A new idea is a soap bubble!

How do you handle a soap bubble? With extreme gentleness, the quality of touch is sublime isn't it? Any jerking and the bubble will burst.

A new idea in your consciousness takes root only if you treat it with that extreme gentleness. Resistance to a new idea is natural. The resistance towards new ideas can easily be overcome with gentleness. The kind of quality you need to feel in order to move a soap bubble without breaking it.

If you don't develop this quality of touch, you'll lose many ingenious ideas and the world will be a poorer place for it.

EXERCISE

To focus your mental energies into a new idea

1. Search your mind for an idea that does not work for you, and identify a new idea that you could use instead. For example lets say you are a CA and you believe it's hard to get new clients, that'a not  a reality just an idea. One new idea you could use is that everyone you meet is a potential client and it's easy to approach them. 

Your mind will rebel violently if this idea is introduced abrubtly in a normal waking state. Your mind will search for data to support the old belief and burst the bubble of your new idea. So you really need to get into the state of mind that will accept your new exciting idea. Here's how you do it.

2. Move an imaginary soap bubble around for a munite with both your palms, try to get into the altered state of mind that allows you to do this

3. Once your consciousness feels gentle enough to welcome  a new idea think about the idea. See the picture/ movie and hear the words, nurture this idea against any jerks and allow it to form clearer. Treat it like you would treat a soap bubble as you move it into deeper layers of your being. 

4. If you nurture it this way for a few minutes you'll be compelled to act on the new idea instead of the old one. The bubble will attach to your being and draw nourishment until it is strong enough to populate your consciousness instead of the old one.

5. You need to go inside and nurture this idea with a gentle state of consciousness everyday. You can modify it and beautify it till its the best idea in the universe.

6. Your mind will now search for evidence to validate the new idea.

Fighting old ideas is never effective. Ease them into your consciousness like you'd ease a soap bubble into another position.

Once you grasp this subtle state of consciousness through your body's movements as described in point 2. above you can wash away the deepest and most stubborn of your negative ideas and replace them with shiny new ones.

How many ideas do you want to work on? There's no limit at all! Just be gentle and relaxed.

Good luck with this. It is a little subtle to grasp if you don't approach it through your body. Move that imaginary soap bubble for a minute with your palms for a minute and read the post again if you didn't get it.

Share your results with me! :)

Talking to the unconscious of another person

By now it must be clear to the regular readers of this blog that every person has two minds. One that is under our direct manual control called the conscious mind and the other an auto pilot system called the unconscious mind. All this is contained in our neurology and brain. Millions of small subroutines are executed every minute by your body without any assistance from your consciousness. The neurology uses chemicals to communicate commands to the various organs of the body.

The unconscious is a highly programmable system and can be programmed to our suit our convenience. However many people don't understand this. They think aging and disease is outside their control, so they continue to kill themselves with bad feelings.

In this post I'm going to share a transformation with you. To write it I have to get into a deep trance and it would be great if you come with me.

You have to understand that bad feelings result from the malfunction of any part of the body. There was this person who claimed she was mentally disturbed. I told her there was no such thing. She became more disturbed when she heard that! So I quickly asked her, 'How do you know you're disturbed mentally?' To which she replied immediately, I feel crushed at my chest, I feel like a heavy weight has been placed on my chest.

This was true. I could see from her posture that her muscles were responding to resist this imaginary weight. But my point was made. You know that you have a bad feeling only when something in your body malfunctions. That's why you feel 'bad'. In this case her muscles were straining the heart and lungs, thereby straining all of the body. If you feel good, all your organs are in the process of moving towards a harmonious and balanced state or are already there!

So I told her, 'I can help you but you have to let me speak to that part of your mind that's holding up this weight'. Intonation is the key when you talk to someone's unconscious. When you speak to a pet or a child why do you change your tone of voice? It's the same thing, people's unconscious minds respond better to resonant voices more than nasal tones!

The more parts of your body involved in producing the sound the better. Have you ever heard Gulzar's voice? I'll try to find a sound sample of his voice when I have my broadband, right now it's suffer-at-2G-network-time! I'm at an obscure cafe in Whitefield, Bangalore with my wireless internet device. However, the point is that he bathes you in his tonality. It doesn't just enter from your ears, the vibrations enter your skin!

EXERCISE

To develop a resonant voice, you'll have to start speaking from the pit of your stomach. Start with rumbling resonant vowels, AAAAAAAA, EEEEEEEEE, IIIIIIIIIII, OOOOOOOO, UUUUUUU then move to resonating consonants BBBBBBBBB, CCCCCCCC, DDDDDDDDDD, FFFFFFFFFF and so on. Practice everyday until your voice becomes resonant.

Never underestimate the power of the tone and tempo of your voice. If you want to help others you must be a master of this. Practice hard!

