Travels With My Unconscious
One of my NLP heroes is a guy by the name of David Gordon. He isn’t as well know as some of the other people that have shaped NLP, but that doesn’t mean his contribution hasn’t been highly significant. He is most well known in the industry for his work with modeling (the thing that kicked off NLP in the first place) and the stuff I really love him for, metaphors.
Metaphors (including similes and analogies) are incredibly powerful and I’m not just talking about in Life Coaching and therapeutic work either. I’m sure you’ve noticed that I use them in my writing more frequently than a senior citizen on a wine tasting tour uses the bathroom. That’s because they are very often the best way to make a point and they can be very funny (or so I’m told).
Copywriters, marketers and advertisers know all too well the power or metaphors and the good ones will weave powerful stories that get you to see the benefits of their products without them being too ‘in ya face’ salesy.
Also, the better hypnotherapists will often rely heavily on metaphors (which is why hypnotherapy is such an art form) because it is the easiest way to slip past the conscious mind and get a message in at an unconscious level. Even if sometimes that message isn’t recognized at the time.
I was recently talking to a client who was struggling to have the confidence to start his own business. I asked him if he remembered when he first learned to swim?
I then went on to say how scary it would have been to begin with. But once he’d summoned up the courage to take the plunge and with people offering their help and support to make sure he was ok, he would have soon been enjoying himself. He then pointed out that didn’t make much sense to him because he couldn’t swim. So I threw him in our pool and told him to pull himself together. Unfortunately he drowned and I have an upcoming court case, but I don’t care what anybody says, it was still a good metaphor.
A few weeks ago I received a guest post and had the same experience reading it I’d had reading Vlad’s post on ‘Developing Self Trust’ about ‘Parts’. Why on earth had I never posted on this topic before before, I pondered?
Anyway, it’s a moot point now matter because Hilary from ‘The New Energy Handbook’ had saved me the trouble. It was like manna from haven and I think that’s where I’ll stop with the crap metaphors, or more accurately in that case, simile for now.
There’s a 1,001 ways to use metaphors in all sorts of different scenarios, Hilary will give you a somewhat unusual take.
Travels With My Unconscious
We are used to thinking of our unconscious as something mysterious and sometimes mischievous and uncooperative but in my travels I have discovered a method of relating to it quite openly and, you might say, consciously.
I was first introduced to it working with Silvia Hartmann and it’s called Project Sanctuary. It was developed as a healing tool based on the observation that you can sometimes heal an issue by healing a metaphor for that issue.
So in your imagination you create your perfect place. It might be a house or the Garden of Eden or a desert island or a castle. Maybe a cloud, maybe Antarctica, maybe your own personal planet. Walk around it and see what needs to be tweaked or re-imagined. See if there is anything missing that might make it more perfect for you. Sylvia Hartmann has hundreds of suggestions for places and features and other people/creatures/beings you might wish to bring into your sanctuary. Anything to help stretch your imaginings.
If you are like me you will find that even at this stage you are having some active interaction with your unconscious. Silvia reports that a lot of people find rubbish piles under the tables or a thick layer of dust on everything. Isn’t it weird that we can’t always just imagine it clean? And isn’t it weird that some things work to fix it and others just don’t? Even in our imagination we can’t just make it be different, we have to find the right way.
For example, I decided to bring my anger into sanctuary and see what we could do with it there. It manifested as a big rucksack full of snakes. Don’t panic, they couldn’t get out until I opened the rucksack but, you know, snakes en masse in a small space seethe, don’t they? Kind of like anger.
I took the rucksack off my back, plonked it on my terrace and opened it but the snakes started to seethe out in an unmanageable way and it all got out of hand for a minute there. I actually used the time-reverse option for the first and only time to get them back into the sack while my sanctuary friend/adviser and I discussed what to do.
And lo, there appeared a pied piper – well not pied exactly but you get my drift. He had a pipe and the snakes were entranced by his playing. He agreed to lead them away to the Valley of Snakes where they have lived peacefully ever since.
We learnt to fly there, me and my (then) partner. We stood on the edge of the slope wondering how we could get such heavy bodies to defy such unremitting gravity but we looked down and noticed that we were actually lanky, childlike, and almost translucent, we had wings and they weren’t particularly cumbersome and they could do the job. We did somersaults in the air and taught each other a few tricks and it was generally very, you know, joyful as flying tends to be. I went off skywards on my own and had some trouble keeping myself from drifting ever-upwards. Eventually I had to invent some angels to keep me within gravity’s reach while I slept.
I brought my father there to visit and it was so strange, he was sooo tired, sooo heavy was the burden of life to him that he could barely stand up. I hadn’t realized that in real life. We created a kind of garden chaise longue for him with a view over the valley and facing towards the little rose-covered rotunda where things tended to go on. He gradually got stronger there.
I played in sanctuary for perhaps two or three weeks when I first discovered it and have rarely returned since. This is not to suggest that I ceased to find value in it – far from it, it is nothing short of genius – but rather I had learnt what it had to teach me. Two things:
1. What it is like to play God, so to speak, to create with the power of your intentions
2. What it is like to bring your unconscious self into consciousness and find out what’s really going on there
I’d love to hear from anybody that has tried anything like this. I have to admit, I haven’t, but I do think it could be very powerful for some people and thanks a lot to Hilary for sending me the post.
