Radical Emotional Honesty

Humanistic Therapy

Carl Rogers has been a long time favorite psychologist among psychologists, and his Humanistic/Client Centered Therapy has found many practitioners and advocates since its creation in the late 1930s. While Rogers' complete theory and methods are well beyond the scope of this article, his approach has several notable characteristics which were unique in his time, and which have inspired many other therapists since.

Back then, the only schools of psychology that existed are the two which are now considered "classical"; Freudian psychoanalysis (and subsets like Jung's work) and Pavlovian behaviorism. While the "classical" schools tend to treat people as machines being examined under a scientific microscope, Rogers saw people as being real humans, with real lives, real problems and real feelings. Whereas even today many schools of psychology (and especially experimental psychology) tend to refer to psychologists as though they're a separate, impartial and superior species, Rogers recognized that psychologists were just normal people also with their own problems, feelings and limitations.

The central tenet of Rogers' theory was that 'psychological maladjustment' results whenever a person "denies awareness of significant sensory and visceral experiences, which consequently are not symbolized and organized into the gestalt of the self structure". Put another way, emotional insanity means denying any part of your experience. This is a theme that I've seen and written about over and over; in buddhism and taoism, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, the Diamond Approach, IFS and elsewhere. Rogers' approach was unique, however, in that he emphasized curing this with emotional honesty and also how important it is for the therapist to maintain a non-defensive, benevolent attitude towards their client(s). I should note that IFS emphasizes the latter but not the former.

Due to the success of Rogers' methods in treating a variety of classically "difficult" clients, and due to its allowance for both the client and therapist to be normal humans beings, Humanistic therapy spread like wildfire and is still popular today. It has also influenced numerous other schools of therapy directly or indirectly including NLP and IFS.

Frank Farrelly and Provocative Therapy

During the 1960s, a therapist by the name of Frank Farrelly developed an extension of humanistic therapy which he called 'provocative therapy'. Unlike Rogers, who had primarily worked with people who attended therapy voluntarily, Farrelly worked in an asylum with people who often did not want therapy, and who even liked living in an asylum and getting free room, board and drugs.

When Farrelly began practicing as a therapist, he used the same Freudian psychoanalysis that all psychologists learned at the time. After a colleague introduced him to Rogers' work, Farrelly quickly found that it caused a revolution in his practice. Suddenly he was able to achieve amazing results with clients that none of the other psychologists in his office could get an inch from. He continued practicing Rogerian client-centered therapy until a series of events caused him to accidentally discover an even more radical approach.

The first case was a woman who was suspected of cheating on her husband, but refused to talk to any of the other therapists about it. When Farrelly was assigned to go out and interview her, she surprisingly confessed to everything, which he later learned to his embarrassment and the bemusement of his colleagues was due to the fact that he had forgotten to zip his fly in his rush to make the appointment. Later on he had a difficult schizophrenic patient which he was making no progress with after many sessions. One day with this schizophrenic, Farrelly was bored out of his mind from the patient's drolling monologue and decided to fall asleep right there on the spot. The schizophrenic was utterly shocked at this behavior and suddenly began expressing an interest in making actual progress for the first time since Farrelly had begun work with him.

Humor and the Devil's Advocate

After this, Farrelly began to actually purposefully employ such methods to shock and disrupt his patients out of their dysfunctional routines. He found that since a person with psychological problems generally believes absurd things, the best way to approach such a person is to take their absurdity and run with it. By taking their absurd propositions and drawing an even more absurd conclusion, by agreeing with them and then exaggerating or understating details, by mocking them in a friendly manner, by confronting them when they're lying or trying to take advantage of the situation, by purposefully misinterpreting what they say, by using puns, non-sequitur, and so on. When put together, to the client or patient it's as though their own dysfunctional behavior has become the butt of an elaborate joke. The therapist in this case is basically externalizing what he sees in the client, while exaggerating things to make it more obvious to the client how other people actually see them.

Farrelly also liked to "play the devil's advocate", actually taking the side of the patient in continuing to display their dysfunctional tendencies. Instead of arguing with the patient and telling them to change, he would agree with them, elaborating things that they might think, listing off benefits of their dysfunctional behavior, and even encourage them to behave worse. By doing so, he was actually taking the place of the person's inner voice and driving it outside, where the person could then choose to argue against it themselves.

In a typical situation provocative therapy takes a three-pronged approach. First, by using humor to make it obvious how other people see the client, second by playing the devil's advocate in order to allow the client to face their own inner dialogue, and third by using confrontation in order to maintain a therapeutic context and to prevent the client or patient from derailing or taking control of the interview (intentionally or otherwise).

Emotional Honesty in Provocative Therapy

Although provocative therapy employs many different specific techniques, the choice of their usage still comes down to doing whatever is the most emotionally honest and which has the most positive impact. To that end, humor is not necessarily appropriate in every situation, for example Farrelly admitted that when confronting a rape victim he would still have to tread very carefully and make sure that he was well calibrated before attempting anything highly provocative. Sometimes what is most appropriate is to be emotionally supportive or compassionate, and sometimes the best result is to have a client crying rather than laughing.

Every person and situation is unique, but if you know what any human's natural tendencies are and if you are well in tune with your own feelings then it is possible to get an intuitive sense for what is most needed in any given case. However with provocative therapy this also carries a great danger, because if at any time the therapist loses their emotional composure they will end up projecting either weakness or hostility to the client. If that happens then the therapist either loses their credibility as a leader or ends up coming off as a douchebag, respectively. While the former is usually recoverable, I can hardly even recall all of the various relationships I've lost due to the latter. Sometimes I might get a second chance, but a lot of the time they never speak to me again. I've even had at least one case where I managed to chase them off during the very first interaction and then never saw them again. This can make learning provocative therapy very difficult and discouraging in spite of its profound effectiveness.

Provocative Therapy and Ericksonian Hypnotherapy

Provocative therapy and Ericksonian hypnotherapy are like two sides of the same coin. On the one hand, Erickson's "utilization" approach to hypnosis and therapy was often very provocative and sometimes even recognizable as standard provocative therapy. On the other, Frank Farrelly often found his clients "spacing out" during intense provocative therapy sessions, which annoyed him until someone told him about Ericksonian Hypnosis and he recognized and began utilizing those trances for therapy (although not hardly at Erickson's level). Provocative therapy can thus be seen as an extension of and as an explicit codification of Erickson's approach to therapy. The reverse, however, is less true since Erickson's work encompassed many things which provocative therapy never incorporated, such as trance phenomena, indirect associative focusing and so on.

I should also mention that Richard Bandler and John Grinder also studied Farrelly's methods, which were highly influential especially for Richard Bandler's approach to therapy. However, they never formally codified provocative therapy (which fits poorly into the overall mechanistic model of NLP) and in spite of the fact that most of the crazy stories they tell from the early days center around provocative therapy, they hardly ever mention it (or Frank Farrelly) anywhere. This is at least one of the reasons why people who read about and train in NLP have so much trouble reproducing the results that Bandler and Grinder achieved.             

Dante's Inferno

In my last article I wrote about the levels of emotional stupidity through which all of us must pass to reach freedom. Today I want to write about my actual experiences with this and some things I've learned from them. This is probably some of the most difficult stuff I've written, bringing together everything I've learned and done so far. We all participate in creating our own experience, and for most of us that experience is a nightmare, a prison made of fictions of who we think we are. If we know how, we can also create a dream of truth, a work of art. It's a battle between heaven and hell, waged constantly in your heart and mind. If you want to know heaven, first you must fight through hell. I hope to show how the battle is waged.

Update: added some things to the weapons list.

Symbols, Agreements & Belief

We all live in fear. Fear of living in a different universe from the one we actually live in. In the universe we live in, there is only perfection, harmony. Everything is art, everything is music. Everything, even pain, suffering, loneliness, war and death. There are no mistakes, no accidents and no coincidences. The world, just as it is, is heaven. Each of us is an artist and prophet in the unfolding masterpiece. Life is your paint and canvas. Symbols, agreements and beliefs are the tools and brushes with which you choose your colors and place your strokes.

We learn to use these tools from our parents, teachers, peers and life experiences. You can make sense of what I've written because of these learnings, because you agree that the words have a certain meaning. We each learn countless words, symbols and concepts and agree to give them certain meanings that we use to understand the world. Some of these refer to real things in our experience, while some of them refer to ideas that exist only in our minds.

As tools, we can use them to create science, art and even magic, however symbols are not the pure experiences they refer to. "Sitting in a chair" is not the experience of actually sitting in a chair, and "art" is not actually the experience of viewing a particular painting. When we believe that symbols are truth, we give them a life of their own, the tools become the user. Our accumulated knowledge becomes a wall of fog and noise, blinding and deafening us to the truth of ourselves and everything in our experience.

The Road to Hell

The path to hell starts with a single step. That step is judgment. We learn to judge from a young age. Naturally, children tend to explore and create, to seek pleasure and avoid pain. However, we learn from others; our parents, teachers, peers, pastors, etc, that when we do what they want, when we are the person they want us to be, we get rewarded with attention, praise, affection and things. When we don't, we're punished with rejection, anger, ridicule and even physical violence. We seek their attention to see ourselves, to learn who we are and what we can do in life, but out of fear of punishment and fear of not being rewarded, we accept their judgments and deny the very thing we sought.

Fear begets fear and judgment begets judgment. We learn to judge everything and everyone, ourselves most of all. Good and bad, beautiful and ugly, fat and thin, smart and dumb, perfect and imperfect, valuable and worthless. Our thoughts and words become weapons which we use against ourselves and others. We judge out of fear, in order to try to control things so our fears don't come true. Judgments are always one-sided agreements, and in our effort to control we end up doing the same thing over and over, either giving and serving while getting little back, or trying to take and manipulate while giving little to nothing in return. The imbalance generally continues until the person either snaps from giving too much, or others snap from being imposed upon; there is no peace in hell.

The War of the Heart

The path to heaven also begins with a single step. That step is awareness. By becoming aware of when you are judging, you can decide to take a different step. This is where the real fight begins, and I suggest taking people you care about as opponents.

Leashes & Walls

The first thing I usually notice that tells me I'm in for a fight is what I call 'leashing'. Leashing is one-sided agreements in action. Either the other person will try to control or manipulate you in some way, or they may try to hand you control (ie throwing themselves at you), or you may find yourself putting yourself at their feet. In the first two cases, I politely decline to either accept control or being controlled. In the last case, I fight to break the leash.

