Several years ago I have noticed something odd about the way people think. Well, at least it applies to me so I guess it applies to everybody else. Just recently I remembered that something and I wanted to type it down.
Now, in the mind of a human there seem to be 2 streams of thought.
One is based on language, we all think that way. When we think about something, we usually hear our own voice in our head having a monologue. That stream seems to be fully conscious and based on consciousness. It's also relatively slow.
The second stream is deeper, faster and not as conscious as the first one. This secondary stream of thought isn't even based on language. It works with images, sounds and emotions.
The secondary stream seems to be some kind of information processor. I noticed this stream one time when I was trying to relax and tried turning off my primary stream by simply concentrating and listening to my breathing. Suddenly my mind was flooded with many thoughts I had no direct control of. Those thoughts were based one images, sounds and emotions only. Of course sound can also be a voice or a spoken word, but mainly this stream seems non-linguistic or language independent.
Another thing I noticed with the secondary stream is that this is the one that keeps us awake at night sometimes. Usually this happens out of two reasons. The first is that when we are not tired, the processor keeps working at full speed and we can't fall asleep. The other one is the opposite. We are too tired and the processor is tirelessly working to process all the information gathered through the day. I like to call these phenomen underload and overload (it's not a general term, at least not that I know of).
In any case I think that during our sleep, the primary stream gets turned off. Only during a shallow dream that stream sometimes mixes with the secondary stream. We simply follow the logic of the world around us. We do not question it, we keep dreaming. Rarely people actually stop for a moment and when the primary stream splits off the secondary (it stops following the secondary stream, I'll get to that later), we realize that we're in a dream.
Everything written up to this point is there so you get the idea and I can continue to something else I noticed just recently. There seems to be a third stream. A few times in my life I was able to shut down my primary stream by focusing it processing capacity to observe the secondary stream. At one short moment I got hold of the secondary stream. I wasn't able to control it or anything like that but instead I probably disabled my primary stream fully. I was awake, but I was actually dreaming for a short moment. That didn't last very long, probably 0.1 - 0.2 seconds or something like that. But in that short moment, while the secondary stream was working its thing, I noticed something much deeper and faster. It was a third stream, below the second one. It was processing information so rapidly that I had the impression that I was "out" for one whole second rather than just a tenth second. And it was so deep and subconscious that it felt very far away.
Probably not much of this makes sense, but keep reading.
You all know what hypnosis is. It's a procedure to put the conscious mind into a state where it reacts very well to suggestions. If you remember how I explained the part when we dream and we actually don't realize it, you will notice the same pattern. Our conscious mind is controlled by suggestions and unless we consciously stop and say "WTF is going on here", we will continue to follow the suggestions and not ask questions. You will probably wonder what hypnosis has to do with all that. Well, I think that hypnosis is a way to slow down the primary stream in order to dock onto the secondary stream to switch information. This makes perfect sense as when we are relaxed and don't think about anything in particular, we become creative. The primary stream gets some stuff from the what goes through the secondary and we get ideas. The creative mind of the human is simply a random process accessing information currently flowing through our mind.
Now, not to go too much off the point here, I am talking about effective self-hypnosis. And I think that I have found a way to apply and use it. It works as quickly as in 10 seconds and there is no danger as the primary thought stream never gets really deep or deep enough to get you in danger in any way. I've realized that I've been doing this for years, but up to a few days ago, I wasn't aware of that. Here is how it works.
Simply stand down or sit down. If you have trouble focusing when your eyes are open, close them. I, personally, have gotten so good at this that I don't even have to close my eyes. Anyway, after you have closed your eyes (or not), try forcing your mind into a numb/fuzzy state just for a moment. This is relatively simple. Remember how your eyelids close and you eyes twitch around for a moment when you are really tired almost falling asleep? Your body is so used to this that when you do the twitching consciously, it will instantly interrupt your primary thought stream and it will feel a bit numb for a moment. It feels almost exactly the same as when you are about to fall asleep (except that it's much weaker). You can usually get this done in 5-10 seconds. When you stop doing that your primary thought stream needs a moment to "reboot" which puts you into a suggestive state of mind, probably a very weak trance. Here comes the fun part. If you don't let your primary stream "reboot" by itself, but rather suggest yourself something like "I feel good. I feel relaxed." first and then let it "reboot" (try taking a bit harsh and deep breath for that), you will notice that when returning to the fully conscious level, you will actually feel a bit better and a more relaxed. Let me phrase it like this: You just put a break point in your program, manually modified a variable or two and let the program continue. The best part is that it takes just a few seconds.
You will probably notice that it doesn't work always or not even often. There's something else. While you still think about the change of the state of mind, it has trouble happening as you are consciously blocking it. What I personally noticed was that as soon as I get my mind off my own state-of-mind altering (even if it's just another 5 or 10 seconds) by thinking about something else, when I return to think about if it worked, I realize that it did. Usually the switching happens by itself. Here's an example:
I'm sitting in a bus and I'm looking out of the window. I feel a bit tense and try the state-of-mind altering to help myself relax. When I'm done, nothing's changed. I wonder why it didn't work for 15, maybe 20 seconds and at one point I start thinking about something like what I'm going to cook for dinner. Half a minute later I remember that I did the state-of-mind altering just a moment ago and that I feel better now.
I think what happened was that the primary thought stream can't react that quickly to stimulations from the secondary stream. As soon as the secondary stream reacted to the suggestion for change of the state of mind, it interrupted the primary stream, implanted a new topic for the stream (like cooking) and let it work again. The fact that I continued thinking about cooking all of the sudden and it felt a bit weird (like thinking about something intensly, like in a dream) pretty much proves this theory.
Of course, all of this might be only happening to me since I've been doing it unconsciously for years. You might have troubles getting your mind a bit fuzzy or fuzzy enough for manipulating your own state of mind. This might be a better version of what they call "reframe the situation".
I think this is what meditation and trance are all about. You don't have to get deep into meditation or trance to make a difference. You can manipulate your own mind for the better. Keep in mind that it's difficult to do this to put your mind into a worse state than before. It's possible and you can do it, but it's more difficult. And who would want that anyway? #_#