Some folks do well with this; other people never seem to succeed.

What do you want from such a system?

You want (a) success; (b) rapid success; (c) reliable success. Just like your Ford automobile, you want it to always start and carry you down the chosen road, to start quickly, and to operate reliably as expected.

In these various systems, different factors are touted as helping to attain success, rapidity, and reliability. These include –

• Practicing to attain clear images
• Adding additional senses as you visualize
• Having faith, believing
• Practicing to build history of success (creates trust)
• Adding emotions you’ll experience upon success
• Picturing as already happened
• Being *in* the picture
• Repetition
• Spending time, more time, every-day time on the same visualization
• Create ardent desire
• Create gratitude (can only feel gratitude on a basis of success)
• Turning it over to God, to the Universe, to your Higher Self, to your Subconscious

The common denominator of all of these … is that they make the visualization more *real*.

Reality – A Consensual Illusion?

For most of us, the first time we hear the concept that the world around us, what we think is reality itself, could be a consensual illusion … it seems absurd. For it directly contradicts our “experience” of the world.

But think. As infants we have no ability to choose a direction, and then create a focused visualization. We must rely upon some incoming sensory input, and what people tell us. Even the words we learn, their meanings, and the way they are strung together create a view of the world … and *inside* of that world-view we operate. Like fish that don’t see the water, we don’t see the world-view we’ve created around us. Everything we see is *inside* the world view.

In Spanish, a person cannot miss the bus. Because when the young grow up inside the Spanish language, the way they consider the missed bus is (as we’d say in English) … “The bus, she left me.” This is now the world view of how busses behave.

As growing children, sometimes we see things that others do not see. However, in order to communicate with others, to attain our goals (food, water, acceptance, grades, friendship) we are attempting to see the commonly-agreed-upon view that we hear from others. Frequently, the imaginary friend fades away from our view of the world, and we cannot see the friend any longer. The golden glow glistening around the leaves as they pulsate with light fades, leaving the flat green leaves shown in pictures and as (we come to believe) seen by others.

We accept the consensual reality as told and demonstrated to us by our family and our culture.

Is My Red Your Blue?

We don’t actually *know* that others see things as we do, even after we’ve agreed.

We can see a shirt or a dress, and we agree that it is red. But perhaps what my eyes are handing to my brain, and what I call by the word “red” would be what you would call “blue” if you could see through my eyes. Perhaps from your viewpoint, you see red and I’m really seeing what you’d call blue, but since we both call it “red” we assume we’re *seeing* the same thing. But we have no way to really check and see if that’s true.

We call it by the same name, we describe it using the same words, but maybe our experience is completely different.

Three Kinds of Entrapment

1. As in the sad movie, you could get your foot caught in the railroad tracks, and you are stuck, entrapped in the physical universe, and the train could eat you up right quick. A fleeing rabbit could be outsmarted in the quick twists and turns by the faster fox, and the rabbit is stuck, entrapped, and it’s curtains.
2. We can get stuck in the structures and blind spots of the mind we’ve constructed by our decisions, from the beliefs adopted from our parents, and from accidental conditioning (automatic reactions) caused by the accidents of our life experience. An example might be an adopted child. While one person might go on to great success and happiness, another might focus on the core belief that the parents didn’t want him, and spend a lifetime seeing rejection from friends, bosses, and lovers even when none existed. All of life could then have targets and strategies designed to deal with and avoid rejection. It’s like running down a football field, dodging invisible barriers, and often failing to see the real opponents closing in.
3. The entire world itself is a consensual reality, which some systems have called the “Veil of Illusion.”

Attaining Freedom from Entrapment

Physical skills and learned skills of the mind avoid physical entrapment, and help us to entrap/ensnare the things that we want.

Self-help and therapies and practices like Rolfing and Meditation help to fix non-optimum mental structures and blind spots in the mind.

So-called spiritual means can achieve freedom from the consensual illusion that *is* the entire world … sometimes.

Some saints and religious figures have done things that seem to be above the entire world, impossible things, miracles. One Indian holy man can create precious jewelry from thin air. Another heals with a hug. Some monks have created enlightenment and freedom in a student with a riddle, pointing a finger, or a whack with a stick. The Jesus is said to have arisen from the dead, awakened the dead by calling his name, and walked upon water.

