si dawson

One of the tough­est things about heal­ing is this. Half the time we know some­thing is wrong, but can't put our fin­ger on exactly what the hell is going on.

Why?

Because our mind/ego has a delight­ful trait of try­ing to pro­tect us by hid­ing things from our consciousness.

This is why peo­ple get selec­tive amne­sia (in extreme cases of trauma), or just for­get things (day to day stuff).

This doesn't stop the hid­den issue from roy­ally screw­ing us over, of course.

So, what the hell to do about it?

Well, I found some­thing cool.

I was read­ing Noah St John's affor­ma­tions when it hit me.

Now, before you go on, I highly rec­om­mend sign­ing up for his book excerpt. Whether you buy it or not is up to you, but the three chap­ters you get by throw­ing him your email address are very worth reading.

Ok, so his basic premise is this: Affir­ma­tions don't work because our mind rebutts it. "I'm wealthy I'm wealthy" & our mind goes "Uh huh, no you're not." So, it all falls apart. Noah's rev­e­la­tion was that if we phrase affir­ma­tions as an open ended ques­tion "Why am I so wealthy?" or "How am I so wealthy?" then our mind works for us instead of against us. It starts find­ing ways to answer the question.

Damn neat idea.

pic by gus­light

I got think­ing about this in con­text of heal­ing — of remov­ing those blocks we have, self-sabotages, resis­tances etc to our suc­cess (how­ever you want to define that).

Now, with tap­ping (EFT), the usual approach is — first we tap out the prob­lem, then we tap in the solu­tion. Neg­a­tive first, then positive.

Where this falls apart is if we can't see what the hell is going on.. & where open ended ques­tions come to the rescue.

So, rather than tap­ping, say, "I hate my life" (which isn't great, since it's so gen­eral any­way), you tap on "Why do I hate my life?" or "What do I hate about my life?"

Sev­eral things hap­pen. First, a lot of times your mind will answer the ques­tion — so you then tap on what­ever comes up. Just go round a bit until it doesn't really feel like a prob­lem any more. Sec­ondly (& this is far more inter­est­ing), stuff will clear out with­out you ever hav­ing any idea what the hell it was that left.

But then, who cares, right? If it's gone, that's all that matters.

I've used this approach a lot over the last few weeks, & I've gotta say, it kicks right­eous ass.

So — start with neg­a­tive ques­tions.. then have a go with the word "still" in there — that'll help clear up any left­overs — eg "Why do I still hate my life?". Then tap in the pos­i­tive, which in this case would be "Why do I love my life?" or "What do I love about my life?"

I tell yah, works a god­damn treat.