write this as a formula: X=Y. The behavior equals the state. The associative thinking that follows often deepens this way of thinking. Actually, when we associate two ideas or an idea with a real world event—we create a thinking fallacy. That’s because we are ignoring differences and distinctions as we set up a linkage. Yet we respond to these equations as if they are real and as if the thinking that generates them is legitimate. "As you wonder about how you will use trance language to construct increasingly an effective learning state for yourself, you can realize how deeply you are able to learn both consciously and unconsciously, because the learning is your best human resource for managing the challenges of everyday life and that’s why you can now begin to confidently anticipate those challenges in a serene way thereby giving you presence of mind under pressure ..."

11. Presuppositions. We are always assuming and presupposing things in our linguistic descriptions. In fact, in every statement you make, there are hidden premises and assumptions—many, if not most, you are not even aware of. This form of language enables you to communicate ideas and experiences -94-

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without stating them directly. About presuppositions O’Hanlon (1987) notes that they involve— “... the use of language, actions, and situations that necessarily involve certain antecedents or consequences.” (Taproots: Underlying Principles of Milton Erickson’s Therapy and Hypnosis) “For Erickson, psychological implication is a key that automatically turns the tumblers of a patient’s associative processes into predictable patterns without awareness of how it happened. The implied thought or response seems to come up autonomously within patients, as if it were their own inner response ...” (Hypnotic Realities, 1976, p. 59)

Presuppositions give you a powerful language pattern for creating various trance states. You can presuppose an enlivening idea that you want another to accept and you can frame it so that the other person will not resist it to his own detriment. "You are learning many things... things which will allow you to go into resourceful trance states at your command and increase your capacities for fully developing your potentials in ways that you have never imagined before ..."

To use presuppositions, presuppose the response you want to elicit. Imply, but do not say, the idea which you want the person to know or experience. “Do you know how you thought about ice cream when you were five years old? As you remember that now, I wonder if you have any specific memory of ice cream as a child that really delighted you... ”

12) Multi-Ordinality (Multi-Ordinal Terms) Alfred Korzybski in the field of General Semantics identified a term which can refer to any one of many levels of abstraction. That is, the term can be used reflexively upon itself. You can love love, you can fear fear. Yet what is most curious is that the same term will mean something different when used at each level. Korzybski labeled this a multi-ordinal term. On each of many (multiple) levels (ordinal, 1, 2, 3, etc.), the same term refers to a different referent. It should not be treated as meaning the same thing. Precisely because multi-ordinal terms have ambiguous meanings, they commonly lead to arguments and confusions. And when that happens, it results in semantic disturbances (e.g., annoyance, irritation, explicable anger, anxiety, etc.) in those using these terms. Multi-ordinal terms only have definite meanings on a given level in which the context is established -95-

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(“I’m using love at a meta-level. I’m asking if you love the experience of being in love.”) Given how this so easily creates confusions and can lead to arguments, the solution is to identify the level you are referring to. On the positive side, multi-ordinal terms gives you the ability to make sense and sort out the difference that makes a difference when it comes to logical levels. Now most multi-ordinal terms are vague terms to begin with, and most are nominalizations (a noun that’s being used for a process, e.g., a verb). If a term can reflexively apply to itself, then it can operate in a multiordinal way (e.g., hopes, dreams, resources, talents, memories, learnings, love, genuine, etc.). Can you have a state about a state? If so, then state is a multi-ordinal word. At what level are you using that term? First, second, third, etc.? Can you fear the emotion of fear? That fear (the one in italics) references the first fear which references something dangerous in the environment. Can you have science about science? Can you say yes to saying yes? Can you have a problem with a problem? The meaning in any one of these terms is not set and determined. The meaning depends on the level on which it is used, hence the question, “At what level, and about what, are you using X term?” Korzybski (1933) explained multi-ordinality as a function of reflexivity: "If we reflect upon our languages, we find that at best they must be considered only as maps. A word is not the object it represents, and languages exhibit also this peculiar self-reflexiveness... this selfreflexiveness of languages introduces serious complexities, which can only be solved by the theory of multiordinality..." (p. 58)

