This week I want to explore the idea of suggestion. Not long ago I met a business associate from Germany in Las Vegas. He loves magic so we decided to take in a magic show while we were there. I was asked to assist the magician by pretending to have lost my watch, a watch that he would find. I wondered, how many tricks are really not tricks but rather staged events? Now, I have studied and used hypnosis for over thirty years and I know of certain hypnotic tricks that are absolutely not staged. Was it group hypnosis, the power of suggestion, which led to the amazement that followed as this magician performed?
Hypnotic Suggestion
Speaking of hypnosis, I recently gave a lot of thought to an idea suggested by Richard Bach in his book, “Hypnotizing Maria.” Imagine that a stage hypnotist has hypnotized you. The experience will seem quite real even if it is a pure hallucination, negative or positive in nature. (A negative hallucination occurs when you fail to see what is there and a positive when you see what is not there). So imagine that you have been imprisoned in a room without doors. Further, imagine that the room is made of solid concrete like a bomb shelter or bunker and that the walls, floor and ceiling are several feet thick. You’re trapped inside this room without exits.
Okay—think about this for a moment. Perhaps you circle on the stage floor walking around the room that only you can see. The audience has been told that you believe that you are trapped in a solid concrete room. You touch the cold walls when the hypnotist suggests that you try to find a way out. They are hard. You push on them and find that they are not just cold and hard, but the surface is rough like a sidewalk. You kick the wall and hurt your foot. When prompted to by the hypnotist, you search for seams and find none. You begin to worry—how will you get out? What if the light disappears? Where is the light coming from? Fear begins to crawl over you.
Self-Imposed Belief
Okay—now imagine that you are in the audience. You are witnessing a hypnotized individual trapped in an imaginary room. That is, the barrier perceived as a concrete wall does not actually exist. The walled in subject is trapped only by their beliefs. From your perspective in the audience, it seems almost ridiculous that this self-imposed belief, this hallucination, this state of mind in hypnosis, could possibly be real. You laugh at the antics of the hypnotized as they become frantic to escape. Their antics grow ever more panicked. You laugh louder and harder.
Okay—now imagine that you are living in a world full of your own self-imposed limitations and you’re doing so right now—right this very minute! How many of these self-imposed walls have you been hypnotized to believe are real? Isn’t that what accepting a suggestion is—a state of hypnosis? How many suggestions have you accepted by the world around you, your peers, the media, etc. that have become your walls, your barriers?
Dehypnotizing
We live in a world where it seems that most seek to entrap us in this or that argument, as though they are our only choices. They are not! Perhaps we need to dehypnotize ourselves. Questioning everything we believe is one way to begin. I wrote Choices and Illusions to expose the extent of this programming and reveal some of our true alternatives. It is my hope that you will seek to separate the suggestion, especially the self-limiting negative suggestions, from the sincere and potentially true, for I am absolutely convinced that within everyone there exists a vast, yet largely untapped source, of energy and ability!
As always, thanks for the read and I appreciate your feedback.
Eldon Taylor
Provocative Enlightenment
NY Time Bestselling Author of Choices and Illusions
www.eldontaylor.com