When you follow any leash, at its end you find what I call a 'wall'. I experience them like a solid barrier, and they're like a felt experience of the denial of self and the unwillingness to experience the pain of that denial. I used to smash into them quite painfully, but now when I realize I've hit a wall, I stop and stare it down. I'll look it over, look for a way through or around, chisel at it, smash it, punch it, kick it, ram it, and fight through it until it breaks. Ultimately, getting through the wall means acknowledgment; a full recognition of the judgments which you accepted into your identity. In my experience, the usual way to get to that point either involves yelling or crying, or both. When it comes to heart issues, it seems to be inevitable, although some people seem to change more easily than others, and it probably depends on a lot of things.

Weapons of War

The fight out of hell is extremely difficult, and for most people (myself included) might be insurmountable without tools to aid in the fight. Here I present a list of agreements which have helped me to survive the battles thus far and to see truth where I might otherwise have been blind.

Focus Your Awareness: A natural consequence of judgment is that our awareness is constricted and fixated on a few limited things at the exclusion of everything else. You stop seeing, you stop hearing, you may literally close your eyes or be unable to look at what's going on. Simply by opening your eyes and looking at what's in front of you can make a big difference on whether you're able to fight or not. It may help to start by focusing your attention on random nonthreatening things to help you climb out of your head. This also means paying attention to your own feelings. They can tell you a lot about what's out of whack in your life. In Zen, they say that the path is always right in front of you. Can you hear the birds chirping? Can you see the trees sway in the wind? There is the path.

Put Your Heart on the Line: Putting your heart on the line means saying and doing exactly what you mean to, or at least refraining from saying or doing what you don't mean. This also means being honest with and about your feelings, even when you feel like shit. When things get tough, you may very well have to slow down a whole lot in order to be able to do this well.

Start With What's Most Important: Figure out what the most important thing to do is, and when you're sure of it, do that. Then figure out what the next most important thing is, and when you're sure of it, do that. Repeat until finished. The hard part is being sure. A trusted second (or third) opinion can be valuable here.

Do Your Best: You will screw up. You will blow up, you will crash, and you will have days where only the dog can understand you. It's an absolutely necessary part of all this. All you can really do is do your best, which will vary depending on how you're feeling, your health and your zodiac sign. If you've done your best, you have nothing to blame yourself for.

Take Nothing Personally: Everyone lives in their own experiential world. If someone else judges, ridicules, blames or tries to fight you, that comes from their own fear and pain, it has nothing to do with you. Let responsibility fall where it belongs; take responsibility for your own emotions, and to others the same. I can also point you to the beautiful Litany of Gendlin.

Question Every Assumption: Curiosity and doubt are some of the most powerful tools in my arsenal. If you don't ask questions, you won't find answers. Ask good questions long enough, and good answers find you. It's doubt of the self that produces judgment, and likewise it's doubt of your judgments that sets you free of them.

Know Nothing: Give yourself permission not to know. It's perfectly ok to say "I don't know". This is actually probably a large part of how I keep my sanity these days; I answer most questions with "Hell if I know!". Also give yourself permission to not know who you are, or who other people are either. Existing in this universe means continuous change and evolution. Nothing is as solid or unchanging as we experience our concepts to be.

No Merit: There is no good or bad, right or wrong. Everything is perfect, and nothing you do gains you (or loses you) any points towards everything. You do what you do because you want to, simple.

Throw Paint: When all else fails, throw paint. Do whatever, say whatever. Usually works out ok, as long as you've got nothing else.

The Stick: This is one of my favorite koans, and although it's rather subtle it speaks for itself:

Yamaoka Tesshu, as a young student of Zen, visited one master after another. He called upon Dokuon of Shokoku.
Desiring to show his attainment, he said: "The mind, Buddha, and sentient beings, after all, do not exist. The true nature of phenomena is emptiness. There is no relaization, no delusion, no sage, no mediocrity. There is no giving and nothing to be received."
Dokuon, who was smoking quietly, said nothing. Suddenly he whacked Yamaoka with his bamboo pipe. This made the youth quite angry.
"If nothing exists," inquired Dokuon, "where did this anger come from?"

Dying to Live

Probably the biggest disappointment I've ever had was finding out just how difficult, painful and tedious it is to fight your way out of hell. Pain, misery, fear, anger, hatred, confusion, headaches, rinse, repeat. There's occasional glimpses of love and freedom, but just enough to frustrate you near to death. Most days it's like crawling in a barrel and rolling down a rocky hill, and feels about like dying pretty much every time. Up and down, back and forth, and I think I've forgotten what sleep is. I think the only reason I'm still able to fight is because I started seeing other people fight right along with me. It's the first time I can recall that I've gotten back exactly what I've given.

References

The Toltec Wisdom Series (1, 2, 3)
Positioning Opens Up the Lines of Sight for the Whole Situation and Very Brief Psychotherapy by James P. Gustafson
Zen Meditation in Therapy by C. Alexander Simpkins & Annelen M. Simpkins
Trances People Live by Stephen Wollinsky

"Relationship" is a Verb!

Things have been pretty rough recently, but I'm learning a great deal and I hope to write some about it now that I have some space to think. I'm always looking for depth, and I haven't been disappointed to find it (although disappointed for other reasons, perhaps). My last few articles have been basically about relationships (sexual, mainly), but I haven't really said much about what makes a good one, or how a relationship is even defined.

Nominalizations, Groupthink and Possession

The first thing I can say about the word "relationship" is that it's a 'nominalization', that is a verb which has been converted into a noun, and thus objectified. There are many words like this; "relationship" (to relate), "government" (to govern), marriage (to marry), etc.

Some of these words also objectify a group as an independent thing that can think, decide, etc, which is not true. Every group is made of individuals each having individual thoughts, making individual actions, and so on. When the capacity to think is attributed to a group, bad things happen. Words like "couple" and "government" exemplify this. Even the simple word "we" can lead you down a slippery slope.

Finally, when it comes to relationships, there is a tendency to cling to the illusion of posession. "My" boyfriend/girlfriend, "my" husband/wife, "my" country, etc. In every case, some exclusion is claimed in general by external coercion. You serve one country, one significant other, one God, etc. to the exclusion of all others, and to do otherwise is a betrayal. It is by this means that everyone is converted into a slave, to their job, their spouse, their country and so on. This is based on a fundamental distrust, and creates a lot of resentment which is ignored until things start to break at the seams.

To Relate

To understand how a 'relationship' works and what makes it good or bad, you have to start with what actually makes it up; actions. The words you say, the gestures, touches, the jokes, laughing, provocations, teasing, activities you do together, and so on. What each person does and how they do it speaks volumes for the nature of a relationship. I should note that 'to love' is also a verb, although it can be strange to consider feelings as actions.

The most important thing is what it is you're actually interacting with. Most people are unable to see the person/people in front of them. All they can see is their own hopes and fears, or else the hopes and fears of others. Unable to see both at the same time, they can't make an intelligent compromise between their own wants and those of others, so they try to manipulate the situation to get what they want.

To Consider

The theme of "being considerate" has come up a lot for me lately, but it hadn't really occurred to me just what it means to consider. To consider what? Well obviously, the other person's feelings. Stereotypically this is something women complain about to men, although the reverse also happens.

To be considerate is a very difficult thing to do no matter what's between your legs. Not only do you need to be able to consider the other person's feelings and context, but you also have to respect your own and strike a fair deal between them. Even if you're willing to do that, figuring out a person's feelings and what's important in their context is not a simple task. That's the kind of stuff psychologists have been arguing about for more than 100 years now. It occurs to me that it's not really so complicated, it's just that they try to stick really complicated names on things that are absurdly ordinary. This is also where the depth is at, and what gives relationships the potential to be great.

To Present

If consideration is the depth, to be present is what brings the depths to the surface. What is it that you present when you're "being present"? No less than your awareness, attention and influence (which are also nominalizations; to be aware, to attend, and to influence). Usually these are preoccupied in thoughts; hopes, fears etc. There is an entire class of meditations (focus meditations) which focuses (facepalm here) on developing presence. This requires a practice of developing flexibility and depth of focus, shifting from the big picture to various levels of details, and expanding your senses as far as they will go, then extending your influence through your awareness. Usually people do the opposite: they look at reality, then at their desires, and try to manipulate reality to get their desires, only looking later to see if they got what they wanted.

Deeper Meaning

This has been the topic of a few arguments I've had recently. How do you know what relationships are worth pursuing? Is it better to have just one romantic relationship or many? Where do you draw the line?

I think there are really two important points here. The first is that, in order for a relationship to be functional, it must be fair. If one partner gives everything and gets nothing back, then it isn't much of a relationship. This doesn't just mean in terms of physical things or favors, either, but also in terms of being considerate and emotional closeness. This requires that both people can see and work out a fair deal, otherwise you get dependency or co-dependency, or one person or both are getting used.

The second is that it is best to maintain only relationships which are truly awesome and which you would keep up with forever. Meaningless self-gratification is an avoidant behavior, a symptom of some imbalance in your life. Time spent satiating that instead of dealing with it is time wasted. It takes time to accumulate worthwhile relationships, but always time well spent. I think it's worth mentioning that there ought to be at least some common interests in such a relationship, although a perfect clone of yourself is obviously not reasonable to expect.

Common Stupidity

As with everything else, there's plenty of common 'wisdom' regarding relationships which is dead wrong and yet it's how people really treat each other more often than not. This is the kind of sickness you should watch out for and either avoid or smash when you run across it. I'm not gonna plagiarize, so you can read it here.

Feminaziism Explained

Now that I've actually had some time to acquire stats, I've been kinda surprised at what I've seen. Apparently I've got readers, regular or random, from every continent except Antarctica (screw you Antarctica!). There's a definite US/english speaking skew, but I've gotten plenty of hits from many places that aren't (and some that I'd hardly heard of). I'm rather pleased with the diversity.

The #1 most popular search that leads people here, ironically, is "is the diamond approach a cult?". I never expected that small comment to be a breadwinner, but there it is. Virtually all of the searches that lead people here are psychology related (go figure) and evenly cover the Diamond Approach, Internal Family Systems, and Milton Erickson. Psychology is definitely a big part of this blog, and there will definitely be more to follow on that, but I'm kind of disappointed that there are few if any people purposefully reading this for any other reason. For now, oh well. Part of it is probably lack of much content, or at least of content that stands out. The rest is advertising in the right places, which I am very lazy about, not that I don't have places I could do that. Maybe later :).

