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Archive for the ‘Best Psychology Resources’ Category

Harbor Island Bahamas
Holidays and vacation periods are the time that vacationers and vacation goers are flooding the vacation hot spots for re-energizing or simply just wanted to have another vacation trip. One of the most lovely areas to go for holiday escapade is the Bahamas Islands. However, among the Islands of Bahamas, Harbour Island Bahamas is one of the very best escapes. Are you questioning why? The Harbor Island Bahamas is a spot where vibrant luxury accommodations and hotel is found. The majority of its resorts are rated as the best Caribbean resorts. Tourist can’t really help but to be interested by its attractive exquisite shorelines. Another excellent factor in this isle is their greatest and luxurious restaurants that range from good dinning to the least expensive yet tasty menus. Your own stay will really be completed if you’re able to experience their greatest menus that you never had tried before. Before it’s too late, make a reservation now as fast as possible to avail their best offerings ever.

Bed and Breakfast Stonehaven
Do you wish to experience a one of kind mattress as well as breakfast in a place which is near harbor? Restaurant stonehaven would really match you. They offer excellent food that could certainly fill your appetite. Bed and breakfast stonehaven doesn’t offer only good food but also captivating surroundings that could improve your feeling. Furthermore when you decide to dine on this place, you will have the chance to enjoy their locally caught fresh seafoods. There will be no concerns whether or not you can afford the Restaurant stonehaven because they provide dishes as well as lodging that within inexpensive price points. If you wish to have the ideal dining experience within your vacation area, go to a place that would give you just that. You only deserve the best ,so make the most out of it.

Sarasota MLS Search
If you are looking for a great destination to settle in, you will surely find it challenging to do such thing when you do not have any notion how to start. Among the best choices you may have is to count on a real estate agent. These know where to access a number of the very best listings of properties that are to be sold. Sarasota MLS search best advantage broker agents. Because by having those listings, they could have simple conversation to other brokers. They could have exchange of information and among other crucial things that would assist them to obtain achievement in whatever that they are undertaking. There are many advantages out from employing Sarasota MLS search. It has been frequently used by agents and so far these Sarasota MLS search has become a success. It made their works more beneficial.

Rehab Guide has a wealth of know-how in aiding people break out from drink and drug abuse. There is an alcohol and drugs clinic with divisions all through the land and a variety of locations abroad. It is known as Rehab Guide. Are you looking for a new system of tackling a dependence on drugs and drink? Then book a consultation with Rehab Guide. A number of the team at Rehab Guide have individually had difficulties with narcotics and alcoholism.

There are folk on the team that have triumphed over dependency. They have not only studied addiction in a book or saw it on TV. The staff members have individually encountered it. They carry the marks. This gives our consultants special personal credentials when assisting people combating dependence. The Rehab Guide manages complete treatment therapy to wean you off drink and substances. See this for more on alcohol rehab center.

Do you feel disoriented? Then find your way to The Rehab Guide. Then benefit from one of the most effective rehabilitation, and detoxification services around. For the best counsel on how to keep from touching narcotics or drink, then the Rehab Guide is with you. This is in addition to overcoming any physical concerns which may take place as a consequence.|It is as well as aiding people with a health condition brought on by giving up drugs and drink. The private clinic will also help recovering addicts deal with possible effects or poor health, caused by quitting.|Then the Rehab Guide offers support to victims going through a deterioration in health and wellbeing, a side effect of quitting drink and drugs.|This is alongside watching for signs of accompanying illnesses they may be susceptible to after becoming drug-free.} However you will always have a sensitive ear, offering all the support you could hope for.

When heading to The Rehab Guide, you could set up a place to stay without any problem. You can organise yourself a spot down the phone in no time. The Rehab Guide shall help you on your way to living clean of alcohol and substances. It can spell the end of dependency.

A San Diego counselor offers the therapy and advising required to have to put out control above hard situations in the persons mind. Way too many folks access treatments as well as advising while using undeniable fact that this is a marvelous fix-all which will clean absent his or her troubles. Building an understanding regarding what folks just like a great San Diego Psychologist can accomplish for their customer can help lay down the inspiration pertaining to productive therapy.

They will have always tips as well as empathy to produce a beloved feel good. The folks which may have truly strike the underside are certainly not enthusiastic about compassion or pity. They would like to be.

A San Diego counselor isn’t right now there to feel sorry regarding as well as to attempt to comfort and ease their particular client. Instead, help get to the source of the difficulty and also allow the average person while using skills they should manage as well as get over. Very good advising can look into more challenging problems that are the muse of the issues getting experienced.

