Synchronicity - God as a Hypnotic Tool
After reading the Celestine Prophecy, I find myself spending more and more time noticing simple little synchronicity - things that are randomly coincidental, but maybe come about for a reason. While doing my lunch time errands yesterday and making a deposit at my bank, the teller I normally use must have felt a bit chatty. She hit me with the big question - what religion are you? Now I suppose she could lose her job for asking questions such as this, but I decided to see where she was going.
“Why?” I asked and suddenly found myself in the midst of a theological conversation.
“I was thinking that in order to have hypnosis work, you would need to have a strong belief in a higher power,” she said. Wow. Now this is a conversation I rarely have, if ever. It was also a nice change from the close-minded religious comments one gets living in the bible belt or the from the tired attacks such as one mentioned yesterday (hence the synchronicity).
What an interesting take - using the belief of the divine, God, or whatever name you give the higher being, in helping you make changes. Rather than assuming hypnosis can be threatening to a fragile sense of religion, this is the exact opposite.
“You say that hypnosis is a great way to hear your inner self,” she continued, “and I have wondered about this inner self - if this is the part of me that is ‘good,’ that can help me be a better person, then this is the religious side of me, the part that does so because of my belief in God. God is the source of giving me the faith to change for the better, so hypnosis is like prayer, but a much more intimate connection.” (Notice I am leaving out spirituality - yes, I do make a distinction).
Then she asked me again about my religion and by this time, all the other customers were listening to this odd discussion. Had we been alone, I might have given her the answer she wanted, using it for rapport purposes, but instead I found myself becoming a little more vague.
“It does not matter what religion I am. In hypnosis, it is all about you - your beliefs. As a hypnotist, I believe we all have the power to create positive change within. What belief systems we engage to do so is a completely personal and individual thing. In your case, it is your belief in the divine that will motivate you and inspire you. Changing for the better may be motivated this way. A rose is a rose by any other name…”
Then she disengaged. Perhaps by not telling her my religious affiliation, she passed some judgement upon me. The moment ended, my despite slip was handed to me and I was dismissed.
On the positive side though, as I was about to leave, another customer asked for my card.
Maybe it is just when one door closes, another opens. Maybe the conversation happened because someone else needed to hear my answers. And maybe there is no synchronicity, but it is not every day I talk theology and hypnosis.
June 10th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
There have been some strange cases of synchronicity in my life, but they never involved theology or hypnosis.
And I was reminded of the most recent just recently. About 25 years ago, I ran into someone who was a big a fan of a particular series of novels as I was. We would meet once or twice a year at conventions and I was proud and happy to call him a friend. Unfortunately, he moved to Shanghai for several years and didn’t make it back into the States so I hadn’t seen him in ages. Therefore it was a pleasant surprise when I ran into him in Japan at the World SF Convention one morning as we were both going for breakfast, in opposite directions. (On reflection, I should have reversed myself and gone with him, as that was the only time we had to sit down and talk.)
I was reminded of that when I learned yesterday he died of cancer. He was given 6-8 weeks to live and turned that into 6 months.
June 11th, 2008 at 5:55 am
I am so sorry to hear about your friend. There are poetics in going the opposite direction (your words).