Death, Acceptance and Grace
(The Opportunity for the Reconciliation of the Shadow in Dying and Bereavement) When a loved one is dying or has died, our defenses to all of the complicated aspects of our relationship with that person are often shaken. If we are lucky, we are less able to keep in place all the unconscious agreements with that person and we are afforded a time to explore those agreements and how they affect our ability to be honest with ourselves. To deepen this process, it is often helpful to use hypnosis and its ability to further weaken the conscious defenses we have to death in order to more fully understand ourselves.
This part of the grieving process, this deeper exploration of the meaning of how death highlights these hidden places in our relationships, is often masked by the homilies of organized religion, the need to save face in front of family members, and the urging by well-meaning friends to just get on with our lives. Even if we find we are able to explore these places, we rarely have the luxury of doing so with the person who is dying.
The pain of exposing these issues can be too overwhelming to someone who has already entered into the struggle between the inevitability of dying and desire to live. However, if the person can perceive the enormous benefit of exploring these unconscious agreements with someone who is willing to help and with the help of tools such as hypnosis, the dying process can become much less of a struggle. This is because the desire to live can often serve as a mask for the desire to resolve and understand the issues we have avoided before dying.
If one of the reasons we decide to incarnate is to make explicit as much of the self as possible, it is hard to die a "good death" when the process of revealing all we have tried to avoid has not been addressed as fully as possible. During life, especially one lived within the confines of the extremely material culture of the west, we tend to indulge in every activity possible to keep us from our task. This task is to fully explore all the aspects of the self we have set out to explore in this particular incarnation.
One of the reasons we avoid doing this is the fear of the contents of what Carl Jung calls "the shadow." All of our activities and the nature of our lives, is of course, intimately connected with this part of ourselves which we would prefer to believe is not there at all. We can choose to undertake the process of flushing out the contents of this shadow side through the use of hypnosis without some pressing external event such as death acting as the trigger. But most people do not want to be drawn into this task because we don't realize how important it is or that it is even a task to be undertaken at all. We may only sense how insecure we feel when we allow ourselves to pause in the construction of the edifice of the external personality. The fear of actually feeling the devastation of the disconnection with the self through the denial of the contents of the shadow is usually avoided until something like death asserts and unequivocally defines the extent of the disconnection.
So death has a way of showing us the futility of our efforts to create a self which is divorced from whatever we have relegated to the shadow - be it a sense of unworthiness, of unacceptability, or whatever. Death has the effect of bringing all of our justifications and "drivenness" to create a life free of the contents of the shadow to a halt. When the machinery of the creation of the false self which is created to indulge in this pursuit can no longer continue in the face of the truth and honesty of death, it is a perfect time to begin exploration of why we felt we needed to relegate parts of ourselves from open and direct interaction with life.
If, with the encouragement of the presence of death, people who are intimate with one another allow themselves to find they are living double lives with each other, they can integrate the two paths into a fully explicit relationship which releases both parties - to death or to life. In the face of the honesty of death we often find that one life of the relationship is based on the direct interaction of the contents of the shadow and one life of the relationship is based on the interaction of the external, fabricated personalities. The latter is, as we have seen, predicated on the contents of the shadow anyway.
This exploration, in a way, just highlights the way in which the contents of the shadow have been bent, almost as light through a prism, to manifest in the forms of the external personality. By integrating the images created by avoiding the contents of the shadow with the actual contents of shadow on all levels - physical, mental, emotional and spiritual, tremendous growth and understanding occurs. Usually, this type of exploration needs to be done in hypnosis because even in the compelling presence of death, fear and the defenses it tends to engender can still be active.
The understandings which arise from this process can come from not only the exploration of the relationship, but from the ways in which the relationship highlights the relationship we have with ourselves. This latter relationship is, in fact, the most important one, because this is the relationship which does, in fact, survive death.
This is why it is possible to undertake the exploration of the shadow within ourselves and the relationship with another even if only one party of the relationship is ready or able to do this exploration. This is because all external relationships are really only the externalization of the relationship we have with ourselves.
If it is true that we take with us from one life to the next all the unresolved issues around our relationship with ourselves, it is important to understand the dynamics in which we reject ourselves. It is also important to understand exactly what it is about ourselves that we are rejecting. This information can be most readily highlighted in our external relationships with others and the unconscious agreements they are predicated upon.
Ideally, the task of rediscovering this information can be undertaken directly with the person or persons involved, but it is rare that everyone who is party to a relationship is willing or able to explore the relationship at this level at the same time. This is especially true when all the fears we have of death are insistently present due to its impending approach.
As we have seen, if we are lucky, our defenses to this level of exploration are shaken with the imminence of death. But it is equally likely that we may decide to start reconstruction of our defenses in an effort to keep death and all that it reveals at bay. If someone chooses this latter course, there is nothing to do but wait until they are ready or until they feel safe enough to undertake the task. Unless we feel safe in undertaking this task it is not possible to explore honestly the contents of the relationship which have been held "underground" but which, as we have said before, are the actual basis of the relationship.
So even if the person who is dying is unable to undertake this task, or if the person we have a relationship with has already died, we can still explore this territory either alone, or, more likely, with the help of a skilled counselor. Naturally, I have found that hypnosis is an excellent vehicle to use in the exploration of this inner terrain. And I have found that people who use this tool at the moment of bereavement or impending death are able to move quickly and effectively to understand and embrace the parts of themselves that death has forced them to review.
Sometimes, just watching the struggle that a loved one goes through in trying to maintain the false mask of the personality designed to hide the contents of the shadow in the face of death is all the encouragement we need to do this work before the time of our own death. Even if we allow the mechanisms of our false self to prevent us from having peace in life, we are generally willing to enter into an exploration of that which is driving the mechanism of the false self in order to at least attempt a peaceful death. The alternative is just too painful.
If we can meet the honesty of death with the honesty of the self, we may find that the struggle to let our loved one die is the same as our struggle to allow our false self die. This involves embracing all the aspects of ourselves, including the shadow's contents. The self longs to know itself in all its aspects - even those aspects which we feel we have to reject in ourselves.
We all have different reasons and circumstances which bring us to the decision to relegate certain aspects of the self to the shadow. And every person relegates different qualities of the self to the shadow. Generally speaking, however, these decisions are based on the assumption of "unacceptableness" of those qualities - whether these qualities were initially unaccepted by the parent, schoolmates, personalities in other parts of the psyche such as in past lives or dreams - we ourselves inevitably become the main arbiter of self-rejection.
By coming to terms with the nature of how we have rejected ourselves, we can become more open to the aspects of our relationship with our dying or dead loved one. In doing this inner work we can open ourselves to the integration of the unconscious aspects of our relationship to the other.
The struggle of the individual to die or our struggle to let that person die, can be alleviated as the dissonance between the two levels of reality within the relationship is resolved. So even if the person who is dying is unable to fully participate in this process, we can bring the help of our own realizations gained from our own inner exploration to their dying process. This is also true in relation to someone who has already died; by undertaking this path of inner understanding, we can release our loved one to death fully and honestly. The reconciliation of the contents of the shadow both within ourselves and within our relationships with our dying or dead loved ones through the understanding of the nature of that which we have kept hidden is a gift we can give ourselves and each other.
But even when we are unable or unwilling to explore ourselves and our relationships at this deep level in order to die as consciously as possible, the grace of death and its utter acceptance of who we are wherever we are in our self-understanding is a constant learning. My work with the dying through the Zen Hospice Project has helped me see how the dynamics I have described above either play out or remain unaddressed in many different situations. It has also given me a glimpse of the possibilities contained within death and the importance of being able to meet them as fully and consciously as possible.
It was a surprise to me to realize that most of the people who are at the hospice - both those who were dying and those who are close to them - have little or no interest in doing the work described above which would help death be as peaceful as possible. Most of the patients spend a lot of time smoking. One patient spent his entire monthly allowance on 3 cartons of cigarettes although it was clear to everyone - and must have been clear to him - that he would not live long enough to smoke all of them. He did try, though, and he spent his last days coughing and smoking, his skin turning gray and his eyes sinking ever more deeply into their sockets. Others spend a lot of time watching TV, but not really paying attention to it. Few of them read. Most just sit and stare into space.
Many of the patients are in a lot of pain and receive morphine which kills the pain, but does not allow them many of the options pain-free people have in choosing how they spend their time. So even if they were to choose to undertake resolution in their relationship and with others, the drugs often preclude such choices. Some who are not on heavy pain medication are agitated, but are reluctant to look into the root causes of their agitation.
I have spent some time at the bedside of actively dying patients who have spent their last days smoking or watching TV. The grace of death is still extended to them even without the work on understanding themselves and their relationships. As I sit in the room and watch their chests heave and their eyes roll, I feel very privileged to be there with them because of the utter acceptance death has of every person.
The grace of death lies partially in the fact that people are their most authentic selves as they are dying - with all of their pain and worry and fear. Often at the very end, all of the masquerade of the false self is stripped away and there is just the breath and the spirit in the room. The presence of spirit and energy which makes itself so well known to me at these times tells me that although the work of understanding and accepting the self at the deepest levels may not be done by many, the utter acceptance of the entire individual, shadow and all, is death's greatest gift. Often, even though the person has not come to peace with his life, death offers a clear and honest peace, accepting the person at whatever place he has arrived at through his living.
I remember Michael, who was brought in agitated and terrified from a tenement hotel room. He had not eaten, bathed, or moved for weeks before he was found. Because he could no longer speak, I had no way to communicate with him through words. I imagine he had not been able to do a lot of clear-minded self-exploration in those last weeks, and as a junkie, it is unlikely that he had spent much time in understanding his inner world before that. He was so close to death that there were no veils between himself and his addiction and that which lay beyond it. At the very end, even the terror and agitation faded away as death extended its unequivocal acceptance of him. It occurred to me as I sat with his body afterwards that his death had accepted all of the parts of himself that he had tried to reject through addiction and neglect in his life. I wonder how his experience of his death would have been different had he had the opportunity to do the work in order to consciously understand the significance of this fact.
I also remember John, whose body and face was horribly twisted as a result of a stroke. He spoke with difficulty and was always full of stories of how he was going to sue the guy who had "done this to me." His bitterness was almost illustrated in the contortions of his body. As he died, his limbs became limber and straight and long and smooth, as his rejection of his life faded into the death's acceptance of him. Again, death had accepted someone and all the ways he had twisted away from his true nature. It would have been wonderful if he had been present enough with his authentic self to fully comprehend and accept the magnitude of this grace of acceptance.
I also remember Juan , who had been sure he would cure himself of his cancer and was furious when he realized he had been deluding himself. He died a painful, self-involved death, agonizing with every breath because of the anger he had at God for not saving him. When he was still well enough to step out of the delusions of rescue, he had not taken the opportunity to see what it was within himself he felt he needed to be rescued from. I wonder if he had been able to stop distracting himself from peering into the shadow by putting his energy into an impossible rescue if his death could have been easier. He rejected death as strongly as he rejected himself yet death was, again, all-accepting.