So back to the story, as soon as I said this, she let her consciousness admit my voice without analysing the words. It's difficult to consciously understand resonant words. Your conscious mind gets carried away by the quality of the words and skips the content.

And if you've got the attention of the unconscious mind a trance will result. Then it's a matter of communicating by creating purposeful pictures and sounds in the other person's mind. I said to her, 'If you hear me, Radha's unconscious (name changed to preserve my client's privacy) then see her thumb becoming warm. She said her thumb was becoming extremely warm, I touched it to check, it was indeed!

This means Radha's unconscious was listening to me! So I said to it, 'See the weight on her chest being lifted slowly by a large crane and going off into the distance, let the crane turn the corner and continue to see it until it becomes a speck on the horizon. See the muscles of Radha's chest soften and the skin fill with blood and fresh oxygen. Now take that condition of circulation and softness and see it spread all over her body. Let all her incomplete nerve impulses reach completion and relax all over her body. Close all the open circuits and hanging commands of her neurology. Let her feel complete again.'

In a matter of minutes Radha fell into a deep slumber. Her unconscious had knocked her consciousness right out while it made these adjustments. I continued to speak to Radha's unconscious, 'Make images of the last time Radha was carefree and happy and peaceful and complete. Multiply the feelings and chemicals that this state requires, to produce a state ten times more carefree and happy and peaceful and c o m p l e t e.' I was slowing the tempo of my voice to match the deeply relaxed vibrations of Radha's brain.

You have to dive right into a trance along with your client otherwise you won't know what's happening with them. By this time I was feeling as if I was floating on a cloud with soft saxophone notes in the background in between the words, the voices were coming from the depths of my being. it sounded more like a harmonised chorus than a single voice.

I said, 'When ever Radha looks inward to see how she's feeling show her the most exquisite parts of her neurology, the parts that are feeling the best. Let the best parts of herself be the reference points for her identity for the rest of her life. '

'Let her convert any less than exquisite feeling into an exquisite one. Blow off the lid that limits her from feeling good. Sort for better and better feelings everyday. Let her life be about exploring how much more exquisite she can feel. Reroute any searches for bad feelings to exquisite feelings, as she sleeps and dreams now make all these changes. When you have finished wake her up gently to the heavenly music of flutes.'

I waited for about 10 minutes, Radha woke up asking me who was playing the flutes.

She has become a very positive person since. She no longer complains of being mentally disturbed. Because when she sorts for that feeling her unconscious reroutes her to the exquisite parts of herself...

So slow your tempo, use resonant deep tonality, and play gentle rhythms in the background when you speak to yourself. You'll turn around your life.

Would you pay money to buy a CD of your current internal dialogue? If you wouldn't, change it to something you'd be eager to buy. You have the finest audio equipment in your head put it to good use! Tell me how it's going :)

Trances

This cool video is great to gain perspective on the universe

If something the size of our brain can contain consciousness, well there has to be consciousness in all of the universe don't you think? There are infinte states of mind other than the ones we are used to. How do we explore these? As you watched the video your mind undertook a journey across the universe officially known by modern man. How much more is documented and lost in ancient tongues?

I know for sure that a trance culture existed in India. Trances were portals into the great unconscious. It's possible that the same unconscious that controls your breathing and heart rate could be controlling the movement of the stars. Swami Rama had demonstrated great control on his 'involuntary' functions. We break bricks with a small tap from our hands in kickboxing class. Neville, one of my teachers gets behind you when you even think of hitting him. All demonstrations of the power of the unconscious mind.

Anyway all of these have one thing in common, they are all achieved in altered states of consciousness or trance.

Kung Fu does not actually refer to a martial art. It means spending energy and time in the cultivation of expertise. Expertise in anything, cooking, gardening, advertising, developing software, whatever... not just martial arts. Now people with Kung Fu are all doing things unconsciously. Look at the matrix below


This is the famous conscious competence learning matrix. Kung Fu is Unconscious Competence.
So as you can see the final state of learning something is a state of entering trance and being able to access capabilities of the unconscious at will.

With this post I hope to start you out on a study of trance. Trances are not only useful to do change-work but are essential to learn and master new skills. Useful? You bet. So isn't it worth practicing?


