Gurdjieffian Hypnotherapy
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Take your first step to deep change and healing
by calling Allan today.
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Please click on the button to the right
if you want to learn more about the
conventional view of hypnosis.
We Live in a World of Hypnotic Illusions

(Please note that double quotation marks "..." will be used when quoting GI Gurdjieff).
Although
we think we are 'awake' we really spend most of our lives in a hypnotic
subjective dream-like state George Gurdjieff called "waking-sleep".
As
children we were indoctrinated into this state when we were taught to
perceive fantasies, illusions and "artificial perceptions" as reality.
We
eventually outgrow some, such as the belief in Santa Claus, while
others, especially those that form around language, become so powerful
we hold them to be real.
Many of us, for instance, believe that
imaginary lines drawn on the ground and deep in the middle of bodies of
water are so real we would be willing to kill and die for them.
Something that the birds and fish who cross these imaginary lines (known
as borders) would find strange.

For example, we are not our name. It was a fiction invented by our parents and heartily supported by bureaucrats and government officials. And even though we may be quite fond of it, and it is printed on our birth certificate and other forms of ID, it is not 'us' but just an invented label.
Some of these labels take on a life of their own such as the label that we are shy, anxious or depressed. And so we filter out those times, those 'exceptions' when we effortlessly chatted with strangers, or felt safe, or experienced one of those of genuine moments of happiness that occur to all of us.
Even the most depressed person is not depressed
24-hours a day. No one is depressed when they are sleeping or startled
or something grabs their attention. They just 'believe' they are always
depressed and do not question this label.
The source of this problem can be traced back to when
we were small infants. Somehow the process of socialization,
particularly the acquisition of language, caused what George Gurdjieff
called our "being-consciousness" to be split into two parts which now
have "nothing in common with each other." Parts we now call our
conscious and subconscious.
Hypnosis and the Hypnotic State
Although we spend most of our waking lives in the hypnotic dream-like
state of waking-sleep, we only use the word 'hypnosis' in a very
specific context, which, according to George Gurdjieff is when this
process occurs in an accelerated way and the results are concentrated.
And
unlike our normal dream-like state, this "acceleratedly concentratedly"
version is one of the main tools we can use to break free from the
delusions, contradictions, and dark, distorted impulses that haunt and
fracture all of us and prevent us from living the life we could be
living.
As George Gurdjieff repeated many times; we
lack any real internal unity and are filled with a mass of contradictory
impulses. We may decide to eat good nutritious foods one day and
suddenly give in to those darker impulses to pig-out on junk food the
next. One part may want to drink and another to stay sober.

This
is because we don't have any real 'will' or the ability to 'do'. Things
more or less just 'happen' to us because underneath it all we are
really fractured and divided. And although we might point to that one
moment when we really did have willpower, we conveniently ignore all of
those other, far more numerous times when it was so obvious we did not.
But then we have "buffers" or mechanisms that prevent us from seeing all
of these contradictions. Otherwise we would go insane.
George
Gurdjieff says that these two consciousnesses, the false one, which we
call our conscious mind, and the true one which we call our
subconscious, have different "tempos" or kinds "of blood circulation".
This
becomes obvious if you have ever seen someone drift into a deep trance
because their breathing deepens and slows. The muscles in their face
flatten and both sides of the face become more symmetrical. Blood also
flows more easily to the surface of their skin making them more flushed.
You can even see this change when someone is sleeping and their
subconscious is in charge.
The Making of the Conscious Mind

