Okay, this is a big shift away from politics.
I have been reading My Voice Will Go With You, a wonderful book by Sidney Rosen about Milton Erickson. Erickson was a psychiatrist who used hypnosis and trance in radically new ways. He died in 1980.
To Erickson hypnosis and trance means allowing the unconscious to help us live more fully, with all that we are capable of or already know and don't know it.
Unlike Freud, Erickson viewed the unconscious as helpful and wonderfully capable.
In this view, it is consciousness that is limited; the unconscious or what some call the "adaptive unconscious" is vast and is "in charge" of so much more of our life than we know.
Trance is learning to give the unconscious more leeway in our lives, learning from it, living with it, using the unconscious to help us have more happiness. To Erickson, to be fully aware was to be open to our conscious and our unconscious life both, as much as possible and at the same time.
That's counter-intuitive, at least to me. We equate "unconscious living" with "being asleep." We tend to want to live "consciously," to live while "awake."
In Erickson's world we can be intentionally unconscious, deliberately in a light trance so that we can allow the unconscious a more creative and intuitive role in our daily life. This is to say, we can encourage more awareness of the unconscious by entering into light trance. Doing so is becoming more aware, not less, more aware, say of when we are acting out patterns and routines without awareness. Trance states could well be a wonderful way to learn a language more quickly and efficiently.
Awareness and trance can be complementary. We can use trance to awaken our full awareness. Or we can be in a trance and be totally unaware.The unconscious can be our friend, our counsel, an enormous resource for daily life if only we will allow it to do so.
I
think Erickson's ideas offer a wonderful way of looking at the idea of acceptance.
If acceptance is treated as mainly something that we do consciously, we
get in trouble. Acceptance is learning to meet experience with with full awareness, with
our unconscious as well as our conscious life, It is often that our unconscious
can figure out what is going one when someone says something or does
something that is objectionable or disturbing to us. The unconscious
can help us select a response that is fitting and accurate and even amusing. Therapists
do this all the time.
Actually, many years ago, I consulted a hypnotherapist, Dr. Milton Kroger, in Beverly Hills and learned a lot from him, including the insight that I am easily hypnotized. Kroger and Erickson were contemporaries and both were founding members of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis.
A few days ago, at a meeting I attended, the noise from nearby tables really began to
interfere with my hearing. I wear two hearing aids and I couldn't hear over the noise. Others who have good hearing were having trouble too.
I became upset and miffed at being called to a meeting in which I couldn't fully participate. After all, i let everyone know about my hearing loss. I felt discriminated against; after all I once wrote a column for the local newspaper called, "Step-children of a lesser god," about the trials of being hard-of-hearing.
Finally I walked out the meeting with obvious exasperation, saying "I'm going for a walk."
It is upsetting when people who don't have hearing problems fail to make allowances for a quiet listening environment, or, when noise erupts, failing to act at least with sympathy and concern. But that's not always possible.
The meeting had been called by our priest and vicar, Fr. Seth Polley. He always asks people to speak up on my behalf and others, and also asks people not to talk over each other. But sometimes planning goes awry..
When it does, this is the time for me to remember, there will be another day, another time and to relax and choose a course of action calmly. What I should have done, what my unconscious was urging me to do, was to "accept the situation" by either "tuning out" and going into a light meditative state or trance, listening to what I could get and benefiting from it, or, as an alternative, simply quietly getting up and taking my book and leaving, without a fuss.
My unconscious was urging me to follow its wisdom to respond to the situation: easy does it. Sometimes you should raise hell; most times, you should grin and bear it.
I mostly did practice "easy does it" and that's a victory for living with my unconscious or what I also call my larger self. I did sit and go into a light trance for a while. I did leave and I drove home for an hour or so. Hooray for the unconscious.
But I also let resentment creep in and to keep me in a sour mood later on in the day. And that's never the right course. Instead, I could have "accepted" what was happening and made the best of it, even enjoyed it, remembering tomorrow is another day and another opportunity for living with all that I am, consciously and unconsciously.
Here is the strangest thing about encountering Rosen's book on Milton Erickson. I got this powerful feeling of reassurance as I read it, as if I was being urged to do this by that part of me, my unconscious, that I don't allow in often enough. I love stories and metaphor and anecdotes and this is a powerful part of Erickson's way of living and communicating. Erickson's view of the world is so human, so optimistic, and so oriented toward hope and change, I am surprised that I have to rediscover him, again and again.
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