Most of us have seen miracles, done miracles, or heard about miracles.

We tend to erase these from our minds immediately as we see them. Even when seen, they do not fit into “what is true” or “what is real” or “what is possible.” We can actually make them disappear from our memory even if we just saw it, because immediately it is easier to create the belief that we mis-perceived.

I have seen miracles: The bones in a woman’s face change shape completely in less than an hour, a woman’s vision change from 20/200 to 20/20 in five minutes, a wart be requested to fall off the body and it does, choosing one bus from over 30 from which to retrieve a book belonging to my wife, a fly requested to fly across the room to light on my finger and it does so, visualizing a lost object in a friend’s house and immediately retrieving it (twice), objects appearing where they didn’t exist before.

Miracle = it happened, in contravention to “reality,” contradicting the consensual agreement we call the world.

Magic, when it happens, nearly always happens just outside of your vision. Seldom is there a puff of smoke or sound effects. It just flows in what seems the normal way, except that it’s impossible, and is often re-interpreted immediately by the mind which is caught and can see and remember only *inside* the consensual veil of illusion that we have adopted.

Do You Believe Your Own Eyes?

If you own some blue plates, and you go to the cupboard and open the cupboard, you are very, very certain that the plates you see there will be blue, just like they were yesterday and the day before.

This kind of “reality” is very, very persuasive.

Picturing what “isn’t” against the constant automatic repeated internal creation of what “is” is pitting a weak force against a strong one.

Only repetition, strength and enhancing the weak can prevail.

And it can be done.

Some people become so practiced that they can simply feel good, think about what they want and it shows up quickly.

Others of us must start out more slowly.

But, just as you will probably have to practice if you want to play basketball, then you probably have to practice if you want to manifest a reality different than what you see around you today.

The good news is that, according to the reports of many, over thousands of years … it can be done.

The good news is that if you’ll spend time just to learn it a little, magic and manifestation and freedom will become more and more visible in your life.

Alas, for most of us, you must actually try it a bit before you’ll see results. You can’t just say, “show me,” and have your life instantly revamped. There is no force in the Universe that can take the place of *you* in this game. Nobody can shoot the basket *for* you; you’ll need to take your shots yourself.

Tips for Success

• Tip #1 — Picture what is *near* the consensual reality.
• Tip #2 — Remove counter-intentions. If you’re trying to walk north and south at the same time, little progress is possible. So in addition to creating the new reality, be sure to remove your participation in the old reality that is no longer your heart’s desire. (One example is chatting with a friend who mocks and reinforces the old views or who continually creates negative scenarios which you “should” accept. Another example is making your actions in the physical are compatible with your vision, like getting a bed large enough when you are seeking a lover.)
• Tip #3 — Practice, and you gain skill.
• Tip #4 — Connect with other people who share the view that changing the world is possible.
• Tip #5 — Choose one thing on which to focus, and then focus as if your head were on fire. Avoid choosing a long laundry list, because watering down your focus over many list items weakens each one.
• Tip #6 — Choose a target about which you can feel passionate. For example, if you think you *ought* to want a million dollars, but you have much stronger feelings about getting a new rug, a new boyfriend, or losing some weight, then the million dollars can wait.
• Tip #7 — Use a gradient. Success is cumulative, and so starting with simple things builds your “strength” or belief.

You can Use the Physical Universe, too

In some cases, a person encountering this magical/spiritual approach can completely overlook using the physical universe. That can be a big mistake. In some cases, using the physical universe may be the quicker road, and please realize you are *still* using the principles of visualization in order to bring about the manifestation of your heart’s desire.

Here’s an example:

At the age 26, I was still completely backward about how to meet and flirt and attract a girlfriend. But one day I had an epiphany, and saw a different way to look at it, and created a kind of system for myself. It worked fabulously. I turned this into an instructional manual some years later, and it appears to have worked very well for pretty much everyone who has tried it.

It consists in asking many people to go out. And in this case, for certain reasons of theory, you do not much discriminate much about who you ask out in the very beginning. (That is, you adopt a mental viewpoint which stops ruling out everybody.) Since your purpose here is not to immediately find the love of your life, but rather to experience the process of inviting and going out, and to learn how to enjoy this process, this whole thing becomes rather easy.

