You're not alone if you are on the fence about hypnosis and whether if it is possible or if it is just a bunch of paid actors clucking like chickens on a stage.. And, that's perfectly OK because most of us have been taught to think the same way. I know I did, and it took some reading, soul searching, and my first client to change my mind.
Growing up, we slowly learn that we should feel uncomfortable with what we don't understand. That we should see it before we believe it. We begin to tragically deny the possibility that something unexplainable could be true or real. We start to choose fear over acceptance and love. Ignorance is safer than knowledge.
And, we live our lives through the mind and eyes of a skeptic. Science is our religion. We become lost. And, we pass the same curse onto our children, who actually know more and better than we do.
Oftentimes, we are the ones who put out the child's spark and help them to forget.
They are eventually told they need to grow up, be an adult, and to put their toys away! Life is too short and too important to spend it playing in a world of fantasy! Be a hard worker! Go to school! Get a job! Pay your bills! Work most of your life, retire, take some vacations if you can, and die healthy and content...or do we?
Why do we believe we have to be a choice between wonderment and the mundane? Why can't we have the magic and do the best we can in this lifetime? Is being told, "You are acting like a child!" always a bad thing? The truth is...it doesn't have to be, we can, and no, not always.
No matter how hard we may try to deny it, and, for some, this might tragically always be the case, we all secretly hold on to what it was like to experience childlike wonderment, the unconditional willingness to believe in things like woodland fairies, tricky leprechauns, fantastic ghosts and devious goblins, monsters lurking under our beds and in the closet, and superhuman powers that can take us away from fear and hopelessness.
We miss the freedom and purity of self and spirit, the limitlessness of our imagination. We miss becoming the all-powerful queens and kings of our backyards and playgrounds with unsuspecting ants as our royal subjects. We miss fighting blood-thirsty witches and long-bearded wizards, plundering pirates and, well, barbaric barbarians, and following the mythical yellow brick road to a shiny green city to only discover who we've been all this time, we have always believed we can't but, in fact, we can.
Maybe you disagree?
I ask you to stop and think for a moment...why are "The Most Magical Places on Earth" the most popular (and profitable) places on the planet? Why is it that when you step inside, you'll witness children and adults, young and old, gleefully wearing mouse ears and jeweled crowns while others take selfies and pictures with oversized ducks and chipmunks, storm troopers, and a skeleton in a pinstriped suit who still has his holidays confused?
In essence, we spend most of our lives trying to find and to remember our spark, our light, whether we are aware of it or not. We want to fulfill our greater potential not succumb to all of the needless limitations we put on ourselves.
Some remain in the dark and forget why we are here, getting lost in greed and war, disease and hate, and thinking this is all we have. And places, like the kingdom pictured above, allow us to do this for a brief moment in time, to revisit our childlike wonder, only to walk through those gates and leave it behind.
Some may feel envigorated by the chance to have find their spark, but did they really find what they were searching for?
I am a former what I'd like call a "hypno-skeptic." I had seen hypnotists make amazing things happen on television or online, but a part of me wasn't too interested or took it too seriously. After all, it's hard for us to believe what we don't experience ourselves. Yes, hypnosis was a strange and obviously entertaining performance to see, but at those times, hypnosis wasn't something I cared to explore nor would I have ever thought it would become my life's path.
Maybe people really had a spell put on them to make them think they were poultry, or to quit smoking, or to lose weight. Maybe past life regression could happen, but even though it sounded fun to explore, why was it necessary? Did it have a purpose?
I had other passions and deeper curiosities that kept me busy, and the stage hypnotists with their volunteer chickens (real or not) could cluck on all they wanted. It didn't mean much to me. Cluck on, little chickens, cluck on.
During the times I thought more seriously of hypnosis or the idea of a "real" hypnotist over the years, I would automatically imagine a stuffy middle aged man from some country, like Germany or Austria, with strangely small and round glasses, tightly parted, dark hair, a top hat he hung in the corner of his office, and a greasy mustache twirled upwards at the ends that he would twist as he thought to himself. During sessions, he'd have his patients sit on a reddish-brown leather sofa in a dimly lit room and would swing a golden pocket watch in front of their noses. And, from behind the hairy monster hanging onto his upper lip, words would come through in low, thick accent, "Youuuu are gettink verrry zzzleepy..."
