Generative Trance E-Book

Stephen Gilligan

• Herausgeber: Crown House Publishing
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Seitenzahl: 440

Beschreibung

This book describes an entirely new way of conducting hypnotherapeutic interventions - Stephen Gilligan's generative trance. The first generation of trance work, the traditional hypnosis that still holds sway in most places, considers that both the conscious mind and the unconscious mind of the client are, to put it bluntly, idiots. So trance work involves first 'knocking out' the conscious mind and then talking to the unconscious mind like a 2-year old that needs to be told how to behave. Milton Erickson created the second generation of trance work. He approached the unconscious as having creative wisdom and each person as extraordinarily unique. Thus, rather than trying to programme the unconscious with new instructions, Erickson saw trance as an experiential learning state where a person's own creative unconscious could generate healing and transformation. At the same time Erickson, for the most part, carried the same low opinion of the conscious mind. Thus, Ericksonian hypnosis looks to bypass the conscious mind with indirect suggestions and dissociation and depotentiate it with confusion techniques.

Leseprobe

This major new work from renowned author and trainer Stephen Gilligan reveals how life can be lived as a great journey of consciousness. The author emphasizes that reality and identity are constructed by ourselves, and explains how generative trance is crucial in creating new realities and possibilities for clients. It is a view that differs markedly from the traditional hypnosis ideas of a client losing control, as well as from Ericksonian approaches that feature a benevolent hypnotist who bypasses the conscious mind to work with a client’s unconscious mind. Instead, generative trance stresses a “disciplined flow” process in which a person’s conscious and unconscious minds cooperate to weave a higher consciousness capable of transformational change.

The book offers a framework for developing this creative consciousness, including step by step processes for creating it. Stephen Gilligan has been developing this work over the past thirty five years, first as a protégé of the great hypnotherapist Milton Erickson, and then as the originator of the post-Ericksonian approaches of Self-Relations and Generative Self.

William James used to say that ‘the unconscious mind is the horse and conscious mind is the rider: it’s the relationship between the two that is most important.’ This book shows you how to harness the relationship for a much more powerful and effective therapeutic intervention.

Praise for Generative Trance

Generative Trance: The Experience of Creative Flow, Stephen Gilligan’s newest book, is not only exciting to read, it gives new ways of looking at already-known information and adds whole new dimensions of different perspectives. Firmly built on his mentoring by Milton Erickson, Gilligan did what Erickson urged all his students to do - he took ideas from Erikson and made them applicable to new and different circumstances.

Beginning with understandable definitions, Gilligan lays out his own framework. The reader is captured with new ideas for hypnosis – an “up-dating”, so to speak, of what hypnosis is. Generative trance is the “real” communication. It is not a place where the therapist provides answers and techniques for change, but where the client can have experiential learning, a reconfiguration of his own unconscious or forgotten resources. This, as evidenced by Erickson’s work, is how lasting and sometimes remarkable and quick changes are achieved.

Under this umbrella of generative trance, he breaks his ideas into separate pieces. He discusses the familiar situation of a client “frozen” and seemingly unable to act, explaining how this is part of what he refers to as neuromuscular lock and literally takes apart what is happening. Then he provides clear methods of using generative trance, how client resources can be accessed and how different, more productive responses, can be learned and practiced. His approach is convincing, intriguing and eminently do-able.

His idea of centering is inclusive of what most people understand this term to mean. But typical of all of his writing, he uses words so precisely and carefully, that the reader stops to absorb his more expansive definition fully. Some of his phrases are immediately transferable to any therapeutic session – “you (can) feel both a part of and apart from an experience … be with something without becoming it …”. He points out that when people learn to be centered, they can be vulnerable. Then with generative trance states, they can provide new and safe places within themselves and new learning and the transformation of dysfunctions can occur more easily.

Gilligan believes, as Erickson did, that people’s realities and fixed meanings have to be broadened. A change in perspective allows people to respond differently; each person can create a different sense of self – a different “identity” – as all of us have done since childhood. Generative trance allows this easily and naturally.

He goes into detail with some of the ideas – for example, “Creative Acceptance” which redefines acceptance not as passivity but as an active curiosity about what something might be if it were accepted. This counter-intuitive idea – accept something to change it – is detailed in one of Erickson’s cases – the girl with the gap between her two front teeth. Gilligan connects this to the first part of his book seamlessly.

Part of the book holds case examples in script form. This clarifies and demonstrates the uses of generative trance states. He gives explanations of what he was doing and even little, easy-for-all to do ideas, such as various phrases to insert in any hypnotic work –“trance is a learning place” and the words Erickson used so often, “trust your unconscious”. Each script is primarily aimed at one of the points Gilligan has made earlier in the book, and the how – and why – is explained. Additionally, as he points out, shorter versions of the scripts are useful to all in everyday life – we all need to be able to become more centered, to be in touch with our bodies and relax comfortably while maintaining alertness.

One of the “bonuses” always present in Gilligan’s writing is his use of meaningful, often beautifully poetic, quotations from a huge variety of sources to begin every chapter. And it’s in this book too.

Generative Trance is an extraordinary book … filled with different and new perspectives, captivating, and most important – valuable. My father would be so proud!

Betty Alice Erickson, M.S.

