The Genie Within: Your Subconscious Mind (6 page)
Read The Genie Within: Your Subconscious Mind Online
Authors: Harry Carpenter
These are just fancy names for the short periods when you wake in the morning and fall asleep in the evening. When you wake in the morning and when you fall asleep at night, you go from delta to beta and beta to delta states, respectively. As you do, you pass through the alpha and theta states. So twice each day you have an opportunity to program your subconscious mind while in the alpha state. This is also why you should never go to bed while worrying. Worry is a powerful affirmation and you would be implanting this powerful, negative affirmation directly into your subconscious mind.
EXERCISE
THE MENTAL ALARM CLOCK
The Mental Alarm Clock is an exercise you can do tonight. After you go to bed and as you feel yourself getting drowsy, but just before you lose control of your thoughts, say to yourself “I am wide awake at, say, 5:55 a.m., Saturday, September 25,” or whatever tomorrow’s date is. Use a time five minutes before your mechanical alarm clock rings. That way you will not be anxious of oversleeping. Also, use visualization. Picture your alarm clock ringing at the time you select. Exaggerate. See your alarm clock reach out and shake you awake. Some people do not use a mechanical clock because their mental alarm clock is infallible.
EXERCISE
GETTING INTO THE RIGHT ATTITUDE
Before we go on, you have to get into the right attitude. There is a psychological barrier you must overcome. The barrier is, “You do not get something for nothing.” The price of this book is virtually “nothing” compared to what it is worth. If this book were taught as a course by a big-name guru it would cost more than $500. I paid thousands of dollars for books and courses, and I spent countless hours reading to obtain the information distilled into this course. So you need
to convince your subconscious mind that just because this book did not cost much, it is, nevertheless, extremely valuable. So, to get into the right attitude, you may either pay me $500 (Just send me a check. I trust you.), or you may do the following exercise. The choice is yours.
You have not learned about some key mental attitudes yet. After we have had a chance to go over them, the importance of this exercise will be clear. These attitudes are essential for getting the most out of these lessons. So for now, just trust me and do the following exercise. The key attitudes are DESIRE, EXPECTATION, and CONFIDENCE. When you pay $500 for a seminar led by a well-known motivator, you go into his or her classroom with a strong DESIRE to “get it”, whatever “it” is. You EXPECT to get it or you would not have paid $500. Lastly, you have utmost CONFIDENCE in the teacher or again you would not have paid him or her $500.
You are going to do a little bit of acting. First, let me assure you that you are a good actor. Some psychologists would say you are always acting—acting out the role that you think others expect you to play. It is time to act. Grab your left forearm with your right hand and hold on to it. Act as if your right hand is stuck to your left arm. No matter how hard you try to pull it off, you cannot pull your right hand away from your left arm. The harder you try, the more it sticks. Go ahead and try to pull your right hand away from your left arm, but you cannot! Okay, that is enough. Now act as if your right hand is normal and take it off your left arm. See. You can act.
Now you are ready for a bigger acting role. First, get comfortable and relax. Sit in a soft chair and place your feet flat on the floor. Visualize a pleasant scene. For example, say you went on a dream vacation to Hawaii. Remember how it was. Picture yourself on the beach. Imagine that you are there now. Feel the gentle Trade Winds blowing across your body. Feel the heat of the sun on your body. Listen to the wind
passing through the palm trees. Relax as if you have not a care in the world. Let your mind wander. Just feel the joy of being at your favorite place.
Have someone else read the following to you in a quiet, slow voice. Better yet, record it and play it back. If neither option is available, or you simply do not want to take the time to record it, that is okay. Just do your best to stay in this relaxed mood and read the following to yourself. As you read it, visualize the following scene as vividly as you can. See it, feel it, and hear it.
Before you start, pretend an expert, an expert you trust, has hypnotized you. You know what hypnotized people look and act like. They look totally relaxed and if their eyes are open, they seem to stare without seeing. If someone is going to read the following to you, then shut your eyes and show complete relaxation. Your head is probably cocked to one side resting on your shoulder and your arms are hanging limply at your sides. If you are going to read the following to yourself, then act like you have been hypnotized and the hypnotist has asked you to open your eyes and read the following, but under a deep hypnotic state. Okay, go on.
Picture yourself on a stage. You are an actor rehearsing for an important play. Nobody else is in the auditorium except me, the author and director of the play. I am coaching you. Now in the first scene you must project the emotion of strong DESIRE. Think of a time when you felt a strong DESIRE...a time when you experienced a strong motivation to accomplish something. Maybe it was winning a game, or getting an “A” on a test. See yourself in your mind’s eye. See yourself pucker up your face and set your jaw in determination. See how you acted. Relive how you felt. Hear what was going on at the time. Get absorbed in the atmosphere of this strong DESIRE
.Now picture this book. Picture yourself reading these lessons and learning these lessons. Overlay the picture of yourself studying
these lessons over the picture of the time you had a strong DESIRE. Let these sensations set in for a minute...Now it is time to rehearse the next scene in the play. In this scene, you are to emote the feeling of showing a high EXPECTATION. This scene is easy. Just remember, say, a Christmas Eve or Hanukkah, when you were young. If it is a Christmas, see all the presents under the Christmas tree. Visualize the bright colored wrappings and colored bows. Remember how eager you were to open those presents...to find out what is in those packages. Recall how you could not wait. You thought you would burst from anxiety. Recall how you could not sleep that night because the EXPECTATION was so intense. See, and feel, and hear the atmosphere of that eve. Now allow these sensations to set in for a minute...