For those who are left behind, the possibility of resolving at least some of the issues of their relationship with the person who has died as well as how this relationship reflects on their relationship with themselves opens and closes without many of them taking the opportunity to embark on the deeper exploration contained within the presence of death.
Even if we are willing to explore the contents of that which we have disconnected from, we often do not know how to begin. There is little in western culture which would support and guide us should we choose this path. Without the help of hypnosis or some other powerful path to the self, we wind up putting the exploration of the shadow on hold until some cataclysmic event like the death of a loved one or the realization of the imminence of our own death makes a dent in the mirage of our life.
Life is so short. We must enter into every experience completely - including the experience of our pain in confronting that which we have relegated to the shadow. There is no hiding from it, and if we cannot face it in life with our faculties more available to us, our deaths can become nightmares. Or worse, our deaths can become a moment of grace we are unable to accept and embrace because we have not been able to accept ourselves. If death truly is a passage from one level of consciousness to another - just as birth is a passage into this level of consciousness - we must use our life to prepare as best we can for each transition.
The goal of this work is the goal of all of the self-transformative work we do in hypnosis: to make all the parts of the self explicit and fully expressed. The parts of ourselves which we do not allow to be expressed fully can often be found in the unconscious agreements we have with others, and ultimately, in the unconscious agreement with ourselves to keep parts of ourselves hidden. In the absence of any compelling force, such as death, to do otherwise, unconscious agreements take on a life of their own.
The choices that people have to make when they are given a terminal diagnosis are wrenching. The loss of a loved one or the immanent loss of a loved one is the most difficult experience many of us pass through. And it is just in that moment of the raw experience of pain that we have the easiest access to that pain we carry within ourselves and the best opportunity to resolve and integrate that which we relegate to the shadow with the full experience of the self. If we can allow ourselves the kindness to explore our relationships with others and ourselves we may be able to accept ourselves with the same grace that death grants us.
Opening the Doors to the Self - Dreams
Widening our definitions of reality to include phenomena which are regularly perceived by the unconscious can help us find the path back to the self at a soul level. This is true even if these phenomena are discounted by the conscious mind. Dreams provide a valuable perspective on this journey and their messages are available to us on a regular basis. In order to decipher those messages, we must allow the defenses of the conscious mind to rest . This allows us to use its acuity to organize the information we are receiving in dreams. By using hypnosis to gain access to dream images generated during sleep, we can perceive that we are actually developing a relationship with profound and utterly personal guidance. Dream images become reports on our evolution toward understanding and reuniting with ourselves at a soul level. They point out areas where we are blocked in that journey and they mark breakthroughs in our efforts to know ourselves more completely.
I use dreams as a door to the psyche when I am working with people who are fully involved in the process of transformation. I find them to be one of the most direct routes into core issues. They quickly highlight the anatomy of the separation from the self at a soul level. There are many approaches to deciphering the meaning of dreams. Some of the most effective begin with returning to that state just between waking and dreaming through hypnosis. Once one has arrived at this state, which Robert Bosnak very descriptively calls, 'the littoral zone' (like the shoreline, it is place between two very different modes of existence), the work can begin. In hypnosis, I ask the client to re-tell the dream he has just told me in a conscious state. Inevitably, more details emerge in the retelling, and new connections are made between the patterns in the dream.
I will relate a dream here to refer to later in order to demonstrate the various methods one can use the images in the dream. These methods help bridge the gulf which separates us from our authentic experience of ourselves. I will refer to this dream at different points and use its elements as examples of ways to understand a dream at different levels. This dream was dreamt by someone who, during our initial lengthy interview, never mentioned her family of origin. She never mentioned the way her parents had interfered with her ability to contact herself at a soul level because she was completely unconscious to the way they contributed to her sense of dis-ease. She came to me because she just felt something was amiss and because she had vague feeling of fear. After the initial interview, I had few clues as to where to begin based on the information she had given me. This information mainly circled around, but never fully touched, this feeling of vague anxiety. Everything she related to me seemed relatively rosy. Even though I can usually intuit the message behind the words, I did not guess the degree of discomfort which lay behind her competent, sweet demeanor.
The dream: She dreamed she was moving into a new house in a far away land with jungle all around it. The person who had her father's job before him had left the family the house. She found an arbor which she imagined planting beautiful vines on, but her mother told her that this was a very bad idea and that she had different plans for the place. She walked around the yard and beautiful women emerged from the jungle. One took a ceramic heart from under her petticoat and handed it to her. She noticed it was broken. Her father was furious that she had accepted the gift, saying, "You don't know what it is, it could be a work order to go work in a far away city which would be terrible." At that, she imagined going away and working in a far away city and it did not seem so bad. She fell asleep in the arbor that her mother had decorated her way and awoke to find a crocodile emerging from the jungle, ready to attack her. She ran inside and jumped on a table. Her mother jumped on a different table. She was reaching down to bring her beloved dog up on the table with her when the crocodile's jaw snapped shut. She awoke in a state of terrible fear.
Sometimes, the information contained within the images or patterns will be very explicit and easy to see. In the dream above, the broken ceramic heart could not have been more obvious as a statement about her state. When I asked her how she felt about being handed this broken heart, she was able to deeply access the extent to which her own heart had been broken. I asked her to focus on the feeling in her own heart by asking her to enter into the ceramic heart. I asked her to "become" the ceramic heart. From this point of view, I asked her to describe the levels of sensation of being of that heart. As a result, we arrived at a scene of severe parental abuse in waking life. This had occurred at a very early age and she had completely blocked the experience from her memory. This was the beginning of the journey to discover why she had this vague feeling that "things were amiss."
This idea of becoming an object or a person in the dream is borrowed from Gestalt therapy, but it takes this idea one step further. In that system, it is a powerful technique for gaining information about one's projections about one's identity onto objects or people in the environment. But all the information is still reflected back on the identity which ultimately needs to change in order for true growth to occur. No doubt, there is much useful information which can be gained from this type of exercise. However, if the object of this type of work is to grow as completely as possible into one's native sense of self without defenses, projections from the false self become meaningless. If the work is successful, there is no longer the identity of the false self to reflect back on. This is because, hopefully, our identity changes from moment to moment as we rearrange our sense of self to be in fuller alignment with ourselves at a soul level. There is really no point in augmenting perceptions of that identity which is only useful insofar as it highlights the degree of separation we are experiencing from ourselves at a soul level.
But by actually transforming our identity into the object or person through hypnotic suggestion and guided imagery, we can have an actual experience of a new identity. This is because we leave our identity of the false self and its defenses behind. This must happen if we are to step outside the traps and walls we have created for ourselves - for whatever reason. This is because these walls tend to limit the breadth of the experience of the native self. This process is especially effective if the transformation of identity is that into the object or person or image which is a product of our own subconscious. There is no denying its reality, and there is no denying the information gained from this exercise.
Sometimes the images are coded in such a way as to need some deciphering. It was clear to her that she would be sad that her dog had died. But by entering into the image of the dog through feeling, another level was revealed. This had a much more profound effect on her self-understanding. When I asked her how she felt about the dog, she said he was her constant companion and that she loved him more than anything else alive. She said that he was 'like a part of me.' By returning to the moment of losing him, and using the feeling this produced as an affect bridge, she was able to touch another situation where her mother was, by her deed and words, killing a part of her. She was able to experience this death in an undefended way. Therefore she was able to understand the origin of the pain of separation from herself which her mother had engendered. By allowing herself to explore the anatomy of this separation in dream images she was able to explore all of the places this pain of separation from herself affected. This allowed her to touch her own life force again. This level of self-understanding could not be reached simply by talking about the psychodynamics of her anxiety. This is because 1). the entire reality of this separation is unknowable at that level since the defenses of the conscious mind have necessarily been tightly kept in place and 2). even if this reality were hinted at through psychodynamic conversation and dialogue they would provide few mechanisms to shift away from the old paradigm.
The technique of using an affect bridge - that is, connecting situations, times or places through the common emotion they share - is used by many hypnotherapists. This is usually used to travel from a conscious state to an unconscious state. It is a very effective way to access information which is hidden to the conscious mind. The conscious mind generally tends to categorize events chronologically or through "rational connection." For example, it might state: "that brown dog looks like the brown dog I had when I was six who was run over by a car." In that statement, rational or logical connection accomplishes what it often does: it leaves out emotional color as a protective device. An affect bridge might connect the following statement to a set of core issues around sadness. By translating "When I wear that brown sweater, I feel sad" to "The brown color of the sweater brings me back to the moment my dog was run over. It connects me to the pain I felt but would not let myself express because my father was there. My father never let me cry, and there is a well of sadness which has been unexpressed all these years." The only difference in the actual clinical situation would be that these latter statements would only emerge after the emotional release the contact with sadness engenders. Usually, this can only occur when the sadness is encountered without the defenses of the conscious mind. This emotional release would most likely connect to other emotions behind the sadness. And so the journey to self at a soul level reveals itself at deeper and deeper levels.
This way of using an affect bridge, or emotional release, to travel from a non-conscious state to a conscious state is even more powerful than using it in the reverse direction, which is more common. This is because it circumvents even very tightly-held defenses; it allows us to come in the "back door" of conscious experience. I am quite sure that if this person had been working in conventional talk therapy, it would have taken months, if not years, to access the information we were able to touch in a few sessions. This is because her conscious defenses were necessarily, because of the deeply-held pain, so well polished. In a psychodynamic situation, the dialogue about the sweater could have easily stayed at the level of interaction we have when talking about the weather.
Another technique similar to the affect bridge in connecting dream images to the experience of the larger self is the body sensation or reaction bridge. Here, the physical reactions present themselves spontaneously without the introductory aspect emotional response provides. Often, the physical reaction will lead back to the emotion, rather than vice versa as with the affect bridge. Many talk therapies overlook the wisdom which is held in the body, believing that the mind is the only place where information about emotional imbalance can be obtained. I have found that the body is, first and foremost, a field of integration of experience. By listening to physical symptoms, we can uncover experience we once thought lost to us. The conscious mind cannot erase that which the body experiences. It may try to ignore it, but information remains accessible simply by opening to physical reactions or sensations.
Many times, dreams will allow us to enter into fully visceral experiences of often-negative emotions. We would never allow ourselves to experience these with our conscious defenses in place. In this dream, she woke up in terror. In waking life, she never allows herself to experience this level of fear. It would be too overwhelming to her self-reliant false self, which she needs because she has found no other way to deal with the terror she holds within her. The dream can produce emotions in us which we don't allow ourselves to acknowledge in a waking state. These unexpressed emotions are the building blocks of the walls we use to separate ourselves from experience at a soul level. The dream images manage to bring us back into connection at this level while the false self is literally sleeping. This allows us to explore and integrate them into a larger, more balanced sense of self.