Steve Gilligan is the closest I’ve experienced to being with Milton Erickson since Erickson’s death in 1980. His new book, Generative Trance, delivers a tour-de-force of the latest thinking of third-generation hypnosis in a charming and organized way. This is the definitive overview of a new approach in psychotherapy and change work. I continue to learn from Gilligan and look forward to returning to this book, again and again, to gain even deeper insights.

Bill O’Hanlon, author of Taproots, An Uncommon Casebook, A Guide to Trance Land and Solution-Oriented Hypnosis

Steve Gilligan says we are on a journey – a journey of infinite possibilities – but only if we are open and aware. Generative Trance is not another cognitive change process. It is about using trance to learn how to love and access the wisdom of your deeper mind, so that new awareness and choice can emerge. Whether you read this exceptional book for your personal development, or you facilitate others in theirs, you will discover that Generative Trance leads to a kind of sacred sight, after which your world will never look quite the same again. What a journey!

Penny Tompkins and James Lawley, authors ofMetaphors in Mind: Transformation through Symbolic Modelling

There is a revolution taking place in psychotherapy that sheds the limitations of naïve models of therapy and change. Stephen Gilligan is one of the most important leaders in this transformation of practice, particularly as it applies to hypnosis. His “generative trance” marks a major advance in helping us resourcefully relate to all that clients and therapists bring to a session. We enthusiastically recommend it to both your conscious and unconscious mind!

Bradford Keeney, Ph.D. & Hillary Keeney, Ph.D., authors, Circular Therapeutics: Giving Therapy a Healing Heart andA Master Class in the Art of Performing Change

This latest book by Steve Gilligan puts into practice the Ericksonian principles he has taught brilliantly for decades. He extends his self-relations model in several important ways, especially in the memorable sections on welcoming and weaving the identity parts into generative trance in order to allow new parts of the self to be born through generative transformation.

Though not a simple book, Generative Trance provides several easy-to-follow frameworks, including the four steps of generative trance and the five key generative methods presented in the book’s second section. Specific scripts are offered to help the reader learn to vocalize hypnotic suggestions so that their receivers connect with positive intentions, with the five somatic dimensions of generative trance, and can explore and engage with generative fields where creative acceptance and transformation can take place.

If you want to learn deeply from a true hypnotic artist, do not miss this book!

Maggie Phillips, Ph.D., Co-author of Healing the Divided Self andFinding Freedom From Pain

Generative Trance

The Experience of Creative Flow

Stephen Gilligan

Acknowledgments

Creativity is not an isolated act, but rather a magical procsss that occurs when individual self-awareness joins with a greater field of consciousness. In this regard, the writing of this book and development of this work owes much to the support, participations, and contributions of many people. I want to thank all my teachers, students, sponsors, clients, friends and family who have been such an integral part of this development. I have truly been blessed to have such extraordinary positive resources in my life.

A special thank you to Abbe Miller, who created the cover art and all the illustrations in the book.

With each breath of belonging,

the light in all things

cherishes the light in you.

With each smile of belonging,

the light in you communes

with the light in all things.

The heart, the hands, the tree,

the stars; consciousness in light,

in stone, cosmic and ordinary,

comfortable and divine.

Light breathing light,

breathing you –

This perfect, precious light.

Dvorah Simon

(inspired by Abbe Miller’s cover art)

Contents

Title Page

Acknowledgments

Preface

Introduction

Part I: The Framework Of Generative Trance

Chapter 1: Consciousness and the Construction of Reality

The three worlds of consciousness

The “original mind” of pure consciousness

The quantum world of the creative unconscious

The classical world of the conscious mind

Relationship between worlds: creative flow vs. neuromuscular lock

Filters: gateways between the worlds

Creative flow: when the gateways are open

Neuromuscular lock: when the gateways are closed

The 4 Fs of neuromuscular lock

Summary

Chapter 2: The Many Faces of Trance

“Just let it happen”: trance as creative flow

Not all trances are created equal

Trance is natural

Trance is developed by releasing the orienting response

Trance is integral to identity creation

The human relationship to trance determines its form and value

Summary

Chapter 3: Three Minds, Three Levels: The Generative Trance Model

The three minds of the generative self

The somatic mind

The field mind

The cognitive mind

The three levels of consciousness

The primitive level: wholeness without self-awareness

The ego level: self-awareness without wholeness

The generative level: self awareness within differentiated wholeness

The COSMIC consciousness of generative trance

Centered

Open (and mindful)

Subtle awareness

Musicality

Intentional (positive)