Neglect and stress can profoundly have an effect on a persons quality lifestyle along with associations. Also the ones that would not possess these tough instances can benefit by making use of the San Diego psychologist. Psychological condition and sociable awkwardness are generally items that may be current because of genetic makeup. The San Diego psychologist will help build expertise along with strategies to coping that will encourage anyone to reside a much better lifestyle, encounter more potent interactions, and attain a better a sense steadiness involving do it yourself.

Way too many people walk into the office of a San Diego therapist with all the indisputable fact that they may obtain fixed just like having a physician arranged a broken bone tissue or even deliver anti-biotics with an disease. Then they lament that they are not fixed. Developing a knowledge that therapy is intended to be a tool to assist someone support on their own can bring about better good results to the individual.

The individual which knows they are having problems stemming via deep-seated troubles of their mind and body come in the greatest situation to take benefit from precisely what advising is offering. Those resources may be used to deal with negative thinking, taking once life ideation, or repeating flare of the past stress.

It’s the cause of controversy but, nonetheless, there’s no shortage of practitioners active today who appreciate the potential of black ops hypnosis. It’s inappropriate to designate hypnosis as mind control — because the well known saw concerning mind over matter holds true; you can inform the subject easily and alleviate, perhaps even treat, emotional, physical and even mental complaints via the unconscious mind. So you can add help to vanquish smoking addiction to any half remembered frat-party hilarious high-jinks and similar antics. We do accept that what you’ve heard could appear somewhat unnerving, but the experts have it down to an art and produce virtually no problems.

Black ops hypnosis resembling the form being taught in the Underground Hypnosis system can be easily expressed as inducing a trance state in the subject. You can typically only make the trance state so deep. The depth to which the subject enters the trance is influenced by things like their emotional status and hypnotist’s ability. As you first establish the trance state, the subject’s minor muscle systems will declench as a result of unconscious decision. As the eyelids feel suddenly heavy, they’ll experience lethargy, wanting to sleep. You can see shoulders slump as this pleasant relaxation washes through the body in no time at all.

Picture only being able to perceive one person. A skilled hypnotist will let you experience this by taking you into a deep enough trance. Hypnotic suggestion comes into play from this point on, as the subconscious finds itself open to influence. Should you lead your subject further into trance, you’ll find a point where they can be helped to ignore pain, and discard bodily sensation, even seal away memories.

Hallucinations slowly make themselves known the farther the subject falls into a trance state, and given time the subject will achieve a state like that found in anesthesia. Where anesthesia appears unwise, hypnosis has very often been used in its place.

You won’t find out ways you can bring someone to that state via Underground Hypnosis, though you’d seldom need to. If all you want is to guide the subject in your chosen direction, all that’s needed is for them to reach one of the simpler levels of a trance state.

For more hints, you are advised to check out this terrific trusted source for conversational hypnosis course clues.

There are no barriers to the Underground Hypnosis crew — all are welcome. Through spending a short while studying and a few hours rehearsing your approach, you’ll very soon develop into quite an expert hypnotist — skilled enough for the common activities. That’s all you have to do — no reason to worry.

While the frequent subject of controversy, several practitioners use and promote conversational hypnosis and programs like Underground Hypnosis as potent systems. Employed as therapy for emotional, mental, and physical troubles in addition to a persuasive communication technique, this style of mind control affects the subject’s subconscious to generate the results you’re aiming for. You may add the struggle to beat anxiety attacks or addiction to smoking to any imagined stage show hilarious hijinks. It sounds a little unnerving at first, but it’s a surprisingly commonly-used practice which usually has no side effects. As with the majority of hypnotic schema, the intention of black ops hypnosis is the inducement of a trance state in the subject. The depth of the trance state induced is affected by quite a few elements, chief among them personality and hypnotist’s ability.

The least deep touch of trance occurs when the subject first starts to declench their minor muscles. They feel lethargic and even dozy. Many subjects also notice their eyelids seem heavy. As the hypnotist deepens the trance state, this ease starts spreading to the shoulders and hands. Usually, this takes mere moments. Try to imagine only having the ability to perceive one person. A skilled hypnotist can take you to this state with sufficient depth of trance. The power of suggestion is available from this point on. Going further you’ll find you can block recall in specific areas – or to prevent physical feeling. You may draw your subject into an even more intense trance, bit by bit introducing them to a hallucinatory level before an ultimate destination like that which the mind enters under general anesthetic. Individuals might go through one of several medical procedures at this point without anesthetic or painkillers. The Underground Hypnosis program won’t take anyone quite that far; however, it doesn’t need to. To all intents and purposes, the more easily attained strata are all that’s called for.