According to George Gurdjieff we are not born this way. Babies and
small infants do not have a conscious mind or the part that is created
by what he calls "artificial perceptions". He says that our whole
approach to child-rearing and educating our youth is unintentionally
"maleficent" because it isolates the subconscious so that it stays in a
primitive and undeveloped form.
This means some of the most
sacred "being-impulses" that exist in our subconscious, remain in a
primitive, undeveloped form: particularly our conscience. Which is one
reason this world is so messed up.
This also gives rise to things
such as our ego and "Mr. Self Love" and "Madame Vanity", which contrary
to what many believe are not bad or evil. They are really "sentinels"
that are there for our protection, because that deeper part, which
should have been cultivated and developed, is unable to protect us from
stray influences and suggestions. So they stick up for us and stand in
the way and prevent suggestions from entering us, even if those
suggestions are really beneficial.
Conventional hypnotists, not
quite understanding this, have simply labelled this defence mechanism
the 'critical factor of the conscious mind' as if labelling it explains
it and tells them all they need to know.
Now one of the keys to
understanding why this all happens lies in what George Gurdjieff calls
"mentation by thought" and "mentation by form". He says that animals are
capable of mentation by form, or thinking by form, whereas mentation by
thought, or thinking by thought is uniquely human. And the main thing
that distinguishes human from animal thought is words and language.
Some
have even simplified this and talk about how we can think in words or
pictures. But this is to ignore our other senses because mentation by
form involves thinking by images, non-linguistic sounds, smells, tastes
and sensations.

Many spiritual and mystical traditions have some latent understanding of this when they tell us to clear our minds and focus on our breathing – in other words, to turn off the incessant chatter of words that normally circle round and round in our brain from the moment we wake up to when we go back to sleep. That running commentary that some call the 'narrator'. Some even recognize the hypnotic allure of words and how it is almost impossible for most people to turn off this stream of verbiage and so they encourage us to use simple mantras or phrases to restrain and control it.
This also partly explains the power of affirmations. They bind the conscious mind in a straight-jacket and allow something to seep inwards and something deeper to grow.

George Gurdjieff says that
we fail our children by focusing our education on the training and
development of the conscious mind, on words and language and other
"artificial perceptions". As a child, I spent a lot of time being taught
the history of Canada, without ever realizing that 'Canada' is one of
these "artificial perceptions" and is a mental construct and only exists
in the mind of human beings and nowhere else in the universe.
He
says that words are "purely peculiarly-subjective" and have no real
connection with those deeper more important parts of our being. When I
talk of my 'world' and you talk of your 'world' we are probably talking
about two entirely different things. Especially when we seem to agree.
Unfortunately
this "false consciousness" has now become our "autocratic ruler" and it
messes us up and causes such disharmony and fragmentation within us -
like the ignorant and superstitious servant who usurped the master's
throne.
The Power of Hypnotherapy

As a result, the real power of hypnosis lies in the fact it reverses
this aberration. By changing the tempo of our blood circulation - the
conscious mind, the part that rules us, but should really be our servant
- is temporarily suspended or restrained. It does not disappear, but
slips into to the background while the subconscious is empowered and
brought to the forefront.
George Gurdjieff then says to
bring about change, the hypnotist (and this is something conventional
hypnotists do – though in a muddled and confused way) should engage in
some type of polarity work, or use of opposites, and utilize the fact
that this concentrated state allows for an "accelerated change".
George
Gurdjieff never made things easy for his students. He wanted us to
struggle to extract meaning and so he made sure he never spoon-fed it to
us. And so in his deliberately complex way he phrased this:
"[T]hen
indeed my boy, if the crystallization of data for engendering in that
localization an idea of something opposite to that which has already
arisen in them and somehow become fixed, is assisted in a corresponding
manner, and if moreover the actions evoked by this idea are directed
upon a disharmonized part of the planetary body, an accelerated change
in it possible."
Or to phrase this in a more
understandable way: we need to conjure up a positive to cancel a
negative. So part of the solution for someone who has problems with
anger involves conjuring up a memory of feeling love and acceptance,
while chronic despair and hopelessness are counteracted with joy and
hope.
Of course, this simplified understanding
ignores the layers of complexity that should be teased out of this
quotation by those who seek to practice hypnosis. This is because if the
original anger arose from a belief and we attempt to counter it with a
feeling, we are not really summoning the opposite. This is why a deeper
understanding of Gurdjieffian Hypnotherapy is an invaluable tool in any
hypnotist's arsenal.
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