On the one hand, the types of coping mechanisms which are sleeping while the dreams weave their messages are absolutely imperative. They allow us to maintain sanity in an insane situation. For example, children who are subjected to constant abuse of any kind by their family dynamics cannot afford the luxury of being fully conscious of the pain the abuse is producing within them. However, once the "insane" situation is over, once the child has grown so he can begin to operate outside of the sphere of the family dynamic, it is important to allow a shift. This shift must occur in the coping mechanisms or defenses which were created to deal with the dynamic of the "insane" situation. This allows us to maintain a clear channel of information streaming in from the new circumstances in which we find ourselves. If there is no shift, we are unable to clearly understand new information. This is because we are constantly cataloguing our experience through our defense mechanisms to past situations rather than perceiving new information objectively. The defense mechanisms must also shift in order for us to maintain clear contact with the self we are trying to preserve by creating them in the first place.
Unfortunately, this dissolution of the coping mechanism does not always occur spontaneously when the situation it evolved in does. All too often, it tends to take on a life of its own. We find ourselves creating layer after layer of karmic involvement in our attempt to contact the emotions which the coping mechanism just as actively continues to keep us from experiencing. Unless these emotions are allowed their true and authentic experience, we are drawn further and further away from the possibility of a direct and authentic communication with ourselves at a soul level.
In this case, by gently bringing the dreamer back into the full visceral experience of terror in hypnosis, she was able to unravel a whole series of events where this terror had crippled her ability to cope. By reliving the genesis of the crippling terror, she was able to begin to, figuratively, walk again. The dream allowed her the opportunity to heal which her conscious defenses could not understand or allow.
There are at least two general categories of images or symbols which emerge in dreams which provide information at different levels of understanding. These two categories are archetypal images and personally-understood symbols. The term, archetype, was coined by Jung to describe the same images which he found recurring again and again in different patients' dream lives. These images often refer to realities which are present at the soul level which all people share, which he calls the collective unconscious. Jung points to archetypal images as containers of vast amounts of information. These images span the realm of the collective unconscious of which dreams are but one emergent phenomenon. Because they are shared, archetypal images can be read from person to person and dream to dream in the same way. Personally-understood images are only relevant in their relationship to the personal meaning of the symbol within the person's own psyche. Images regularly cross the boundaries of these two categories. Nonetheless it is important to keep this possible distinction in mind.
The function of archetypal images contrasts with the function of more personally-understood images. I have found that when archetypal images emerge, they are indicative of a major shift in consciousness. The more personally-understood images can also function in this way, but generally, they deal with the understanding of ourselves at a more quotidian level. Personally-understood images can be compared in their function with the images of the minor arcana of Tarot cards. This is because they deal with our personal situation. Archetypal images can be compared with the images of the major arcana. This is because they are concerned with our interaction with forces greater than ourselves.
In practice, it is useful to explore dream images from both standpoints. This is because, as mentioned, these images have a habit of shifting category. In this dream, the jungle - a wild and unconfined place, much like the subconscious - is a classic archetypal image. In this case, she did feel like the jungle was wild and unconfined, so the archetypal reading of it is valid here. However, she could have grown up in a jungle and found it to be a safe haven; in this case the classic archetypal meaning would have led us away from the path of understanding rather than toward it. This is why it is so important to check the nature of archetypal imagery against the language of each individual's subconscious.
Beyond the information gained through the affect bridge, the body bridge, the use of archetypal and personally-understood symbols and the transformation of identity, dreams can provided more maps. These are maps to some of the issues which contribute to the way in which a person has been separated from his sense of self. These guides are especially valuable when someone has had to deeply sever connections to the self due to severe abuse. In this dream, I was given concrete information about the severity, genesis, and depth of this woman's dislocation from herself in a few sentences. However, although this information had been lost to the conscious mind, the unconscious mind had preserved it in a way which needs only a little understanding to decipher.
A superficial reading of the map of the above dream told me this about this about the client:
Her issue was a karmic one, a generational thread handed down to her parents from their own parents. Because of her parents' inability to make the extent of the damage of their own acculturation conscious, they created the same damage in their child. (The person who had her father's job before him had left the family the house.)
One source of her disconnection from her self was her mother's scorn and need to control her daughter's reality. (She found an arbor which she imagined planting beautiful vines on, but her mother told her that this was a very bad idea and that she had different plans for the place).
One path to reconnection to herself is through connecting with her feminine nature and the power of nature. (She walked around the yard and beautiful women emerged from the jungle).
The extent of her distress was hidden from her (One took a ceramic heart from under her petticoat and handed it to her.)
She has a broken heart. (She noticed it was broken.)
Another source of her disconnection from herself was her father's fear of her being independent and his inability to trust her. (Her father was furious that she had accepted the gift, saying "you don't know what it is, it could be a work order to go work in a far away city which would be terrible.")
She is able to defend herself a bit better from her father's attempts at breaking her spirit. (At that, she imagined going away and working in a far away city and it did not seem so bad).
But the only way she can deal with her mother's attempts at controlling her sense of self is to relegate her feelings about herself and her distress at her loss of self to the unconscious. (She fell asleep in the arbor that her mother had decorated her way).
But on one level she realizes this is ultimately dangerous because she will leave herself open to ultimate destruction by her mother's machinations. (She awoke to find a crocodile emerging from the jungle, ready to attack her). (As she was reaching down to bring her beloved dog up on the table with her, the crocodile's jaw snapped shut).
Again, her mother was a victim of the same type of destruction of her spirit, but she has used a different way to deal with it. (She ran inside and jumped on a table. Her mother jumped on a different table).
All that she is consciously aware of in this disastrous internal passion play is that she is afraid. But having no conscious point of reference for the fear, the fear can only be expressed as a vague anxiety. (She awoke in a state of terrible fear).
I could never have gained this information by asking her about her relationship to her birth family, because she was totally unconscious about this information herself. I wonder how long it would have taken us to get to the level of self-understanding she touched through this dream in one session through more conventional talk therapy.
This dream amply demonstrates one of the most remarkable aspects of dreams: that one can understand them at constantly deepening levels. One dream is almost like a series of fireworks. At different levels and places in the dream, there are always new bursts of light one had not seen before. I have given up all hope of ever getting all of the information available in any one dream. This is because there are constantly new ones to delve into and because I am limited by own ability to see and understand.
Dreams have a way of providing us with exactly the kind of information we need if we can just allow ourselves to open to them. The following is a description of just one dream, the only one John remembered in 2 years of working together. It appeared at a time when no other experience could have provided him with the inspiration to continue in the sometimes difficult work of confronting pain honestly.
John came to me originally because he had been diagnosed with severe dyslexia and anxiety. He had been seeing a psychiatrist for several years and had been taking the drugs prescribed by him during that time. But his symptoms had not appreciably improved. He was hoping that hypnotic suggestions could help him with the symptoms involved with the label of dyslexia.
John decided to try to confront whatever was at the source of his imbalance rather than settle for simple, external hypnotic suggestion. I asked John to go back, in hypnosis, to the time to when he was first aware of the problems he was experiencing. What followed was many months of twice-weekly meetings where he uncovered layer after layer of abuse - including physical, sexual and ritual abuse.
On one level, he was relieved to know that there was a reason for his many maladjustments to reality which came into focus through the psychiatrist's diagnosis. But he had tremendous difficulty in accepting that these things had really happened to him. With the torrent of information which poured out of our sessions together, John's sense of self began to shift. I saw this a positive sign since his perception of himself had been so negative. Yet, in giving up this negative image of himself, he was left, as he put it, "with no buoy to hang on to." This loss of the already-tenuous mooring he had in reality was of increasing distress to him. It made it difficult for him to continue to have the courage to continue our work together. No amount of external support seemed to help shift this distress because he was so utterly unable to connect with any sense of support from within his psyche. As he put it, "It is almost impossible for me to allow myself to believe in myself."
I had always asked him to try to remember his dreams to see if they could offer more information about the state of his internal dynamic. For months, he could report no dream recall whatsoever. Then, one day, after several sessions where he had been unable to continue what he called the "dredging" operations, he reported a dream. This dream marked the shift in his journey back to wholeness.
At first, he was reluctant to recount the dream because he thought I would think he was being conceited. When he did recount the dream, I helped him to see how clearly it signaled a new sense of identity in formation. The dream was actually very simple, but it was packed with many symbols which were intimately relevant to John.
The dream: Mario Andretti sees John driving and declares that John is Benito Andretti. John knows without a doubt that this is true.
The following is a reconstruction from notes of the session:
T:Who is Mario Andretti?
C:He is greatest racing car driver in the world.
T:What does being the greatest racing car driver mean to you?
C:It means that you can do anything. I have always been drawn to racing of any kind.
H:Why?
C:Because it means winning, setting records. You are out in front, no one can touch you. You're the first or else you can get better and you can always improve. You are free. Free!
T:Who is Benito Andretti?
C:He was Mario's little brother who disappeared under mysterious circumstances at the age of 2, or maybe even younger.
H:What would it mean if you were Benito, Mario's little brother?
C:It would mean that I would be part of a big, loving Italian family. The family I always wanted. A family which is really alive and where people interact with each other in a real way. A family which sits down to dinner together.
T:What else would it mean?
C:It would mean that I would have someone to learn from. Someone who knows more than I do and who could give me the information I need.
T:What was it like to know that, without a doubt, Mario's assessment of you was true: that you were Benito Andretti?
C:I just knew it was true. I knew that I was a great race car driver, that I could drive any kind of car in any kind of race. I knew that I was related to Mario. It was undeniably true, unshakably true. There was no doubt in my mind that Mario was right.
This simple dream was very significant to John's ability to go forward with the recovery of his sense of self. It filled many of the voids he had been feeling in himself.
He knew, without a doubt that he could handle any car in any race (the symbolic connection to life's situations is more than graphic).
He knew what it felt like to be part of a loving family (that he belonged to a greater, beneficent whole).
He knew he would have Mario to learn from, to help him improve ( that it was possible to go forward with his journey to himself and that he would get the help he needed).
It is significant that Benito disappeared under mysterious circumstances at a very young age - at about the same time John believes the abuse started. It is also significant that in the dream he has now reappeared. And his return has been validated and confirmed by someone who is admirable, respectable and believable.
The most wonderful gift that the dream gave John was a sense of utter certainty which he was able to carry over into his waking life. This is something that he had been seeking desperately throughout his life. But this was especially true since he had begun to uncover the memories of abuse. This certainty of his ultimate success is what has brought him through the next level of his recovery. I am quite certain that he would have found it much more difficult to continue and his process would have taken much longer without the insight this dream provided.