You stay out of bed and avoid entanglement, while you learn how to have a good time, how to share a good time, and how to operate in this world of asking women out. And what happens?

It’s the Ultimate Visualization

Your physical eyes *see* you going out with women. Your nose *smells* the perfume the women are wearing. Your sense of touch *feels* the women going out with you. Your ears *hear* the women saying yes to your invitation to go out. You see and hear and feel and experience that you are going out with women.

How much chance do pre-existing “mental” limitations and visions have of standing up against this evidence of your senses? Precious little. Because you are now pitting the strong (automatic repeating creating of your reality) against the weak (mental fears and blind spots). You are using the Universe to reprogram your reality, in the direction you have chosen.

It changes you. It changes you fast. It changes you reliably. It changes you in the direction of success. It changes you on a self-regulating gradient. It changes you “near” to the existing physical universe. And it changes you more and more as you continue.

You then discover, whether you started this way or not, that attractive women somehow start falling out of the sky, appearing in your world, manifesting. And, better still, one or more start manifesting in your dates.

Keep this up, and it’s darn difficult to avoid meeting the love of your life.

(How do you know when to say “yes” and accept the love of your life? My rule is simple. When I realize I’d be a *fool* to let *this one* escape, then it’s time to say yes.)

A Learned Manifestation Skill Remains

More good news — If you start out fairly clumsy with women, as I was, then the first time you try this, it takes a while, and it may take time before you really flip over somebody.

However, this process is teaching you a skill. And if, some time later, you need to reactivate your “dating mode,” you’ll happily discover that things go faster and easier … because you have (a) learned a new skill, and (b) this new “possibility” is now a part of your psyche, easy to accept, and now a part of you and who you are.

This is using the physical universe. Alter your actions so that your eyes and ears and nose and body create your desired reality, more and more.

And you are still visualizing, and manifesting.

You are using judo on the consensus reality you call your life to find true love and happiness.

What Visualization System is Best to Use?

Though some are probably better than others — for you in particular — it probably doesn’t matter a lot whether you engage in prayer, magic, meditation, manifestation, and such things.

You may have to sort out some of your skills in the physical universe, and in your mental universe, before you start creating thunderstorms over your town, or speedboats appearing in your driveway.

But the good news is … you can do this.

[reprinted, with permission, from Shyguy's How To Get A Girlfriend Blog.]

All too often, in our lives we find ourselves being manipulated or influenced by other men, by women, and sometimes even by the damned television.

Of course, as a kid against a schoolyard bully, perhaps the only options are the Charles Atlas course, karate classes, or a tactful withdrawal. But in later life usually we’re not influenced by physical threat.

HOW DO ‘THEY’ MANIPULATE US?

It’s done with worths, with images, and with social pressure.

If you’re being influenced this way … what that tells you is that you DO NOT actually understand how it’s happening. Oh, you may have theories and opinions about those bad people.

But if you’re still being manipulated, either “having” to go along, or even resisting but feeling upset or angry about it .. then you DO NOT fully understand how it works.

But here’s how to change that …

HERE IS THE KEY:

If you wish to invest time to understand how it all works, then *you* can learn to influence people around you. You can control nearly every situation. You can attract people to you, and they will listen to what you have to say.

If you don’t wish to invest time to understand how it all works?

<!–more–>Well, then you will simply go on with the same life you now have — being manipulated by women, by men, by situations. All seeming out of your control.

So unless you wish to continue the life of a helpless pawn … then the question becomes simply … WHERE and HOW can I learn how ‘Influence’ works?

And luckily, in recent years, this is no longer mysterious.

There is a body of knowledge that reveals all of this. It requires some time investment and some study, but it actually does deliver this kind of power, this kind of skill, into your hands.

It is the rightful study of Hypnosis.

WHAT?

Now before you start thinking about guys on stage with wild eyes, and people in chairs acting like chickens, please be aware that there have been radical developments in recent years, and for the first time, these INSIDE techniques are being presented to the public.

In the past, we sometimes have described certain politicians, certain charismatic individuals, certain evangelical preachers, and certain actors as “almost hypnotic.”