Today's article is somewhat psychology related, and is brought to you courtesy of Valentine's Day and some insane experiences I've been having recently. And no, not the "awesome" sort of insane, either. In particular, I'm referring to feminism and its consequences.

Contradictions and Doublespeak

On the surface, feminism claims itself to represent "equality for women", i.e. sufferage, the abolishment of discrimination and exclusion, and so on. Great, awesome. Except that's not really what they're asking for, nor does that accurately represent the policies that feminists have actually pushed into law. Also, we're no longer living in the dark ages, the "glass ceiling" is nothing more than a myth today (at least in the west) and exclusive men's-only clubs and things are virtually extinct.

What you can see plainly today, rather, is a growing number of exclusive women's-only activities, clubs and so on, justified by "equality", but plainly discriminatory. And that is precisely what they want; positive discrimination. They want to have their cake and eat it, but they don't want to buy the ingredients, do the work of making the cake, or clean up the kitchen when they're done. They have "affirmative action" laws that force businesses to hire women even if they basically refuse to work or do a poor job, laws that force businesses to employ and pay (non-working) mothers, "no-fault divorce" laws that allow a woman to walk away with everything a man owns based solely on her word, and laws around rape which provide no meaningful punishment for false-accusers (and offer zero protection for men who are raped). There's your 'equality'.

And those are just the legal consequences. The social consequences are much more pervasive and insidious. "Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them" has increasing become the battle cry of the now feminised media. Both in advertisement and on television shows, men are now portrayed as thuggish, stupid, helpless children being 'humorously' guided only by the wise and benevolent nagging of a woman. In public school, it's now apparently mandatory for teachers to repeatedly spout the "fact" (which they pulled out of their feminist asses) that "women on average are smarter than men" (but equal!), since you see so many of them in engineering fields, or actually doing anything meaningful besides filing their nails and occupying a spot on front of a TV, of course. "Sex education" is practically nothing but pseudo-scientific misandry, thinly veiled by the paper authority of the government run school system. Men are portrayed as nothing but sex fiends and rapists, looking to fuck and chuck as many women as possible, and basically implicates them as walking STD infections or potential unplanned pregnancies.

The sort of sickness that feeds feminism (and misandry) comes from both sexes, though, and is a deeper problem than feminism itself. In female "tribal wisdom", "Welfare is only a man away", and in male "tribal wisdom", "the man is supposed to be the provider". Both sexes apparently agree that (strong, independent) women need to be taken care of by a man, nay they are entitled to it and the nearest man is obligated to do so for them immediately (in exchange for {the promise of} sex, of course). In other words, all the woman should have to do is wiggle her ass (or other parts) and the man then offers his paycheck for the mere privilege of being manipulated.

I've noticed personally that women tend to automatically place men into one of three categories. 1) Walking welfare check (ie free lunch), 2) Sex object (the thugs they actually sleep with, married women included), or 3) a creepy loser. In general, women think themselves terribly clever at being able to manipulate and shame men into these roles (and then taking advantage of the free ride), but if you refuse to comply their reality tends to fall apart.

Western women (and women in general really) tend to base their value on how good of a sex object they are, or rather how well they can control men with their bodies and whatever else. In conversations regarding relationships, they usually refer to themselves in the passive-objective form "me". "Romantic stuff should happen to me", "My boyfriend took me on a date", "My boyfriend went shopping with me" and so on. Rarely, if ever do you hear a woman say something like "I decided to do x", or "I took responsibility"; making themselves an active subject just does not occur to them. And yet in the same breath they want to cringe and whine about men treating them as sex objects, but they whine even louder when they don't. They want to be a passive object, with no responsibilities and all the privileges of a relationship, and they also want to be treated as a real person at the same time, again just as long as there are no responsibilities to this (like considering other people's feelings and needs).

The Man Trap

In order to successfully shirk all responsibility for contributing anything to anyone, women require a man that they can manipulate into shouldering that responsibility on their behalf. Unfortunately, in the modern western world, governments are more than happy to assist them in forcing men at gunpoint to do their frivolous bidding. It grants politicians more control, after all, so why shouldn't they?

Probably the most obvious is that divorce courts are extremely biased in favor of women. Even a woman who has no children and contributed nothing to a relationship is entitled by law to alimony for life, to sustain the "lifestyle she's used to". If there are children, she's entitled to them, too. They came from her vagina, after all, and so they must be her sole property. And to child support, since she's a helpless (strong, independent?) woman who can't take care of them without a cash cow to pay for it.

If the man tries to do anything to protect himself, ie a prenup (or stronger contract, preferably), the woman inevitably complains that it's an "unromantic legal contract". Mind you they have no such complaints about marching down to the government office to sign your life away in an unromantic, legal marriage contract. And hey, they even get a big, shiny expensive rock and a huge narcissistic party thrown just for them as a bonus.

If that's not bad enough, in many places they are trying to enact laws that imply that any woman who even lives with you for a certain amount of time is entitled to the full benefits of marriage; ie all of a man's possessions and income. Of course, even if you avoid that, governments have plenty of programs; single mother ghettoes, single mother welfare and so on for which they will force you to pay taxes. Consider yourself successfully parasitized.

Society Pays

Whenever someone tries to get privileges while neglecting any responsibility, there are negative consequences. Aside from the huge legal-economic vacuum that feminism represents, there are social consequences that are far worse.

In the UK especially, women are basically never held accountable for their actions. If a woman does something deliberate and criminal, it's written off as "she couldn't help it, she didn't know any better, she needs a counselor or therapy". As a result, women commit heinous crimes (often against men) and walk free. It's also very popular in the UK for women to abandon newborns in dumpsters, parking lots, and so on which occurs all the time. Of course, all they did was install "baby drops" at hospitals so now women can abandon their children at whim without facing any emotional consequences for it.

Not only that, but if a woman wants welfare without the bother of marriage, she can just have babies, then collect welfare and child support and get a free house on top of that. It's the children who really get screwed, since they're stuck with a manipulative parasite of a mother who tears the family (if there ever was one) apart at whim. They get to live in a ghetto and go to crappy schools while their mothers drink and pop prescription pills all day (and of course screw around with their thuggish boy-toy of the moment).

Indeed, the destruction of the family has created an entire generation of thuggish-whorish delinquents and criminals. And the government, of course, then steps up to "save" everyone from the criminals they created in the first place. So you get fascism as a final cherry on top.

Things aren't quite as extreme in the US or Canada, but there is still a significant burden, and a very significant degree of entitlement and demand for instant gratification that plagues most wealthy societies. Implosion from a critical mass of parasites is only a matter of sooner or later.

A Political Movement

In no way am I trying to suggest that women are inherently insane, or parasites, or that no woman ever takes responsibility for anything, or that women are somehow less intelligent. The real problem is that, from a young age they are trained (in general) to expect infinite free lunches forever, as a part of an ongoing political movement called "Feminism" (free lunches for women only).

The thing is, regardless of what individual women may think, the women who are actively engaged in the political workings get rewarded simply for doing so. You can get funding, prestige, and political power just for whining about having a vagina and about life being totally unfair on account of that fact. Just like every other politician, they are driven by greed and power-trips.

The government also likes feminism, since it allows them to control men through women, and to control women through free-lunch programs. Ultimately, group-think makes people stupid, and totalitarians have no use for intelligent serfs. It's much easier to control a group that undermines itself through competition and groupthink than one of individuals who cooperate and think for themselves. Divide and conquer, and all that.

A Case of Brainwashing

From a young school age forward, kids in school are indoctrinated with feminist double standards, and then especially so in "sex education", which is more like part religious part feminist propaganda. There's a long list of such double standards which degrade both men and women, and create a culture which actively enables female entitlement (to basically anything they want). The gist goes something like this:

“Us women don’t need men…
…what do you mean men are on a Marriage Strike? How are we meant to cope! Grrrr.”

“Children don’t need fathers, and are probably better of without a man in their lives…
…but men who walk out on their children are scum for depriving kids of a father.”

“Women are financially independent from men and can cope easily enough on their own…
…but we still want – nay, demand – child support, alimony, welfare benefits for single mothers, etc.”

“Men and women are equal…
…but women are better.”

“Gender roles are pure social constructs; no behaviour is naturally male or female…
…but men are naturally bad and women naturally good.”

“Women are just as capable as men, if not more so, in the workplace…
…but we do insist on positive discrimination/affirmative action to ensure we can succeed.”

“Women are actually stronger emotionally than men, better able to handle stress and emotional pain…
…but we demand to be wrapped in legal cotton wool to protect us from the evils of sexual harassment.”

“Women are the more gentle, nurturing and caring sex…
…but we want the right to gleefully abort our babies at whim.”

“Feminism is not about hating men, it’s about equality…
…(insert random Andrea Dworkin or Germaine Greer quote here.)”

“Making wide generalisations about a gender is unfair and nasty…
…and all men do it all the time.”

“It is terrible that women are objectified and equated with their sexual organs…
…come on fellow lezzers, let’s watch The Vagina Monologues!”

“Women are not in anyway impaired by PMS…
…but we reserve the right to use PMS as an excuse to justify murder.”

“There is no excuse for domestic violence or child abuse…
…except having a vagina of course.”

“For a woman to sleep around it means she is liberated and free…
…but a man who sleeps around is a womanizing sex-crazed bastard!”

(from another blog)

"Many women do behave as if equality means getting their way all of the time. True equality means equal consequences, equal effort, equal expectations, etc. Many women want their cake, they just don’t want to have to pay for the ingredients, make the cake or clean up the kitchen afterwards."

Links

Eternal Bachelor : Scary tales of feminist reality in the UK.

What I Learned from PUA

Whew! Recently I've been distracted by a conversation with Joe Fobes, who introduced me to a whole lot of new psychology stuff that I'll have to write about later. I've also been working 8AM to 4 or 5PM, and haven't had a whole lot of time to do anything. Now that I've got things reasonably settled, I'm going to try to get at least something written. There's plenty of topics that I haven't touched on yet, and plenty more side stuff to talk about, so as usual it's more a matter of getting it down coherently in text. And having the time and energy to do so.

I've also been having an interesting conversation with Jimmy, who has some very cool (although sometimes hard to follow) insights into Ericksonian Hypnosis. He also links to some very good articles on lesswrong, which I never would have been able to dig up myself. I've also been re-reading Erickson's collected works, and I've edited the second Erickson article to include some clarifications and insights. If you can't tell, I've had a lot on my mind lately.