If you’re a blogger that is struggling to get where you want to go I have some exciting news coming your way soon. I’m not exactly sure what it is yet, but I’m sure it will be as exciting.
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Comment by Greg on 10 April 2009:
Hey Tim,
Great post, really ‘out there’, and enjoyable. Liked the metaphor thinking. I’m a sucker for analogies… it’s like, you know…, that thing…, like this, or possibly that?!
BTW: When you pulled the body from the pool did you check the pH, because a corpse can really mess up the chemical balance of your water… oh yes, and clean your filter.
Cheers,
Gb
Gregs last blog post..Recession vs. Depression
Comment by Vlad Dolezal on 10 April 2009:
I tried a distant second cousin of this technique… lucid dreaming.
Interestingly enough, you also can’t control everything you want in lucid dreams. Sometimes you want to fly, but you can’t get off the ground by jumping or floating, and eventually manage to do it by flapping your arms madly. Or, another time, I tried playing chess in my lucid dreams. But the pieces kept morphing when I wasn’t looking, and somehow I ended up playing with three different colours of pieces on the chess board :p
Seems like you can control your imagination to some extent… but there’s still quite a bit under unconscious control you can’t get around. (Like the dust in other people’s sanctuaries)
I think I’ll give this thing a try, sounds like a lot of fun :D
Update: I just remembered I tried something like that some years back. When I was trying self-hypnosis. I only created a small dream place without much detail. Basically I entered through an elevator (going deeper and deeper down into my subconscious), and when I got there, I had a big pile of pillows, and a door leading out to a beach. I think I also had a very British butler there I sometimes asked for advice (when I wanted somebody else to tell me what I already knew… kinda kicking my butt to take action if you get what I mean).
Vlad Dolezals last blog post..One Awesome Attitude That Can Transform Your Life
Comment by Tim Brownson on 10 April 2009:
@ Greg – It’s still in there bud. I figure the chemicals will have dissolved it by July.
@ Vlad – LMAO at that last bit! Tell us how you get on mate!
Comment by Tracy on 11 April 2009:
Hi Tim, I’ve never tried anything like this except, I suppose in actual writing. Perhaps that is why people like to write? I know when I write, I sometimes realize things that I’d not noticed in every day life, much like you noticed how tired your father was and it also helps me figure out a way to deal with whatever problems I am having.
Perhaps though I am not understanding this all correctly, because it is very new and heavy stuff. That’s why I like your blog though, I always feel free to make my observation then you’ll let me know if I got the right point or not.
I love Vlad’s self-hypnosis, I want a British butler to advise, me, too!
Tracys last blog post..6 Things I secretly hope are included in life coaching
Comment by Michael Panebianco on 11 April 2009:
I sat here in Hartford for a few hours in my hotel room trying this. I had a bad start to my morning, and it took me a while to get straight again. So, I invited in my anger.
When I look at it from the outside, I see it as pure suffering, a huge hulking monster with a spiked club, an insatiable rage, and incredible suffering fueling its fury. Everybody around sees this beast, lights a torch and grabs a pitchfork. Why should I expect anything but that from others? Why can no one see the suffering as the source for this beast? Don’t they know when they attack it, it will defend itself? Sorry, he gets out sometimes, and it takes me a little bit to calm him and get him back in the cage.
A kind word or gesture, an accepting voice, a non-judgmental acknowledgment of its existence creates for me a soothing remedy for the gap between stimulus and response. This post generated a bit of a pattern interrupt for my most desired-to-lose behavior.
Quite a journey you inspired Hilary. It would have been better if I wasn’t there to ruin it for me! Just kidding, I will take that to my Self Defense students for inclusion to their Cycle of Behavior exercise. Great tactic!
Thanks for the post, thanks to the host…..
Comment by Maureen on 11 April 2009:
I haven’t tried something like Sanctuatry but it sounded so cool I’m off to the page after I write this
Comment by Hilary on 11 April 2009:
@ Greg – I know! Some experts say you shouldn’t use too many analogies in your writing, but I say that would be like travelling without looking at the scenery.
@ Vlad – So cool, the whole british butler thing! I might bring one into my sanctuary if you don’t have a copyright on it. It does sound like the other methods you talk about are similar but I found sactuary easier because I was not trying to move into an altered state of consciousness, just doing something we do every day. It amazed me how close was the key to our unconscious mind.
@ Tracy – I hesitated to put in the bit about my father because I think that is where Tim and I (and probably a lot of his readers here) part mindsets, in that I take the information gained in my imaginary place as probably-true-pending-further-evidence whereas our modern empirical, rationalistic culture won’t be having with any of that airy fairy thinking. It’s my way of givng my intuition/second sight/psychic perception an audience. It doesn’t shout, you have to listen carefully.
@ Michael – I have noticed, to generalise outrageously, that men tend to respond to hurt with anger and women with tears. My mother died when I was 12 and life was very lonely for a while. I became sadder and sadder but nobody tried to make it better! Sad face was supposed to inspire comfort. And in fact it had the opposite effect, just like your anger, of people responding to me as the victim and victimising me. Needless to say, I don’t do victim any more. Anyway, re. your anger, I love the image and was sad to think of it in a cage, much as I know you might have to deal with the consequences of you give it too much freedom. But I felt that it’s served you well so far and deserves some gratitude. Just my take.
@ Maureen – Ooh I hope you have some fun with it. Would love to here of your adventures there if you come up with anything interesting.
Hilarys last blog post..Going with your own flow
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