Well … it’s not “almost” … they are using modern, secret hypnotic methods.

Hypnosis is all around you, being used successfully, and profitably … by business, by politicians, by television.

Why do housewives pay $2-$3 more for a bottle of name-brand laundry soap? The stuff in the other bottle works just the same. So why do her eyes go to the more expensive bottle? Why does her hand reach out and pick it up? Why does she stand at the check-out stand and pay extra?

Hypnosis is simpler than you imagine, more common that you imagine, and easy to understand … IF it’s presented simply.

I FOUND A MASTER WHO MAKES IT SIMPLE

Though I’ve known of this field since about forever, I recently stumbled across an up-to-date report and was delighted to discover an outstanding hypnotist — perhaps the best hypnotist in the world — who has the true gift of a master and a teacher …

He has a way of making it simple.

GET THE FACTS

Your life can transform itself.

You can have a body of knowledge that sets you apart, that gives you freedom from being manipulated by women, by men, by situations.

You can .. be in control.

Get the facts. The full story is revealed here –

http://learn-conversational-hypnosis.org

You’ll be happy you did.

Mobius Megatar ToneWeaver Guitar.

I make and sell guitars. Unusual guitars that you can play without strumming or picking, and this lets you play strings with both hands, so you can play bass strings and guitar strings at the same time. The name of this instrument is the Mobius Megatar.

Recently, a college student had inquired because he wanted to get one of our instruments. We wrote back and forth, and he was all set to go, but then he sent me this email –

“I’m sorry but the Megatar is not in the picture any more. I was coerced into buying a 2700 dollar classical guitar from a company that gives referral bonuses to the teacher who I was coerced by, so I’m left broke and on crappy terms with my main teacher for the next 3 years.

“I really wish I had the cash and time to delve into a tapstyle instrument right now, and if I could, it’d be a Mobius with Bartolini pickups, but it seems like that won’t be available for a while. With student loans and a no emergency funds (thanks to the aforementioned jerk of a teacher) I’ll be lucky if my car makes it without scheduled servicing for the next 6 months.”

What is really odd is that I got another email from another college student, in a similar situation who told me something of a similar story, that he’d been required (or perhaps urged) to get a nylon-string guitar for some upcoming course work. However, the second student seemed much less bitter.

And it got me to thinking. I can understand the disappointment he must feel.

And actually, it does sound kind of crappy behavior for the college music instructor, to push the student toward an instrument that pays the instructor a commission.

On the other hand …

On the other hand, that’s the past, and I’m guessing that it’s a pretty good guitar, and I expect that the young man will get quite a bit of good out of it. So I suggested that he might as well see if he could let some of the bitterness go.

If somebody makes you angry, it’s as if they have given you a heavy rock to carry around. You can go into the other room, but you’re still carrying the rock. Over time, it seems like the rock grows heavier and heavier and heavier.

The person who triggered the unhappiness, perhaps they are good perhaps they are bad, but in any event most of the time these other humans are doing about the best that they can with the training and insight that they possess; most people are like you and me. Sometimes we are good people. Sometimes we are bad people, but generally we are doing the best that we can. Because, if you knew how to do better, you would do better, wouldn’t you?

Even the fools and jerks are about the same.

Generally speaking, you cannot do too much about the ignorance or wrong choices of other people, but you do make your own choices.

At this point, might you be able to consider this idea? … Throw down the rock. Let it roll away. Someone else can pick it up, if  they want to. Might that make your passage through the days … lighter?

You’re young or you’re old. Either way, there are lots of adventures ahead.

Time enough for things that are important.

For example, if you think you want a Megatar, start picturing it, allow yourself to think of it as something you *already possess*. Something you already have, in the fullness of time. Perhaps you don’t see the way right this minute, but that’s the way of all life. You don’t see all life right now. And the first step is to see it, decided that it’s on the way, picture it, enjoy that you have it … and generally it will show up, often sooner than you’d have thought, just because that’s the future you are creating.

You create your life as you go, moment by moment, with your thoughts and with your perceptions.

Perceive tragedy and all around you tragedy abounds, and with your thoughts, future tragedies begin to take form.

Perceive what you want, and the good things you enjoy, and all round you, good things exist, and you create more good things a-coming.

