Life is like a river in which you choose your method of concourse. You can choose to float along, letting life take you willy and nilly. You can choose to anchor yourself in one spot. You can choose to swim with or against the current. Or you can even choose to get out of the water and walk beside it. Whatever you choose, give it all you’ve got, without complaint, and you will have accomplished what you set out to do, to traverse the great river of life.
A sting can cause a trigger; gathering pollen is a habit! – Photo by Jan Ketchel
“That really triggered me!” Here, a sore spot, a vulnerability has been touched by someone’s comment, setting off this emotionally explosive reaction. Typically, the wounded party expects that others should know and respect this sensitivity and refrain from going near it. One often feels entitled to an apology.
A trigger is anything that can cause one to remember and feel an unprocessed emotionally charged experience. If someone tries to forget being attacked by a dog, the mere mention of its name can arouse anger and terror. Inwardly, the experience of being bitten has been pushed out of consciousness, protecting one from the discomfort of the reactivated memory.
The psyche envelops overwhelming experiences with strong defenses to keep the dreaded event far away from consciousness. Traumatic events may be so far removed from consciousness as to render one amnesic of their existence, even for decades.
Though the need for distance from a disturbing event may be necessary to function, it comes at the price of wholeness. The psyche must employ a good amount of energy to contain the disowned, unwanted or unknown parts of its experience. Furthermore, relaxed functioning may be compromised, as vigilance may be needed to avoid encounters with triggers associated with the split-off experience.
Ultimately, all events of a lifetime must be reconciled. A shamanic recapitulation, in this life, emotionally neutralizes all experience, rendering the psyche fully cohesive and able to be open to life without concern for triggers.
The life review referenced in near-death experiences, or reported by spirits in the afterlife, is required before one can advance into new life. Problems we haven’t resolved will preoccupy our lives, regardless of what subtle plane we may transition to. Recapitulation in this life both frees one for fulfillment in this life but also advances one in preparation for new life in the afterlife.
Habits are automatic beliefs, programs or pre-programmed behaviors that lie dormant in the subconscious mind. Programs are connected to genetic coding, as well as instinctive and archetypal imperatives that are specific to the nuances of the human species.
When a need or suggestion is encountered, the subconscious automatically activates the relevant program to address the situation. Thus, if one is attacked the subconscious will automatically activate fight, flight or freeze in response to the event. These reactions are not reactions to triggers, they are purely instinctive reactions to an existential threat. An instinctive habit is objective, a trigger is subjective.
The subconscious is also filled with habits that are derived from one’s subjective experience in this life. Thus, a person who has been bitten by a dog may consciously choose to always avoid dogs. This intentional behavior becomes a suggestion to the subconscious mind that molds it into an automatic, unconscious habit.
Thus, for instance, our bitten subject may unconsciously find themselves only walking certain routes that are known to be dog free. Now, if, while calmly walking one of these routes, a bark is heard, the subject may be triggered into emotional distress via encounter with the unreconciled memory of the original bite.
While triggers require a successful recapitulation if they are to be neutralized, habits, to change, require new suggestions to the subconscious mind. Thus, if one’s habit is a belief that one is unable to dance, one must first eliminate the conscious restating of this long-held belief. The subconscious will only manifest the suggestions one states.
To change a habit we must routinely state the new instruction to the subconscious mind: “I am able to dance.” This is not a discussion with the conscious mind. No reasoning or processing is required. What is required is the statement of intended fact to the subconscious, without any discussion.
To avoid conflicting suggestions to the subconscious, which virtually nullifies the formation of new habits, it is critical that one have complete faith in one’s suggestion. If one can embrace the belief that anything is possible then one can mobilize the requisite intensity of suggestion most likely to influence the subconscious.
One is often tested by the subconscious by the activation of old programs, despite one’s new intent. Old habits will reassert themselves until the new habit is established. Be calm, patient and persevering until the subconscious automatically prompts the newly established program. Simply repeat the new intent with calm assurance that it will manifest.
Trigger and habit are frequently intertwined. A new habit will be blocked from formation if a defensive habit must be retained to protect one from a potential trigger. Triggers, which represent split off experiences, must be neutralized through recapitulation before a habit, used to keep triggers at bay, can be effectively replaced.
Though both habits and triggers may be permanently altered, their pathways to change are distinctly different. Triggers must be processed at a conscious level to be neutralized; habits require rote repetition of new marching orders to the subconscious to result in a changed habit.
When triggers and habits are intertwined it is necessary to first reconcile the triggered event to effectively free the subconscious to take in the instructions for the desired change of habit. Change itself is always possible. Remember, anything is possible!
