Anyone looking for ways and means of changing their lives through ‘self development’ would be justified in feeling baffled and confused by everything that is on offer. As well as self hypnosis and subliminal techniques, there are NLP (neurolinguistic programming) and related systems such as reframing, there are ‘energy’ techniques such as EFT (emotional freedom technique), temporal tapping, TFT, BSFF and several others, there are various forms of religious prayer, meditation, strategies such as visualization, goalsetting and repeated affirmations, and a host of other software, systems and techniques (including outright ‘magick’ rites) which promise to help.

In the case of ‘psychological’ tools such as hypnosis, subliminal suggestion, NLP etc, the basis of operation is in line with scientific research and the ‘modus operandi’ is therefore clearly understandable.

But how can anything else work - the ‘energy therapies’, prayer, goal setting and other techniques that are NOT based on psychology and science? After all the ideas which underpin these various techniques range from Western and Eastern religious philosophy to angels, spirits and occult forces, with a good sprinkling of dubious ‘scientific’ explanations involving magnetism, holograms and especially quantum physics thrown in for good measure.

They can’t all be right

The simple fact is that this apparent mutual incompatibility does not matter at all. All that matters is results. And the fact is that the experience of hundreds of thousands of people who have tried the various paths to self development and reality change is that many of these techniques WILL get results - often spectacular ones.

But how could this be, if the belief systems underlying them are mutually exclusive, and may even be in complete opposition to accepted scientific or religious norms?

The reason is simply that NONE of these techniques is ‘the truth, the whole truth....’.

They are simply pragmatic tools which have been developed to do a job - different approaches to fixing the same problems. The rationale behind the invention of any particular ‘tool’ or set of tools simply does not matter, because with just a few exceptions, the actual reason they work probably has little or nothing to do with this rationale.

Will the real culprit please stand up

You will know about the ‘placebo effect’. The placebo effect is what happens for example when people believe they're taking a real drug but they're actually swallowing an inert capsule. Because the recipient is convinced that it has power, he or she will often  actually experience healing effects. Not just a subjective ‘feeling better’, but real, measurable medical or psychological benefits which have been scientifically documented thousands of times. The effect is so consistently strong that ‘placebo’ pills used during trials of new drugs often produce a beneficial effect equal to the drug pills they are being compared with, making it difficult to determine whether the drug itself is having any additional effect at all!

So what brings about these effects if it is not the inert pill? Quite simply, it is the subconscious mind of the pill taker, responding to the ‘signal’ provided by the inert pill. Not to the pill itself, but to the ‘message’ implicit in taking it and the beliefs accompanying that action. In short, the culturally-embedded ritual of pill-taking. The pill itself is just a symbol within the ritual - exactly the kind of language ‘spoken’ by the subconscious mind.

And having ‘got the message’, no matter how it is actually delivered, the subconscious mind just gets on with the job using the enormous powers at its command. This is the real ‘magick’ because despite all the speculation, we actually have almost no idea about how the subconscious mind, or whatever else we call it, can manipulate reality in the way it does.

So does this mean that all ‘self help’ products are placebos? Not at all. Many tools such as hypnosis, subliminal suggestion and NLP are designed to communicate with the subconscious mind, and their mode of action is logical according to Western rationale.

But where this is not the case, regardless of the belief system behind them, on at least one level other techniques work because they have one thing in common: - they are ritualised systems for communicating desired outcomes to the subconscious mind.

Ritual as a self help tool

Take for example, EFT. The philosophy underlying this technique involves the belief that as well as all the physical systems identified by Western medicine, the human body has a set of ‘meridians’ or energy channels flowing through it, and that these come to the surface at various specific points. EFT is loosely based on traditional Chinese medicine (acupuncture) and similarly holds that ‘blockages’ in the meridians can cause disease and other problems.

The EFT core process involves tapping gently on certain points of the body, in a particular order, while reciting certain phrases. A majority of Westerners (at least those who have not experienced the real benefits of acupuncture) will initially tend to dismiss this whole idea as nonsense. It is without any basis in the current scientific paradigm and therefore should not work according to the predominant Western belief system.

Yet EFT demonstrably does work, and not only that, it works in a whole range of superficially unrelated situations. And the interesting thing is that it even works if you do it ‘wrong’ by, for example, mistakenly tapping on incorrect locations. Now if I am following a recipe for chocolate cheesecake but arbitrarily substitute gravy powder for cocoa, I will not get anything recognisable as chocolate cheesecake from the exercise. Yet in EFT, as with many related systems, if I make an equivalent mistake in my ‘recipe’, in all likelihood I will STILL get the result I wanted, at least in some measure. Even if I do the EFT equivalent of adding strychnine powder instead of cocoa, I will not poison myself - the process simply cannot produce a harmful outcome.

And this is because it is NOT the procedure itself that is producing the effects I want. It is my subconscious mind responding to my structured request. EFT and a host of other ‘non-logical’ techniques including ‘magick’ are simply rituals for conveying an intended message to the subconscious, and THIS is where their power lies. It is in ritual that we have the key.

To the ‘modern’ conscious mind, rituals are often thought of as relics - the stamp of tribalism and tradition - something we should put behind us in our rational, scientific world.  But to the subconscious mind, deliberate ritual can be a process which marks out something of importance amidst all the transient rubbish constantly generated by the chattering conscious mind.

Rituals are a way of marking out a ‘special place’ within which we can make our real desires known. We may not by nature share this language but we have to learn to speak it if we wish to ask the subconscious to bring us the things we want.

Whether your personal ritual involves putting aside a particular time of day for self-hypnosis, visualisation or meditation, lighting a candle in a darkened room, tapping routines, putting on particular clothes, performing physical rituals, repeating mantras or affirmations or sacrificing a chicken (joke - please don’t do that) - these are all rituals that tell the subconscious mind: “I want you to listen to me now”.


Peter Roe, www.MindWaves.co.uk

Self Development - would sacrificing a chicken help?
by Peter Roe, MindWaves