To test for multi-ordinality, check to see if you can apply the term to itself. Do you love John? (First level) Do you love loving John? (Second level) Do you love loving that love of John? (Third level) Are you prejudiced? What are you prejudiced about? (First level) Imagine now having a prejudice against that prejudice? (Second) with multi-ordinal words, you are using a word that can be applied to itself at the next logical level. For example feeling secure about your security, content about contentment, ease about ease, peace about peace, etc. "You may already have noticed that the more you take this inner journey, the more you are learning about trance and the language that hands you the keys to this kingdom, and the more insights you -96-

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develop will only make your life more effective and productive because you are also learning about learning— you are learning about how you learn, how you best learn, and how you can learn to accelerate your learning... and how well have you learned that learning?”

13) Over/Under Defined Terms. To over-define a term is to give too much "intensional" meaning via its dictionary definition and too little “extensional” meaning in terms of its behaviors (under-define). Korzybski described these as two orientations in how we think. We mostly over-define terms assuming that our definition is the reality. Usually it is not.2 “We often live, feel happy or unhappy, by what actually amounts to a definition, and not by the empirical, individual facts less coloured by semantic factors. When Smith1 marries Smith2, they mostly do so by a kind of definition. They have certain notions as to what ‘man’, ‘woman’, and ‘marriage’ ‘are’ by definition. They actually go through the performances and find that the Smith1 and his wife, Smith2, have unexpected likes, dislikes, and particularities — in general, characteristics and semantic reactions not included in their definition of the terms... Characteristics ‘left out’ in the definitions make their appearance.” (1994, p. 415).

In over-defining terms, you over-trust a verbal definition, all the while thinking that the word you are using fully describes the territory. In this way you attribute substance and concreteness to the term which it does not have. We under-define the same term by too little extension to facts and behaviors in the outside world. "Learning the ins and outs about trance empowers you to take charge of your life in a way that you have always wanted to experience, and with a determination that will be undying ...”

14) Delusional Verbal Splits When we verbally split something that is a whole, we create a delusional false-to-fact idea. Korzybski said if we take reality-as-a-whole and split it into parts, we will then be tempted to treat the elements as if each is a separate and real existence. We speak about "mind" and "body" as if you can have one without the other. Obviously, you cannot. Try it if you dare! We speak of "space" and "time" as if each one is a self-contained reality. They aren’t. Einstein’s work led to a revolution in physics. Korzybski noted -97-

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that Einstein restored the delusional verbal split between “space” and “time” when he linked them together using a hyphen, hence “the space-time continuum.” This holistic understanding created the field of quantum mechanics. In synthesizing the system, he put it back together again. We need a similar healing for other forms of delusional splitting: "mind-body," "thoughts-emotions," “neuro-linguistics,” etc. Words which sort, separate, divide, and categorize the ever-connected flow of processes of the world creates all kinds of mis-understandings. When we verbally split up the world in this way, we dichotomize the rich interconnectedness of reality. "When you mentally learn trance as you are doing, you may be surprised to find that your body will often reap numerous and wonderful results especially if you direct your learning to some aspect of your physiology because you can and will include your habits of eating and exercising into the changes that you are making...”

15) Either-Or Terms An Aristotelian way of thinking frames things in either-or terms which then creates two-valued terms. Yet this maps another false-to-fact distinction as it leaves out everything in the middle. Here the excluded middle, both-and perspectives, and the whole range of degrees of an experience suddenly disappear. Yet when we dichotomize, we over-simplify. The either-or format offers only two choices. Typically, this invites polarizing between the two choices—a colossal mis-representation of reality as it leaves out the grays in-between as well as distinctions of degree and extent. "You can either learn about trance as we do this induction— what it is or you can learn about how it works so that you can improve your skills at trance induction, it’s your choice which to start with ... and I wonder, really wonder which you will first focus on learning...”