EXERCISE

To initiate and deepen trance and contact the unconscious

1. Sit comfortably in a chair with your hands on your lap and make an image of yourself sitting opposite yourself looking at yourself (phew!). You can keep your eyes closed or open, whichever makes it easier for you to visualise.
2. Now take this vision of yourself and make it larger while simultaneously dragging it away from you. So it gets bigger, but it's moving away from you, until it's really big on the horizon.
3. You'll begin to experience a somewhat altered state now, your breathing will deepen and your body will begin to relax.
4. Now tilt the image a bit one way and see if your state deepens, try both sides, also try tilting it forward and back, also try turning it so that it faces you at an angle. Do all these slowly and notice the effect of it on your trance and relaxation. Keep yourself tuned to recognise if this is taking you deeper into trance or not
5. Now turn up the brightness and check your trance, the idea being to get deeper. If you're not going deeper, try dimming the image and notice the effect on your trance.
6. Now make the image breathe along with you and see the trance deepen.
7. Imagine a control panel in your mind, imagine a large clickable dial with trance written on it, turn the dial up to 10X deepen and click it gently.
8. Feel yourself drop into a 10X deeper trance
9. Repeat 7 and 8 a few times
10. You must be in a really deep trance by now.
11. Imagine another large button on the control panel called unconscious communication switch.
12. Click it on.
13. Tell your unconscious mentally "If you hear and understand me please make my right index finger warm"
14. See if this happened, if it did congratulations! You have established communication with your unconscious. If it didn't go back to step 1 and try again before you proceed to 15
    
15. Now tell your unconscious "Please make it so that I can reach this state by going to my control panel and clicking the button called unconscious communication. If you have made it so please make my nose warm"
16. If your nose becomes warm, thank your unconscious and slowly come back out of trance by becoming aware of the sounds in the room.
17. Test the button by going in and clicking it, repeat steps 13 and 14 to see if it works.

You now have a great way to enter trance specifically to communicate with the unconscious part of you. Please practice this everyday. This is a useful relationship! I will elaborate on it's uses in future posts.

Great going!

How I met NLP

My first exposure to NLP was with Renu and Sanjeev my trainers at In Quest Foundation. This company wanted to use psycho-spiritual methods to help people. It was my first ever formal job. 

I had just graduated from art college and had a degree in sculpture.  The only reason they took me in was my experience in training a large number of women in self defence. I had been at this for 2 years then. 

They offered me the mind boggling sum of Rs 24000 a month! For me that spelled the end of all my financial woes. And getting new knowledge for free! What could be better.

This is where I learned that there's something called N-L-P Neuro Linguistic Programming. 'We can use NLP to model anyone's behaviour and create it in anyone else including ourselves.' said Renu mysteriously. And then she and Sanjeev proceeded to teach us the basics of this crazy subject. Eye accessing cues, pacing, anchoring, rapport, sensory acuity, submodalities... it was a brave new world with endless possibilities.

Then i ran into a consultant to this company called Halasyam, this gentleman was part of a group called mind masters or something like that. Anyway they had all attended seminars by Richard Bandler himself when he had come to India. What I liked about Halasyam was his confidence. So I modeled it and anchored it.

When In Quest closed down due to poor planning and in-fighting 6 months later I moved on. I studied Anthony Robbins and his NAC... pardon me, but anyone know what the big difference is? But moving on... I went on to train several corporations, because they were the only ones who'd pay huge sums of money for 3 hours of training. It was fun, but i realised nobody used the concepts because they really didn't understand it the way I was explaining it. 

So I went on with my study. The good thing about NLP is that all you need is a human brain and sharp observation to discover new things and the ability to dive into trance. Being a brahmin boy I had a really good understanding of trance states anyway. All those bija mantras and sahasranamas induced some mysterious states, what I needed was the information on how to use these states and with Dr Richard Bandler's (one of the co-founders of NLP) books and tapes I found it!

Dr Bandler has created new fields called DHE and NHR which is basically NLP on steroids! All of which I lapped up greedily and began change work on myself. I had come a long way from the first day I had heard about N-L-P in February 2004. A lot had changed and the future never looked so good!

Today my understanding of NLP is quite functional and practical. I love to watch people change. I've taught these techniques to more than 14000 people and  watched them change into better people. Nothing like hearing about a little girl using NLP to induce a state of fear in her attacker.

I think NLP is a powerful tool, but many people do not understand how to use it properly. They are learning it academically and NLP is a practical science not a theoretical one.  Dr Richard Bandler noticed and discovered so many things about the human brain and neurology that we can fast-forward evolution in our lifetime, before our very eyes. He does not believe in slow change.

Someday i hope to meet him and get properly certified from the Richard Bandler society. I do not want to take credit for this great man's work and want to pay him  his due royalties or what ever they charge to be able to use his methods.

However everything i discuss here is due to my own understanding and application of the principles and techniques of NLP, DHE and NHR.

So, who do you want to be and what do you want to experience? You can talk to many people about this, but the best thing to do is to talk to your own unconscious mind!

It has a language, and that language, of symbols and feelings is what i'm going to explore and expound with this blog. I hope reading it will help you to make the changes you want to make effortlessly!

You see people resist change for 2 main reasons

1. the new state is something they don't know and therefore scary, because the biggest fear is that of the unknown

2. they  don't know how to make the change

Dr Bandler says 'if you give people a choice they'll make it'. Iwant to give people a choice, especially in my hometown of Bangalore. Subscribe to my blog and be the change :)