Creative engagement

Breakdowns vs. Breakthroughs: how problems and solutions develop

Summary

Chapter 4: The Four Steps in Generative Trance

Step 1: Preparing a generative state

Connect to positive intention

Connect to center

Connect to resources

The use of self-scaling to assess and track connections

Step 2: Welcoming and weaving identity parts into generative trance

Inviting parts into a generative field

Creatively weaving the parts into a generative trance

Generative trance elements of weaving parts

Step 3: Integration and transformation

Step 4: Transfer learnings to real life

Marking out key learnings

Imagining a positive future

Commitments and vows

Gratitude

Reorientation

Feedback

Incorporate feedback for next cycle of work

Summary

Part II: The Methods of Generative Trance

Chapter 5: “Drop into Center”: Somatic Attunement in Generative Trance

The generative principle of centering

The values of centering

Methods of centering

Centering through somatic attunement

Centering through positive memories

Centering through negative experiences

Somatic elements of generative trance

The somatic mixer model

Summary

Chapter 6: “Open Beyond”: Subtle Fields in Generative Trance

Opening to a generative field

First method: The energy ball

Second method: The energy ball and archetypal resources

Third method: Generative trance as a quantum field

Fourth method: Second skin as a generative field

Fifth method: Celtic cross

Summary

Chapter 7: The Principle of Creative Acceptance

The generative principle of creative acceptance

First method: The suggestion loop of creative acceptance

Second method: Self-trance process of creative utilization

Third method: Unfolding trance from experiential resources

Fourth method: Relational mantras

Fifth method: Somatic modeling of problem patterns

Summary

Chapter 8: The Principle of Complementarity

Generative trance methods of complementarity

First method: The suggestion loop of complementarity

Second method: Mutual trance

Third method: “Good self/bad self”

Fourth method: Reconciling opposites

Fifth method: The somatic trance dance of integrating opposites

Summary

Chapter 9: The Principle of Infinite Possibilities

First method: Suggestion loop of multiple possibilities

Second method: Generating new choices

Third method: The tetralemma

Fourth method: Metaphorical stories

Fifth Method: The council of resources

Summary

Epilogue

References

About the Author

Copyright

Preface

The goal of all our living is to become transparent to the transcendent.

Karlfried Graf Durckheim

This is a book about how to live life as a great journey of consciousness. It emphasizes reality and identity as constructed, and trance as a major means to create new realities. This view of trance differs markedly from traditional ideas of a person losing control, instead focusing on its potential to elevate consciousness to higher levels of creativity.

My own experience with trance has been a long and winding road. I spent much of my childhood in trance. Part of it was in the wonderment of watching the many unspoken connections between people, most notably my family. I loved to absorb in the magical qualities that seemed to be everywhere – in my grandfather’s twinkling eyes, my mother’s loving stories, my dog’s blissful playfulness, even the “dancing dots” that swirled in the darkness after my mother turned out the lights at bedtime. This happy world had its counterpart: another part of my childhood trance experiences was in the dissociational escape from family alcoholism and violence. I learned trance as a sanctuary, a safe place to get away from the dehumanizing parts of life, to be alone and not confused and lied to by words.

I entered adolescence in the late 1960s in San Francisco, where traditional consciousness was being shaken to the core by a myriad of movements: hippies, Black Panthers, gay pride, the women’s movement, and anti-war activism, to name a few. In my all-boys, Jesuit high school, a counselor introduced me to my first group therapy, where it was possible to talk about experiences I had previously only witnessed and silently experienced. I also found my way to meditation during this time, an important balance to the “sex, drugs and rock n’ roll” ethos of the time.

At 19, I met the great psychiatrist healer, Milton Erickson, who changed my life forever. He showed me that trance could be used to come into the world, not just to leave it, and illuminated the uniqueness of each moment, each person, and each experience. It set me on my adult path as a psychotherapist using trance therapeutically to help others creatively deal with the many ego-disruptive challenges that touch each human life – births, deaths, traumas, marriages, divorces, and so on. The trance work was not just for my clients, but myself as well. I am grateful that Erickson modeled and emphasized the need for each person to continue to learn and develop and change throughout life.

All of this has taught me to appreciate the deep creative consciousness that lives within human beings, and how it may be tapped into through trance. I am continually amazed how trance can help people realize their dreams, heal wounds, transform problems, and live their life callings. Not artificial trance, not trance where somebody is manipulating somebody else, but a natural state where it is possible to take a step back from having to perform some fixed role and open a creative space where new reality may be created.

This is what I’d like to share with you in this book. How to develop higher states of consciousness that can help you live beyond fears, limits, and negative beliefs. I want to describe a type of trance that requires a cooperative relationship of mutual respect between the conscious and creative unconscious minds. In other words, you don’t go to sleep in generative trance, you awaken to a deeper type of creative consciousness.

This central emphasis on creative trance as a conversation between different levels of a person decouples it from the outdated assumptions of hypnosis. It sees trance as a natural experience arising whenever identity is destabilized, and hypnosis as but one of many possible social rituals for unfolding trance. Given that traditional hypnosis seeks to bypass or “knock out” the conscious mind of a person, I believe it has limited value in promoting self-mastery and creative transformation. The work here is presented as an alternative method, whereby a person can experience an integrated self-wholeness that can guide and experience creative change.

I wrote the book for individuals who want to live life as a creative journey, as well as for people-helping professionals working with clients in such ventures. It needs to be emphasized that the work is not a substitute for essential medical or psychological care, nor should unqualified professionals use it to treat serious maladies. What it can do is help reawaken the wonderment of being alive, and allow realization of a happy, fulfilling life.

We live in challenging times. The longing for deep transformational change often clashes with rigid ideological “fundamentalisms,” resulting in a “betwixt and between” state, suspended between old realities that no longer work and new ones that have not fully ripened. Such times present great opportunities for growth and transformation. May this work help you to make creative use of each moment of your life, no matter who or where you are.

Introduction

Let your mind start a journey through a strange new world. Leave all thoughts of the world you knew before. Let your soul take you where you long to be … Close your eyes, let your spirit start to soar, and you’ll live as you’ve never lived before.