The current of heart centered truth… – Photo by Jan Ketchel
Suggestion is the connection to the imagination of the human soul. The mere hint of a possibility seeds the foundation of a story that bursts forth, in all its particulars, from the raw materials of the subconscious mind, in concert with the logic of consciousness.
Perhaps the greatest works of art and literature, as well as scientific discoveries, have their roots in the power of suggestion, as it conjures and takes shape in the interplay between the subconscious and conscious minds.
The subconscious has access to every detail of all we have ever experienced, since conception, and even before. The subconscious, as a piece of the hologram of infinity, also stores the collective history of humankind, with all its accrued knowledge.
When Edgar Cayce, with his simple 8th grade education, gave an intuitive health reading, he had access to in-depth medical treatments from all historical times. At the same time, Cayce required, in trance, to be asked questions to give needed answers, as the subconscious requires suggestion; it is not a freethinking mind. For this, the directed thinking of consciousness is required.
The subconscious, with its unlimited ability to generate information, is the automatic mind that guided our evolutionary ancestors. The birth of ego consciousness—the hallmark of a sense of personal identity, and the ability to reason and override subconscious instinct—is a very recent human acquisition. In fact, the automatic mind of the subconscious dominates both the running of the physical body and most mental processes as well.
The shamans point out that the incessant repetition of the internal dialogue that we all experience is nothing other than the drone of the subconscious, as it generates the preprogrammed suggestions that contour our habitual sense of self. Whatever core beliefs we have about ourselves are constantly reinforced by suggestions fed to us by programs embedded in our subconscious, which we unwittingly reinforce daily at a conscious level.
Much of the cognitive and emotional distress we encounter in our lives is actually generated by suggestions we automatically give ourselves from the moment we awaken to each new day. Those suggestions generate the familiar stories we live by. If consciousness made a concerted and persevering effort to suggest a different storyline to our subconscious, we could open up to an entirely different sense of self. The key is to have faith and belief in the suggestion we embrace.
Suggestion is at the heart of marketing psychology, that which controls much of our economic behavior. Suggestion has run rampant on social media as well, as people unconsciously absorb fake news, and as they subsequently take on the polarized attitudes and stories encoded in those viral suggestions.
Once the subconscious takes in a new suggestion, that suggestion becomes its truth and it rallies all its resources around its imperative. It remains for consciousness to judge the validity of the storyline. If consciousness does not engage its reason to objectively evaluate the story, it automatically becomes the story we adopt and live by.
The current of truth is the one story that actually aligns with the truth in the world. The many currents of nature—be they the tides, the fires, the earthquakes or winds—reveal the truth of climate change. Despite this objective truth, many people still believe in subjective stories that don’t acknowledge the actual truth.
The current of truth is actually the Tao, the harmonious law of nature that validates the simple truth of cause and effect. Humans are free to embrace whatever story they wish, however, nature’s currents of truth will continue to react to human miscalculation.
Eventually, humans will embrace the suggestion to live in the current of truth, as it is the only combination that will ensure the necessary balance and harmony for survival.
The truth is, all are empowered to embrace this intent now, simply by offering new suggestions to the self to flow with the current of truth.
When consciousness embraces the truth, the subconscious will rally its potentiality around this directive, and the world will be remade in a truthful story. Now that’s a story worth embracing!
Our truest parent is our Spirit, which has provided us with a reflection of itself as an ego entity, and charged us to lead this human life of material being with consciousness, on a mission of progress, the underlying intent of all nature.
Spirit’s material clothing for its fledgling offspring is the prefrontal neocortex of the brain, that houses the functions and states of ego that make conscious decision making possible. Spirit, in its intent for progress, equipped little ego spirit with the ability to alter the accrued binding laws of life, known as archetypes, which, without interference, directed life actions until the dawn of ego consciousness.
Ego, with its ability to quickly override the rules of its conservative evolutionary inheritance, is nonetheless still but a child quaking in its boots, as it assumes its assigned task to responsibly lead both its individual life and the life of the planet. The world stage today reflects ego’s developmental struggle to emerge from its insecure narcissistic adolescence into assuming true adult responsibility, for the greater good of all.
Spirit never abandoned its ego progeny; its eyes rest peacefully and lovingly—but not interferingly—behind the ego’s eyes that, of necessity, remain fixated upon the outer material view of the world. What Kahlil Gibran counsels all parents, as regards their children, applies to Spirit as well:
Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
Nonetheless, Spirit’s seeing is not encumbered by the shadows that veil ego’s perception and interpretation of its limited worldview. Spirit sees ego’s projections upon its fellow humans that mirror its own unknown or disavowed self. Spirit sees the power drives of the archetypes, powerful spirits in their own right, competing and vying for life through the ego’s decisions on life’s earthly stage.