16) Static or Signal Words. Animals use signals to communicate, not words. They cue each other with sounds, yet the sounds operate as signals—warnings, mating calls, distress, etc. As such they are not symbols and do not operate symbolically. As sounds they have a fixed meaning and cannot be used symbolically to mean something else. A dog can bark to welcome his owner. What he cannot do is give two-quick barks to indicate a stranger, three barks for the postman, four barks for delivery man, etc. -98-

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Yet while animals cannot upgrade to symbols, we humans can degrade a word so that it becomes a signal. Any word that “pushes a button” in you has been so degenerated. Now the word operates as a fixed and rigid signal. Now you respond to the word as if it is a signal. It is insult. Cuss words fall into this category. To downgrade a word to a signal takes a process. You have to nominalize it into a polysemous, vague, ambiguous word (e.g., stupid, idiot, bastard, etc.), which then inappropriately locks in the meaning so it seems fixed, rigid, and “true for all time.” Given the problem of a polysemous multi-ordinal term, when you fix its context (specify the level), you specify its meaning. This generates a specific and definite meaning. Yet if you do this in such a way that you construct a fixed and rigid meaning— then you construct a map that poorly represents reality—you create a static word. What was a multi-ordinal term becomes static—fixed. This is Aristotelian logic (i.e., "Whatever is, is.") and it confuses the map– territory distinction. "As you learn trance, and as you go into a trance, if you like you could use the word ‘trance’ now as an anchor for your learning state, then that very word will re-induce you into a rich and wonderful learning trance, a trance deep and profound that you can elicit at any time ...”

17) Pseudo-Words — Non-Referencing Words. A name without a reference is a pseudo-word. You have given a name to something, but that something does not actually exists. The word refers to nothing. You can not point to anything and say, ‘That is X.” Therefore, just because you can make a verbal noise or spell out marks on paper which looks like or sounds like a word, you do not necessarily have a true word. Korzybski designated such pseudo-words as noises (in the auditory channel) and spell-marks (in the visual channel). Because it refers to nothing, a pseudo-word is a linguistic map to nowhere. It’s a linguistic map of nowhere. Nothing exists in the actual world, or in the world of logic (logical existence), to which the word stands as a true symbol. They are airy nothings. They are verbal fictions. That’s why if you use them to navigate through the territory for action, you are more than likely in for either a disaster, a shock, or an unproductive trip. When you use words that refer to nothing, you are merely making noise. It might be interesting, even entertaining, but it does not usefully navigate the territory. Pseudo-words are deceptive because they look like words, sound like words, but refer to nothing real. -99-

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"As you relax more fully into your learning state, you might notice that you are also getting very close to a state of spiritual transcendence because that can occur ... and when it does be sure to enjoy the experience of transcendence as fully as possible...”

18) Identity / Identification. Korzybski said that identification is the primary factor of unsanity in human functioning (1933, p. lxxviii). He said that identifying represents the heart of Aristotelian reasoning and thinking and creates a structure that is false to fact. Identifying equates things on different levels and does so absolutely. Identity is "absolute sameness in all respects." Yet the word "all" in that sentence is what makes identity impossible. Eliminate the "all" then the word absolute loses its meaning. Now we simply have "sameness in some respects"—an acceptable concept. The concept of similarity enables us to use generalizations, labels, categories, etc. appropriately. Using the process of identification leads to drawing false conclusions and making false evaluations. Because "absolute sameness in all aspects" never occurs in the world or even in our heads (1994, p. 194), we construct evaluations that are essentially wrong. In identification we fail to make needed distinctions to keep us sane. "With the learning trance, you become a learner— a life-long learner, and a person on the cutting edge of creativity and innovation, and with that ... learning is not only something you do, it is who you are and you can feel delight as you recognize this...”

19) Personalizing. In child development, we first learn to think ego-centrically, that is, from out of our own eyes, ears, and skin (i.e., first perceptual position). As a child we cannot not think apart from this until somewhere around five or six.7 With the development of Cognitive Therapy and REBT, Aaron Beck (1976) and Albert Ellis (1979) created lists of cognitive distortions—filters that distort information and create misery. One of those is personalizing.4 Personalizing refers to perceiving activities and the actions of others as targeted toward oneself, usually as an attack. It refers to perceiving the world through egocentric filters that whatever happens relates to, speaks about, and references oneself. This works well for associating into an -100-

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experience and taking responsibility. It works detrimentally when trying to understand another person or attempting to be empathetic. "As you welcome the learning state an interesting thing happens as you move through life, namely, you can learn things vicariously from others because as you hear them tell a story of a learning or read about an adventure in a book, or watch a movie, you can take it personally, imagining what is happening and how you would experience it because you are there, in it ...”