The best part? Everyone has a chance to study this technique using Underground Hypnosis. After spending a little while learning and a little more time rehearsing your approach, you’ll quite soon develop into quite an expert hypnotist. It really is as straightforward as that and nothing to worry about.

We suggest you review this terrific page for black ops underground hypnosis facts!

Clinical Depression Can Put Your Living on Suspension

Depression is a severe illness and must be considered seriously, not merely in a psychical sense. Depression may literally position your life on a a halt. Clinical Depression differs from just experiencing gloomy in several manners, particularly the feeling of inadequacy and miserable self regard is something that will lead to intimate isolation and hence make the illness even harder.

Clinical Depression can totally block conversation and interaction with other individuals and thus restrain your intimate interaction on a freezing place with very little hope of heating without assistance. If you sustain from depressive disorder it is of the utmost importance to seek professed advice from your physician, your psychiatrist or a master psychologist.

Having a soft clinical depression, there are some things you can manage yourself, to get stronger. Make a list of matters that causes you sad, matters that troubles you and things where you have a reasonable chance to establish changes for the greater. Modest and serious depressive disorder requires master assistance and frequently you will need antidepressants to have your living right. You can study articles on the internet and you can buy boeger about clinical depression and these can help, but the most fundamental step you can take is to acknowledge your sickness and confer with your physician.

One manner of identifying your most worrying concerns is to write a diary, private with pen and paper or online as a blog, it’s up to you. The serious thing is that you make valuations of your journal to place problems which occur frequently and which you must embrace or even speak about with your psychologist.

From the notes in your diary, you may likewise make associations between what you do and how you feel, does specific tasks make you depressed, does seeing particular people make you depressed, etc. From here you can start thinking about why it makes you blue and make out a solution from this beginning point.

It is the nature of soul to grow, to heal, and to love. As we enter into the world, we emerge as a tiny child. We are open. We do not have conditions placed on us by our parents or ourselves. We have not closed ourselves off from any possibility. It is though the world lay at our feet. We are a bundle of unconditioned purity.

As we age, conditions are placed on us to direct us along our paths intended to keep us from harm. Even if we manage to stay out of harms way, we move into a state of stimulus-response reactions toward life. This draws us further and further away from the natural state of pure being we came into the world with as an infant.

How can we return to our natural state of being? How can we call our soul back and gain a sense of spiritual well-being? The following are ways we can return to the wholeness and healing we seek as spiritual beings incarnated into the human race:

1. Do Something Creative.

Creativity engages our heart, our mind, and our imagination. These activities allow us to utilize our whole being. Our attention moves from outer expressions of the world and enters the inner dynamics of living giving rise to our heart and our imagination. When our heart and our imagination are given attention, we enter into the realm of insight. Insight is our ability to see from within just how sacred and magical our lives really are.

In the realm of soul, our humanity becomes sacred. Through creativity we are aware how life flows through us and not from us. The more we identify with these qualities of attention flowing through us, the more we are identifying with qualities residing in us that are whole and healing. It is our natural state.

2. Spend Time With A Child.

Children have a way of drawing our attention away from activities and responsibilities defining us as adults. All a child wants to do in this world is have fun. They seem to never tire of such activities. Children are constantly motivated by play.

As adults, we tend to think of play as wasted time. Adults who lose a sense of play and joy in their lives are in danger of losing self-motivation. The kind of self-motivation I am referring to involves the desire to have fun in life. This can lead to a depressive state lacking creativity, spontaneity, and the heart of a child.

Each of us has the heart of a child within us that never tires. It is the part of us fully participating in and with life. As our imagination and heart begin to guide us over the mind, we are in soul. In soul, our mind is in its proper perspective. This part of us is our inner awareness not bound by the pressures of the world. When we return to soul, the possibility of living whole and healed becomes a reality.

3. Become A Child.

The next time you look into a child’s eyes try to feel their heart. Notice the difference and similarities of your heart and their heart. Is there a difference? Is this awareness a long or short distance from where you were as a child?

What happened to that little boy or little girl inside you? Since we cannot retrieve childhood physically, maybe we can from within. Remember your past as a child – the good times and the bad times. As you look at your life through the eyes of a child, recall how active your heart and imagination were. Embrace it. Let this inner vision penetrate your entire awareness. Let go of your adult interpretations of your childhood and view it with innocence and love.

Our true nature is to live in the world without being fully of it. Inside us are endless avenues that can move us toward the experience of joy. When we let go of our tendency to view the world as right or wrong, good or bad, we leave behind dualism and enter into Unity.

This Unity behind all appearances of diversity is a healing state of unconditional love. It is the part of us bringing all life into being, leading us through life, and what will lead us home. It is the force of nature giving us life. It is our soul.