Today I want to talk about something that I kind of hate, but is also kind of cool. If you've never heard of the "pick up arts", you might want to google it quickly to understand just wtf I'm talking about. Before I even start on what I thought was cool, I think I should preface it with everything that is garbage about the whole industry and the concept in general.

The Lame Stuff

When I first learned about 'game', all I heard about was all the techniques, how to dress, how to make them jealous and how to tell stories about yourself. I got the stupid idea into my head that I could use hypnosis to enhance this, but could never figure out how. That sort of seemed to work the way they said it would, but none of it led to actually getting laid, nor to anything resembling a meaningful relationship. At the same time, they were saying that it doesn't matter what you say, but rather how you feel about what you're saying. I observed this directly myself; sometimes I would say virtually nothing and yet the result was far better than when I tried doing all that stupid acting crap. I decided then that hypnosis would be better used as a therapy rather than a means of control.

So then I got into 'natural game', which focused around dealing with your inner state and being more 'authentic' as opposed to using techniques and acting. They had a lot more interesting things to say, but they were still incongruent in many ways. They still used a lot of cheap "techniques", in spite of the fact that they admitted that they were useless. They advocated forcing your way through your resistances, and that you should go out 7 days a week so that you don't "slip backwards" into your old ways. They also said that men and women are equal, which I agree with, but then they go on to say that if a woman is physically attractive, that is all the value she needs to 'bring to the table', whereas the man should be cool and open and level headed and provide the good time. Utter nonsense. Their focus on actual self-improvement was superficial at best, and as much as they might claim 'radical honesty' or whatever, they were all very artificial in their social interactions.

Aside from that, both 'schools' spoke about eliciting jealousy and making yourself seem "higher value". Jealousy, I found, is a miserable and hateful thing to use, and you invite them to throw it right back at you when you invoke it. As for being "higher value", that's all about living through your own values congruently. That's a topic for another time, however. Flirting is really very, very stupidly simple. All you're doing is demonstrating confidence, playfulness (and general positivity) and interest. Once you understand that, all the other crap they say is superfluous and often backwards. Two out of three works well, too.

The Cool Stuff

The cool stuff I learned was more about social dynamics, and that probably made the whole thing worthwhile. There's a lot more going on in social interactions than most people are consciously aware of, but to which they respond in profound ways unconsciously.

Probably the most ubiquitous example of this is the Reticular Activation System or RAS for short. The RAS is like a visual 'cache' for important reality-objects to pay attention to. This includes both threats (like if you saw a gun out of the corner of your eye, you'd probably freak) as well as desired things (hey, there's a hot girl/guy, or hey, there's a bag of money). When something in our RAS radar comes within our peripheral vision, we automatically look at it without thinking about it, and this happens all the time.

One thing which is naturally almost always in our RAS is to look out for alphas. There's much talk in the PUA community about "being alpha", but they seem to have very little understanding of what this really means. An alpha is simply someone who acts primarily through their values (as opposed to acting through anxiety). A person who acts through their values will tend to produce their own good time, rather than needing to follow along with a group, although there are certainly degrees of 'alpha'. If you go to a club, you can easily observe the phenomena where one person in a group will be the most active leader, and everyone around them will be looking to that person to try to figure out what they should do. This has been called a "chode crystal".

Most of what determines an 'alpha' from a 'beta' depends on non-verbal signals like body language, facial expressions, glances, and voice timbre. What your body projects is interpreted as being strictly more true than what you say. If you say something and your body language or voice projects that you don't believe it, people will think you're trying to trick them or are hiding something. Alphas generally project values which result in a distinct confidence, fluency and grace of movement, whereas betas project uncertainty and a level of disbelief in what they are doing.

In addition to non-verbal signals, people will also use what is known as a "congruence test" to ascertain the social 'pecking order'. Even if a person moves or talks like an alpha, when challenged they may break down and react in a negative or beta fashion. So, people will tease you, insult you, try to manipulate you or get you to be subservient, anything to see if they can put you under them. Essentially, if you violate your own values in your response to them (or sometimes if you respond at all) then you may find your status automatically lowered. It is the strength of your reality or frame which determines your social status and not what you look like, how much money you make or what activities you participate in.

As might be guessed, since displaying "alpha" non-verbal behavior congruently causes people to tend to follow what you are doing, it has a great potential for hypnosis. Instead of trying to copy what they are doing and use that to lead them, you get them to want to follow you (which they may do automatically on an unconscious level) so that you are giving them something when you display similarity to them. Then leading them is nearly effortless.

There are also untold legions of difference social signals that mean "I want to fuck you", which also occur in degrees. One thing I was shocked by is just how quickly a person's attitude can change in that respect, sometimes flip-flopping back and forth in almost comedic fashion. The other thing that surprised me is just how sexually charged almost all casual conversations in all situations are. It seems it doesn't matter what gender you are, or whether they're in a relationship or not, sex is the number one concern for most people. I've also seen that most people are bi to at least some degree under appropriate circumstances. Weird shit, let me tell you.

My general conclusion has been, aside from the three main aspects of flirting, the majority of social action should be directed to people as... well.. people. Surprise? Through a complete lack of understanding of this, PUAs fail to manage meaningful relationships, and usually end up with mentally immature people, and then complain that they don't understand. To those folks, here's a cluebat for you.

Irrational Rationality

Well, I thought I had 'tao' basically finished, and then I found out that Jay Earley from IFS also practices the diamond approach. His article on the relationship between the two is quite a bit different from mine, and mentions some things that I didn't. Apparently his books are primarily focused on IFS as 'therapy', ie goal/problem oriented, whereas the DA is very open-ended. He has worked with some DA students, but generally he keeps IFS and DA separate. Since I have the opportunity, I'm planning to shoot him some questions and see if I can get some clear(er) answers before I rewrite (and yes, I've been slacking).

Today, however, I want to talk about a disturbing trend that I've seen gurgling from the annals of the interwebz. There are a few people who hold 'rationality' as an ideal, and profess that all people should live with 'rationality' as their primary standard. In IFS, you might say they had an over-analytical part, and moreover that they're trying to tell everyone that we should be led by over-analytical parts as well. Speaking 'rationally', though, my bigger complaint is that they often use logic in ways it is not meant to be used, or in ways which are incorrect or not logic at all. At the same time, they have no problem regularly begging for donations for their vaporware projects. There are two main offenders that I'm aware of, Stefan Molyneux of freedomainradio and the folks at lesswrong, who also run the singularity institute and the Center for Applied Rationality. After I've deconstructed them to death, I'll discuss what 'rationality' really is and what it really means.

Stefan Molyneux, 'Universally Preferable Behavior', and 'Real-time Relationships'

Stefan Molyneux is a libertarian activist who has an endless collection of podcasts about libertarianism, austrian economics, psychology, atheism and what he deems 'objective ethics'. While he makes some good points about government, and introduced me to anarcho-capitalism and austrian economics, I can't say that I agree with much else that he says. Several Austrian Economists have pointed out that he has no idea what he's talking about, both in regards to economics (a topic for another time) and to ethics, which is a consistent pattern with most anything he says.

"UPB"

Molyneux's pride, glory, and primary source of income is convincing people that he has discovered something miraculous; a system of 'objective' and 'universal' ethics, which he calls "Universally Preferable Behavior". His definitions of 'objective' and 'universal' are far from standard, however, as is the 'logic' he uses to justify his conclusions.

At first, he acknowledges Hume's observation that you cannot derive an 'ought' from an 'is', and that there is no objective quality of 'better':

As Hume famously pointed out, it is impossible to derive an “ought” from an “is.” What he meant by that was that preference in no way can be axiomatically derived from existence. It is true that a man who never exercises and eats poorly will be unhealthy. Does that mean that he “ought” to exercise and eat well? No. The “ought” is conditional upon the preference. If he wants to be healthy, he ought to exercise and eat well. It is true that if a man does not eat, he will die – we cannot logically derive from that fact a binding principle that he ought to eat. If he wants to live, then he must eat. However, his choice to live or not remains his own.
Similarly, there is no such thing as a universally “better” direction – it all depends upon the preferred destination. If I want to drive to New York from San Francisco, I “ought” to drive east. If I want to drive into the ocean from San Francisco, I “ought” to drive west. Neither “east” nor “west” can be considered universally “better.”
It is true that very few people do drive into the ocean, but that does not mean that it is universally true that nobody ought to drive into the ocean. Principles are not democratic – or, if they are, we once more face the problem of rank subjectivism, and must throw the entire concept of ethics out the window.

 and acknowledges that a theory must be consistent with observed phenomena in order to be considered valid:

If I say that gravity affects matter, it must affect all matter. If even one pebble proves immune to gravity, my theory is in trouble.

and that preferences cannot be objective:

Preferences do not exist objectively within reality.

but then (actually out of order in the book) he contradicts himself, saying:

When I say that some preferences may be objective, I do not mean that all people follow these preferences at all times. If I were to argue that breathing is an objective preference, I could be easily countered by the example of those who commit suicide by hanging themselves. If I were to argue that eating is an objective preference, my argument could be countered with examples of hunger strikes and anorexia.

and makes arbitrary leaps over the is/ought gap:

If you correct me on an error that I have made, you are implicitly accepting the fact that it would be better for me to correct my error. Your preference for me to correct my error is not subjective, but objective, and universal.

Nevermind the fact that he states originally that behavior is what is objective, universal, and to be preferred but here he clearly states that it is the subjective preference which is 'objective and universal'.

And, to finish it off, he 'proves' his theory in his most favorite way of doing so, circular logic (that's a fallacy for those not aware):

1. The proposition is: the concept “universally preferable behaviour” must be valid.
   
2. Arguing against the validity of universally preferable behaviour demonstrates universally preferable behaviour.
   
3. Therefore no argument against the validity of universally preferable behaviour can be valid.

 Overall the book is nothing but a bunch of pseudo-logical rhetoric designed to convince overanalytical people that morality is objective and universal. The actual content of the book is nowhere near as organized as my deconstruction of it (which I strained to manage) which makes it much easier to hide all the self-contradiction and blatant fallacy. In spite of its "logical" facade, the actual arguments are predominantly emotional, with very little real logic or reasoning and absolutely zero evidence to support the claims he makes. The rest of the book only goes downhill from what I've mentioned, with false dichotomies and the same fallacies repeated in variations.

