Hypnosis, NLP, mahagickque

[Cain]

http://www.hawkridgeproductions.com/media/index.html

That's what this guy deals with, in a decent amount of detail.

Now, to be fair to him, he describes mahadgicqke as "a means of first perfecting the self so that the things that one may do will be done with power and effectiveness. This has always been the aim of magick: to understand the relationship between our consciousness and the world, in a way that allows us to re-create ourselves in healthy and practical ways. Our understanding and self-perfection allows us to fit into the world so well that we can influence it in accordance with our will."  Which is eminetly more useful than 99% of descriptions, and doesn't even require a belief in the supernatural. 

As I understand it, this guy spent a fair amount of time with RAW and Douglas Rushkoff, hence why he may be worth reading a little more than many others on the subject.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Phil Farber is extremely competent in "magick" of the sort discussed by RAW, Crowley, Carroll, Antero, etc. That is as a sort of advanced psychotherapy. I got to be in a class he taught this year over at Maybe Logic and it was... awesome. No spooky mechanics, no dogmatic IS/Is Not... just practical exercises and ideas that seem to help people play with their brains.

He also uses his metamagick as a sort of therapy for patients. One example he gave in the class:

A woman was extremely afraid of spiders. So he (or one of his students, don't remember), brought her into a quiet safe room, had he get comfortable and put earphones on her.) They basically took her through a guided meditation wherein she had to visualize spiders... and eventually a very big spider. They let this continue, feeding her imagery etc until the woman was obviously in an extremely agitated state. Then right at the pinnacle of her fear, the guided meditation was directly and loudly interrupted by the Monty Python theme song, complete with Squishy Foot noise. The lady began laughing and apparently has no more major problems with spiders... I don't think she is friends with Peter Parker, or anything... but it did seem to re-imprint (using Leary's terms) her subconscious program about spiders.

Also, his new "Book of Atem" is an awesome view of metamagick and memetic entities, something which I think a lot of the OM stuff here might benefit from.

[East Coast Hustle]

I find the concept interesting, but it seems to me that it's the sort of thing that stronger-willed people would find unnecessary to begin with.

or...

if you need a way to trick yourself as a means to enforce your will on the world, maybe you shouldn't BE enforcing your will on the world?

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I find the concept interesting, but it seems to me that it's the sort of thing that stronger-willed people would find unnecessary to begin with.

or...

if you need a way to trick yourself as a means to enforce your will on the world, maybe you shouldn't BE enforcing your will on the world?

Well, I think it depends on what you think is going on inside your head. If you subscribe to the Leary model, then lots of things that happen in the first few formative years will imprint your tendencies for the rest of your life. That doesn't mean it deterministicly defines what your decisions WILL be, but it will define your tendencies, your initial reactions and your subconscious reactions. While a strong-willed person can train themselves to behave differently, Leary's argument was that the tendency would still be there.

To modify the 'imprint' Leary felt that you could provide a 'shock' to the neurological system which would act as a sort of 'buffer overflow' in computer terms. That is the shock would permit a subtle change to the imprint. This was the basis for his work in prisons with rehab... and as far as he got before the government shut him down, it appears that it may have worked.

In other examples of "metamagick" things like memetic entities, invoking parts of your personality etc. appear more tools for self-examination. The concept being quite close to the BiP, with metamagic allowing you to basically stand on the other side of the bars looking in at your prison, to see ways to make changes. Phil's concept of memetic entities seems most interesting to me, particularly as it fits very closely with discussions we've had of memes.

The difference between a meme and a memetic entity might be explained like this:

23, The Law of Fives, The Myth of Starbuck etc are all memes.

Discordianism is a memetic entity.

Memes are specific mostly unchanging, static ideas that we can poke into someone's brain to evoke a change in their perception.

Memetic entities are complex systems of memes that have escaped the static constraint and live in the minds of many people, growing and changing through a sort of feedback system.

So Memes = M1

Memetic entity = (M1+M2+M3+M4+M5) * X   Where X is the ideas and experiences of the individuals that the entity resides in.

Where the 10 commandments were memes, Judaism and Christianity are memetic entities.

All in all, its just more models, maps and metaphors for discussing types of ideas. However, they seem like particularly useful ones to me.

[Triple Zero]

I find the concept interesting, but it seems to me that it's the sort of thing that stronger-willed people would find unnecessary to begin with.

or...

if you need a way to trick yourself as a means to enforce your will on the world, maybe you shouldn't BE enforcing your will on the world?

i would rather say that stronger-willed persons already naturally and inherently exploit some of these tricks without necessarily being aware of it.
the point of these tricks is, afterall, that if you want them to be really useful, should become a second nature to oneself.

this also means that, "stronger willed persons" can still learn from these things, especially from the tricks they don't employ by their nature (the others will just give them a "yeah duh, of course" sensation). but of course they have less inclination to do so, because why bother if their innate tricks already work so well?

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I find the concept interesting, but it seems to me that it's the sort of thing that stronger-willed people would find unnecessary to begin with.

or...

if you need a way to trick yourself as a means to enforce your will on the world, maybe you shouldn't BE enforcing your will on the world?

i would rather say that stronger-willed persons already naturally and inherently exploit some of these tricks without necessarily being aware of it.
the point of these tricks is, afterall, that if you want them to be really useful, should become a second nature to oneself.

this also means that, "stronger willed persons" can still learn from these things, especially from the tricks they don't employ by their nature (the others will just give them a "yeah duh, of course" sensation). but of course they have less inclination to do so, because why bother if their innate tricks already work so well?