Now overlay that mental picture of a time when you felt a strong EXPECTATION with the picture of yourself reading and learning these lessons. Superimpose this picture of reading this book over the picture of Christmas Eve while experiencing the same feelings and emotions
.Now it is time to rehearse the last scene. In this scene, you must show complete CONFIDENCE, so start by showing absolute CONFIDENCE in the director and author of your play. Look out into the audience at me and emote confidence in my ability to direct you...
Now again, overlay this picture of yourself reading and studying these lessons
.Allow this feeling of CONFIDENCE to sink in
.Now it is time to awake from the hypnotic state. Picture me as the director of your play saying to you, “You are fully awake on the count of “3.” I am going to count from 1 to 3 and as I do you return to a fully awake state of mind. “1,” you are waking up...“2,” acting like you feel refreshed and relaxed...“3” you are wide awake!
Do you think that was too easy to be of any value? I will say it again, “If it is not
easy
, if it is not
effortless
, then you are not doing it right!” So lighten up! The methods you will learn in this book are easy; if you exert effort, you will fail.
Do you believe you were hypnotized? You probably do not. But do not be too certain about that. If you were not hypnotized, you were not acting. Some experts believe that hypnosis is nothing more than acting.
To prove hypnosis is acting, on a TV show aired on PBS, a professor asked a volunteer to
act
as though he was hypnotized. The professor did nothing else. No induction. No staring at a candle flame or a swinging pendulum. The volunteer assumed the typical hypnotized look. He appeared to be completely relaxed. His head rested on his shoulder. His eyes were closed. His arms and hands hung limply at his sides. The professor then said, “Here is a delicious apple. You may eat it while I talk to the host.” The object the professor handed the volunteer was not an apple—it was a Spanish onion. Nevertheless, the volunteer ate the onion thinking it was a delicious apple. This volunteer was never hypnotized by any standard routine. He was only
acting
as though he were hypnotized!
So, if you really imagined the acting scenes, you were hypnotized, or more importantly, you were in the alpha state.
An accredited hypnotist states on his web page that if you close your eyes and imagine yourself walking through your house, or apartment, opening each door as you walk through it, you were hypnotized while you were imaging it. Hypnosis can be that simple.
1
Langer, Ellen.
Mindfulness
, Perseus Books, 1989
DIFFERENCES
Between
the
Subconscious Mind
and the
Conscious Mind
INTRODUCTION
U
nderstanding your subconscious mind is essential in order to use it effectively. To begin with, you must be aware of the differences between the conscious mind, which you are familiar with, and the subconscious mind, which you are not familiar with. Below are the inherent differences in layman terms.
THE BRAIN
Most of you are familiar with the “Right-Brain, Left-Brain” Theory. Briefly, the left side of your brain (for most people) processes language capability, thinks linearly, and is logical, whereas the right side of your brain is intuitive and senses the whole, rather than parts.
Some experts believe this theory is an over-simplification. Much of the research leading to this theory, at least initially, was obtained from epileptic patients who had the left and right sides of their brains surgically disconnected for medical reasons. In normal people, there is considerable feedback between both sides and, in special cases, one side can acquire the capabilities of the other. We will not use this model in this course.
We will consider the “Triune Model” of the brain developed by Dr. Paul MacLean, Chief of the Laboratory of Brain Research and Behavior, National Institute of Mental Health. The Triune model is based on three stages of evolution, the “Reptilian,” “Mammalian,” and “Cortex.” Each stage
represents a different type of mentality geared to the needs that prevailed at the time. Each is a separate computer with its own special intelligence, subjectivity, sense of time and space, and memory. For our purposes, it is convenient to combine the first two parts, which are by far the oldest parts (the reptilian and mammalian parts) and call it the subconscious mind.
REPTILIAN
The first stage of the brain evolved 250 million years ago and is called the “reptilian brain,” or the “brain stem.” It stopped changing 250 million years ago. Thus, the reptilian brain in man is essentially the same as in all reptiles. It is involuntary, impulsive, and compulsive; it contains programmed responses that are rigid. This part of the brain is paranoid for self-preservation. Paranoia is useful for keeping an eye out for enemies or, more to date, for cars when crossing the street. This part of the brain does not learn from experiences. It just tends to repeat its programmed behavior over and over.
