Ghost in the Machine

Leveraging self-hypnosis to access the liminal state; breaking down the universal protocol to edit consciousness

Part 1 — Theory: Architecture of Belief and the Neuroplasticity of Narrative

We don’t directly experience reality — we experience our brain’s mapping of reality.

Whether the world works for us or against us, and whether we’re champions or victims of circumstance all depends on perspective, much of which rides the tides of our default mode networks and our neural feedback systems.

All of which can be adjusted.

Because the structures of belief that we weave into the fabric of reality are much more malleable than we’d generally think they are; we often just let them become an autonomic part of our default perspectives.

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” - C.G. Jung

Hypnotic suggestion (even self-administered) can physically rewire neural pathways by changing our belief structures from the root systems upward — from the stories we tell ourselves to the ways we process the input around us.

The architectonics of our belief and the neuroplasticity behind the narratives we live by are highly susceptible to modes of thought that we don’t even know we employ.

The fun begins when we realize that we’re writing these narratives as much as we are living by them and that we, as the ghosts in the machine, can breathe some real magic into the mechanics of the mind.

Despite its indecipherable workings, the brain can’t always distinguish between a vividly imagined experience and a real one.

What does that say about the nature of objective truth? If not the nature of truth, then the worthwhileness of our experience and of our existence on the whole?

The more we zoom into the subatomic or look out at the cosmic, the more we realize that everything’s relative — it’s not just time.

Subjectivity wins the day and holds more value than it’s given credit for; reality is a fickle concept that’s sluiced through the neuronal pathways to make some livable sense out of the otherwise chaotic nonsense.

Our consciousness decides what’s right and wrong, true and false, and, above all, what means what.

And so if the brain has the power to imagine an ideal experience as powerfully as it can sense a real experience, and it alone is responsible for ascribing meaning wherever it deems meaning to be true, there’s a lot to be said about the potential we have to define reality on our terms.

To create and construct rather than to consume and comply; to navigate space and time through our own physics and by our own standards.

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.”

— Plutarch

We can rewire how we interact with challenges or how we define the requirements for authenticity; we can transcend habits and patterns to achieve triumph over pains or addictions; we may not have much control over the plot and setting, but we can have total authorship over the story from start to finish.

The more often we exemplify this, the more we reconnect our neural pathways into the constellations that generate the kind of outputs we want amidst the kind of possibilities we choose.

And the whole process in doing so isn’t something that lingers out of our grasp.

Part 2 — Practice: Understanding the Liminal Space

Hypnosis is defined as a “state of consciousness involving focused attention and reduced peripheral awareness characterized by an enhanced capacity for response to suggestion.”

It’s essentially the art of editing consciousness by accessing the liminal state — the twilight zone between wakefulness and sleep, where the critical faculties dim and set over the red horizons of conscious awareness.

If we think of the subconscious less as a basement where we collect junk or store memories, and more as a capacitor for the broader functions of consciousness, we can open up layers of malleable potential.

We can reconfigure our perception of time away from one of scarcity and towards one of accumulation; we can interact with possibility on a much greater wavelength of self-proclaimed capacity.

But in a world full of marketed, over-complicated and over-saturated methodology, a process that’s really quite simple becomes commodified to obscurity.

Despite the paperback curtains and bar room theatrics of an enterprise diluted in an industry of therapeutics, the mode and methods of sinking beneath the layers of the mind remain available without appointment.

It’s entirely possible to simplify things by taking all popular protocols into account and deriving a common-denominator; doing so reveals a singular formula at play: intention, induction, immersion and instruction.

Add the ever-present variables of progressive relaxation along with some potent visualization and you have a generic template for accessing and editing the subconscious mind.

Below is a break-down of each phase, self-applicable with enough focus and self-evident with enough effort. Understanding the process allows one to pick at the deepest matrices of perspective — a practice that, as detailed above, is useful beyond any quantifiable measure.

I. Intention

It all starts with an intention. To quit smoking, to work out harder, to resolve trauma.