So far, we have looked only at how individual dreams can point to greater realities within our psyches. But there is much information which can be tracked from dream to dream. This tracking reveals ever-more deepening patterns which can bring understanding to the issues we struggle with in conscious-mind reality.
Robert Bosnak has come up with a remarkable method of tracking this plethora of information from dream to dream. By using his methodology, we become aware of the parallel universes we live our lives in. We also become acutely aware of the patterns and connections between the worlds and the way in which they inform one another without our even realizing it.
His method involves the juxtaposition of similar images across a series of dreams. This is an innovative technique which creates a map to travel through the psyche even beyond the realm of dreams. This method for individual dream mapping which I use in my practice traces the following steps. I use all of them in mapping my own dream life, but I may only use the information gained in one or two of the steps in any given hypnotherapy session. A basic outline of this method is as follows. For a more in-depth set of guidelines, I strongly recommend his book, Tracks in the Wilderness of Dreaming.
* Record a series of dreams in a journal.
* Make a foldout of 20-50 dreams by taping them one next to other, numbering each one and noting their chronological order.
* Create an infrastructure by making connections and marking similar images across all of the dreams with the same color of colored pencil or marker.
* Identify clusters: look for themes and bring all the images in each cluster together. Create a separate document for each set of clusters.
* Muse over the life of the cluster - indulge in free association with the images contained in each of the clusters.
* Reminisce with some of the images and see what conscious memories the images evoke.
* Write along with cluster's chronological format: Use one description paragraph for each element or image in the cluster, then rewrite it expanding the meaning of the image, drawing connections between conscious life as in the reminiscence.
* Use the material generated in the previous steps to write in various genres, i.e. a poem, a story or a dialogue, depending on what suits the text. Weave things that the story reminds you of into the text. These are amplifications which will bring significance to the surface because the dream images will bounce off the surface of similarity. A contrasting story can also be woven into the text, dialogue or poem.
* Let the work rest and come back to it about 10 days later and see what condensation of narratives and comparisons you can make. Switch clusters around and see if this provides new light on their images.
A very brief illustration drawn from a series of 10 dreams I dreamed over a 6 day period illustrates this process. The mark "//" defines a separation between dreams.
The following is an example of steps 1-4 is as follows. This is a cluster of images drawn from about 10 dreams along the same theme of: Foreign countries and languages, new places.
I am in a new country. At one point, I am taken to a classroom where their writing is on slates - it looks like Russian. I wonder if I am in Russia - with all the secrecy and the high rise, it would make sense - but the script isn't Russian. Someone points to it and I suddenly can read it directly without translation. The words dissolve into English. I see the words: "utility, forge, strength, strong." I hear that language I heard before - kind of like Russian. // They are from all over the world. I hear lots of languages as I head toward the building. People are sitting in the sun - and all seem so depressed. They are speaking all different languages, Spanish, Chinese, they look Indian/Mexican. // The voice I hear is heavily accented with an accent I do not recognize. A Turkish man stops the taxi and tells me something about busses and time. He is fair.// I manage to turn the conversation to Lao Tzu . I am in a far off country. It seems like Europe. // She speaks a language I don't know. Somehow I realize she wants me to help her home to the Serbian quarter of the town. Suddenly, she is a little thin boy whom I lift onto the train and ask for a seat for him in German. There is a man who says he is a Spanish teacher. I say, "Que hablemos espanol" My German is really bad for some reason. I tell him I speak like a CentroAmericana because I don't say "grathias." He is offended, but remains nice. // 2 little fat German kids with rosy cheeks and blue eyes and blonde hair are hassling me by putting white cups on my shoulder with a little water in them. They pretend they did not do it. I turn around and address them with the "du" form. This pisses them off. I find my German and give them 'what for.'
The following condenses the process in steps 5-7:
I do a lot of traveling in my dreams - as I have in real life. On the one hand, I like being an ambassador of sorts for these Russian type people, but on the other hand, I don't like them much. This seems to be true of the way I feel about people (including myself) in general, which I rarely let myself admit.
These people from all over the world - the third world in particular - are so desperate. I wonder why I am so lucky not to be like them, but I am determined never to be like them - so powerless and helpless. Is this because I feel I really am powerless and helpless in spite of my first world pedigree?
This Turkish (sometimes Persian) taxi or bus driver figure keeps popping up - sort of the guide who says he knows everything, but does not know a thing. I want to believe him, but know I am fooling myself if I do.
It is interesting that a Turk would be concerned about time - which seems to be an abstract in that culture. Maybe that is another reason I wonder if he is Turkish - besides the blond hair and blue eyes.
The people on the train are quite a mix. The Germans are so irritatingly superior to everyone, but the Spanish guy feels superior the Central Americans and does not like me poking fun at his "th" for "s." Everyone in Europe is always trying to feel like they are better than another nationality. I am with the Serb, who is at the bottom of the heap at this time, and yet I address the Germans with du. I have always enjoyed breaking the social rules in Europe - doing something totally shocking (but really very minor) to the mores and rules of the silly hierarchies the Europeans have created. They are comical in their self-importance. Am I ?
I had no idea my dreams were so filled with far away places. My constant yearning to learn new languages, understand new cultures may be the way I express the need to know all the aspects of myself. The following is a bit of short cut to the writing suggested in point 8: Accents
We try to speak
one another's
language
Accents hide our
misgivings.
Sound travels
across the sea
on sailing ships
And when it returns
The ways
the wind
has changed
it makes all of us
uneasy.
Words
A new country.
Words dissolve into
incomprehension
Empty eyes
look back at me
as I spiral
higher and higher
away
From the desperation
of language
lost
in lack of meaning.
The following illustrates step 10:
This particular set of images taught me a lot about my feelings which I often don't allow myself to act on. In particular, I try not to act out of the negative point of view I have about Germans or even admit that I do have a negative view of Germans. But these dreams do not let me hide from this part of myself. I used this information to look at what it is I find so distasteful about Germans (I had to face that I think all Germans are Nazis, which is a prejudice I would not consciously admit to myself). I had to find those places within myself which reflected the need for this type of outward-directed prejudice. It was like a pheasant hunt: flushing out the hidden hatreds I direct at Nazis and seeing how I direct the same type of knee-jerk, negative judgments at myself. And then, most painfully, I had to face the damage I do to myself in this process.
This series also amplified my rebelliousness when caught in social hierarchies. This helped me look at the ways in which I am limited by my acculturation and find the ways in which this has crippled my relationship with my self at a soul level. Also, it let me see my deep fear of being powerless as those in the third world are; I realized I often mask this fear with "acts of kindness" toward people from those countries. Surely, there is compassion in those acts, but I was forced to really see that the fear that I am powerless like them drives me to these acts of kindness.
This is all information that I would not willingly look at because all of it tarnishes the persona of goodness I want to project into the world. But only by embracing these issues can I be truly myself in an authentic way. I doubt I would have access to this information without dreaming because it never would have gotten my past my conscious defenses to these realities which do not allow me to pretend I am always good and kind.
However, I also learned first-hand and experientially how to look into images and have the information emerge in a completely non-rational way. The experience with the Russian-like language taught me a lot about the process which provides information without using the loop of the rational mind. I definitely would not have had access to the mechanics or experience of this process through the tools available to my conscious mind. And this information is utterly invaluable in my line of work. This work relies so heavily on the dynamics in which information emerges through non-logical channels. This type of information is not available to the conscious mind because of its reliance on logic to organize phenomenon.
By combining the techniques discussed in the first part of the paper with those developed by Robert Bosnak, we have access to an almost infinite amount of information. If we could spend our days understanding our nights, we would emerge infinitely stronger and wiser - if our conscious defenses could bear this challenge to their domain.
Needless to say, much of the information available to us through dreams would be lost without the tool of hypnosis to aid in the retrieval of the information. It is almost as though the dream is the ore, hypnosis the smelting process and self-understanding at the conscious level is the ingot. By allowing the information contained within our subconscious to interact with that which is held in the conscious mind, we are made whole in ways we cannot imagine when we are lost in either the unconscious or the conscious mind. Hypnosis is the bridge between these worlds and the way it allows each to inform the other is an extraordinary path to self-knowledge.
Rescripting a Sense of Self
Hypnosis is a very helpful tool for understanding the nature of one's experience at a very deep level. My experience in helping survivors come to terms with the effects of abuse has shown me that hypnosis can help break down defenses to abuse memories. These defenses may have been useful when they were developed but many survivors find that these same defenses become an obstacle to the integration of the information contained in the abuse memories when the survivor begins the process of self-exploration.
Because most defenses are formulated unconsciously, they can most easily be contacted through the unconscious. Often, the survivor will not even know the existence of the defenses, much less what thoughts or decisions they are constructed from. By exploring the nature of these defenses, usually through contact with the issues they were constructed to cope with, the defenses can be slowly and carefully transformed in a trance state once the survivor begins to feel it is safe to do so.
The establishment of safety is essential to this process. The survivor needs to know that the transformation of defenses will not leave him or her helpless and out of control. By bringing the survivor into contact with the essential self through guided imagery and meditation, we establish both a base to work from and goal to work toward. In effect, we create a container which can hold all of the emotions safely and keep the survivor protected while the exploration of the nature of the defenses and the issues they relate to begins.
When I work with abuse survivors, I am less interested in laying down historical fact than in understanding the nature of the person's subjective experience. This idea of staying close to the person's subjective experience regardless of actual external events becomes particularly important when hypnosis has been used in any way as part of the abuse.
I have found that there is always some level of cognitive dissonance to the hypnotic suggestions laid down during or after abuse. That is to say, there is some feeling on the part of the survivor that 'something is not quite right' around the issues that have been the subject of hypnotic suggestion. The sensation that something is not quite right can manifest as uneasiness, strongly defended irrational ideas, or a complete unwillingness to look at the idea that 'something is not quite right' about a particular sensation or feeling.
I believe this dissonance arises from the fact that the hypnotic suggestions given during or after abuse do not jive with the person's authentic experience and sense of self. The mind during the abuse is so open to manipulation that the suggestions do take seat in the person's psyche, but because they are paired with the abuse and generally are contrary to authentic experience, the seat they take is uncomfortable.
My experience with a survivor we will call Jim has many themes consistent with other survivors I have worked with who have been hypnotized as part of the abuse process. When Jim first came to me, he was unaware that he was a survivor of severe parental abuse. In fact, he vehemently stated again and again that his mother loved him very much. The vehemence in these statements was a red flag for me, and I filed this information away, not realizing where it would take us as we began the process of hypnosis to help him with a physician-diagnosed attention deficit disorder which was not responding to medication.
There is much to tell about the long process in Jim's evolution in understanding himself and his inability to focus and his coming to terms with the idea that he was an abuse survivor, but I will focus here on how it became evident that hypnotic suggestion had been used to screen from him what had actually happened to him.