20) Metaphors/ Metaphoring. While metaphor was assumed in the first Meta-Model, it was not treated as a separate linguistic distinction. Therefore I added metaphor as an essential linguistic distinction of ill-formedness in the Extended Meta-Model (1997). Metaphors are everywhere in language given that language itself is metaphorical. Metaphors lurk in the corners. They often visit us like angels unawares. Yet at other times, you have to smoke them out. Most language, it seems, operates via the structure of metaphors. In fact, several theorists have proposed that all language boils down to metaphor. Regardless, metaphor functions as an essential part of how we conceptualize— we compare what we know with what we seek to know and understand. When we do this, the metaphor becomes a meta-level template for thinking. We will explore this more fully in chapter 16, Metaphorical Trances. Lakoff and Johnson (1980a) see metaphor as a basic process for structuring knowledge. They theorize that conceptual structures of concrete experiences form the basis for abstract thinking and talking and so titled their book, Metaphors We Live By (1980). "We understand experience metaphorically when we use a gestalt from one domain of experience to structure experience in another domain." (1980, p. 230)

Consequently, in thinking, perceiving, understanding, and talking we constantly find, create, and use metaphors from one experience to "make sense" of another experience. The fundamental nature of metaphor "is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another." When we use metaphors, we engage in top-down processing (deductive reasoning).

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Analogical communication includes metaphors, analogies, similes, stories, and a great many other kinds of figurative language forms. Such language connotates and indirectly implies, rather than directly denotes, a referent. This language endows communication with less directness, more complexity and vagueness, and make it more emotionally evocative. Metaphor is more the language of the poet than the scientist. I say "more," because while scientists also use metaphors regularly, they use them mostly as explanatory devices. The poet, by contrast, glories in it as an end within itself—for its beauty and charm. "In learning trance, you are taking a trip to a foreign land— you are on an adventure to a hidden and secret place which lies deep inside and what will you learn– what will you discover— that is the inviting question, is it not? And because it invites you ever inward, you can wonder, really wonder, as you now take another breath and float down deeper and deeper down into this inner space...”

Figure 9:2 The Logical Levels of Language _______________________________________ / Presuppositions \ Presuppositions /

——————— Distortions ——————— Complex Equivalence \ Cause-Effect Mind-Reading Nominalization ———— Generalizations ——––—— / Lost Performatives \ Modal Operators Universal Quantifiers ------------ Deletions ------------/ Unspecified Referential Indices \ Unspecified Verbs / Nouns Simple & Comparative Deletions

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Thinking “Logical Levels” Thinking hypnotically enables you to use the Meta-Model for more than a list of linguistic distinctions and set of questions. Some of the linguistic distinctions refer to a primary level of thinking, others involve higher logical levels. The Meta-Model therefore includes several logical levels. Because of that, you can take a person up-up-and-away so they transition into the inner space of their minds. We will return to describe more about the higher levels in a later chapter (chapter 11, Meta-Level Linguistics). End of the Chapter Trance-ition The very language which allows you to de-hypnotize also allows you to hypnotize. Use the language of ill-formedness— vague unspecified terms and you set things up that encourages a listener to go inside on an internal search for meaning. You get your listener to do the thinking. Now you can induce all sorts of trance states. The Meta-Model was designed to address the natural ambiguity of language which hypnotizes so that you can break old dysfunctional and toxic trances. That’s the genius and power of the Meta-Model. Conversely, it is possible to use the Meta-Model distinctions for trance induction.

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Figure 9:3 The Hierarchical Levels of the Extended Meta-Model ____ Structures _______ / Metaphor (Met) \