Maybe this version of the hypnotist is cliché. Still, the whole process seemed gimmicky to me, and, even if it did work, I had heard only some chosen people could be hypnotized. They had "the gift," and everyone else had to find something or someone else to tell them about their past lives, soul lessons, predict their future, or help them from overindulging in cookies and cigarettes.
But, not until recently, my perspectives on hypnosis and its significance have been unexpectedly and utterly transformed. And, yes, anyone can be hypnotized.
During the middle of 2020, I was finishing the quarter for my counseling program and somehow found myself going down the rabbit hole, so to speak. I was doing research for a final assignment that combined my background in philosophy and ongoing interests in how quantum physics could overcome the limitations in traditional and modern therapy. And, I happened to find a research study that briefly mentioned hypnosis, and in walked a complete stranger to me, Dolores Cannon.
I was intrigued by the possibilities associated with her research and, considering I was about to have a break from classes at the time, I was in search of a book that did not have to do with counseling and mental illness. Why not find something written by Dolores?
Because I grew up in Las Vegas, and near Area 51, the thoughts of aliens or extraterrestrials kept me awake at night more than the local vampire or wolfman. Nevertheless, ETs remained a lifelong curiosity, so I decided to read Dolores' The Custodians.
The summary included using a type of hypnosis, QHHT, to regress people to the times where they were visited or taken by otherworldly beings. However, after the first chapter or so, I realized that it was not going to be the typical "ABDUCTIONS: EXPOSED, HIDE YOUR CHILDREN!" adventure. What Dolores began to reveal was completely unexpected, but deep down, it felt honest.
In fact, ever since I was a child, suffocating under my blankets because I thought an alien was in my room, I wanted to believe The Custodians was true and all that we think we know or deny is not the whole story. And, Dolores managed to prove this is the case and barely scratches the surfaces of all that is, was, and will be.
Suffice it to say, I read several more her books, and I haven't been able to stop. And, Dolores states throughout her texts, what she could discovered and wrote about could not be made up, or faked. And, why would she? When hundreds of people across the globe shared almost identical knowledge, sometimes picking up where others left off, without knowing each other or what the others had said, there is absolutely no way that Dolores, or her clients, even if they wanted to do so, could have coordinated such an elaborately complex, valid, and meta-metaphysical collection of testimonies and unlimited knowledge.
Yet, after all of the reading and up to the point where I was working with my first QHHT client, I wasn't sure if it was 100% true. Why? Well, we've been taught we have to see it, or experience it, to believe it, haven't we? Even all of the evidence is there before us and slapping us upside the face?
Dolores' "Mr. Stupid" (our logical, conscious selves) was still in the driver's seat after I finished the first level of QHHT training, witnessed Dolores work directly with clients, but that annoying logical part of myself had locked the car doors, still holding my faith in the practice and the endless possibility as a prisoner.
However, and to my surprise and relief, my first doubtful and hesitant volunteer easily went into trance and ultimately had a life-changing experience. He had been paralyzingly afraid of death almost all of his life, and he regressed back to a life in Virginia, which was in the middle of the yellow fever epidemic that occurred in 1793. He, his wife, and three children were able to escape to the midwest US and survive. There, the blacksmith was a blacksmith no longer. He had become corn farmer, and he told me about his loyal workhorse that greeted him when he revisted that day of his life. He shared the excited of his family's very first harvest and how prosperous they would be after selling their goods to the local community. They would even have food for the winter and felt relieved.
The Higher Self showed him this lifetime, his death, and the spirit side, where he was greeted by his wife who had passed years before. The Higher Self then explained the causes of his pack pain and anxiety and healed him. They also told me he had no reason to fear death, and they would show him, so he could remember and not be afraid anymore.
When I brought him back, he opened his eyes, and he remembered nothing. No memory of the corn, the horse, his wife and children, the yellow fever that was killing everyone around him, including his friends, and being a blacksmith in Virginia in 1793.
An hour and a half had gone by, and he thought he just closed his eyes for a second.
This was the moment when he and I became true believers in hypnosis and regression. We had both experienced it first hand. No gimmicks, no stuffy Austrians, no clucking chickens, and no more Mr. Stupid tormenting my brain. The prisoner was released and faith in the process, myself, and the energies that guide us and love us helped me find my spark, my wonderment, and my joy.
The Higher Self had also revealed me that being a QHHT Practitioner was my life path and purpose.
My first volunteer was no longer doubtful and neither was I. And, neither of us would look at life the same, mundane way even again.
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