Monkey Mind « Setanta Hypnotherapy Clinic

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Taming the Monkey Mind

by Xavier_Nathan

Published on: February 15, 2012

Categories: Health, Human Spirit, Thoughts & Feelings, Xavier Nathan, spiritual exercise

Tags:attention, concentration, Isle of Man, meditate, meditation, mind, mind experiment, Monkey Mind, Setanta hypnotherapy Clinic, thoughts, visualization, Xavier Nathan

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Mind Experiment

To investigate how much control you really have over your choice of the thoughts you think try the following mind experiment. Focus your mind on a particular thought. You could choose to think of an image, a sound, a smell, a taste or even a sensation. It doesn’t matter the kind of thought you choose to think, just try focussing on that single thought for no more than a period of 3 minutes. It might seem like very simple exercise to perform but for most people thinking one thought for more than even one minute is simply not possible.

Focus

Don’t take my word for it. Before you continue reading this article, you try it! Sit comfortably in a chair with feet on the ground, back straight and eyes closed. Before you close your eyes take a peek at the clock. Now focus your attention on the air entering and leaving your nose. Focus your mind on the feel of the air entering and leaving the nose and say the word “in” when the air is entering and “out” as it leaves your nose. Whenever you find that your mind has strayed from the task open your eyes and see for yourself how long it took for you to lose control of your attention to your thought.

Meditation

This is precisely what the wise men of old noticed and they believed that if they could not control their thoughts then the mind was free to reek havoc in their lives. They understood that the thoughts we persistently dwell upon affect how we feel which in turn creates the life we experience. Our feelings attract the people and the experiences in our lives and for this reason they felt it essential to find a way to get the mind to dwell upon thoughts that would create the life they wanted so that they were no longer victims of random thought forms chosen for them by their subconscious. This led to a practice we now know as meditation.

Meditation is a practice that develops our ability to focus the mind on the thoughts that will create the life we want. It does this by training the mind to obey us. If you liken the mind to a monkey that noisily chatters and jumps from branch to branch then training the monkey to serve you is one of the objects of meditation.

With the monkey mind under our control we are then in a position to take the reins, as it were, and create the life we desire.

Rescue from Chaos

In this day and age we nurture chaos by feeding our minds with the kind of stimulation and distraction that is now readily available to all of us. We even pander to the monkey minds of our children in giving them free rein to wander where they will. Rather than teaching our children how to gain control of their minds we encourage them be become victims of their minds which ceaselessly require activity and stimulation. How many times do we hear children say they are bored when not provided with the external stimulation that their minds have grown used to? The mind is a bottomless pit that will eventually devour the people who have never learned to tame it. You need only look around at how dissatisfied people are with their lives to see the evidence of this all about us. The key to our freedom and happiness is in placing a ceiling on our desires, appreciating what we have and dwelling on the thoughts that create inner peace and happiness. Meditation is one a step in the right direction.

Link to Video on How to Meditate

Links to Related Articles

Hypnosis to Create the Life you Truly Desire

by Xavier_Nathan

Published on: December 17, 2011

Categories: Hypnotherapy, Thoughts & Feelings

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The Split Mind

The mind is split and that is why we sometimes find ourselves talking to ourselves. The internal dialogue we each experience is as a result of the divided mind. One part of the mind sides with the ego and is continuously filling the silence with noise. The noise I refer to is the internal dialogue that keeps us distracted and focussed on what we imagine to be real.

The Internal Critic

The more immersed we become in this internal dialogue the more real our problems and stresses become. The dialogue is a creation of the ego and its sole purpose is to keep us focussed on the unreal which then becomes real to us. The more we can disengage from this idle chatter the more peaceful we become and the closer we feel to our true nature. Hypnosis is a wonderful tool which gives us the ability to, in effect, turn off the noise that keeps us distracted and daily practice brings peace and enjoy into our lives.

The ego needs us to believe in time for its own survival. Without the construct of time the ego cannot exist because we would immediately see through the illusion. The way the ego keeps us believing in time is by making us jump back and forth between past and future never actually allowing us to ever be in the present moment. The ego plays a very clever trick on us and we all fall for it every time. The trick involves getting us to make the association between what has happened in the past and making us equate that with the future. So, in effect, we are conditioned to expect from the future what we have experienced in the past.

Breaking the Cycle

The way to break this cycle is in understanding that it is our focus of attention that attracts our experiences to us. If we continue to place our focus on what has happened in the past then that is exactly what we will attract to us in the future. Using hypnosis to ground ourselves in the present we can sever our false connection to the past and future and choose a different focus for our attention. By learning to place our attention on what we want to experience we eventually attract those very experiences and people to create the future we desire.