As the abuse memories began to surface in exploring the roots of the attention deficit disorder, Jim was often aware of a very bright light in the middle of the images that were surfacing. When I asked him to focus on the light, he began to repeat the same phrases again and again. One such session revealed the following set of phrases,
"Your mommy loves you. No matter what anyone else says. You just fell down today. See, your knee is just a little scraped. Those bruises happened when you fell. Poor Jim, mommy helped you fix your knee and made it better. No matter what anyone else says, you know this is true, you know that your mommy loves you every day, more and more and when you look at your knee you will remember that your mommy loves you, your mommy loves you more and more each day."
It took me a moment to put it together that he had been told to look at a bright light while classically-formulated hypnotic suggestions were told to him after having been abused. As the truth dawned on me, I realized that we would have to focus on uncovering all of the hypnotic patter that had been given to him during or after abuse.
We discovered that there were many, many different situations in where hypnotic suggestion had been used to distort memory. In subsequent sessions, whenever the light would appear, I would ask him to look into the light and just allow his lips to move; each session revealed a new patter to screen a new memory of abuse. After each session where this patter would emerge, I would present the recorded patter to Jim and ask him how he wanted to erase the patter which was still stored in his memory.
I never provided him with hypnotic suggestions that he did not write out himself. In each one of the "re-writes" I would include the suggestion that this new hypnotic suggestion would take permanent and total precedence over any hypnotic suggestions he may have been exposed to in his childhood. This worked as a kind of seal to keep the other hypnotic patter from intruding on his sense of self and perception of reality in the way that it had for forty years.
A big part of this work went beyond simply providing a new hypnotic "tape". The new tape would never had been able to take hold had he not been able to deal with the rage and sadness he felt about having been betrayed in this way. It took a great deal of courage for him to be able to see the physical abuse and the way it distorted his ability to concentrate, but the emotional betrayal of the use of hypnosis to cripple his memory, and thus his sense of self, was in many ways a more brutal process to work through for Jim.
Because the damage had been created at a subconscious level, it needed to be undone on an subconscious level, by way of a method which was able to contact the way Jim had been conditioned through hypnosis. I am not aware of any process which can provide this repair other than hypnosis. By using hypnosis to explore the nature of his defenses in seeing his mother as anything but a perfect, loving creature, he was able to see how his defenses were keeping him from contacting his ability to concentrate and focus.
Jim is still coming to terms with many of the aspects of being identified as an abuse survivor, but his attention problems are greatly reduced. He is able to focus his attention and tap into his will to act in ways which were impossible for him before he began the rewriting of these tapes. He is regaining the ability to trust his own experience and make decisions based on it. I am sure if we had not discovered the way in which hypnosis had been used to rob him of these abilities most of us take for granted, he would not have made the progress he has in reclaiming himself.
Opening the Doors to the Self - Spirit Involvement
As we have seen there are many paths to self-knowledge. Understanding the self is a complex process because the self is so complex. There are many facets to our being which our conscious-mind awareness generally blocks out. It must do this in order to deal with the very complicated external world we must negotiate in our daily life. The creation of a vehicle from which to explore the external world is one of the primary tasks we have to accomplish as part of our development. For many of us, this development is not as linear or logical as we would like to believe.
Chaos is around every corner if we cannot find a "home base" in the conscious mind from which to experience the world. And many of us do find ourselves in chaos in pursuit of this center from which to understand the world. Generally speaking, this chaos is due to the amount of trauma we experience at any point in our development. One of the results of repeated exposure to trauma in the development of a sense of self is the appearance of what western psychotherapeutic community calls Multiple Personality Disorders (MPD) or Dissociative Disorders (DD).
These manifestations of multiplicity or disassociation can be disconcerting to those around us as well as to ourselves. They interfere with our ability to develop a stable base to begin to understand ourselves at a soul level. In this chapter, we will look at different paradigms which can help us understand this multiplicity. We will see how we can actually use these manifestations to understand ourselves at soul level once integration of experience takes place.
Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) or Dissociative Disorder (DD) has only recently been re-recognized within the field of modern western psychology. When Freud's theories reigned supreme in this field, most cases of dissociative disorders were misdiagnosed as schizophrenia. In 1980, the American Psychological Association (APA) officially re-established the legitimacy of multiple personality disorders and defined a separate diagnostic category for dissociative disorders. Since that time, there has been increasing research and clarification of the major differences between schizophrenia and dissociative disorders, including multiple personality disorders. The association's diagnostic manual, DSM IV recognizes dissociative disorders as psychologically-originated mental disorders, originating from psychological reactions to trauma and the stressors of life. Schizophrenia is considered an organically originated mental disorder due to brain/nervous system/ chemical abnormalities.
However, the phenomenon of vastly divergent "personalities" or behaviors contained within one physical body is not a new concept. It has been described and understood in different ways in healing communities throughout time and throughout different parts of the world. We have seen how multiplicity manifests in our different experiences of ourselves at different ages within one time frame.
One of the ways multiplicity has been most commonly understood is by shamanic practitioners who view the phenomenon as a type of soul loss or spirit possession. One of the essential aspects of shamanic healing across all cultures is the shaman's journey in search of these lost soul parts. The shaman seeks help in getting the spirit or soul part to move to where it will best serve his patient. Michael Harner, in the Way of the Shaman, reports that it has been understood in almost all pre-industrial societies that a person's physical illness or erratic behavior often has its roots in loss of an essential part of oneself. The illness can sometimes be aggravated by the subsequent use of that lost life energy by non-corporal spirits. This loss can be compounded by the fact that trauma, which is often the triggering event for soul loss, can also allow the entry of spirits into a person's psychic space. This can then play havoc with the individual's mental and physical health. It is generally recognized that soul loss takes place due to some kind of mental, physical or spiritual trauma. It is the shaman's duty to find the lost soul parts and restore them to the individual. He then performs the specific type of healing, such as depossession or extraction, which will supplant the occupying spirits which might be present.
This idea seems preposterous to the typical western mind. Some anthropologists reporting on the healing powers of shamans in pre-industrial societies have described the ceremonies associated with the restoration of soul and depossession of spirits as a child's game. Some of them describe these rituals in terms which gives the impression that the participants in such rituals take part in a silly mass delusion. In any case, these phenomenon have always been associated with things religious or spiritual from the western point of view. Until recently, they have found no place of observation from within the realm of science or medicine from which western schools of psychology and psychiatry have grown.
Indeed, the manifestation of the miracles (e.g., a return to sanity or wholeness as a result of interaction with spirits) associated with this type of healing has been branded as quackery. Some members of the western scientific community have rejected it outright. This is true even though no lesser a personage than Jesus was a practitioner of this type of miracle healing. This has left a void in dealing with spirits which the church has tried to fill by charging priests with spirit exorcism or depossession work. By and large, they are ill equipped to understand the nature of the reality the shamans or traditional healers operate in. This is because their core belief systems do not include the maps of healing used by traditional healers.
The divorce of healing from the realm of the spirit occurred with the supplantation of pagan and other spiritual practices by the advance of Christian missionaries. The services provided by the shaman or witch doctor in retrieving souls and convincing spirits to leave are barely addressed by western cultural structures. Over time, Christian exorcisms have degenerated into little more than the ordering of demons. The type of filibustering behavior displayed by those who do not understand the true nature of exorcisms is an unfortunate and ineffective form of communication. Any healing effect manifests almost accidentally. This is because pagan gods or spirits which might have assisted traditional healers in such practices as depossession are perceived as the work of the devil in many theologies. Indeed, the idea of spirits of all classes are sometimes viewed in this light by some religious authorities. This view precludes the assistance available from a shamanic perspective. The shamanic view understands spirits as denizens of a world which can be known and understood. Their powers are considered to have an effect on our own world. . Shamans, on the other hand, are comfortable working with the elements of the other worlds to effect lasting and permanent change for the better.
It has been easy to discount the sometimes ineffectual interaction with the spirit world by those who did not understand what powers they are summoning. In this context, it has been easy for scientific westerners witnessing poorly-understood exorcisms to classify them by putting them the rubbish bin. The understanding of these rituals has been cast aside along with myths and stories whose powers are equally poorly understood by the western mind. William James, in his famous Lowell Lectures of 1896, spoke about the nature of possession and its perception by various cultures throughout the ages. He underlines the negative prejudice surrounding it in the scientific circles of his time, which persist to this day:
"India, China, Egypt, Africa, Polynesia, Greece, Rome and all medieval Europe believed that certain nervous disorders were of supernatural origin. When the pagan gods became demons, all possession became diabolic and we have the medieval condition. The refusal of modern "enlightenment" to treat possession as a hypothesis to be spoken of as even possible, in spite of massive human tradition based on concrete experience in its favor has always seemed to me a curious example of the poor of fashion in things scientific. One has be to 'scientific' indeed to be blind and ignorant enough to suspect no such possibility."
The refusal to include the idea of spirits in a scientific world view, is, as Michael Harner points out, highly unscientific. A scientist does not reject any possibility out of hand without careful observation and experimentation. Yet this is just what the western scientific community has done to the idea of spirits playing any role in mental health dysfunction. It is possible that the practitioners working in the field of MPD may never suspect that they are working with an entity or spirit possession. And if this were pointed out to them, they would probably ridicule the idea. Unfortunately, I suspect that this is why some people suffering from the symptoms of MPD, which so strongly resembles spirit possession, are not always helped in any lasting way.
It is a pity that modern psychotherapeutic practices do not include the study of spirit involvement in its approach to MPD. The model of spirit involvement has been well defined and used to great effect in healing in shamanic communities for thousands of years. Along with the failure to recognize or attempt to understand the nature of spirits within western healing methodology is the failure to recognize the existence of the soul. Because this point of view does not recognize the soul, it has no map or possibility of being shown a map which includes the entire nature of the individual's experience. This map includes most of which is hidden to the conscious mind. It consists primarily of memories and experiences, some of which have been intentionally forgotten because they are too painful to remember.
These memories may arise from one's own current life experience, including the experience of the womb. Or, they may arise from past life memories or even experiences between lives in other realities. In any case, most memories and experiences contained within the knowledge of the soul from other times or realities are re-kindled as an issue in this lifetime. However, the entry point into the process of resolving these issues may occur at any point in the soul's constellation of the issues.
The entry point may even be found through a spirit which has become attached to any of the events within the constellation of the self. This attachment often occurs during the process of rendering these memories or experiences unconscious. Or, it can occur in the process of traumatization which leads to the blotting out of these memories. The entities or spirits known to shamans throughout time and well described in modern terms by William Baldwin can take hold and create the havoc they do within the individual psyche. It is often the effects of the trauma they are creating which brings a person to seek help. Access to the issues they are "medicating" can often occur through the gateway of the spirit itself, especially in cases of MPD.