Ego, in its humbleness, might at any moment turn inward and ask its Spirit what it sees. Spirit never judges; all roads lead to evolution and must be trodden. Spirit only tells the truth if ego seeks its guidance. If ego is hiding from the truth, Spirit will show it this truth by way of a compensating dream.
Spirit will suggest ego get calm and notice all the events that are happening within its purview, from a blinking light to a cardinal’s song to an open book that falls to the floor. This is the language of truth that greets all of us every day, in every which way we turn.
Spirit also offers ego the communion of being in presence. In the quiet calm of meditation, as the sensory world is put to rest, ego and Spirit come home to each other in the deepest of calmness and oneness of being. Ego can walk any road in life with the knowing of this most intimate relationship ever present, within and without.
Roughly speaking, the left brain is the home of personality and ego, the right brain is the home of our evolutionary history, our intuition, and our connection to spirit.
Eminent Yale psychologist Julian Jaynes hypothesized that, prior to the dawn of consciousness—that is, left brain ego—right brain automatically dictated human response to environmental and physical triggers. He went so far as to suggest that humans have always had voices in the head telling them what to do!
Carl Jung named these innate programs archetypal images that directed human behavior, unconsciously, through directives to the subconscious mind. Prior to the birth of ego consciousness, humans functioned as do animals, automatically reacting to the world according to the directives of archetypes. With the dawn of ego consciousness, humans developed the ability to reflect and choose whether to follow the automatic promptings of archetypal images or not.
The biblical Garden of Eden story depicts this moment of ego wrestling the ability to choose from the control of the archetypes. God essentially cast humans from the Garden for their decision to break from archetypal mandates. Thus, fledgling ego was left to both think for itself and manage the influence of archetypes upon itself. Left brain development gave humans the power to suggest their own destiny.
Nineteenth-century psychologists were immersed in the study of hypnosis, which could so deeply impact human behavior through the use of suggestion. Their studies proved that once a subject established connection with a hypnotist, it was even possible to be influenced by a mere thought of that hypnotist, though they be miles removed from the subject’s location.
Here we have an example of right brain non-spatial interconnectedness utilized by a hypnotist to circumvent a subject’s ego control and direct their subconscious to act. In clinical terms, we might call this an established transference, where the hypnotist becomes the authority figure that takes over the operation of the mind of the subject.
Psychic researcher Frederic Myers predicted, in the late 19th century, that hypnosis, with its components of trance and suggestion, would be foundational in clinical research in the 20th century. He was right. However, what took up the charge in the 20th century was applied marketing psychology, with the intent of material gain through influencing human behavior.
Psychologists Walter Scott and John Watson scoffed at the notion that humans were reasoning animals, calling them instead “creatures of suggestion”. They were able to demonstrate how easily the supposed ego could be subverted by powerful suggestions. They founded the advertising industry, perfecting the use of archetypal images in advertisements as bold suggestions, combined with verbal or written commands, to influence consumer’s purchases.
The modern world is dominated by an advertising industry that has now morphed into a social media that directly subverts the fledgling ego of humankind via hypnotic suggestion. Today, when a candidate runs for office, the main concern is the size of their war chest, that is, dollars to be spent to hypnotically entrance the electorate.
No longer is science or rational thought a trusty guide. The world is largely run by influencers, who through word, image, repetition and command entrance the populace with suggestions that become facts via their action upon the subconscious mind.
We are indeed creatures of suggestion, but with a reasoning capacity. The ego, however, is easily possessed or circumvented by the power of hypnotic suggestion. In fact, most of daily functioning is driven by one incessant voice in the head, the internal dialog.
To take back our extraordinary power to manifest via our subconscious powerhouse, it is best to assume conscious control of our innate suggestive tendency. Begin by identifying where you have unconsciously transferred your personal authority, allowing it to be controlled by the commands of authority figures.
Break the spell of these figures by commanding your central nervous system to go calm when you think of or visualize them. This is taking back inner control of the self. Regularly send the subconscious new suggestions to get calm. Exercise your own reasoning capacity, allowing it to guide your understanding and actions.
Truly take charge of your self-hypnosis with suggestions consciously intended for the betterment of self, and the greater good. Suggestion is indeed a highly influential force in human manifestation, but exercise it with reasoned care.