A Shift in Awareness

Some people imagine hypnosis as something that a hypnotist does to them and associate it with entertainment . No, hypnosis is simply using any one or more of your five senses to bring us into the present through focussed attention. I regularly do it as I am walking to work and I focus my attention on the beauty of everything I see. By looking for the beauty of everything that is presented to my eyes this creates a shift in awareness that takes me out of my head and the monkey mind ceases its idle chatter. The feeling of well being that accompanies this shift in awareness is unmistakeable.

The Art of Self Hypnosis

All that is required is our willingness to get out of our heads at various times during the day and eventually we will spend more and more time in the present creating the life we desire. It is all right there and all we have to do is simply develop the discipline of mind to bring our attention regularly to it until it manifests.

Mary and I have each created an audio you can download from our Facebook Shop or from the downloads page on our website. The audio is called Introduction to Hypnosis and designed specifically to teach the art of self hypnosis and regularly playing the audio teaches you how to focus the mind so that you can deliberately choose to dwell on the thoughts to attract the life you truly desire.

Links to Hypnosis Audio by Xavier and Mary Nathan

Treatment Preparation by Xavier

Treatment Preparation by Mary

Link to Free Hypnosis Audio on Manx Hypnosis Facebook Shop

Free Bonus Hypnosis Audio Product – Ten Minutes Morning Meditation by Xavier

Free Bonus Hypnosis Audio Product – Ten Minutes Morning Meditation by Mary

5-Steps of Successful Self Hypnosis – Video

Meditation

by Xavier_Nathan

Published on: August 12, 2011

Categories: spiritual exercise

Tags:benefits of meditation, ego, High C, higher consciousness, how to meditate, illusion, maya, meditate, meditating, meditation, Monkey Mind, no thought, Phyllis Krystal, reality, the breath, thought, true self

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What is Meditation

Meditation is an ancient method devised thousands of years ago by people who realised that the self we think we are is a false self and responsible for the illusion we have become trapped in. These people realised that in order to pierce the veil of illusion which they called maya it would be necessary for us to still the false self and make it quiet for long enough so that we can experience the true self.

The Ego

The false self is nowadays called the ego. Everything we see in this world we see through the ego and it is the ego that gives meaning to everything we see and experience in this world. The real meaning lies hidden beneath the meaning the ego has written over everything and that is the illusion or maya they referred to.

In order to experience the real self they came up with the idea to focus the ego so that it is eventually concentrated on only one thought or activity. Once this is achieved it would then be relatively easy to drop that one thought or activity and be in the world free from the ego and its interpretations. The state would be a state of no thought.

Dropping The Ego

In order to achieve this state they practised, in many cases, for years. The ego, however, does not relinquish its power over us so easily and it places distractions before us as we get closer to the state of no thought. Many people abandon the practice as a result of the temptations presented to them. The distractions or temptations I refer to range from an increase in mental activity and a focus on worries or questions to a discovery of special psychic powers. Faithfully adhering to the practice of meditation in which the ego is completely dropped, results in discovering the true self or Higher Self.

The High C

The term Higher Self or High C was coined by Phyllis Krystal who wrote a number of books about the subject two of which are:

Because we are conditioned from birth to believe in the illusion created by the ego few question what everyone believes to be reality. In Cutting of the Ties that Bind Phyllis Krystal describes how to connect to the High C and undo the conditioning that holds us captive that keeps us spell bound by our beliefs.

How to Meditate

You can meditate anywhere, any time sitting on the floor or in a chair. As long as you are comfortable all that is required to meditate is that you fix your mind on something for a period of time and with practice spend longer and longer periods with the mind concentrated in this way. Should stray thoughts enter your awareness simply acknowledge them and let them pass the way you would acknowledge a bird that comes into view and flies away. Thoughts are like trains that pull into the station of your mind. You can remain in the station or board the train of thought. The choice is and always has been yours.

The thing you choose to focus your mind on can be anything that registers through any one or combination of the five senses. You could focus on the face of a picture symbolising God or the face of your mother or father. You could focus on a sound perhaps the sound of a clock in the room. There is no reason why you could not focus on a body sensation like the rise and fall of your tummy or chest as you breathe or even a taste. You could of course combine a picture with a sound or a body sensation with a sound as I do. I focus my mind on the sensation of the air entering and leaving through the tip of my nose and as I breathe in I hear myself saying the word in and as I breathe out I hear myself saying the word out. You could try various combinations until you find the one that just feels right for you. The point here is to observe rather than control. So if you are observing the breath then you do not interfere with it in any way. That was what I found hard in the beginning because my mind tended to change the rhythm of my breathing when I focussed on it. With perseverance your ego relinquishes control and you just are!

Falling asleep or finding yourself on a thought train are both distractions and with practice you will learn to avoid these. Remember the aim of meditation is the dropping of ego so that judgement and analytical activity is suspended. The first stage of mediation is really self hypnosis and the frequency of the brain waves in this state of mind is predominantly alpha which is about 10 Hz. As you progressively quiet the mental activity the frequency of the brain waves decreases and you achieve deeper levels of meditation.