RTR

Molyneux's other major work he calls "Real-time Relationships" or RTR for short. In spite of its name, the primary focus of RTR is neither being in the moment, nor mindful awareness of one's feelings. Instead it encourages people to analyze every social interaction they have and to judge whether the other person/people are interacting morally or not.

In spite of the fact that Stefan often refers to IFS, both UPB and RTR make assumptions and recommendations that are in direct contradiction to the theory and teachings of Dick Schwartz. Molyneux often advises people to disown their families and to leave abusive relationships. While I agree that you have no obligations to stay in abusive relationships, he also promotes an attitude of judgment towards everyone (x is a bad/immoral person) and blame especially towards 'bad' parents. He also likes to play therapist, although he has never been trained in IFS or anything else, and obviously shows little comprehension of psychology in general.

Lesswrong, SI and CAR

In contrast to Stefan Molyneux, the folks at lesswrong are techno-socialists. They profess that in a short while we will develop a superhuman AI which will either make human effort completely obsolete or else destroy humanity terminator style. They too promote an absolute standard of 'rationality' which they claim will solve all of humanity's problems. However, the fallacies that plague lesswrong's arguments have some general differences from those of Molyneux. They're also somewhat better organized, which makes it much easier to dissect.

Lesswrong's Bayesian Machine

The cornerstone of lesswrong's 'rationality' is bayesian logic and game theory. In their distorted view of reality, human-level intelligence, and for that matter all truth can be achieved using only these things. They seem to be blissfully ignorant of visually-driven thought experiments, meta-logic, epistemology and ontology. They only vaguely acknowledge that psychology exists, mentioning obscure concepts like 'ugh-zones', which describe a very real aversion to confronting psychological 'burdens', but relegate their importance to the sole fact that they interfere with 'rationality' by producing cognitive bias. Their model is extremely oversimplified, to say the least, and not nearly as useful as they claim it to be.

The Singularity Institute Mugs You

Springboarding off their dramatically oversimplified view of psychology and intelligence, they then take a great leap into fantasy land, predicting that in 50 years we will have a superhuman AI that will either be the ultimate nanny or the terminator. Thus, they claim, we need to start now to develop 'friendly AI' just like in an Isaac Asimov book. Even if you ignore the economic and physical problems with their vaporous theory, and the fact that they aren't actually doing AI research, and the fact that real human intelligence cannot be summarized with bayesian networks, their explanation for how we will achieve this is an insult to anyone with any knowledge of computer science.

Namely, they invoke Moore's Law, claiming that since computing power tends to double every two years or so, that we will necessarily have superintelligent computers just around the corner. Ignoring (and this is a lot of ignoring) the problem that Moore's law is soon doomed to face the reality of the limits of atomic scale, the real problem is that Moore's law does not apply to AI research at all. Yes, desktop computers have become much more powerful since they were first introduced; orders of magnitudes more. However, computers still do basically the same mechanical, deterministic tasks. Computing power does not equal intelligence, so no matter how fast or how complex a desktop computer becomes, it will not become a shred more intelligent, except perhaps by means of very complex software. Software which depends on AI research that they're not doing, and which moves far slower than Moore's law.

In fact, SI doesn't actually do anything at all except self-flagellating and 'brand building' (ie taking people's money). Givewell declined to recommend SI, commenting that they didn't actually accomplish anything, and furthermore that their argument was pascal's mugging. I consider that an accurate assessment.

The Center for Applied Fallacy

As part of their campaign to 'rationalize the world', they split off an extra branch of SI which is aimed at imposing 'rationality training' on unsuspecting layfolk. Through this effort, they hope to brainwash the world into becoming good little 'rational' techno-socialists, ready to accept the blessings of their all-benevolent technological singularity dictator in 50 years. They also have an entrepreneurship program, associated with ycombinator, which has become known for ripping off investors with fraudulent tech startups. The only good thing I can say about it is that, given their general ignorance of psychology and complete lack of charisma, they aren't likely to succeed.

So What Is 'Rationality'?

In NLP, we would call the word 'rationality' a nominalization. A nominalization is a verb, which through the magic of the ambiguity of language has been converted into a noun. The verb from which 'rationality' is derived is 'to reason'. So what does it mean to reason? Put simply, reasoning is the capacity to represent and solve problems without having the actual problem in front of you. Reasoning includes thought experiments, meta-analysis, logic, questioning and hypothesis.

In the past there has been much controversy over whether reasoning or empiricism is more useful for discovering truth, and even whether 'truth' can be known at all (it can't, but that's a topic for another time). Over the past century, however, we've pretty much come to the conclusion that they must be used together (reason + evidence = science) in order to achieve results, and even then there is an uncertain element that requires imagination (ie, coming up with theories that interpret the raw data).

Far from being an ideal to live up to, reasoning is something which requires constant questioning of everything in order to remain useful. It is, at best, combined with evidence under proper conditions in order to come to a better understanding of how things work, and at worst fundamentally limited in accuracy thanks to the map-territory distinction and recursive complexity. While there is a definite place for reason and evidence in discovering truth, there is also far more to life and being human. Both lesswrong and Stefan Molyneux seem to be trying, in contrast, to reduce humans to mere machines.

Tao of Psychology Part 7: A Secular Spirituality

The book "Stranger in a Strange Land" by Robert A. Heinlein tells the story of a human boy named Mike who was born and raised on Mars by Martians following the death of his parents and all of the other colonists. When a later mission 'rescues' him and returns him to earth, he is shown to have learned superhuman capabilities from the martians. He can control his breathing, heart rate, muscle growth, and even his sense of time. After struggling for some time to fit in with the other humans, he visits several churches, hoping that the 'old ones' of earth could help him to understand what it means to be human. He finally comes to a realization of the contradictoriness of human nature, which gives him the revelation he needed both to understand his own humanity and to fully understand the teachings of the Martian 'old ones'.

After that, he becomes inspired to start a church in order to teach the people of Earth the things he has learned. He finds that the only way he can do this is by teaching them to speak martian as the human languages completely lack the words needed to describe what he knows. His church becomes very wealthy and prosperous, and several of the other large churches declare him a heretic, sending hoards of angry believers against him. Ultimately, he decides to allow them to have their way, peacefully allowing himself to be martyred to show them the true nature of their hate.

It's often said that the real world is stranger than anything in science fiction, but in this case I'd say they're not too far apart. While humans can't actually make objects disappear into another dimension with our thoughts, or breathe the martian atmosphere (95% CO2, which often freezes), we can learn to control our autonomic functions, our sense of time, and to transcend the artificial limits of personality to find higher meaning in life and reach profound states of awareness. We don't have to learn martian to do it, either. (although Ericksonian language might as well be)

Mr. Ali observed that if parents (or peers or teachers, etc) fail to recognize, mirror and support a child's developing essential nature, the child will dissociate and create self-image parts to protect that nature in whatever way they can. These parts become the story we tell ourselves about ourselves; our 'life story'. By seeing this story objectively for what it is, we can learn to unwrite it, to transcend it and live in the present instead of the past or the future. We can learn to stop our incessant inner 'doing', to center ourselves in being and to transcend the limitations of attachment to the body.

We can do this without invoking gods or ghosts, and without requiring belief in the absence of evidence. Ericksonian Hypnosis can further aid in teaching these things experientially instead of by mere advice or dogma, and to more fully unleash the potential of the human mind both in the inner journey and in living in the world. It is my conviction that this is truly the path which will allow humans to transcend war, prejudice and totalitarianism, and to evolve as a civilization to work towards what is really important and what really does good.

Zen Hypnosis

Recently, while I was digging for free resources on Milton Erickson, I stumbled across uncommon knowledge and their sister sites, uncommon forum and hypnosisdownloads. At first I took little interest in their hypnosis audio, as Erickson commented that no single induction fits perfectly for all people. However, after experiencing a definite effect from a mere text induction (that wasn't directed at me), I decided that it might be worth looking into to see if they had anything that resonated well with the theory I have described. Although it's scattered around randomly, it turns out they have a lot of things which are exactly what I was looking for in terms of converting IFS/DA into a hypnotic format.

Now that I've had the chance to try some of these, I can say more about it. Their inductions suck, so it's bring-your-own-trance. Some of them, particularly the ones Roger Elliot narrates, have very good, very Ericksonian suggestions though, and would be quite useful if you've learned autohypnosis already.

Intro

Harmony with Nature: Unguided visualization to boost inner peace and harmony.

Hypnotic Body Scan Relaxation: Teaches you how to quickly and deeply relax every muscle in your body. An easy way to naturally learn to enter a trance, and extremely useful in general.

Clarity

Know Yourself: Introduces you to the many facets of you.

Cloud Nine: Helps you to have a very zen-like experience, and to connect with your sense of inner harmony.

Mindfulness Meditation Training: Helps you to become more centered in the present, to become more detached from your emotional states, and to gain a wider perspective on things.


These three provide the fundamental skills needed to begin unwinding your personality, and help you to discover a sense of inner calm that underlies all of the chaos you normally experience.

Heart

Strength of Character: Helps you to achieve a deep self honesty, from which your indestructible inner strength and perseverance arise.

Trust Your Instincts: Teaches you to become aware of subtle physiological signals your body sends you, to find and believe in the truth in your heart, and to combine your instincts with your reasoning ability to improve your judgment.

The Meaning of Life: Teaches you to access your inner sense of meaningfulness, and to create greater meaning in your life through it.


These three work synergistically with the last three to amplify the effect of meditation, increase centeredness and awaken your inner guidance.

Intuition

Awaken Intuition: Teaches you to gain access to the subtle and powerful abilities of discrimination of your unconscious.

Learn from Your Mistakes: Become your own best teacher, learn how to learn from your past experience and improve yourself without self-punishment.

Expand Your Comfort Zone: Learn to expand your boundaries gradually, to invite more excitement into your life.

Others' Shoes: Teaches you how to experience what it's like to be another person, and come to understand people better in general.

Misc

Super Senses: (at the bottom) Self-explanatory.

Other Hypnotic Techniques

Recently I found a bunch of related hypnotic techniques through hypnosis.org. Cal Banyan's regression therapy, C. Roy Hunter's parts therapy and spiritual part therapy, ego state therapy and Michelle Beaudry's "Spa of the Inner Mind" unguided imagery and "The Forgiveness Pyramid". From what I understand, connecting with your inner spiritual guidance is a simple and straightforward process, and would be easy to integrate with other techniques.