Your Megatar is just one of the good things coming to you. You have a wonderful life unfolding.

What is it about taking a shower that causes new ideas to pop into your head?

Is it the invigorating ions that are caused by splitting water droplets?

Or is it a simple as Murphy’s law triggered because you will never have pencil and paper in the shower?

I don’t know the answer to this time-proven rule, but as of this morning’s shower, I do know a super-simple way to look at mental health, a simple way to be happier and more productive.

It’s simply this –

As you go through life, and as you go through each day, stuff will be going on. Some of it’s yours, and some of it seems to just happen. And you’re going to be seeing this stuff happening and you’re going to react to it and think about it.

Now here’s the key –

If you allow yourself to *dwell* upon the bad in it, you’ll be using your mind in a way that, over time, conditions you (by repetition) to habitual thinking. And in this thinking, you’re dissatisfied with life, you’re the effect of stuff out there, perhaps a repeating victim of stuff out there. And this will never produce happiness in your life, and your thinking or perception will tend to become oblivious to the good things, the good possibilities, the good feelings, that could turn it all around for you.

But to have a happier life, if you will make an ongoing and intentional practice to consciously find what good is in whatever is happening, if you will consciously consider what’s happening and consider how it may be to your (now or later) benefit, then several good things will happen.

Over time, as you do this you will experience more happiness, because you’re going out of your way to find some happy thoughts. Thinking happy thoughts tends to go along with a happy life. Sounds a little too simple, because frankly it is simply too simple. It is so simple that hardly anyone thinks to try it.

Further, as you intentionally practice focussing your attention on discerning what good is in what’s happening, or how it may turn to your advantage, you are developing a creative problem-solving mentality, and you’ll discover yourself creating new ways to operate that are to your advantage. This too is horribly simple — if you look for ways to get good from a situation, you’re likely to find some.

Now let’s hear it from the nay-sayers!

The nay-sayer will have an automatic reaction against what’s just been said here. Now in fact, what we’re seeing with the naysayer is that something happened (some words appeared) in the naysayer’s life, but the naysayer is in the habit of finding the bad, so the automatic, trained, habit of the naysayer is to now find something that will ruin it for himself.

For example, the naysayer can object that “squelching down your negative feelings and suppressing them is an unhealthy mental practice.” And, truth be told, there is a germ of truth here. Because the ongoing practice of denying the feelings one experiences will lead to the automatic, trained, habit of becoming unconscious of one’s feelings. That doesn’t help survival nor lead to a happier life.

The difference is: if you’re *pushing against* a negative thought, you just keep it there. ‘Pushing against’ will tend to be reflected in the words you say inside your head. For example, “I’m not feeling like crying, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not!” is a pretty good example of pushing against. Another one is “I’m not going to be mad at Johnny any more!”

Maybe you squelch it, but it’s not really going away. And for some folks, who have fears about their mind being out of control, this can be a real catch-22. A self-fulfilling problem.

But if you have fears about your mind being out of control, then you can simply learn to practice meditation, in the simplest sense of the word.

Meditation, at the simplest level, is nothing more than practicing holding your mind on one thing. That one thing could be your breath going in and out. That one thing could be the repetition of a word, like ‘Om’ or ‘Shanti’ or ‘peace’ or even ‘boogie shoes.’ That one thing could be holding a picture in mind: a mountain, the bright light of a candle, the face of someone you love.

Now your mind *will* wander away; that is the unruly nature of a mind. And when you notice it’s wandered away, you just put it back.

And if you do this every day for 20 minutes, then after a few weeks you will notice that you feel better, and you feel calmer, and your fear about your uncontrollable mind will have dwindled, because slowly by slowly you are actually learning to control your mind. Not in a harsh, military and suppressive way, but by a gentle persistent returning way.

And this is the same way that you would develop your practice of looking at what’s happening to find good in it, or how it can be turned to good.

If you have a real stubborn case of the nasty unhappies, maybe you’ll have to start by simply finding ways to *minimize* the bad that you see all around you. But if you persist, you will slowly by slowly begin to develop the habit of seeing the good going on all around you.