The intention is the point and purpose behind the effort, working as the pre-text that fuels the entire process.

In what ways do we seek to bend perspective or reconfigure our interactions with possibility? What constitutes the ideal states that we’re seeking out?

Clarity of intention, along with a realistic scope of what can be achieved (and how), is central, but a true engagement is what counts.

The process is only achievable through a strong and focused intent; this alone is what will power the mechanisms to dig deep enough into the roots of our belief structures and effectively rewire the various networks of the mind.

II. Induction

Relaxation is the avenue to the liminal state — the conduit through which the mind becomes isolated and awareness becomes activated.

Without it, the mind remains floating on the surface, unwise to the waves and without a paddle.

Hypnosis modulates behavioral brain networks by downregulating the incessant work of the cortexes, bringing attention inward.

The Salience Network reduces its constant monitoring of external stimuli; the Default Mode Network quiets the ego and self-consciousness, and the Executive Control Network pauses its unremitting problem-solving.

Through methods like breathing, counting, muscular decompression and tension contrasting, a shift in focus slips the spotlights of the mind towards the lower realms of conscious operation.

From here, the stealthy descent into the subconscious can really begin.

III. Immersion

Hypnotists will leverage a perceptual descent (i.e. walking down a staircase or floating downward) to guide the mind from an active, waking state into a deeper, suggestible condition.

Called a ‘deepener’, the technique is aimed at cultivating subconscious openness, facilitating the intent. A rhythmic undertone (counting or stepping) occupies the analytical brain, preventing the mind from wandering and fortifying the descent.

The deeper the focus becomes, the more that the experience feels like a place rather than a thought, accommodating the shift away from the external engagements and leveraging the brains imaginative potential against itself to access the sub-surface.

The process activates the vestibular system and motor cortex to create a proprioceptive feedback, lulling the brain into a hypnagogic state where the seeds of instruction can be planted.

IV. Instruction

Instruction is the answer, the rewiring.

It’s the core stage where the actual purpose of hypnosis is carried out.

Specific instructions following the induction phase aim to modulate the Salience Network to act upon specific goals. It’s here that emotional control can become regulated and predispositions can be adjusted.

The top down implementation of instruction arrives on the back of techniques like disassociation (i.e. working to create a perceptual separation between the body and pain or addictive substances), congruence (aligning suggestions with deeply held goals or values), or visualization (leveraging the minds imaginative capacity against its analytic faculty).

Positive tones in the present-tense focus on the ideal rather than the flawed; metaphorical reframing bypasses the critical domains of the mind; repetition helps properly seed new responses.

It’s here that the dissections between stimuli and response or action and awareness take place, reworking the software that regulate interoceptive awareness — the feelings inside the body — or the outputs that are generated upon the inputs.

While sagas can be written about any one element under this phase (like congruence or visualization), the ultra-condensed point of the matter is that the specific instructions are designed to change belief structures and play on the neuroplasticity of the mind, rewiring the neural pathways towards new and improved response structures.

Altering the minds intake of experiences and effectively editing consciousness.

“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”

- Henry Miller

There are countless protocols and methods, including PMR (progressive muscle relaxation), the Betty Erickson method (aka the 3–2–1 technique), the Dave Elman Induction protocol, the Silva Mind Control method and even more specific techniques like autogenic training, eye fixation, and self-suggestion loops.

Some leverage the physical (sensory perception and repetition, muscle tensing or focal manipulation) while others emphasize the mental (visualization and imagination); all work under the same goal to recalibrate our minds mapping of reality.

The fact that there exist so many avenues to reach a pretty variable destination says a lot about the versatility of the journey — that no one method is required and no great investment of resources is needed.

All that’s required is a few minutes to take a stroll from induction to instruction, spear-headed with a solid intention.

A simple formula and practice that pays infinite dividends to those who seek to assume some more control over the enigmatic mind and amplify the voice of the ghost that runs the machine.

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