Shamanic healers and psychologists working in the field of MPD, whether they call it MPD or not, do agree on one important element. The imbalance which presents itself and is called DD or MPD or spirit possession has its roots in some type of trauma. Most western psychologists only look for these roots within the waking consciousness of the patient. The more successful actually use the tools of hypnosis to search for the roots of the traumatizing event beyond the reach of the conscious mind's defenses. The most effective healers within the western context are those who look for the roots in a context which is far larger than either of these contexts. They look for the trauma's roots in both the conscious and subconscious mind. If its source is not readily available in the surface areas of the either the subconscious of the conscious mind, they look further. They can trace the pathways provided by the subconscious mind through dreams or other non-ordinary states of consciousness. They track the trauma's roots to perinatal experiences, past life experiences, and encounters with different types of spirit entities.
William Baldwin, whose work has centered around spirit depossession, defines three sets of entities in his work: human entities, dark force entities and extraterrestrial beings. Shamans practicing the core, trans-cultural shamanism which Michael Harner defines, outline three worlds: the upper world, the middle world and the lower world. These worlds are populated by an almost uncountable number of entities. Some are helpers and archetypal figures, for which Jung is the best translator in western psychology. According to this model, most of the spirits which are causing problems in a person's psyche inhabit only the middle world. These are the spirits defined by William Baldwin. The spirits of the upper or lower worlds are understood to be more helpful and powerful. The shamanic practitioner can call upon upper and lower world spirits with whom he established a relationship for help. They can help with the depossession of troubling spirits and help the client begin the process back to integration and wholeness.
Western psychology has very few interventions which address the issue of spirit possession. It does have a set of exhaustive descriptions of the external phenomenon associated with MPD or DD type states, which, as we have seen, are very similar to those associated with spirit possession. And it does use some mind-altering drugs to some effect. Neither of these approaches allows access to the internal functioning of the client or his relationship to the spirit which is caught within his psyche.
The American Psychiatric Association states: "the essential feature of the dissociative disorders is a disruption in the usually integrated functions of consciousness, memory, identity or perception of the environment." The APA further defines DD as an adaptive response to acute trauma because it provides:
* Containment of traumatic memories and affects (amnesia barriers)
* Separation of normal conscious awareness (splitting off)
* Escape from the constraints of reality
* Alteration/detachment of self
* Analgesia (numbness).
Other schools of thought, including shamanism and past life therapies would agree with this assessment. These are all good reasons for the individual to opt for the alternate reality which can manifest in spirit possession, DD or MPD or other types of imbalances. The following symptoms of MPD, DD, and spirit possession (although not commonly defined as such in western psychological circles) are defined by the APA as:
"Depression, low self esteem, crying spells flat affect, feelings of being overwhelmed or fatigued or mood-swings, difficulty in concentrating (fading out, detached, distanced), phobic, panic or anxiety symptoms, palpitations, sensations of choking or smothers, faintness, trembling, numbness, tingling, visual disturbances, headaches not relieved by standard analgesics, feelings of unreality, sleep disturbances of nightmare, misuse or abuse of sedatives, analgesic, alcohol, stimulants, gaps in memory, disappearance of objects, forgetfulness, periods of time loss, out of body experiences, sexual difficulties, fear of making mistakes, difficulty in making decision, extreme internal conflict between parts with different 'needs' or 'needs' v. shoulds.', self-mutilation, suicidal ideation, negative outlook on life, and suicide attempts."
These definitions are helpful for as far as they go in, again, describing external manifestations of internal states. However, when helping a client resolve these symptoms, one almost has to forget the definitions. One must remain totally present with the presentation of the symptoms in order to enter the internal processes of the problem. True resolution can occur only from within the internal processes. Hypnosis is a very valuable tool in helping the client arrive at the moment these symptoms took root in his psyche. It can aid in finding an internal "beachhead" where resolution of the problem can take place. Only by staying with the symptoms and guiding the client on his own journey through the psyche can the hypnotherapist cross the boundaries of western psychology and traditional healing methods. When he can remain present with the client's experience, he can find the tools to assist in the retrieval of the lost soul parts or dissociated areas of the psyche.
Practitioners with the most detailed maps of the psyche and with the least prejudice to the presenting symptoms are best prepared. They are the most able to help people come into an integrated sense of wholeness within themselves through this journey. The best way to use the maps defined by any school of thought is to put them aside or in the back of one's mind. The task is then to ask the client to guide the practitioner through the landscape of his mind. This is done through a process of non-leading questions, which incorporate the mental, spiritual and physical reporting on the part of the client while in an altered state.
The background information I use in forming my own personal map to help clients with symptoms similar to those of MPD, spirit possession and DD is expanding all the time. But the questions I ask to help resolve the issue have remained surprisingly stable and sparse over time. After hypnotic induction, my goal is to find out: 1). What is the source of this particular presenting symptom? 2). What are the decisions or assumptions the client made about himself as a result of this situation? 3). How are those assumptions active in his present life? 4). What needs to be done for a shift to occur in his relationship to the source situation? 5). How will that internal shift affect his internal life? 6). Provide suggestions based on the client's own solutions to create the engine to effect those changes.
We may have to repeat these questions and the processes they engender for many separate issues. This depends on the degree, severity and complexity of the imbalance. And we may have to delve into past lives, alternate realities of all types, including extra-terrestrial realities (as defined by the client). We may have to dialogue and converse with spirits to get the answers, but the answers and the resolution they bring with them do emerge.
The tools I use in helping the client uncover the answers to these questions vary depending on the client's own needs. I don't really care if a person has been diagnosed with a DD by a psychiatrist or if a priest has referred someone to me for depossession work. The label is irrelevant. All that matters is the process and the process is defined by the client. Schools of thought which state the client is incapable of identifying the paths the journey should take denigrate the integrity of the client. Everyone knows what they need to become whole. They just need guidance and support to have the courage to take the path to wholeness. Granted, I do not work with severely so-called schizoid or psychotic clients, so I cannot make that statement in reference to them, but I would not rule this possibility out.
When most people come to me it is because they have a habit which is the presenting dysfunction. Sometimes, the habit can even belong to an attached spirit. This usually becomes evident in following the course of symptoms as described above. All habit formation is really a development of a new coping mechanism for the base personality. Most people are dissociating from themselves in order to indulge their habits. Developing a habit can indeed facilitate the same type of "altered" behavior and fulfill the same need that developing a new personality does. Both cope with unacceptable external elements in the environment. Both serve the same purpose: the release from the unacceptable or the untenable. Within this framework, it could be argued that habit disorder and full-blown MPD or DD symptoms are just different points along the psyche's continuum in dealing with what the conscious mind perceives as unacceptable. And spirit intrusion can happen anywhere along this continuum.
Indulging in a habit becomes the trigger for behavior to emerge which is unacceptable outside the realm of the habit. Alters, as defined by APA texts, function the same way. Alters are divergent personalities contained within one body. When an alter emerges, the person can indulge in all types of behavior which is unacceptable outside the realm of the usual personality. And my guess is that alters defined in this way may well be attached spirits.
For instance, a normally mild-mannered person who allows himself the habit of drinking alcohol can use the alcohol as a trigger for the release of rage. An outside observer might remark, "He is just a different person when he drinks." Indeed, he may well be. This is especially true because parapsychologists have documented the usurpation of the body by bodiless spirits during drug induced stupors.
The symptoms of spirit possession, MPD, and DD strongly resemble each other and have much in common in their presentation with other psychic phenomenon. For this reason it is important to remain open-minded when traveling through the client's psyche, seeking understanding and resolution. These similar symptoms can also present as subpersonalities developed in response to an imprint of negative parental messages such as "you are stupid." Or, they might present in strong, dogmatic belief systems about oneself based on decisions or statements received in moments of trauma, in an altered state or at the moment of death in a previous life. Similarly, identification or introjection of an abusive adult role model, usually a parent, can develop to the point where a true introject of the parent is present and actively using the client's life energy.
All of these presenting symptoms can strongly resemble full-blown MPD symptoms depending, in large part, on the degree and repetition of trauma associated with such imprinting. They also depend on the age or place in time the imprinting occurred and the degree to which spirit involvement in present. The degree of trauma is the main determining influence on how much of the individual's energy gets subsumed by the dynamics of these types of dissociative processes. It is also the degree of trauma which often influences a person's susceptibility to possession by other entities. It also determines how much of the person's life energy becomes available to spirits to use for their own devices.
One might well ask, what are the motivations of spirits or disembodied energies in taking up residence in a person's psychic or physical space. In my clinical experience, I have found that spirits have many different motivations for seeking access to a person's life energy. Many times, it is just the fix of life energy they are seeking. Sometimes they are lost or confused and simply find entry into a person's psychic space when that person is also lost or confused. Sometimes they have very good intentions; they are drawn to situations where people are so afraid that they have withdrawn their life energy from their body. The spirit or disembodied energy may fill the vacuum, trying to rescue or protect the person. Spirits which try to rescue inappropriately in this way may be operating under the same set of misunderstandings people in bodies do when they try to rescue or "fix" a loved one's problem by offering up parts of their life energy for that person's use. They enter into symbiotic agreements which cement the continuance of the relationship.
Interestingly, I have rarely encountered the type of angry or demonic spirits which are so avidly depicted in Hollywood renditions of spirit depossessions. Almost always, if a spirit is operating out of revenge or intent to harm, they regret it and are anxiously seeking a way out of the negative place these emotions have put them in. If they do not regret it, it is only necessary to trace their intent for harm to the source of pain at the root of it, and help resolve their relationship to that pain. So, in a depossession, it is not uncommon to effect a healing for the occupying entity as well as a healing for the host. In many ways, this work is extremely gratifying because of the tremendous amount of healing which can take place on so many levels at once.
Following are recreated excerpted transcripts of two cases of spirit depossession I helped effect. In the first case, the client was aware of a physical block in his abdomen which caused him considerable pain, and he had been diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome. He was also experiencing a block in his life as he was afraid to begin new ventures both personally and professionally. He reported becoming increasingly fearful and his partner expressed concern at what he called his "personality change." The second was aware that there was, as he said, 'something around' and suspected it might well be a spirit. He said he felt like a different person, and those around him reported behavioral changes, when he felt this 'something' present. In both cases, the host was in a hypnotic state, speaking for his own experience and allowing the spirit to speak through them to relay its experience and motivations for entering into the relationship. They reveal typical causes and nature of relationship between the host and spirit. C refers to the client, S refers to the spirit and H refers to the hypnotherapist. It should be noted in the first instance that I was at first unaware that a spirit was involved.
A psychologist trained in the western psychotherapeutic paradigm might recognize the spirit as a manifestation of an alter or a fragment of a personality. It does not really matter what one calls this manifestation, but given the fact that the techniques used in depossession work so well in resolving the issues which present themselves in this context, it is useful to call this manifestation a spirit.