Erich Fromm

The journey of life has infinite potential. At each step of the way possibilities open, each moment bringing a wholly new beginning. But to realize these possibilities, we must live in a way that is creative and meaningful. It is easy to go on unconsciously acting and reacting in predictable, tiresome ways. This book is about how to move into more creative states of consciousness using a process that I’ve developed called generative trance. Generative here means to create something new – a new future, a new state of health, a new relationship to self and the world. As we will see, generative trance is not a traditional hypnosis where one gives up control or consciousness, but a creative art in which conscious and unconscious minds are woven into a higher consciousness capable of creativity and transformation.

The experience of generative trance is grounded in the notion of life as a journey of consciousness. This idea was formalized by the mythologist Joseph Campbell (1949), who noted how every culture features myths about a hero living life as a great path of transformation. (Interestingly, the Star Wars movies were directly based on Campbell’s work.) Such a life is not primarily about fame or fortune, but about bringing a greater healing and wholeness into the world. This might be done through any of a number of domains – art, science, social justice, family, business, and so on. Most important, especially in these challenging times, is the awareness that each of us can live such a life. This book is an exploration of how to help yourself and others to do so.

There are many examples of living life as a great journey. One of my main inspirations was Milton Erickson, the renowned psychiatrist who revolutionized ideas about how trance could be used for creative healing and transformation. I studied with Erickson during the last six years of his life. He was a classic Yoda-like character by then, a wizened old healer with twinkling eyes and amazing skills. His skills in no small part arose from his personal journey, as life gave him so many significant challenges. He was tone deaf, dyslexic (including not knowing the dictionary was alphabetized until he was an adolescent!), and color blind (purple was the only color he could “enjoy”). He was severely paralyzed with polio at 17, and suffered a related setback at mid-life. He met each challenge in courageous, creative ways, and then helped his psychiatric patients to do the same. This book looks to honor and extend that work in various ways.

To live life as a journey, we must consciously choose to do so. There are, of course, other possibilities. Campbell suggests three available paths: (1) the village life, where we play out the routines of the ego ideal; (2) thewasteland, where we sink into the shadow world of cynicism and despair; and (3) the journey, where we live life as a great call to adventure.

The village life

This is the conventional path of the ego ideal, where you live a “normal” life within the roles and social strictures of mainstream society. Here “the good life” moves through a clear sequence. For example, in the “American dream” (if it still exists), you are born into a happy family, obey your parents, do well at school, graduate and get a job, marry and have kids, buy a house and make a lot of money, then retire and die. This is the village life, and as Campbell points out, there is nothing wrong with it. For some people it is their main path.

Others, however, cannot or will not live in the village. Membership may be denied by virtue of having the “wrong” skin color, sexual orientation, religion, gender, or socioeconomic status. You may be exiled by something like a trauma, which shatters the “ego trance” and drags a person into the underworld. Or you may voluntarily leave the village, unwilling or unable to work within its orthodoxies or hypocrisies. Whatever the case, it raises the question of what lies outside the village.

The wasteland

The dark alternative to the ego ideal is the shadow world of what T. S. Eliot called the wasteland. Its inhabitants reject (or are rejected by) the shallow “happy face” of the village. Based on negation, the predominant experiences are cynicism, apathy, and destructiveness. You drop out of the mainstream and live alone or with some isolated subculture. The wasteland could be the despair of depression, the numbed glaze of television, the hatred of gossip and prejudice, or the toxic worlds of drugs, alcohol, and other addictions. Self-awareness and human dignity disappear, and consciousness descends into disconnected despair.

When people seek help, they are typically mired in the wasteland, unwilling or unable to participate in normal village life. Often the request, explicitly or implicitly, is to get them back to the village, so they can just be “normal”. It is important to realize that this may or may not be possible. In generative trance, we see that the experiences that led to the “village exile” may be a “soul signal” that some deep transformation is needed – that a person can no longer continue in the restrictive role assigned to them. Luckily, a third alternative exists.

The (hero’s) journey of consciousness

The ego ideal of the village and the shadow world of the wasteland are polar opposites, each containing what the other rejects. The journey ofconsciousness is a third path that integrates and transcends these dualities. Here you are neither blindly following the established rules and roles, nor cynically rejecting them. Instead, you “go where no man (or woman) has gone before,” in the words of the old Star Trek series. On the journey, life is a great mystery unfolding daily deeper into greater awareness and possibilities. Many great people have spoken about this living of life as a great adventure:

Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not.

George Bernard Shaw

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, “This is the real me,” and when you have found that attitude, follow it.

William James

The journey is often initiated by what Campbell termed “the call”. Something touches a deep place in your soul. A sense of magic or amazement awakens, and an awareness dawns of what you are in the world to do. When I first met Milton Erickson at the ripe age of 19, a fire ignited in my soul, and a quiet voice said, “This is why you are here”. I often ask clients if they can remember similar moments of “soul awakening” or magical mystery in their lives, especially as children. Interestingly, most initially say no, but as we continue they begin recalling such moments. Maybe it was when reading poetry, or playing with animals, or drawing or painting, or becoming absorbed in science and technology, or feeling deep connections flowing between people.

Some hear the call and don’t look back, their lives coalescing around it. Campbell called this “following your bliss”. While often misunderstood as an irresponsible encouragement of hedonism and debauchery, he was actually inviting people to notice when they are touched by wonderment or passion. This “bliss” tells you what you’re in the world to do.