And that, my friends, is the end of this series. (finally!)

Tao of Psychology Part 6: Erickson Revisited

Surprise! More Milton Erickson :P. In all seriousness, though, in my first article on Erickson, I primarily covered the general character of his therapy and methods. I didn't, however, say much about trance or hypnosis, what those are, how they work and what you can do with them. While I won't be giving any instructions on how to actually induce a trance (ok I lied, sort of), I will be describing what you can do with one, how that relates to what I've been discussing, and some of the latest findings in neuroscience and how that relates to trance.

What is Hypnosis?

While the word 'hypnosis' might bring up images of swinging watches, 'hypnotic gazes' and the like, hypnosis can easily be defined as any communication which causes a change in thinking in another person. Advertisement is hypnosis, teaching is hypnosis, negotiation is hypnosis, even social situations are hypnosis. All of our mental problems can be ascribed to hypnosis, and any successful treatment is also hypnosis.

More specifically, hypnosis affects people on an 'unconscious' level, where responses seem 'automatic', and not voluntary or controlled. "Un-conscious" literally refers to anything that isn't conscious. When you walk down the street, you don't think "ok now left foot go there, now right foot go there, now left foot.." and so on. You just walk, and your unconscious does all the rest. Your unconscious regulates your breathing and immune response, it filters your experience and it performs all the skills you've mastered and no longer need to think about. It also has the reigns on all of those latent mental abilities that you always hear about how we don't use them.

 

Characteristics of Trance

 You can't really talk about 'hypnosis' without also talking about 'trance', although like hypnosis there's a lot of superstition surrounding the phenomenon. Really a trance is just a mental context. When you go to work, you probably put yourself into a 'work trance'. When you 'fly into a rage', you're invoking an 'angry trance'. People who are good at performing or playing music will put themselves into a 'performance trance'. As you might guess, we're in some sort of trance or another all the time.

However, in most of these trances, 'consciousness' is in the foreground; reacting, watching and making the usual fuss. In a 'hypnotic trance', the unconscious is brought to the foreground, which is what makes this sort of trance different and special. It is not, as many hypnotists do their best to convey, a state of 'increased suggestibility'. You do not become a mindless slave or automaton. Rather, you gain more direct access to your more subtle inner machinations, to your imaginative abilities, to your autonomic functions, and to many other abilities that you probably didn't know you had.

There are certain profound differences in awareness that characterize a "trance" as opposed to the normal "waking state". Awareness of 'external reality' is essentially traded for 'internal reality', leading to what is called "rapport", where the person ignores and/or gives no significance to external reality objects. Instead, ideas are given reality, and additionally examined very closely to relevance to the subject as a person. While a person in a trance is very receptive to ideas, they will reject or defeat any ideas which they find objectionable or harmful. It is this very engaged ideation which allows access to various physiological and intellectual capacities. Also, as a result of a limited awareness of reality contexts, a person in a trance may fail to find amusement in things which they normally would in the waking state (like practical jokes).

Outwardly, there are observable differences between someone in a 'hypnotic trance' and someone who is 'normally awake'. Probably the most obvious and profound indicator is that their pupils dilate like satellite dishes. It's almost impossible to miss. They also tend to relax their muscles and take on a sort of spaced-out or stuporous look. Their movements take on a strange rigidity (catelepsy), their attitude becomes more child-like, they lose awareness of most things in reality unless you specifically point them out, and they become very literal in the way they interpret what is said to them (due to the literal interpretation of ideas). Check out the video links at the end of the first Erickson article for examples.

Light vs Deep Trance

 Most hypnotists seem to recognize that there are 'light' and 'deep' trances, and some even add in a 'medium' category, although for reasons I'll explain I don't consider that distinct. Basically, in a 'light' trance, the conscious mind is still 'awake', and can even participate in eliciting and experiencing hypnotic phenomena. In a light trance, you're generally limited to associative phenomena like positive hallucination, although you can also elicit dissociative phenomena in a localized way. For example, you could develop amnesia for your name in a light trance, but if you developed amnesia for the entire experience the trance would automatically 'go deep'. It's really a sliding scale, with fine variation in how far you've 'drifted off', but at some point you really 'zone out', which is called 'deep trance'.

In 'deep' trance, your consciousness has either gone away, or to sleep, or is simply in a state where it is so comfortable that you just don't care about anything. You don't care enough to try to move, or to speak, or to pay attention to anything in reality. In a 'deep' trance, it's possible to elicit all of the associative phenomena with profound lucidity, and to elicit all of the dissociative phenomena like negative hallucination, amnesia and anesthesia in a global way.

Hypnotic Phenomena

There are a number of specific phenomena associated with trance as they are easily identified as unusual and are easy to elicit consistently. There are also many more than I could list, some profound and some subtle, which cover a wide range of experiences and capabilities above and beyond what is well studied. I'll try to give some examples of both to give you a pretty decent overview and an inkling at what sorts of things are possible with hypnotic phenomena.

Some basic phenomena:

• Ideomotor activity (and automatic writing)
• Positive hallucination (experiencing something that isn't there in any of the senses)
• Negative hallucination (not experiencing something that is there)
• Anesthesia/analgesia
• Hyperesthesia (amplification of senses)
• Amnesia
• Hypermnesia (extreme recall)
• Time distortion (time seems faster or slower than what the clock says, sometimes extremely so)
• Control of breathing, heart rate, body temperature, blood pressure, blood flow (to specific areas, has even been used to reduce bleeding during surgery) and immune response (amongst other things)

Erickson also often used hypnosis to awaken people's 'intuition'. He took the position that the unconscious could be aware of more things and process them faster than consciousness can (modern science agrees, more below). He used this to help people improve their performance in sports, to make creative leaps, and went into a trance himself to improve his awareness of his client's state and to allow himself to instantly respond to whatever they did during therapy.

To give a firsthand account of something similar, back in my "pickup" days, I had the opportunity to see someone who was 'in state'. I decided in the moment to see if I couldn't go into a trance to 'copy' that state, and so I defocused my eyes and watched him for a moment; and as he moved and interacted I could see sort of 'swirls' occurring around his elbows and other joints, and soon I felt a strange new feeling arising from my center. This expanded like a flame, and then when I went to walk away it didn't even feel like my body. I moved like he did, almost exactly, and at his pace (which I had to slow down). Later I was making small talk with some customers and it didn't even sound like me (although it wasn't like him either). I was more confident, easygoing and personable than I have ever been; normally I hate making small talk at all.

Of course, that experience didn't last, but it was astounding how I was able to 'absorb' so completely what someone else felt and how they moved. Especially when it was something so alien to my own experience.

There is another case of Erickson's which I think is illustrative. He once had a blind woman come to him because she thought hypnosis might help her see. Having no sense of sight, it was difficult to distract her and limited the kinds of hypnotic phenomena he could elicit. After much effort, he finally managed to get her to manifest arm levitation, and left her only with the suggestion that she would be surprised. Later, she found that she could walk and move easily and smoothly like a sighted person. Being blind all her life, she had built up her senses of hearing and touch over her lifetime which she was able to synthesize so that she could move gracefully without thinking about it.

Posthypnotic Suggestion

By linking a hypnotic suggestion either to a class of experiences or to a future time, it effectively becomes a posthypnotic suggestion. When the trigger for the suggestion is activated, the person goes into a 'posthypnotic trance', during which time they carry out the suggestion. This may persist until the suggestion is fully carried out, or it may only last a moment and then the person wakes up with residual hypnotic phenomena.

Hypnotic Sophistication

To Erickson, unless you intended to purposefully deceive him (and probably even then), he considered you a good subject as a matter of fact. However, he often spoke of a distinction between subjects in terms of "sophistication", which I did not understand for a long time.

In order for a person to carry out a suggestion such as "stay in trance, but act as if you were awake", or "you have an interesting experience, and learn important things", they must first be able to manifest basic hypnotic phenomena such as ideomotor activity and hallucination. The more abstract and complex the suggestion, the more sophisticated the subject must be in order to carry it out.

Autohypnosis

Many of Erickson's first experiences with trance were autohypnotic. You can learn autohypnosis through a posthypnotic suggestion, and/or you can also learn to do it in a 'naturalistic' way which Erickson described. His method was simple: Gather, in your mind, all of the impressions which are relevant to what you want your unconscious to do, focus on them clearly in consciousness, and then set them in the back of your mind for safe keeping, with the knowledge that your unconscious will respond when it has come up with a solution. It may respond like a bolt of lightning out of the blue, or intuitively without you noticing that something has changed, or perhaps in a dream, but you won't know until it does. Of course, sophistication helps, but it isn't necessary to get a good response.

Hypnosis & Neuroscience

While modern neuroscience has found out virtually nothing about trance itself, or hypnosis in general, it has found some fascinating things about representation and memory which are linked to trance phenomena.

It was found that for the primary senses (VAKOG) each could be trained so that you can remember and name more details of things you've seen. Hypnotic games with hallucination and hyperesthesia can achieve the same thing without having to do 'flash card' type work. Nikola Tesla, for example, gained his engineering skill because as a child, he was in such boring and captive circumstances that he found himself drifting off to daydream worlds regularly. Later, when he learned engineering, he figured that because he already had such imaginary prowess that simulating engineering in his head would be easy. Turned out he was right.

They've also found that reaction time can be reduced, regardless of age. This can be trained through martial arts practice, or ironically through first person shooter games like Halo(tm). Posthypnotic suggestions have also been used to aid in improving reaction times.

Previously I mentioned how memory champs use the method of loci to memorize obscenely large bits of information (like 18,000+ digits of pi). The method of loci is a combination of visual representation and anchoring, both skills which can be practiced and improved through hypnosis.

Other experiments have used people as living computers. They showed some subjects pictures of helicopter pads and had them become familiar with what one looked like on a satellite photo. They then hooked the subjects up to an EEG and rapidly flashed many satellite photos in front of them while measuring the output. They found that even though the person wouldn't have any conscious awareness of it, whenever they saw a helicopter pad in a photo their brain would register an 'aha' response, telling the computer to search that frame to find a pad. The photos were cycled fast enough that they could barely see anything at all.