I would simply warn against having any expectation of the experience as expectation is a function of the ego and as such will set you up for self sabotage. I would warn against distraction especially the ones that make you feel that you have special psychic abilities. Simply relax, focus the mind on one thought until that thought is dropped. That is the essence and end of meditation.

Secondary Benefits of Meditating

By meditating regularly you will find yourself feeling more centred, happier, healthier and with your mind uncluttered you will feel more purposeful and confident. You will undoubtedly experience many benefits, physically, emotionally and spiritually but these are more a consequence of the practice rather than the goal but sometimes that is enough for many people and that is fine too.

Links to Related Articles by Me

Maya Illusion

A Way To Meditate

Following is a video that explains how to to meditate in order to achieve the state of no thought.

The Phyllis Krystal Method using the Figure 8 to Achieve Freedom from Attachment

by Xavier_Nathan

Published on: February 5, 2011

Categories: Hypnotherapy

Comments: 3 Comments

Most people now accept that we are much more than physical beings. We have a conscious and a subconscious mind. We have an intellect and we also have emotions.

We use language to communicate our conscious ideas and thoughts to ourselves and to each other but we use a far more complex system to communicate our feelings.

It is not what someone says but what the person feels that is communicated. Eloquent words can never truly mask feelings that are not in harmony with the spoken word. You know when someone is lying to you. You can hear their words but your gut is telling you something different.

Most of what we do in our normal waking lives is subconsciously motivated. A smoker will often find himself smoking and not remember lighting his cigarette. A person driving a car arrives at the destination but doesn’t remember the journey. A person biting her nails will suddenly suddenly realise she is doing so but not remember lifting her hand to her mouth for the purpose of biting her nails.

When we dream we are like scuba divers in the ocean of our subconscious. When we awake in the morning we bring back photographs of our feelings. Each image is a symbol representing a feeling or complex of emotions. Our dreams are an indication of our subconscious communication and our dream images are a way for us to learn the language of our subconscious. Just as we learned how to consciously communicate through language we can learn the language of the subconscious by connecting our dream symbols with the images we bring back with us. Each symbol is personal so that is why it does not make a lot of sense for anyone else to interpret our dreams for us. Our dream symbols are unique so what symbolizes something for you may not symbolize the same thing for someone else. It is for this reason that consulting a dream book that tells you the meaning of each symbol you bring back from your dream world is a complete waste of time. There are as many meanings as there are people in the world. You are unique and only you can decipher your own symbols. A therapist can help you learn the language of your dreams but it is not any therapist’s place to interpret your dreams for you.

Having said this, however, there are symbols that are recognised by the collective unconscious. One such symbol is the figure 8. The figure 8 is naturally recognised by each person’s subconscious and is used very effectively to communicate with the subconscious one’s conscious desire to sever unhealthy attachments to people, and addictions. It is no good shouting at the subconscious and demanding it stops you from over eating, smoking, indulging in destructive behaviours. It is no good begging your subconscious to feel good about yourself or to stop seeing your father as cruel and insensitive. Your subconscious does not understand English or any other language you speak. You must learn the language of the subconscious to communicate your wishes. Your subconscious wants to give you whatever you want even if it is bad for you. It simply answers all your requests regardless. The problem is you don’t even know that you are continuously requesting and receiving everything you ask for. There is communication between what you consciously dwell upon and how these thoughts create feelings. It is the intensity of the emotions created by the thoughts you most frequently dwell upon that forms the communication with your subconscious. You use your thoughts and feelings to order what you want in your life but you don’t know you are doing this.

The English psychotherapist, Phyllis Krystal developed a method of communicating with the subconscious for the purpose of freeing the individual from reliance on and attachment to outer symbols of control and/or security. The method involves being guided by our own inner source of wisdom which is available to everyone. Phyllis Krystal has written many books in which she describes her journey in developing the techniques that people all over the world have used with great success. She has given numerous seminars all over Europe showing people how to achieve the freedom they seek. In her book Cutting the Ties that Bind she explains how to use the symbol of the figure 8 to sever our negative attachments to people and anything else that hijacks our personal power and prevents our development as human beings.

In my private practice as a Hypnotherapist & Psychotherapist I use the techniques developed by Phyllis Krystal with most of the people who seek my help and have found them invaluable. Using the methods developed by Phyllis Krystal both personally and in my capacity as a therapist has greatly enhanced my life and my effectiveness as a healer of minds.

I have listed all the books written by Phyllis Krystal at the bottom of this article and highly recommend each one for your own personal journey to free yourself from all that holds you back in your life and to truly express who you really are.

If you would like to find out more about this therapy why not call us on 842938 if you live on the Isle of Man and avail of a free initial consultation to discuss your needs.

Recommended Reading from Amazon.co.uk

Cutting the Ties of Karma

In addition two other titles have been published in India:

These books have been translated into many languages, thereby enabling the method to be shared with even more people worldwide.

Recommended Reading from Amazon.com

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