Who are you, really?

Don't confuse your comfort zone for who you are.

TRY!

There are some words that are dear to the hypnotist's heart, and few as much as the word TRY!
"Try to keep your eyes open.."
"Try to remember the number.."
"Try to feel the pain of your injury.."

But what makes it such a power word? Well, yes, it implies failure, and it's a sneaky command to do the opposite of what we seem to be asking the client. We don't say "Keep your eyes open" when we want the client to close his eyes, even though that is usually how the client perceives it. (And isn't it terrible that when a kid is having trouble in school we tell him to "TRY HARDER!!" Think about it).

On a deeper level, though, it's more than a covert reverse-suggestion.

When we use the word TRY, we're really telling the client to begin to substitute our suggestion for their own empirical experience. "Try to open your eyes, and you'll find you can't." Words like try reprogram, for a little while, the clients perceptions of his own experience in a way that make those experiences seem to support and reinforce the truth of OUR suggestions.

Powerful stuff.

What other treasured words can you think of that will also encourage the client to accept our suggestions over their own experience?

Did You Ever Have This Dream?

In a psylocybin induced dream, I sat in a cafe, with my best friend from the other side, the place of disincarnate souls where we all live eventually or once upon a time, and he, never having incarnated, asked me incredulously why I would want to spend a lifetime with so many limitations -- limited by space and time and gender -- when, in the pace we come from everything and everyone, all of real existence, occupies the same place and moment, where nothing and nobody is ever out of reach, where the answers come with the questions, where there aren't any beginnings or ends, unless you want them, and then you get them all together. I know what I told him, but what would you say?