H: As you breathe into the pain in your abdomen, just allow any words, images or sounds to emerge as you breathe out.
S: Come and get me.
H: Come and get who?
S: Come and get me.
H: Who is here.
S: I am.
H: Who are you?
S: I am the Protector.
H: Who do you protect?
S: George (the client).
H: What do you protect him from?
S: Pain.
H: How do you do that?
S: I catch pain and make it into tiny balls.
H: And how does that protect him from pain.
S: It doesn't seem to be protecting him very well.
H: What do you mean?
S: There is so much pain, and I can't make the balls tiny enough and they are all gathering up here in this place. I don't know what to do. (At this point the spirit is quite distressed)
H: How long have you been helping George in this way.
S: Since before he was born.
H: How did you connect with him?
S: I came with him into this life because I knew he was going to have a lot of pain and I wanted to protect him. But I can't do my job. There is too much pain. I can't make it small enough.
H: How would it be if you could let George feel his pain and process it differently.
S: That would hurt him.
H: But this block in his stomach is also hurting him.
S: (sadly) That is true. I have not done my job very well.
H: Do you think it is possible that no one can do the job of protecting another person from pain?
S: I thought I could.
H: You may have thought you could, and certainly your intention seems very kind, but do you think it is possible that everyone has to do deal with their own pain?
S: Well, I can't deal with George's pain, that is for sure. There are too many little balls.
H: How would you like to go to a place where you can learn about how to deal with pain in a new way?
S: That would be a good idea. I am not doing any good here dealing with it this way.
H: Is there anything you would like to say to George before you go?
S: I am sorry I failed. I was only trying to help
H: Is there anything you would like to say to the protector before he goes, George?
C: It's okay. Thank you for trying. I know I have to deal with my own pain, and maybe I didn't want to.
H: George, you may feel a draining sensation for awhile. Just let me know when it stops. Now, Protector, please find your attention being drawn to the light that is here all around you. And notice if there is any particular energy pattern or entity which seems familiar to you.
S: Yes, there is something familiar here.
H: Just allow yourself to be drawn to that familiar pattern. Go now, without any fear or longing. Go, and continue your evolution.
After about 5 minutes George reported a shift in the draining sensation and I sensed a definite shift in his energy pattern. After this shift, I spent some time helping George connect with his life energy in a new way, connecting on an energetic level with all the places the protector had been using. This is an important part of all depossession work. If the client is not filled with life energy after the spirit has left, he will sense a hollowness and may be susceptible to further intrusion as he seeks to fill the hollowness.
After this session, George was able to begin to explore some deep emotional blocks through hypnosis. Within 6 months, they symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome had disappeared and he was working at a new job. He also reported that he felt more energized and alive than he had in years.
In the second case, Michael had been a drug addict for many years. He had been "clean" for about 6 years. He said he did not really believe in spirits or the possibility of possession, but he said he always felt 'something around'.
H: Is there anyone here with Michael?
S: No. (there is strong twitching on the left side of Michael's body).
H: Is there anyone here with Michael?
S: No. (there is stronger twitching on the left side of Michael's body).
H: What is your name?
S: An...
H: What is your name?
S: Anthony?
H: Anthony, what are you doing here?
S: Where am I?
H: You are here with Michael.
S: Who is Michael?
H: He is the person you are with.
S: I am not with anyone. I am here. Where am I?
H: You are in California.
S: What is California?
H: Look in this mirror. Is this you Anthony?
S: This is not me. Who is this person?
H: This is Michael.
S: What am I doing here?
H: That is what I want to know.
S: What is happening?
H: Anthony. You are dead.
S: What? No!No!No!
H: Anthony, you are dead. But you are among friends. Don't worry. Just relax. We can help you.
S: What?
H: Anthony, think back to the last time you were talking to someone like this.
S: My head hurts.
H: What is happening?
S: It is very dark. My head hurts.
H: Why does your head hurt?
S: It hurts here. It is very dark. Something hit me.
H: Is it possible that you left your body when you got hit?
S: I don't know.
H: Anthony, you are dead.
S: No! Oh, my head.
H: Anthony, do you notice the light here in the room?
S: Yes.
H: Do you recognize anyone here in the light.
S: My father. Daddy!
H: Would you like to go to your father?
S: Yes! Daddy
H: Michael, you may feel a draining sensation. Please let me know when you feel it has stopped.
This session was quite a bit longer than this. We spent more time establishing the circumstances around Anthony's life, the way he died, and how he had become involved with Michael's energy. Clearly, this was a confused spirit who had been attracted to Michael's life energy - probably while Michael was not in full control of his life energy because of drug use. Interestingly, Michael reported that one of the reasons he had done drugs was to escape confusion. There was probably a "vibrational match" of confusion.
And again, some time was spent connecting Michael to his life energy in the places where Anthony had been using it. In the weeks after the session, Michael reported that he no longer felt as if 'something was around.'
Both of these manifestations of spirit possession could have been recognized and defined within the terms and paradigms used by psychologists or other social scientists.
It is important to define the different ways in which the imbalance called spirit possession here and possibly called MPD by western psychologists can manifest. It is also important to develop a set of maps of the psyche in order to help the client. But it is just as important not to allow these paradigms to interfere in the clinical setting. It is easy to get lost in the definitions without progressing toward resolution for the client. It is too easy to try to place a structural paradigm on the client's symptoms just to ease the mind of the practitioner. This labeling is really a way the practitioner can believe he has a sense of knowing where he is and what he is doing.
In fact, one can never really know exactly where one is or what set of imbalances one is ultimately helping to correct when one is surveying the landscape of the mind. As Victor Hugo once stated, "There is something which is larger than the sea, and that is the sky. There is something which is larger than the sky, and that is the psyche." To pretend that we understand all the manifestations of the mind is ridiculous.
Indeed, it is foolhardy to ever think one knows exactly where the client is going because the client's experience is unknowable. It is unknowable because of all of the ways he has made the experience unknowable by rendering it unconscious. It cannot be known until it is revealed through questioning in an altered state such as hypnosis. It is important that the questioning take place while the client is in an altered state. This is because the trauma, spirit possession or other involvement almost always is processed in an altered state at its inception. Even if the practitioner thinks he understands the issues, the creation of connections between the issues which lead to resolution of the presenting symptoms are unique for every person. It would be arrogant, if not damaging, for a practitioner to make connections for the client between the trauma and the resulting behaviors. We have only to look at the damage perpetrated by adherents of Freud's flawed theory of female hysteria for such an example.
The client must make the connections between the trauma and the presenting behavior himself. This allows the integration and resolution of the symptoms into the larger self to occur. It does no lasting good to tell someone who he is if he has no coat hook to hang that definition on within his psyche. It might make the person feel a bit more stable for the short term, but the stability is based on the perceptions of the practitioner, not upon the foundations of client's psyche. The client can only find himself in a different sort of trap when the practitioner attempts to resolve the presenting symptoms in such a way. And the practitioner is bound to fall into all the transference issues described western psychology texts by inserting himself inappropriately into the client's psyche in this way.
It is important to remember that continuous manifestations of multiplicity within individuals has been recorded across all ethnic and culture lines since Paleolithic times. This phenomenon can be most easily observed by understanding shamanic approaches to healing. These methods have remained largely unchanged through time and these techniques are remarkably similar across cultural and geographic boundaries. One of the key concepts in shamanic healing is the idea of soul parts which get separated from one another. This creates illness or psychic dysfunction. The restoration of these soul parts creates healing. Soul parts have different functions and hold different experiences. They can be viewed as multiple manifestations of personality within a single individual.
Even normative studies conducted by the APA indicate that we are "born with the potential for multiple personalities and over the course of normal development we more or less succeed in a consolidated an integrated sense of self." "With the occurrence of severe, sustained and repetitive trauma there is a disruption of the development tasks of consolidation of self due to loss of the acquisition of the control over modulation of states, which leads to DD." We must become comfortable with the possibilities contained within multiplicity in order to maintain an open mind long enough to locate the source of trauma and resolve it.
Once the task of redeeming the self from the trauma has been accomplished, it is important to allow the individual to continue exploration of the realms of the self. The task is not only to help in the integration of this multiplicity into a stable platform from which to interact with the world, but to also help the individual expand his sense of self. This can happen once that stability is attained and it can include many types of experiences on many different levels. When we can maintain that sense of stability with as few defenses as possible to the marvelous multiplicity of life forms and expressions and experiences that we exist in, we can truly begin to understand ourselves. Naturally, we cannot appreciate the beauty of all the different expressions of life if we are trying to interact with them from a place where we have been crippled by trauma. Once we have allowed the practitioner to assist us in "cleaning psychic house" we are then free to explore the many facets of life without fear of the loss of sanity.
Depth Hypnosis, Soul Retrieval, and Addiction
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
There are many different understandings about the nature of addiction. In working with addiction through my practice of Depth Hypnosis, I have found that it is helpful to apply the diagnostic and restorative methods provided by shamanism to help resolve addictive issues permanently.
Depth Hypnosis is an innovative model which combines Shamanism, hypnotherapy, transpersonal psychology and Buddhism to effect change in a wide variety of imbalances. Depth Hypnosis takes the wisdom of the most ancient psychologies on the planet, shamanism, and applies it to a modern therapeutic context.
In shamanism, it is understood that imbalance is created by three possible conditions. These conditions are power loss, soul loss and energetic interference.
Power loss and soul loss both occur in reaction to trauma. The types of trauma which create soul loss can also create power loss. Trauma ranging from a car accident to emotional, physical or sexual abuse to negative internal self talk can create a state of soul or power loss. Soul loss is characterized by a loss of energy on a physical level, a lack of interest in life on emotional or spiritual level and a lack of focus on a mental level. Power loss is often recognized by the struggle or a series of events which appear to bad luck which occur in a person’s life as he tries to overcome the exhaustion or depletion created by power loss.
In Depth Hypnosis, addictions are viewed as a medication for the state of soul loss or power loss. In my work, I have seen that people either use the addiction to try and reproduce the state of soul loss in a controlled way or use the addiction to try and erase the state of soul loss.
By taking an emotional biography of the person as well as a presenting biography of the addiction, it is surprising to see how predictable the onset of an addiction is in response to events which are viewed as producing soul loss or power loss. Divorce, death, abusive conditions in early childhood correlate with the roots of the addictive process. People will often say something like “Nothing was ever the same after that.” Or, they might say, “Everything has been hard since then.” These types of statements are tip offs that some major shift has occurred in a person’s internal world. That shift is what shamans refer to soul loss or power loss.
In classic shamanic terms energetic interference is characterized by what is often called “possession.” That is, a person can become affected and even overcome by energy which is not his own. In shamanism, this can refer to as a possessing entity – or an energy which does not have a definable physical body. In Depth Hypnosis, energetic interference can refer to spirit possession, but it also refer to foreign energies such as introjects. Introjects are aspects of another person’s personality which a person can adopt or which a person can be overrun by. This occurs frequently in parent-child relationships.