Closing Thoughts

Hypnosis not only offers the possibility of directly teaching the fundamental skills and states needed for inner work, but also the possibility of awakening the latent potential of the human intellect and human action.  It can be used to bypass and break up rigid conscious states, and to achieve rapid change and growth. It's faster and more powerful than meditation, and I almost consider it to be a way of life. Ultimately, it's something you'll have to experience for yourself.

Links

• "What Every Body is Saying" by Joe Navarro 
• "Unmasking the Face: A Guide to Recognizing Emotions from Facial Expressions" by Paul Ekman and Wallace V. Friesan
• The Dog Whisperer: The Complete First Season
  (Humans act more like dogs than you think)
• Uncommon Knowledge

Tao of Psychology Part 5: The Diamond Approach

Woah. I posted a few comments yesterday on wikihyp which I also linked back here, and when I went to check my stats later that night I found I had as many views yesterday alone as I have since I started writing this. I'm not sure whether that's actually because there were that many people reading through, or if it was because individual posts were being counted as 'views' when they hadn't been from my previous traffic. Anyway, I was a bit skeptical of Joe at first, but after reading through a bit about what he's doing I find that I agree with the majority of everything he says. He seems to have a very solid grasp of what I consider to be the most important aspects of Erickson's technique and therapy, and puts the ASCH to shame in that regard. Joe and Craig Galvin and James Tripp are all doing awesome stuff, and I highly recommend checking them out. It seems there's an 'underground Ericksonian' movement that's much bigger than I was aware of. Previously, I left off talking a bit about the Diamond Approach and how it helped me to make sense of IFS. Today I want to cover that in some depth and hopefully leave you with a good sense of what it's all about.

Hameed Ali (pen name "AH Almaas") originally studied physics in college, and was working on his PhD when he happened to attend a class by Claudio Naranjo. Claudio had been working on synthesizing psychology and spirituality, which he saw as being one and the same. Mr. Ali had a profound spiritual experience which led him to question if he was really doing something meaningful with his life, and decided from then on that he would study psychology and spirituality.

He worked and studied with Claudio for several years, along with spiritual teachers from Sufism, Taoism, and Buddhism, developing himself spiritually and discovering parts of himself that he didn't even know existed. Shocked that nobody seemed to have an explanation for the things he was experiencing, he began recording his experiences and comparing them with people he worked with. Eventually he came together with a comprehensive theory and practice to explain and reproduce the profound revelations he had, which he called "The Diamond Approach".

EDIT 11/09/13: Since I've had quite a bit of experience with this stuff now, I've decided to edit this to include my own observations. I can now personally confirm the validity of most of the basic concepts within the diamond approach, as well as some things which I observed to be quite different.

 

Fundamental Narcissism

The heart of Mr. Ali's theory revolves around what he terms 'fundamental narcissism'. He realized that most people, including 'normal' people, mostly don't experience reality or themselves as they really are. Instead  they experience their identifications and beliefs about themselves and the world. In the early days of NLP, Richard Bandler often commented to that effect as well. Identifications and beliefs are rigid and "opaque" to the "true self" (as in IFS), which prevents people from experiencing their 'spiritual' nature - all the things we consider good and often idealize such as strength, will, love and compassion.

The sum of these beliefs and identifications make up our 'self-image', which we experience instead of our selves. The self-image can contain elements which we see as being bad, for example a person might say "I'm dumb" or "I'm shy" or "I'm unlovable". It can also contain elements which we are highly attached to and consider vital to who we are; "I'm an American" or "I'm a Christian" or even "I'm smart and good looking". The work in the Diamond Approach focuses on seeing through these fixations in order to reveal true nature or "essence". As the buddha often said, it is our attachments which cause our suffering. "Enlightenment" is merely the process of letting go of these attachments, and "realizing" the aspects of the true self. Seen in this way, "enlightenment" and "self-actualization" are two aspects of the same process.

The same dynamics as IFS apply (although I think Mr. Ali probably recognizes more things as being parts than IFS does) with exiles trying to get attention and managers and firefighters trying to stop them from manifesting. Mr. Ali also emphasizes that, whenever a part is being experienced internally we also project aspects of parts onto the world outside. Sometimes we project our parents onto other people, either by idealizing (projecting essence onto others) or re-enacting abuse, and sometimes we project an inner child onto someone else and act out the part of the parent (although both roles are played by inner children). Projection also occurs more subtly in the way we define our everyday reality; for example if you think of a spoon as "a small metal shovel used for transporting food to your mouth", you won't be able to experience the spoon as it really is in your hand in the moment. Words and analytical ideas are unable to capture even such a mundane experience.

The 'self-image' is said to often be experienced as an entity many times in therapy. It always appears as a sort of 'coating' or 'shell', blocking the person from the world, although the form changes each time it is encountered. It's often hard, sticky, or heavy, and at the highest levels, it's seen 'directly' as a sticky fluid that 'screens out' reality and prevents it from being seen clearly.

In my experience, the personality usually appears as a sort of barrier which clouds my thoughts. At first it appeared hard and solid, very much like running into a brick wall. After dealing with many issues, getting knocked down and then recovering and getting back into things, it now feels more like a cloud of silly putty, thick and sticky. In all cases it has a character of unpleasantness, which I can only describe as being filthy and disgusting. It usually appears when I've had enough experience with an issue that I become fully aware of it.

Holes and Space

In his own work and in his work with other people, Mr. Ali noticed that once he managed to work through the defensive emotions, he often came across an experience which is described as being like an inner "black hole". A sort of deficient emptiness, a lacking, which when approached would bring on intense fear and disorientation. It was like if you 'fell in', you'd get lost down a bottomless pit mario style. This was also a recurring experience in therapy, each person inevitably had many of these which might appear in different places in the body, and they all seemed to mark the 'center' of a given cluster of issues.

He found that if the fear surrounding these 'holes' was dealt with, the hole itself would become less threatening. There might still be some disorientation, but mostly it just became a calm emptiness. When clients focused on this emptiness, reliably it would transform itself, becoming a spaciousness which began to expand until it became boundless. Sometimes this 'space' would be clear and open, sometimes it was full of presence, and sometimes it was more black and void-like. In every case, however, after the space had fully expanded, a profound state of the 'true self' would then emerge from it, revealing the source of the sense of lacking.

Once that point had been reached, the cluster of parts involved became 'fully understood' and no longer reappears. He also found that, following each such experience, the person would gain a subjective sense of having "more time" and having "more space", and over time they would gain an increasing 'general faith' in life which begets a realistically optimistic attitude.

He also mentions that most therapists stop before reaching that point. The fear and disorientation of the 'holes' tend to discourage them from trying. In 'self therapy', they even mention the phenomena, saying 'it's like there's nothing there, an emptiness where my self is supposed to be'. Because they avoid or miss the experience, the self never materializes (or at least not completely).

In my own experience, "holes" have usually always been associated with either fear, anger, jealousy and other personal emotional conflicts. The very issues which modern society would have us believe we should "compromise" on tend to be those most important to actually fight about. Furthermore, unlike Mr. Almaas's account, I find it rare to ever deal with a hole without a great deal of trauma and catharsis in the process, and other times I experienced essence without any particular "hole" identified with it. In general, "understanding" a hole for me has meant understanding the absurd limiting beliefs I had and acknowledging them.

 

The Aspects of the True Self

 One of the strongest aspects of the diamond approach is the extensive discrimination and description of the aspects of the 'self'. I have now had personal experience with most every aspect which Mr. Almaas described, and can relate them to their significance and to how I came to experience each.

Mr. Ali notes that the parts of the self-image are in imitation of the aspects of the true self which they ironically suppress. Anger mimics strength, compulsion and effort mimics will, neediness mimics love, pity and empathy mimic compassion and so on. The imitations never achieve the glory or the effectiveness of the real thing, however.

• Strength

  Strength is warm, firey and energetic. Strength supports movement and action, and is the primary focus of Tummo. Strength is revealed by deciding on an action and taking it, even when it requires fighting against your worst fears, and by fighting against any imbalanced emotional exchange you come against. You could say it's developed by the practice of walking off of (emotional) cliffs.
  

• Will

  Will is solid, supportive, secure and radiates certainty sort of like an inner mountain. Will also supports action, providing the steadfastness required to persist, and allowing you to act without efforting or nagging yourself. Will is also inextricably related to sexuality and sexual security. In the 'natural' school of 'pick up', will is referred to only as 'state', and Milton Erickson's 'anticipated response' drew heavily on will. Will, like strength, is gained through emotional "fighting", but comes through finding enjoyment in things that you are proud of, in spite of possible judgment from others. Will is also the antithesis of spoiled, bratty behavior, and can be used like an emotional demolition tool against such behavior.

• Love

  Love is a warm, smooth melting feeling, like an embrace of liquid gold. This is, of course, what most people attempt to experience through a relationship. Usually, the need for the other person to provide that experience causes tensions which ultimately destroy the relationship. Nonetheless, most issues around love will require another person as an object of that love in order to clarify them, and issues surrounding any aspect of essence will tend to affect your perception of love first and foremost. I only experienced love after first having experienced strength (in a fight revolving around love), and thanks to the admiration of certain sweet persons who helped me out when I needed it.
  

• Compassion

  Compassion is a gentle, healing energy which makes pain easier to bear. Note that it doesn't make pain 'go away', nor does it do anything to try to. Instead, it helps you to 'stick with it' until the pain is healed. For me, compassion arose very easily when I did not expect it, simply acknowledging that I was attacking myself was sufficient.
  

• Joy

  Joy is light, warm and energetic. Joy also includes the experience of curiosity and engagement, ie 'being in the zone'.
  

• Peace

  Peace is empty, clear, silent, and well, peaceful. Peace allows you to 'cut through the noise' to get to the heart of things. I first experienced peace through practicing mindfulness meditation.
  

• Value

  Value is royal, noble and holy. Value is a matter of feeling important, as though your existence is valid and meaningful, and was one of the most traumatic issues to work through.
  

• Nourishment

  Nourishment is the experience of being filled with wholesomeness, literally as if you were drinking it. Nourishment is the only aspect of essence directly tied to the enjoyment of food, you could say it's literal 'chicken soup for the soul'.

• Awareness

  Awareness is a clarity, developed by continuing to look and listen to everything that is said and done, even when it's unpleasant or scary, and responding to what is actually there. Conscious awareness begets greater awareness, and is a necessary practice for clarifying essence.

• Knowingness

  Knowingness starts with acknowledging that there are things that you don't know. Until you acknowledge that you don't know something, you cannot begin to investigate it and find out. Knowingness is also developed by acknowledging that there are things that you know but don't know that you know (perhaps because you don't want to).