Look, here’s a kind of proof:

In your life, like any life, there have been unhappinesses. Let’s consider how many of your experienced unhappinesses have been ‘hard’ unhappinesses caused by something that happened in the physical universe, and how many of your experienced unhappinesses have been ’soft’ unhappinesses caused as you *thought* about things that had happened or might happen.

If you’re like most humans, and even if you’ve had a rough life, then less than 5% of the unhappinesses were ‘hard’ ones, like you tripped and fell down the stairs and broke an arm or sprained a muscle, or like you had a traffic accident, or your boyfriend left for another woman, or your dog died, or somebody stole something that belonged to you, or something you owned got ruined or spoiled. These are hard unhappinesses caused by an actual event in the physical universe.

Now you may have more control over these things than you realize, but we don’t even need to think about that. What we want to look at here is this –

Do these things happen every day? Do they happen multiple times every day?

For most people, no. They don’t.

These things happen, but only now and then.

For most of us, many days go by before we get another of these ‘hard’ unhappinesses.

But if that’s the case, what about those times when you’ve been continuously unhappy for days and days at a time? Where is that coming from?

Well, if nothing is happening in the physical universe to give you a ‘hard’ unhappiness, then you’re filling up your experience with *your thoughts*.

And you must have these thoughts on automatic unhappy mode, because it’s just one unhappy thought after another. Let’s say the boyfriend left. That happened once. But what about the hundreds or thousands of times you think unhappily about it? What about the hundreds or thousands of times you think about it even before it ever happens?

With these hundreds or thousands of unhappy thoughts, you are training your mind by simple repetition to automatically generate unhappy thoughts, and these will create the unhappy emotions in your body, and you are training yourself, unconsciously and automatically, to become and remain an unhappy person.

Is this mental health? To train yourself to become an unhappy person?

No, it is not good mental health.

So what is the opposite of this unconscious training program for unhappiness?

The opposite is a conscious training program for happiness.

Can it really be that simple?

Yes. Actually, it is exactly that simple.

You choose: Unconscioiusly keep running your unhappiness training, or consciously re-train to become a happy person.

Maybe not always easy. Maybe not immediate. Takes intention, practice, and time. And it works.

You will recreate yourself as a happier, and healthier person.

Presto. Mental health and happiness.

Think of the President. There’s your opinion … automatically.

Go out on a date. There’s your usual feeling … automatically.

Decide to tie your shoe. There go your hands … automatically tying your shoe.

But what if you’d like to do something … different … for a change?

MAKING A CHANGE

You might formulate a plan, like going on a diet, but your usual responses are going to be served up automatically. Just the *thought* of a meal will automatically trigger your usual response to have more pie. Your non-conscious mind trying to help you, just like you trained it to do, by repetition. That’s how it learns.

But let’s use going on a date as an example. Let’s say that it has been your habit to be up-tight, anxious, and worried. For our purposes, it doesn’t matter how this got started or whether your parents were good people or what your astrology sign is. Let’s just say that uptight, anxious, and worried has become your habit.

And maybe you think this isn’t the best way to enjoy your next date.

Now, just supposing you have that thought, thinking about going on your next date, most likely already your non-conscious mind starts serving up your usual feelings, so quite likely you may begin to feel uptight, anxious, and worried … and you haven’t even gone out on the date yet!

How then can you make a change?

CREATING SYNTHETIC EXPERIENCES

One way is to mentally “rehearse,” using your ability to chose which thoughts to think. You can mentally rehearse the date, and you can choose to imagine success, and all sorts of things going right. And the way your body will react to these thoughts and images of success is by giving you a bunch of good feelings.

If you are persistent, and will rehearse and rehearse, then you can build up an amount of positive “experience” which becomes a habitual way of thinking and feeling, just as your old pattern was a negative experience which became a habitual way of thinking and feeling. If you persist, eventually you’ll have more positive “experience” than negative experience, and you will discover your dates being more enjoyable.

Of course, doing it once, and saying, “Cool!” won’t do the job.

There are some other ways, such as using hypnotic or Neuro-Linguistic Programming methods, but simple mental rehearsal gives a clear model of what works.

COMMUNICATING DIRECTLY WITH YOUR NON-CONSCIOUS MIND

As you formulate your new plan for making a change, you can also “talk” with your Non-conscious Mind. By doing this, you can discover ahead of time how your non-conscious mind will automatically *help* you, and how your non-conscious mind will automatically *block* your new plan.