Others hear the call and turn away from it. You might be hypnotized by the suggestions that “it’s not realistic” or “you should be doing something else,” and then try to lead a village life to make others happy. Campbell observed that sometimes we climb the ladder all the way to the top, only to discover that we’ve placed it against the (wrong) wall of other people’s expectations. You can live away from your soul force and then die, “not with a bang, but a whimper”.

But for many there comes a wake-up call: at some point (often in mid-life), symptoms begin to appear – health problems, relationship failures, depression or addiction, you name it. In generative trance work, we see such symptoms as “calls to return” to soul resonance, to reconnect one’s outer self with the callings of the inner self. In this way, we see problems as openings to deep transformation, if met with positive and skillful human presence.

I start with these three life paths to emphasize generative trance as a tool for living the third path of life as a journey. It is not primarily to “fix abnormalities” so one can live within a sanitized village world, nor to get “lost in trance”. Rather, it is a set of practices for living life at its highest levels, replete with many creative possibilities: joy, transformation, great accomplishments, and good health.

The book explores the approach in two main parts. The first part overviews a framework for generative trance work. Chapter 1 presents the key premise that reality and identity are constructed (through reality filters) and may be deconstructed and reconstructed when needed. The principle of creative flow is central to this skill, while the process of neuromuscular lock prohibits it. Chapter 2 examines trance as a process of creative flow that is naturalistic, necessary, and capable of many forms and values (both positive and negative), depending on its context. We will touch upon generative trance as a high level state based on the creative interplay between the conscious and creative unconscious minds.

Chapter 3 outlines the basic model of generative trance. Three minds are distinguished: somatic, cognitive, and field – along with the three levels of consciousness at which they can operate: primitive, ego, and generative. The general goal of the work is to move each mind to a generative level, thereby awakening new dimensions of consciousness capable of significant creative transformation. Chapter 4 outlines how this can be done in four steps: (1) preparation (developing the generative state); (2) weaving the identity parts into a generative trance; (3) transformation and integration; and (4) the return into the ordinary world.

The second part of the book focuses on how to implement the model. Chapter 5 explores somatic methods for developing generative trance, emphasizing mind–body centering as the central principle, along with how to optimize the five somatic dimensions of a generative trance: relaxation, absorption, openness, (musical) flow, and groundedness. Chapter 6 explores generative fields as subtle spaces of mindfulness that can hold and transform their contents. For example, we will see how trance can be used to develop an “energy ball” that contains and allows creative engagement with difficult experiences; or a “second skin” that opens around the physical body; or an interpersonal relational field within which generative trance work can occur.

Chapter 7 identifies the creative acceptance of experiences and behaviors as a major way to develop trance and transformation. Chapter 8 explores the principle of complementarity, showing how holding opposites is one of the most succinct methods for popping the binds of the conscious mind and opening the gateways to the creative unconscious. Chapter 9 describes the principle of infinite possibilities, which holds that every experience and behavior can be experienced and expressed in many ways, as another major means for activating the creative unconscious.

Underlying the entire work is a two-level theory of experientialconstruction, which posits that (1) at the primary (quantum) level, experience has infinite possible forms and meanings, until (2) at the secondary (classical) level, an observing consciousness creates one actual form and meaning from all the potential possibilities. Integrating these two worlds of action and potential is at the heart of creative consciousness. Unfortunately, it is easy to get trapped within the fixed realities of the conscious mind, walled off from creative consciousness. This self-contained world is maintained by a state dependency effect that constructs reality to affirm its own position. Generative trance loosens these binds so consciousness can drop back into a generative field, then invites the conscious mind to move within this field with aesthetic intelligence. As we will see, musicality and resonance are primary languages of this creative consciousness, allowing the systemic parts to fluidly create ever changing mandalas of creative wholeness.

This great journey of uniting the two worlds was beautifully described by T. S. Eliot:

The point of intersection of the timeless

With time, is an occupation for the saint –

No occupation either, but something given

And taken, in a lifetime’s death in love,

… you are the music

While the music lasts.

“The Dry Salvages” from Four Quartets

May the words on these pages help us to hear this music and find this intersection point.

Part I

The Framework of Generative Trance

Chapter 1

Consciousness and the Construction of Reality

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.

George Bernard Shaw

Mary1 led a charmed life. She was smart, socially poised, and attractive. She had lived on the “fast track” to success: drawing the praises of adults and excelling in school as a child, earning a doctoral degree in science from a major university, marrying a wonderful man, and giving birth to two wonderful daughters. She was a superstar at work, happy in her family, and secure economically. So when she received a major lifetime achievement award at mid-life, she was understandably bewildered to find herself depressed and unhappy. Something was missing from her life.

Mary began a series of deep life explorations using trance work. She found tears and fears, as well as amazing and delightful awakenings of consciousness. Most important, she realized that she had been living away from her soul dreams. She hadn’t even realized she had soul dreams, longings deeper than external achievement or social pleasantries. She discovered a desire for spiritual development, as well as for mentoring young female scientists in her high-stress professional world. In addition, she and her husband began a series of interesting journeys through different psycho-spiritual processes.