When speaking of addiction, one can easily recognize an addiction as something which has its own energy system and does not have a physical body. Addictions fulfill the main criteria of energetic interference in that they disrupt the flow of a person’s life energy. By engaging in addiction and trying to either recreate the energy patterns underlying traumatic events in a controlled way or erase those patterns, a person loses choice over how he uses his life energy.
In shamanic terms, the remedy for the above situation is simple: remove the energetic interference and restore the part of the soul or power that was lost. But not necessarily in that order. Often a person must be restored to his power or his soul before he has the power or energy required to face down the depletion the energetic interfence is compounding.
In traditional settings, the shaman does this work for the individual. By moving into an altered state, the shaman uses his relationships with what in shamanism are called ‘helping spirits’ to find the piece of soul or power which is frozen outside of time. This part of the self is usually caught in the trauma which created the soul loss – and it is as if the event is occurring in present time. By releasing the part of the self which is frozen outside of time by entering into the event and with the help of his helping spirits, the shaman retrieves and returns the soul part or power which has been lost.
Depth Hypnosis adapts this technique to create an environment where the person suffering the power loss or soul loss is assisted in retrieving the lost part himself. This is done through a variety of techniques, most of which are accomplished in an altered state. The Depth Hypnosis practitioner guides the client into an altered state where the person is able to perceive more about himself than he would normally be able to in a waking state. By following the path of the trauma through the effect it has on the body, the client is guided into entering the situation or circumstance where the trauma occurred and retrieving the lost part himself. The advantages of engaging the client in the process are numerous – not the least of which is that the person becomes empowered as an agent for his own healing and is not dependent on an outside source, such as the shaman.
Again, in traditional shamanic practice, it is the shaman, along with his helping spirits, who engages with the source of the energetic interference and moves it out of the person’s energetic sphere. And again, this practice is adapted in Depth Hypnosis to engage the client in understanding the source of the interference, its effect and the ways in which the individual is participating in creating and maintaining the energetic interference. And again, the advantages are the same.
Case studies demonstrating the advantages of using Depth Hypnosis to address the issues underlying addiction are numerous. It is important to note that no two smokers or no two drinkers or no two heroin addicts have the same reasons for indulging in their habits. By using Depth Hypnosis methods such as insight inquiry, hypnotic regression and modified shamanic journeys the practitioner and the client embark into a process of discovery and healing.
One client, a 35 year old woman came for help with an eating disorder – bulimia. By exploring the role the eating disorder played in her life and following the energy pattern it presented, she was able to see how the overeating to vomiting was mimicking the soul loss and resultant overwhelm she felt at being left in charge of 2 younger brothers at age 12 after her mother left her father for another man. The vomiting created a valve which released the overwhelm from the food. This relief had not been available to her as a teen coping with trying to parent her siblings. Through the eating disorder, she was recreating the conditions surrounding soul loss (using food to overwhelm her) and correcting those conditions with vomiting.
By introducing her first to the power retrieval process wherein she encountered what in shamanism is called ‘ a helping spirit’ and what in Depth Hypnosis is called ‘the part of the self with your highest good as its soul intent’ she was able to receive internal stability she had not had before. With that stability, she was able to return to the part of herself which was frozen outside of time in the state of overwhelm through age regression. She was then able to effect a series of soul retrievals for herself. As her dominant internal state continued to shift from that of overwhelm to that of stability, her eating disorder subsided naturally. No behavior modification or suggestion hypnosis was necessary and the change in the eating disorder remains 9 years after treatment.
Another case of an addiction being permanently altered through shamanic means adapted to Depth Hypnosis methodology is in the case of a 45 year old man with a 25 year addiction to chewing tobacco. Through his work with insight inquiry and age regression, he was able to follow the pattern of his addiction to grade school. He had been a naturally brilliant student, but found that he could not maintain friendships if the other students felt he was smarter than they were. So he came up with a method of dumbing himself down – doing poorly on tests on purpose to keep him from getting better grades than the other students. The habit of undercutting himself continued when he left school through the use of tobacco. The tobacco left him irritable and unable to focus, so his high energy was depleted and his performance at work remained mediocre. This was a less effective adaptation to the social constraints, and he had not been able to stop chewing.
By effecting a power retrieval through the engagement with ‘the part of the self with your highest good as its soul intent’ he was able to revel in the joy of being fully in his power for the first time in 30 years. During an age regression, he was able to restore this power to the 10 year old who had disowned it in favor of social acceptance. As an adult, he was so exhilarated at the prospect being able to function at full capacity, that it was easy for him to quit chewing – especially when he realized that the habit was reinforcing and deepening the pattern of self-sabotage he had so poorly understood before his work with Depth Hypnosis.
One last example is a 30 year old man who was addicted to several different types of ‘downers.’ The state that all these drugs produced was the same – one of suspended animation where he could feel very little and thereby ‘relax’. In exploring the roots of his experience through Depth Hypnosis methods, it became clear that was recreating the state where he had spent most of his childhood. This was a state of numbing which had been able to produce for himself in response to severe neglect by his parents. In a way, it could be said that he was actually visiting this part of himself that was caught in the trauma the numbing was medicating by doing the downers. By doing a series of power retrievals, soul retrievals and removing the energetic interference of the numbed state, he was able to kick the drug habit permanently.
By adapting the ancient methods of shamanism into the modern therapeutic context, addiction can be overcome permanently and relatively painlessly. By challenging the client to participate in his own healing at the roots of the dysfunction, addiction can be successfully abated through Depth Hypnosis.
Name:
Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
Location of Practice:
San Francisco, CA
Certification:
Depth Hypnosis Practitioner, Shamanic Practitioner
Specialization:
Relationship Counseling, Panic, Post Traumatic Stress Response, Auto-Immune Disease, Energetic Imbalances
Phone:
(415) 333-1434
Email:
isa@sacredstream.org
Website:
www.depthhypnosis.com
Isa Gucciardi holds degrees and certificates in Transpersonal Psychology, Comparative Religion and Cultural Anthropology, Hypnotherapy and Transformational Healing. She has studied with masters from many spiritual, therapeutic and shamanic traditions. She is Founding Director of the Foundation of the Sacred Stream, and developer of Depth Hypnosis.
Other Resources
At Sacred Stream, our goal is to share our knowledge, information, and resources with as many people as we can. For this reason, we include resources on this page including alternative heath and therapy organizations and associations, bookstores and alternative retail stores, a recommended reading list, and more. Please check this page regularly for updates.
Alternative Health and Therapy Associations
• Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology (ACEP) www.energypsych.org
• International Board for Regression Therapy (IBRT) www.ibrt.org
• International Assoc. for Regression Research & Therapies Inc. www.aprt.org
• Professional Board of Hypnotherapy www.hypnosiscanada.com
• Society for Spiritual Regression www.spiritualregression.org
• Society for Shamanic Practitioners (SSP) www.shamansociety.org
SF Bay Area Alternative Healing Centers & Practitioners
• Integral Body www.integralbody.com
• Pacific Academy of Homeopathic Medicine www.homeopathy-academy.org
• Valencia Healing Arts Center (415) 647-6222
Other Alternative Healing Centers & Practitioners
• Nangten Menlang - Buddhist Medical Centre is an organization dedicated to the preservation and teaching of Tibetan medical science and Buddhist knowledge. www.nangtenmenlang.org
• All That Matters (Wakefield, Rhode Island) allthatmatters.com
• Panacea (Retreat Center, Costa Rica) www.panaceacr.com
• The Family of Light Healing Centre - An international mobile healing, channeling, yoga, eco tours and educational centre. www.thefamilyoflight.net
Bookstores & Alternative Products
• Shambhala Publications www.shambhala.com
• Wisdom Publications www.wisdompubs.org
• The Scarlet Sage Herb Co., 1173 Valencia St, SF, CA www.scarletsageherb.com
• Elephant Pharmacy www.elephantpharm.com
• Crystal Way, 2335 Market Street, San Francisco (415) 861-6511
• Planet Weavers,1573 Haight Street, San Francisco (415) 864-5526
• Open Secret Bookstore, 923 C. Street, San Rafael (415) 457-4191 www.opensecretbookstore.com
• Tibet Moon, 47 Broadway, Fairfax (415) 256-9414
• Bodywork Central, 5519 College Avenue, Berkeley (415) 226-8500
• Shambhala Booksellers, 2482 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley (510) 848-8443
• Angel Light Books and Gifts, 709 El Camino Real, Redwood City (650) 780-9900
• East West, 324 Castro, Mountain View (650) 988-9800 www.eastwest.com
• The Herb Wyfe, Wickford, RI (401) 295-1140 www.herbwyfe.com
• Psychic Eye Bookstore, 1128 El Camino Real, Mountain View (650) 964-2220
• San Jose Metaphysical Bookshop, 1231 Kentwood Avenue San Jose (408) 446-0590
• Planet Earth Rising, 625 Sutter Street, Folsom, CA (916) 355-8844
• Rigpa, www.rigpa.org and www.rigpabayarea.org
• San Francisco Buddhist Center www.sfbuddhistcenter.org
• San Francisco Zen Center www.sfzc.org
• Shambhala International www.shambhala.org
• Tse Chen Ling Center for Tibetan Buddhist Studies www.tsechenling.org
• Healing Crystals www.HealingCrystals.com
Meditation & Shamanic Resources
• Cedar Mountain Drums www.cedarmtndrums.com
• Centralia Fur and Hide www.furandhide.com
• Dharma Crafts www.dharmacrafts.com
• Grey Wolf Drums www.greywolfdrums.com
• Living Drums www.livingdrums.com
• Samadhi Cushions www.samadhicushions.com
• Shaman's Drum Magazine www.shamansdrum.org
• Shaman Drum Bookshop www.shamandrum.com
• Tachini Drums www.drumhoops.com
• Tara and Company www.taraco.com
• Yolanda's Drums www.yolandasdrums.com
Recommended Reading
• Anatomy of the Spirit by Carolyn Myss
• The Art of Happiness by H.H. Dalai Lama
• Commentaries on Living by Krishna Murti
• Esoteric Healing by Alice Bailey
• Fear No Evil by Eva Pierrakos
• Graceful Exits (How Great Beings Die) by Sushila Blackman
• The Hero of a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
• The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh
• The Myth of Freedom by Chogyam Trungpa
• The Nature of Personal Reality by Jane Roberts
• No Boundary by Ken Wilbur
• The Places That Scare You by Pema Chodron
• The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche
• Voices of the First Day by Robert Lawlor
• When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron
Note: These resources are listed as a convenience to our visitors. If you use these resources, we take no responsibility and give no guarantees, warranties or representations, implied or otherwise, for the content or accuracy of these third-party sites or organizations.