• Brilliance

  Brilliance is something like a cross between a lightning bolt and liquid sunlight. Mr. Ali mentions that people often mistake it for god because it is so glorious, and it provides a liquid-like ability to seep through experience and reveal inner truth as though it were transparent. Brilliance is the source of major "aha!" moments where the common threads of different ideas come together. Most of my experience with brilliance has been indirect, I only realize after the fact that I've somehow outsmarted myself.

• Personal Essence

  Personal essence is sort of the 'center' which integrates all of the aspects of the true self into a whole person. It adds a 'personal' character to all the aspects as this happens.
  

• The Essential Self

  Also called 'the point'. It is like an infinitely small, but very bright point of pure beingness. It is like an individual, personal version of the absolute, and has a characteristic of indestructibility to it, too small to cut, too short lived to kill, and shining without light. I experienced this spontaneously shortly after strength and love.
  
  

You might notice that (some of) these sound familiar. They're the very traits which society venerates under various names: "courage", "kindness", and of course the #1 most cliche of all, 'love'. I don't believe that there is any coincidence that across a variety of cultures and religions around the world, the same basic values turn up consistently. Likewise, certain activities, whether they pay well or not, often become a 'calling' for people simply because they embody these characteristics in a physical form. On the other hand, there are careers such as being an advertising executive which no one would claim has any deep meaning. We even have words like "deep" and "shallow" which we use to describe them.

 The Process of Inquiry

The actual practice of the Diamond Approach incorporates elements of Object Relations Therapy and the Feldenkrais Method, although both have been modified to fit the DA framework. The primary practice of inner work is referred to as 'inquiry', and involves being mindful of your emotions while keeping an open and curious attitude towards them. By directing that open curiosity towards your emotions, and questioning them (even if it's just the attitude of a question) until they're fully understood, you work through your parts and reveal the 'holes', ultimately revealing the self. Feldenkrais is used often when a person gets 'stuck', or when the teacher notices tension in the student that they aren't aware of.

Mr. Ali does recognize the sort of paradox that occurs where, in order to work with parts and free the self, the aspects of the true self are necessary first. In IFS, this is explicitly recognized and managed by getting the parts to 'back off' so that the true self can be temporarily revealed and do the work. In DA, however, he only vaguely recognizes that sometimes the student is 'in sync' and work can happen, and when they take 'the wrong attitude', that they won't be able to get anywhere. He kind of runs around in circles with it, but never reaches a solid conclusion of how to get 'in sync' with any consistency. He also recommends using anger to access strength and to force your way through inner defenses, which causes many problems and has limited success.

There is another aspect of inquiry that has to do with giving things up. As Jesus (supposedly) said in the Bible, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs in the kingdom of heaven". In the process of revealing the self, you end up giving up your identity, your beliefs, your parents, your conceptions of reality, even the solid ground you think you're standing on. In contrast, the aspects of the self are fickle, fluid, ephemeral and constantly shifting. They offer nothing to grasp onto, and disappear into thin air if you try to fix them into place and build an identity from them. As the buddha pointed out, it is our attachments that stand between us and enlightenment.

The Three Stages of "The Journey"

Mr. Ali uses the metaphor of a journey to describe the process of self-realization. In this journey, the soul is both the guide and the destination. He recognizes three main 'phases' of this journey, each with its own unique focus and revelations.

 The First Phase

 During the first phase, a person basically has little or no access to their self. Most of the focus of this phase is learning to access the self and free some of the aspects of it in their basic form. At this point, the self is experienced as bits of greatness here and there scattered within a sea of parts.

The Second Phase

After the first phase, students now have much greater access to the basic aspects of the self. This makes the work much easier and allows it to proceed more quickly; simply becoming aware of a part is enough to heal it very quickly. However, the parts become more subtle and difficult to detect. They try to cling to the newly revealed self and its aspects, and become possessive of them.

In the second phase, working through parts does not usually reveal new aspects. Instead the aspects are transformed into a purer manifestation. While most people have heard of 'unconditional love', here it is revealed that strength, will, compassion and so on can also become unconditional. "Unconditional" in this sense does not mean for me, all the time, without me having to do anything. That is the egoic idea of 'unconditional'. In this sense, 'unconditional' means the intrinsic nature of everything and everyone, everywhere, always. The experience of unconditional aspects is clearer, brighter, and more profound, and you begin to see the character of those aspects reflected in each other as well. Mr. Ali calls these "diamond essences"; ie "diamond strength" "diamond will" and so on, however I find this to be a bit gimmicky and confusing. The second phase is also usually when the aspect of brilliance is revealed.

Towards the end of the second phase, you begin to see that parts are actually manifestations of the self as well. It is as though the self was an infinite ocean, and parts are like individual waves. This is something which can't be experienced when parts make up the majority of conscious attention. At the end of the second phase, once all the aspects have been 'upgraded' to their unconditional forms, this culminates in the 'supreme self'. The "supreme self" is the highest experience which has the attribute of being 'personal' or individuated. All higher aspects are 'universal' and impersonal by comparison.

The Third Phase

The third phase is quite different from the other two. There is no longer anything to do with the primary aspects of the self, and instead the focus is on the very act of conceptualizing. The experience of you knee, for instance, without the concept of 'knee' and 'location', becomes formless and dimensionless. The same could be said for holding a spoon, feeling the 'coldness' and so on, or in regards to people who you feel 'familiar' with and have a stable of idea of who you think they are and how they should act. When these things are experienced as an experience in and of itself, they lose their stable familiarity and become new and wondrous, and you become explicitly aware of their nature as thought.

He offers an interesting meta-exercise related to this. In the exercise, you pay attention to your experience, and notice what you think of as 'self'. If you can point to it or name it, you know it isn't the self (including the body), since then what is it that's doing the pointing or naming? The self includes those things, but because it includes them it must also be greater. As you strip away and include all the things that aren't self, you find yourself in more inclusive, more expansive states until you include everything and everything is seen as thought; timeless, dimensionless and formless.

It is in the third phase that you experience a direct connection to the universe, including it and manifesting from the same contiguous 'stuff'. You no longer feel bounded by the limits of your body; that is not where you end or all that you include. The states of the third phase tend to transcend concepts, and include universal consciousness, pure being, absence, non-conceptual awareness and the supreme ultimate (known as "taiji" in taoism). The "supreme ultimate" in particular is a non-conceptual experience of reality in which you experience your (selfless) self as an observer of this reality. Attempting to introspect at this point results in looking back outwards, as if there is nowhere further 'back' that you can go, and inside and out are one.

The Source

 At the end of the journey, upon casting away everything that is left of you, you find The Source, although it sometimes manifests earlier than this. The Source is described as being the ultimate unmanifest, like pure unknowable mystery and wonder. Once The Source has been experienced and recognized, you start to see it in everything. It's as though everything you see manifesting is the 'front' of the universe, and The Source is the back. Everything seems less real, less substantial and transparent, with 'the light of the void' shining through. It's kind of like the universe is a movie; lights dancing on a non-existant screen. The light has no real substance, and when you try to see the 'back' of the pictures it makes there is nothing.

Mr. Ali notes that people who reach the 'ultimate' level of attainment generally shift between the supreme self, the supreme ultimate, and the void. This is automatic, and whatever aspect of the supreme self or whatever level of awareness is most appropriate for the situation is what manifests at that time.

Shortcomings

 While the Diamond Approach is quite advanced in some ways, it has several features which are less than attractive. Mr. Ali has some serious guru-itis, and through his books he beats you over the head with 'my way is the only way', 'you have to stick with the spiritual practice forever' and 'you need to fully dedicate yourself to finding (my) truth'.

While some of the methods he uses (like feldenkrais) are interesting and effective, many of them are not. I already mentioned the problems with 'inquiry' relative to IFS, although the generally non-verbal approach in inquiry is very interesting.

The Diamond approach also includes a lot of small group and large group meetings. While I can appreciate the possible value of a small group session, I don't see the value in anything they do in the large group meetings, especially given what they usually do there. In this video you can see Mr. Ali spout some random irrelevant gibberish about love, followed by 5 minutes or so of clicking his prayer beads, as though he's said something so awesomely profound that it deserves 5 whole minutes of meditation to understand it. Compared to that idea of 'meditation', Ericksonian hypnosis is orders of magnitude more effective and engaging.

Speaking of effectiveness, the Diamond Approach seems to have very little overall, at least in terms of consistency. He expects a 7 year commitment in his organization (the Ridwan School, sounds like jedi to me) before most people reach a high level of attainment. On the plus side, that's the requirement for becoming an instructor in the school, which ensures thorough training and development amongst their teachers. Overall, the organization is rather cult-like, and they arrogantly tout their methods as best without experimenting with other possible approaches. He readily admits that most people who enter the school drop out before reaching a high level of attainment, and considers that to be the students' problem rather than something for the organization itself to improve upon.

Closing Thoughts

Mr. Ali had a fascinating parable which he relates to the attitude people tend to take towards 'therapy'. It goes something like this:

One day an elephant came to see the great shah, looking very troubled indeed. He said to the shah, "Oh great shah, I can't understand it at all. I can't seem to eat the right mosquito foods, they make me feel sick. I can't find a suitable mosquito mate. I can't do the right mosquito things. I'm just not a good enough mosquito, can you help me?" and the shah said "I would be happy to help you, but you're not a mosquito at all". The elephant, however, was quite skeptical. He pointed his trunk and said "Look at my long, pointy nose! What besides a mosquito has such a nose?" then he flapped his ears and said "See? What else besides a mosquito has such flappy wings?". The shah replied, "Well, perhaps you're a bird. If the food of a mosquito makes you ill, perhaps you should try the food of a bird to see if it fits." The elephant sat thoughtfully, and then said "Alright, I'll do as you suggest, and try some bird food to see if that doesn't fit better."

 So too with clients. They come in wanting all their mosquito problems solved, ie they want an even better, grander self-image, when all along they are truly elephants, the true self, which is something completely different.

I hope these articles have been both revealing and inspiring to at least some of the people who read them. I still have a bit more that I want to write on this subject before I put it down, but for now what that will be about is a secret :).

Update

I just found out that Jay Early (who's interpretation of IFS I heavily critiqued) originally practiced the diamond approach (and still does). Life is full of surprises. I had previously thought there had been no contact between the two, but it seems I was mistaken.