In all of this, her old world wasn’t abandoned, just deepened to allow a more complete and fulfilling life. She was especially delighted to realize that she was responsible for, and capable of, creating her own life. The journey that became her life was a joy to behold.

The longing to live a deeply meaningful life is, of course, quite common. Many people feel a calling to go beyond the village life, to allow their light to shine brightly and uniquely into the world. If such callings are accepted and supported, beautiful miracles can happen. Generative trance is a great process for supporting such a journey.

The experience of generative trance begins with the appreciation that reality is constructed, and that each of us is responsible for creating our own lives in a meaningful way. To navigate such a journey, it is helpful to have some sense of this creative process. So in this first chapter, I want to offer a general map by which reality construction occurs, so that you can support yourself and others in such a venture.

I start by noting three different worlds that creative consciousness moves through: (1) a “pure consciousness” world of creative love and light; (2) a “quantum world” of the creative unconscious, with infinite possibilities and pure imagination; and (3) the classical world of the conscious mind, with its consciousness of time-space, matter, and other “reality” elements. Creativity requires flow between these three worlds of creative light, infinite imagination, and practical realities.

Accordingly, I next focus on how information/energy moves between these worlds. I suggest that there are “consciousness filters” that transduce one world into another. These gateways are akin to stained glass windows through which coherent light flows, creating a patterned world on the other side. A crucial idea for the entire book concerns whether these filters are open (in creative flow) or closed (in neuromuscular lock). Neuromuscular lock traps consciousness in a fixed and disconnected reality, giving rise to tremendous suffering and problems. Generative trance activates the creative flow that allows transformation, healing, and a great journey.

The three worlds of consciousness

How do you create a life that has purpose and growth? When your life isn’t working, how do you let go in order to reconnect with wholeness and peace? And from that place of wholeness, how do you create new realities that heal brokenness and generate new possibilities? These are core questions regarding generative trance, and to answer them we distinguish three worlds:

1. Consciousness itself (“original mind”)

2. Quantum world (“creative unconscious”)

3. Classical world (“conscious mind”)

The “original mind” of pure consciousness

Now, all the medical rituals we have been examining aim at return to origins. We get the impression that for archaic societies life cannot be repaired, it can only be re-created by a return to sources. And the “source of sources” is the prodigious outpouring of energy, life, and fecundity that occurred at the Creation of the World.

Mircea Elaide, Myth and Reality

Be a light unto yourself.

Buddha

We start our creative journey in “the middle of nowhere”. Milton Erickson used to playfully use this term when inviting people in trance to experience a safe place where one could detach from all content. This trance field served as a sort of transitional space where old identities could be released and new realities born.

The Buddhists use the term original mind to refer to this empty space of pure consciousness from which everything comes and goes. Experientially, it is a non-dual awareness, empty of all forms and qualities, but luminescent. In other words, consciousness at its source is pure creative light.

Lest this sound too far-fetched, note the metaphors used across different cultures and languages to describe creative consciousness. New ideas flash from out of nowhere or out of the blue. A person is brilliant, beaming, shining, light-hearted, radiant, or enlightened. The light went on, and it was like being hit by lightning. Heightened awareness may be free of thought, unclouded, or wide open. Taken together, these common expressions intuitively point to a consciousness before and beyond form that carries wisdom and bliss.

The practical relevance is that when we are connected to this creative consciousness, we are at our best – happy, healthy, healing, and helpful to others. Countless poems, songs, and stories sing its praises. Philosophical traditions give it different names: spirit, élan vital, life force, shakti, chi, divine consciousness, and prajna. It appears at moments of great success, or beholding aesthetic beauty, or in the presence of deep love. Suddenly an indescribable space opens beyond all thought and form, and a euphoric bliss fills you, if only for a few lovely moments.

For consciousness to be creative, connection to this first realm is vital. Without it, we feel disconnected and trapped in compulsive doing and thinking. Ironically, it is at such times that we are often most afraid of letting go, fearing a drop into an abyss of no return. Thus, one of the first goals in generative trance is to become comfortable with letting go of all content, surrendering to the creative source. T. S. Eliot spoke to this beautifully in writing:

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope

For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love

For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith

But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

“East Coker” from Four Quartets

Appreciating this as our first base – the light of “all that is” is within each of us – allows a great creative energy to guide our path. Martha Graham, the late great luminary of the American modern dance field, expressed it in the following way:

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine howgood it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. (Quoted in de Mille, 1991: 264)

Generative transformation is possible when we keep the channel open to this creative light source. We will see how this can be done skillfully. If you are confident that you can let go of your mental thinking and allow something underneath to safely catch and support you, a great freedom is achieved. Generative trance work looks to develop the conditions where a person can sense the immense goodness and intrinsic wholeness of this source level, so that it can be skillfully accessed again and again.

When we work in generative trance, we “follow the light” in various ways. For example, close attention is paid to to somatic resonance and subtle energies, such as when a person’s “light brightens” in a conversation. Such signals suggest that what is being communicated is deeply connected to creative consciousness, and encouragement is often given to slow down, take note, and attune to the resonant connection.

As a final note, this content-free, subtle field of awareness is the basis of what is called mindfulness. We will see how mindfulness supports the generative skill of being with something – a thought, feeling, behavior, person – without becoming it, thereby allowing creative engagement and transformational relationships. So we want to make friends with the great void, and discover that it is imbued with a subtle light of love, wisdom, even bliss.