If you can know these things, then usually you can modify your new plan so as not to automatically invoke a lot of blockage, and in fact you can often modify your new plan so that automatic behaviors that will be served up by the non-conscious mind will assist your new plan.

So the question is: How do you talk with a Non-conscious Mind?

It doesn’t speak you know. It doesn’t even have self-consciousness as you and I know do. It’s not an actual entity as you and I seem to be. But it *acts* like an entity. It *acts* like a different, and autonomous, part of you. Because it is.

IT RESPONDS TO YOUR THOUGHTS

Here’s the answer: Although it cannot talk, it does have the habit of automatically generating the habitual thoughts and feelings you’ve entrained it to store, by your repeated thinking, feeling, or performing habitual actions.

So here’s what you do. Let’s say your new plan is to be more relaxed on your next date, and to have more fun.

So you sit down, and though you can do this just mentally, it will be easier to learn if you first try it with pencil and paper. So you start writing down your plan, with a lot of details. And as you write, pay careful attention, with every word that you write, what feelings and thoughts are popping into your awareness.

These feelings and thoughts are the responses of your non-conscious mind to your plan, word by word, and bit by bit.

For example if you write (or say), “I’m going to go out,” you might have a vague feeling of questioning. (That’s your non-conscious mind’s automatic reaction to the idea of your going on an excursion.)

And you then continue, writing (or saying), “on a date,” and immediately you notice a gentle feeling of unease. So right there you could react, and try some different words, like “I mean, to go get some dinner,” now you get a feeling of relaxation and ease.

And you continue, “with Sally,” and you notice that there’s no feeling of uneasiness. You just saw that your thinking “go out” and especially thinking “go on a date” are triggering the unwanted, automatic responses entrained into your non-conscious mind, but that “going to get some dinner … with Sally,” doesn’t trigger any automatic unpleasant stuff at all.

HOW TO USE WHAT YOU DISCOVER

Well for one thing, pay attention to your thoughts. If you feel uneasy, did you just think thoughts about dating? If so, reframe them differently. In this way you are retraining the non-conscious mind as you go.

You might discover, for example, that your non-conscious mind is going to produce a lot of automatic negative stuff if you plan a trip to the bowling alley, but no automatic negative stuff if you go golfing, and that it will generate warm and pleasant feelings if you’ll take a picnic to the museum.

Then, for certain, take more picnics at the museum, and for those other places like the bowling alley, visit the bowling alley on your own and meditate there or listen to music that always puts you in a good mood, or do something in those places that create more confort for you in those places.

A SIMPLE EXAMPLE

Recently, I’ve been engaged in the process of buying a house, and I knew I had to go to the Title Company, because that’s part of the process. I’d never been to a Title Company before, and when I thought about the mysterious ‘Title Company,’ I felt a discomfort and an uneasy feeling. So, before the day that I had to go there with the seller of the house, I went to the Title Company on my own.

I walked in, and the first thing I did was to “locate” myself in the place. That is, I made a point to look at the space and the things in it. I looked at the carpet and its color, and the way the sunlight fell through the window on the floor. I looked at the desks, and the walls, and the chairs. And then I looked at the several people in the room.

I picked one of them, and was invited to sit down. I sat down and felt the chair, and examined the person across from me. And then I asked a half a dozen questions about the process, which both told me something about the process, and also told me something about the people who work there. I then thanked the lady and left, noticing the furniture and fixtures as I did so.

In short, I familiarized my senses with the place, the process, and the people.

Then, the next day when I returned there with the seller of the house, guess who was relaxed and comfortable in that place? That’s right. My disquiet (automatic reaction from the non-conscious mind) was gone, replaced with a feeling of calm familiarity.

In the same way, you can familiarize yourself with unknown places and situations, and you can de-sensitize yourself from upsets that occurred in the past in certain locations. It’s not a perfect system, but it does work.

HOW THE NON-CONSCIOUS MIND SPEAKS “NEW” IDEAS TO YOU

So far, we’ve discussed how you speak to your non-conscious mind, and how you can perceive its reactions to what you say. However, as you engage in this practice — and at many other times, once you tune in to this process — you will begin to discover that your non-conscious also initiates communications to you, and these can be new ideas. They are probably triggered by things you say and do, but these new communications, to you, represent new and additional thoughts.

