Transpersonal Hypnotherapy / NLP

by Jack Elias, CHT

     My approach to hypnotherapy is transpersonal in the sense that I think the client's goal, whether she realizes it or not "consciously," is to be whole and at peace with herself, moment by moment, in any and all situations. Regardless of the "presenting problem," the "cure" will ultimately only be satisfying if it is rooted in and merely an expression of, this wholeness and peacefulness.

• Exploring attaining this wholeness and peace is what this therapy is about.
• What constitutes this wholeness and peacefulness? 
• Where is it?
• How do we create it or find it?
• Do we create it or find it?
• Did (does) it create us; does it find us?

Contemplation of this sort, in order to be passionate and curious, has to be free of any standard of success regarding the contemplation. You have to be free of fear or hope that you will or will not be successful. You have to be doing it for the sake of learning...learning for its own sake...discovering that even so-called success or failure are merely labels for certain kinds of learning whose fundamental value lies beyond these conditioned judgments. Learning is not something you do with your head; it is a whole body / being process. 

To be fully engaged in the process of learning is to be fully alive moment by moment. To understand that, is to experience it -- to experience being fully alive is the ultimate goal of this therapy. To experience it is to be awake from all forms of hypnosis. 

   Hypnotic processes are redundant. It is important to recognize that almost any therapeutic process partakes of redundancy. Learning how to appreciate and work within this atmosphere of redundancy is one of the most important principles of this course. 
You do not have to put people in trance -- they already are in trance. Their problems are the fruit born of their trances. You can use standard hypnotic processes, which you will learn in this course, in the same way that poisons are used in proper fashions to make medicines. But I want you to do that alchemy with the greater viewpoint of recognizing that the goal is not to become established in comfortable trances, but to be free of trances - which is to be present, at ease, and free of fear - whole and peaceful.

This course will blend the nuts and bolts of learning hypnotic processes for therapeutic and clinical uses with a dance of metaphors and perspectives and challenges to wake you up from your own limiting trances. Learning how to awaken from your own trances is the best way to learn how to help your clients awaken from theirs and it generates an essential compassion for yourself and your client. 

Humility will also arise from genuine wakefulness - humility in renewed appreciation of the sacredness and mystery of life, your life and regarding your work as therapists, humility in honoring your clients' efforts to rediscover that same sacredness in their lives.
If you can contact, cultivate, and maintain an active sense of compassion and humility, moment by moment, situation by situation, these qualities will be your protectors and guides -- magical spiritual powers worthy of attainment.
This course is my attempt to make the above statements understandable in a way that is useful and transformative - not merely intellectual.

The objective of this approach is to awaken in students a living, moment by moment heartfelt sensitivity to the limitations of the thinking mind as supporter and director of our lives. Developing this sensitivity softens the mind:
 

• When the mind is softened, concepts and preconceived ideas about who we are and what is going on become transparent.
• When our ideas become transparent, the light of the ever-present brilliance of our life force can literally be seen as well as felt in our bodies. (This course is based on the presumption of inherent, basic purity and goodness of our life force, and its basic identity with Source, God - or whatever term one may choose to point at the ineffable.)
• When our ideas become transparent, we are not limited by habitual patterns of behavior which are maintained by opaque, i.e., fixed, solid ideas about who we are and what is going on, moment by moment, in our lives. We will learn that such fixed ideas are hypnotic trance states, most commonly experienced as ordinary waking consciousness.
• When we are not so limited, the resulting softness of mind constantly provides the opportunity for spontaneity to arise and spontaneity is the highest expression of freedom and appropriateness, moment by moment, in any situation, including the so-called therapeutic situation. 

To what degree do you believe it about yourself?

There is no experience without ideas. The ideas that define experience, when they short circuit the spontaneous play of our energies, become restricting "truths" (trance truths) for us and about us. They are no longer models over which we have power as creators, but they have power over us as our "definers."
This is what I view as hypnosis -- the fundamental underlying hypnosis that is the nature of the thinking mind in its relationship to the inherent spontaneity and purity of our being:

The fixating thinking mind is the Great Hypnotizer of us all!

Without an awareness of this fundamental hypnosis, one might only play the game of self-improvement. One would be doing hypnosis, therapy, or whatever, within the realm of the goals defined by fixating thinking mind. One would be improving the self one thinks one is, attempting to secure peace and happiness without ever noticing that living in the worlds of the fixating thinking mind (or living in the world as defined by the fixating thinking mind, on a moment by moment basis) is always a trap, always an illusion, however beautiful. 

In the person acting as therapist, this comes across as a certain mechanicalness and formality in relating to the client, the skills, and the techniques of therapy. There is a lack of heart, a lack of a warm living quality to what is being communicated. One focus in this course is to dissolve the dominance of the fixating thinking mind in the therapist -- to free her from this kind of limiting trance state. 

Clients generally come to therapists to modify their experience more pleasantly. Therapists who believe in the mind, who are hypnotized by the mind, will agree with this idea/model of experience that such modifications are the goal. As graduates of this course, I hope you will understand that the happiness sought lies beyond the mind, beyond any ‘idea of self’ getting happier. Hopefully you will learn to recognize THAT as apparent FACT not merely as idea.
It is my contention that those who believe in the mind and apparently have achieved a great deal of happiness seemingly by following the dictates of the mind, still are experiencing the happiness beyond the mind as it is identified by and usurped by the mind as its own accomplishment. This tendency, like taking credit for a sunny day, does make it hard to identify happiness, and the source of happiness, for what it is.

We do not create happiness through modifications of our lives. Our being is inherently happy, and, through our attempts at self-improvement, we may create gaps in our mind-trance through which we experience the happiness of our innate purity. As long as we identify these experiences as the product of the mind, the product and creation of our efforts, we will miss the fullest appreciation of our lives and ourselves.

The operative conviction is that this already happy state exists within us in its fullness and shines through our trances, rather than being produced by the modification of our trances. In my opinion it is the central vision of a truly transpersonal therapist, and, more than just a vision or ideal, it is a working understanding. This view is central to the orientation of this course.

Excerpted with permission of the author from 'Finding True Magic' by Jack Elias, Copyright 1996, All Rights Reserved.