The quantum world of the creative unconscious

The fundamental process of Nature lies outside space-time but generates events that can be located in space-time.

Henry Stapp

From the world of creative light we move to the quantum world of pure imagination. This is the creative unconscious mind, a field of infinite possibilities from which new realities are created. It is before and beyond classical time or space, empty of real (material) forms but pregnant with infinite potential ones.

As the source of all possibilities, it is to the creative unconscious that we turn when we need new visions, identities, ideas, or experiences. It is a sort of visionary consciousness that can see beyond the limitations of a given situation. It can create new possibilities “out of nowhere” and show many possible ways to proceed in a given situation. A journey of consciousness cannot proceed without such a presence.

One of the most interesting properties of a quantum field is superposition, which is a virtual wave field that contains all possible states of something simultaneously.2 Applied to psychological identity, this means that the creative unconscious holds all possible states of a given individual, in terms of identities, futures, pasts, relationship fields, and so on. So whatever state or identity you may be in at a conscious level, your creative unconscious is carrying many other possible states at the same time. The trick is how to connect to the creative unconscious when your present state isn’t satisfactory.

For example, let’s say a fellow named Dave complains that he is depressed. We would accept and welcome this as his present identity state, while also appreciating that there are many other identity states resting in his creative unconscious – some playful, some young, some old, some wise, some wounded, etc. The challenge becomes how to make room for the conscious identity – the “depressed Dave” – while also inviting and welcoming other (complementary) ones.

This is what we can do in generative trance: connect an isolated problem state to a creative (trance) field that contains many resourceful states, and skillfully weave them into a new mandala of identity. For example, when a “depressed” part connects with “playful” and “affectionate” parts, many helpful transformations can occur. The isolation of one part of a system creates problems, while the skillful activation of many complementary parts into a creative field allows solutions. As we will see, this is a major characteristic of trance: the capacity to simultaneously hold (and creatively weave) multiple contradictory truths or realities without conflict. Many significant transformations can be created in this “trance soup”.

The view of the unconscious as holding multiple possible forms of a given state is closely related to the idea of archetypes. The concept was proposed by philosophers such as Plato and Kant and later developed more fully by Jung. It assumes that core life challenges are not unique. Luckily, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time we face a challenge – for example, finding love with another person. Our ancestors have dealt with this challenge since time immemorial.

The theory of archetypes posits that each time such an experience occurs, a trace of it drops into a collective field of consciousness. For example, each time someone experiences love, the pattern of that experience drops into the quantum field. From thousands upon thousands of such drops, a general abstract pattern slowly develops. This is what an archetype is: an abstract, deep structure than can be experienced and expressed in manypossible ways. The creative unconscious contains general archetypal patterns plus infinite numbers of possible ways that they can be expressed. Thus, the human need to protect identity may be represented by the archetypal pattern of the warrior. This warrior archetype can be experienced or expressed in many ways, some negative and some positive. As we will see, in the conscious world we identify with one of those forms, while in the creative unconscious countless other possible forms are simultaneously present.

So when a specific experience isn’t working, don’t despair. Your unconscious carries many other possible ways to do or view this challenge, and trance is the means by which you can activate them. In trance you can safely let go of your old patterns and discover ones that work better.

For example, Martin grew up with a violent, alcoholic father, so his first examples of “warrior energy” were dark and destructive. Like many, he vowed to never be like his father, which translated into always trying to be a “nice guy”. His inability to speak his own needs created many relational problems, and he found himself lonely and bitter. He used trance to find that he was carrying a negative map of assertiveness – namely, images of his violent father making endless demands. Trance then allowed him to discover and implement more positive images of assertiveness. Throughout the book I will emphasize this central use of trance: when you need to let go of what’s not working and find new possibilities, trance is a great way to do it.

In applying the ideas of quantum superposition and archetypes to the nature of the unconscious, one additional point is worth making: there is no single unconscious mind, there is an infinite number. The unconscious mind is a construction (usually involving many people, over many years) and it can be constructed in a variety of different ways. To be sure, traditions ensure that certain versions are much more probable than others, but in principle there are no fixed or innate structures. Thus, Freud looked into the unconscious and saw sex, violence, and repressed emotions. Similarly, fundamentalist Christians see a dark seething cauldron of satanic evil and hell fire. Alternately, Jung “discovered” a pantheon of archetypal figures, and Erickson observed a vast storehouse of experiential learnings that could be used as resources for creating a happy, fulfilling life. In the quantum view, all are possible, but none exists in actuality until an observing (human) consciousness makes it real.

When generative trance work looks into the unconscious, it sees a creative field of infinite potential for human being and becoming. It sees a creative consciousness that can generate new possibilities “out of nowhere” and show many possible ways to proceed in a given situation. Of course, it is not a complete system. Contrary to some popular misconceptions, the unconscious is not independently intelligent. It is one part of a multi-level system. We need the creative life force of the original mind as the source and then, on the other side, the skillfull presence of the conscious mind to set intentions, create filters and meanings, and make creative use of whatever comes from the unconscious. It is to this third world that we now turn.