This is the process we see anytime you are “brainstorming,” which is listening to all the (wild and wacky) ideas that spring up as you consider a problem. During our daily life, as humans we learn to “tune out” all these associations. We have to do so in order to concentrate on the task at hand. But when you “brainstorm,” you pay attention to all these ideas as they arise. Although many do seem irrelevant, often wondrous gems can be found. And sometimes, behind an idea which seems loco, will be found a useful idea that is completely “outside the box.”

KEEPING THE FLOW GOING

The key in brainstorming, to keep the useful flow a-flowing, is to write down every single idea, no matter how “useless” or “silly.” That is, you permit no criticalness to intrude. (If criticalness or judging ideas is permitted, then very quickly you go back into “daily tasks” mode where non-fitting ideas are squelched, and the flow dries up. Put another way, your non-conscious mind quickly gets the message that you aren’t interested, and stops bothering to send you this rich trove of ideas.)

When you are having your “conversation” with your non-conscious mind, and feeling its reactions to what you are saying, it will also offer up new ideas. These are ideas that just “pop” into consciousness. Hopefully you are listening, and being non-critical and non-judgmental during this process, because these “offered-up” communications seemingly originated by your non-conscious mind are often creative solutions to the project you are considering.

In our dating example, you might discover as you consider taking Suzie to miniature golf, that you suddenly get an image of some female relative from the past or an old girlfriend or a childhood friend. Where did that come from? You guessed it.

Why? That’s the interesting question. When you look, you may suddenly have an “Aha!” when you realize that Suzie is triggering this old similar situation and maybe that’s where some of the worry or anxiety is coming from. Sometimes, when you spot old connections like this, just the process of spotting it is enough to disconnect or weaken the automatic response. Much of conventional therapy is in hopes of attaining enough of these new awarenesses so as to improve your usual operation.

Or, it might be that you get that image of some female relative from the past or an old girlfriend, and you ponder it, and then you think, “Aha!” because you just remembered that Aunt Bessie or old girlfriend Lucy used to really enjoy baking gingerbread cookies, and you wonder if your new date might — radical thought, outside the box — you wonder if your new date might enjoy (as a “date”) the two of you baking some gingerbread cookies, and then you carry them in a picnic basket with a thermos of milk to this really secluded place in the park for a romantic date of cookies and milk? Here, your non-conscious mind had handed you a creative and different idea for a date, that might be lots of fun.

IT WILL FIND THINGS FOR YOU

We’ve all had the experience of searching for a word and can’t immediately grasp it. You’ve probably also had the experience that you are suddenly reminded of something, but you can’t quite remember what. Or you want to recall the past, and you know it’s in there but not floating to the surface.

Your non-conscious mind is already in contact with that information. That’s why you have the “feeling” that you know that word, or why you have the “feeling” of being reminded, or you have the “feeling” that you know it’s there.

If you just ask your non-conscious mind to fetch it for you, then at some later time — maybe two minutes and maybe two hours — as you are doing something else, suddenly the missing word, or the missing memory, or the missing information will “pop” into your mind. Your non-conscious mind, having been given the task, has been working on it, and has found a route to present it to you.

This is also related to the process of handing a task to your non-conscious mind, such thinking of a problem as you go to sleep, and awakening with the solution. But that’s another whole thing. And, the better you and your non-conscious mind can get along, and the better the two of you are communicating, the better it can serve you. Remember, it’s looking out for you in every way that it can, as best it knows how. And when you operate in conformity with its activities, you become more integrated and more effective. And, generally, happier.

CHANGING YOUR MIND

The Non-conscious Mind cannot speak, but it can automatically issue feelings and thoughts. That’s what it does. So if you’ll speak (or write), paying close attention to the feelings and thought automatically arising as you do so, you’ll be carrying on a dialogue with your own non-conscious mind.

You can discover where it will automatically help you, and where it will automatically block you. And so knowing, you can choose your path so that it will help you, and you can also find ways to change some of those ‘automatic blocks’ into more useful habitual reactions.

And, so doing, you are changing your mind.

For the better.