Yep, though I have yet to meet a person that would not likely benefit from giving their brains a good going over... no matter how strong willed they consider themselves to be. 

[Cain]

I find the concept interesting, but it seems to me that it's the sort of thing that stronger-willed people would find unnecessary to begin with.

or...

if you need a way to trick yourself as a means to enforce your will on the world, maybe you shouldn't BE enforcing your will on the world?

i would rather say that stronger-willed persons already naturally and inherently exploit some of these tricks without necessarily being aware of it.
the point of these tricks is, afterall, that if you want them to be really useful, should become a second nature to oneself.

this also means that, "stronger willed persons" can still learn from these things, especially from the tricks they don't employ by their nature (the others will just give them a "yeah duh, of course" sensation). but of course they have less inclination to do so, because why bother if their innate tricks already work so well?

That's pretty much my thinking.

Plus I am of the mind of seeking an advantage wherever one can be found and when it comes to syncing your worldview and taking advantage of opportunities, I can't see there ever being a problem of doing too much to aid that.

[Lies]

hmmm very curious, I'll give it a good read when I can later.

[East Coast Hustle]

I find the concept interesting, but it seems to me that it's the sort of thing that stronger-willed people would find unnecessary to begin with.

or...

if you need a way to trick yourself as a means to enforce your will on the world, maybe you shouldn't BE enforcing your will on the world?

Well, I think it depends on what you think is going on inside your head. If you subscribe to the Leary model, then lots of things that happen in the first few formative years will imprint your tendencies for the rest of your life. That doesn't mean it deterministicly defines what your decisions WILL be, but it will define your tendencies, your initial reactions and your subconscious reactions. While a strong-willed person can train themselves to behave differently, Leary's argument was that the tendency would still be there.

To modify the 'imprint' Leary felt that you could provide a 'shock' to the neurological system which would act as a sort of 'buffer overflow' in computer terms. That is the shock would permit a subtle change to the imprint. This was the basis for his work in prisons with rehab... and as far as he got before the government shut him down, it appears that it may have worked.

In other examples of "metamagick" things like memetic entities, invoking parts of your personality etc. appear more tools for self-examination. The concept being quite close to the BiP, with metamagic allowing you to basically stand on the other side of the bars looking in at your prison, to see ways to make changes. Phil's concept of memetic entities seems most interesting to me, particularly as it fits very closely with discussions we've had of memes.

The difference between a meme and a memetic entity might be explained like this:

23, The Law of Fives, The Myth of Starbuck etc are all memes.

Discordianism is a memetic entity.

Memes are specific mostly unchanging, static ideas that we can poke into someone's brain to evoke a change in their perception.

Memetic entities are complex systems of memes that have escaped the static constraint and live in the minds of many people, growing and changing through a sort of feedback system.

So Memes = M1

Memetic entity = (M1+M2+M3+M4+M5) * X   Where X is the ideas and experiences of the individuals that the entity resides in.

Where the 10 commandments were memes, Judaism and Christianity are memetic entities.

All in all, its just more models, maps and metaphors for discussing types of ideas. However, they seem like particularly useful ones to me.

I understand the point you're trying to make, but please to not be using Timothy Leary as some sort of credible source on, well, anything.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I understand the point you're trying to make, but please to not be using Timothy Leary as some sort of credible source on, well, anything.

While he lost most of my respect in later life, his actual research and theories early on are still respected by a lot of psychologists today. I wouldn't site him as an authority on anything, but since much of the work being done in NLP etc. are somewhat based on his models of imprinting, it seemed appropriate.

[East Coast Hustle]

fair enough.

[Lies]

Timothy Leary is THE authority on questioning authority.
Why does he want us to do that? Is there something he knows that he doesn't want us to know?

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Timothy Leary is THE authority on questioning authority.
Why does he want us to do that? Is there something he knows that he doesn't want us to know?

Metathority!

Oh what a great name for an evil group in a futuristic story... hrmmmmm

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

I understand the point you're trying to make, but please to not be using Timothy Leary as some sort of credible source on, well, anything.

While he lost most of my respect in later life, his actual research and theories early on are still respected by a lot of psychologists today. I wouldn't site him as an authority on anything, but since much of the work being done in NLP etc. are somewhat based on his models of imprinting, it seemed appropriate.

Bump for

NLP is big on "locus of control," and outcomes. Imprinting is a frame of reference that puts you on the effect side of the equation, in the past while ignoring your goals. A NLPer would ask how you can use the imprinting experience to achieve something specific in your life. Leary produced one descriptive model, while NLP is a large set of strategies and techniques for producing models and utilizing them on the fly. Hardly comparable IMO.

NLPers may say that Leary's model can be useful in some context, but I don't see any part of NLP that has roots in Leary's drug addled jabberings. Maybe he influenced NLP towards dressing up ideas in scientific sounding names but that's about all the similarity I've noticed.

If you want to investigate the taproot of NLP, dig up work by Milton H. Erickson. I'm not convinced Leary was even a wispy little rootlet.

I hope I don't need to beat you with a stick again, Tosk.