The classical world of the conscious mind

The classical world is the conventional reality of time–space: matter, physical energy, Newtonian physics, stuff really there. This physical universe has been unfolding for almost 14 billion years, the planetary consciousness for about 4 billion years. As biological and then psychological consciousness has evolved, the classical world has developed many levels. From a traditional Western view, we typically regard it as the empirical world of single values: something is true or not; if you’re here, you’re not there. Causal logic abides: that which is born must also die; things are as they are. The classical world includes a history and many traditions and patterns.

In creative consciousness, something isn’t real until it exists in classical reality. So while there may be infinite possibilities in the quantum field, none of them “really matter” until they appear in the classical world. You’re merely a dreamer until you practically realize your dreams; then you’re a creative genius. So you need a decent grounding in the classical world to be “really creative”. This can mean many things: a healthy body, good social connections and skills, emotional intelligence, education, perseverance, behavioral plans and commitments, and so on.

When we go into trance, we usually take a step back from the classical world, to let go of our restrictive “performance selves”. We then open to the creative unconscious to generate new reality maps for navigating the world. While the trance may be an extraordinary experience, it has no “real” value until it translates in ordinary life. For this reason, we need both a creative unconscious mind and a conscious mind for generative work. The creative unconscious generates new possibilities, and the conscious mind translates and implements them into classical reality.

Unfortunately, trance can often be associated with the fantasy that somehow if you just “trust your unconscious,” eternal happiness will result. (Or similarly, if you just let an external hypnotist “program” you to change your behavior, it will work.) In strongly emphasizing both the conscious and creative unconscious minds, generative trance work is a bridge between the two worlds of infinite possibility and specific reality. Transformation is born on this bridge.

Given this emphasis, we should have some understanding of how the conscious mind of classical reality can work in partnership with the creative unconscious of the quantum world. As the organizing consciousness of classical reality, the conscious mind is most often constructed in terms of managerial control. It uses what McGilchrist (2009) calls the “3 Ls” of the left hemisphere: language, logic, and linearity. It sets goals, sequences actions, creates order, and focuses on control and predictability. As such, it is an essential tool for living, allowing us to make sense of the day-to-day world and to reliably repeat what we’ve done in the past. When we make a cup of coffee, we don’t need to be in visionary mode. But if we can’t make a cup of coffee (and related routines), the visionary world is of no use to us. Creative living requires each world of consciousness to support the others.

But the conscious mind can be more than managerial. Just as there is no fixed structure to the unconscious mind, there are many possible conscious minds. While the traditional Western conscious mind too often operates as a disembodied intellect bent on controlling or consuming whatever it encounters, there are many other possibilities. For example, Milton Erickson modeled an exceptional conscious mind that was curious, cooperative, relationally connected, and eminently creative. As we will see, a conscious mind patterned in this way is an integral and necessary part of generative trance.

Relationship between worlds: creative flow vs. neuromuscular lock

In viewing the three worlds of consciousness, we can see how each is integral to creative experience. The primary world gives the pure, luminous consciousness that pervades everything, experienced as presence, spirit, and light. The secondary world of the creative unconscious holds the visionary, non-linear imagination of infinite possibilities. The tertiary classical world of the conscious mind carries the managerial competence and self-awareness to translate a possibility into an actuality.

Creative flow between and within these levels is at the heart of generative living. Echoing Martha Graham, we must “keep the channel open”. At the primary level, this means staying connected with the creative source that energizes, illuminates, and sparks our thinking and acting. This light of creative consciousness informs, guides, and brings genuine love for ourselves and the world, without which we are reduced to empty egos trying to survive or get ahead. The practices of centering and opening to resource fields are ways that we will explore to support this connection to the creative source.

With this source connection, we can see the patterning of the creative process as an interplay between the conscious and creative unconscious worlds. Knowing how and when to shift between these two worlds is one of the most important skills in creativity. Figure 1.1 shows their complementary nature. While the creative unconscious holds infinite possibilities, the conscious mind makes them real. The conscious mind breaks the wholeness of the creative unconscious into the classical consciousness of many parts. The shifting relationships between the different parts of the whole are what allows time, space, self-awareness, and existence to emerge. The creative interplay between the worlds is what moves consciousness to its highest levels.

Figure 1.1. Two worlds of consciousness: quantum and classical

QuantumClassicalInfinite possibilitySpecific actualityVisionary (“dreamer”)Managerial (“critic”, “realist”)Creative unconsciousConscious mindSuperposition (quantum wave field)Position (specific actuality)VirtualRealSubtleMaterial (“hard reality”)Timeless“In time”Multiple valuesSingle valueQuantum logicClassical logicWholeness (implicate order)Parts (explicate order)Ideal (unwounded/unwoundable)Actual (broken and wounded)TranslucentOpaqueN-dimensional, un-imageable4-dimensional, imageable

Filters: gateways between the worlds

We thus come to the question of how consciousness moves between these two worlds. In generative trance work, we say that information/energy flows between the different realms through reality filters that function as gateways. The nervous system is a prime example of such a filter. For example, neuropsychologist Karl Pribram (1971) proposed a holographic model of consciousness in which sensory systems are filters or lenses that convert the swirling patterns of the quantum world into the (classical) languages of the human being. Thus, what we experience as reality is not “out there,” but rather is created by our filters. Our filters transduce the waves of the quantum world into the realities of the classical world. This means that we are ultimately responsible for our reality; the good news being that with this responsibility comes the possibility for transformation.