Samuel Oliver, author of, “What the Dying Teach Us: Lessons on Living”

www.soulandspirit.org

Hypnosis has been given many definitions over the years, and many authors have debated whether it even exists. These debates and definitions themselves are evidence of what I consider to be the most basic and profound form of hypnosis. My definition identifies the discursive thinking mind (what most of us identify with as our ordinary sense of self) as an ongoing hypnotic process. From this perspective, the ordinary conscious mind contains all the process elements of what traditionally have been called “trance phenomena.” And although the conscious mind approximates reality and makes its constructs seem workable, the mind itself is never accurately in touch with reality. More and more people are now beginning to subscribe to this view, as quantum physics continues to bear out scientific evidence that the nature of reality as described by spiritual masters throughout the ages is not merely metaphor, but actual truth. In fact, this approach to hypnotherapy could as appropriately be called “quantum hypnotherapy” as well as “transpersonal hypnotherapy.”

The transpersonal definition of hypnotherapy assumes that:

1) We are not who we “think” we are. Who we think we are is our deepest trance state (actually a “bundle” of trance states).

2) To the degree that our awareness is absorbed in and identified with our thoughts, we are in a hypnotic statea defined state rather than a spontaneous, “real” state, an “awake” state.

3) All communication, both intrapersonal and interpersonal, to the degree that it is a sharing of thoughts about reality rather than a direct experience of reality, is a sharing of hypnotic states, “dream” states, even deluded states.

The Hypnotic Trance of Self

Not being who we think we are is the root of our dilemmas. (Or, more accurately, believing that we are who we think we are, and not noticing that we are not, is the root.) We are selectively attending* to our ideas about ourselves in order to make choices* which define and determine our lives. If the root idea of who we are is a mistake, then our whole accustomed process of strategizing to improve our lives is a “mishap” having varying degrees of painful and pleasurable consequences.

The most profound aspects of the hypnotic trance of self (or the bundle of trances of self) are established in childhood prior to our development of a discriminating perspective. As children, we accepted the overwhelming vividness and prestige, good and/or bad, of the stimuli and messages acting upon us as “truth.” Learning to identify our sensory functions and our bodily delineation happens quite naturally, but extending that to the healthy expression of our mind/body in interpersonal relationships is rare. The degree to which our first relationships were unhealthy, i.e. shaming, confusing, or threatening, determines how profoundly we develop the trance of false, hypnotic self. This trance of self refers to a fixed idea of a rigidly defined self, rather than the spontaneous sense of wellbeing of a self that flows on effortlessly through changes, one that does not need ideas to help it remember who it is. In other words, when you are fully involved in being who you are, you don’t waste time keeping track of who you are. It isn’t necessary to do this if there is no sense of shame or threat to ward off. And the de-hypnotized, free-flowing selfnot perceiving anything as separateis simply blissfully existent and awake, without a need to ward off anything that comes its way.

The hypnotic self is a powerful set of trance phenomena. Growing up from infancy to early adulthood means being in the cultural and familial hypnotist’s arena 24 hours a day! Everyone is hypnotizing youtelling you what everything means, telling you what you are, and what your actions mean regarding your worthinessby delivering suggestions to you with repetition and emotional force.*

Children learn by modeling; they are master mimics. Thus begins the process of self-hypnosis (or self-talk, if you like). Have you ever had the opportunity to eavesdrop on a young child playing with toys while he is repeating the judgments he has heard about himself in an innocent, singsong voice? We master these skills of hypnosis very early in life.

In this way we quickly develop the veils of perceptionwe are no longer able to see a tree, hear a bird, taste a hamburger, or experience anything (including ourselves) simply and directly, without a running commentary going on inside. The stimulus of a tree, a bird, or a hamburger, or the spontaneous movement of our own mind, body or emotion, triggers an instantaneous, uninterrupted barrage of associations, judgments, and memories, filling our mind with sights, sounds, and sensations. This onslaught of associated responses refers to the past and projects into the future with such speed and force that, not only do we not notice we have missed the experience of the tree (its mounds of soft leaves, its mottled trunk, its gnarled mass of roots sinking deep into the earth who knows how deeply) but we also don’t notice that we have been distracted from seeing the tree. We are anesthetized to the pain of our severed relationship to the tree. How many of us are already habitually numbed to the pain of being disconnected from the natural world? Does it seem a strange notion that it could be painful not to really see and experience a tree that was right in our midst?

Distraction by association, forgetfulness, spontaneous anesthesia, positive hallucination (seeing something that isn’t there), negative hallucination (not seeing something that is there), time distortion and time displacement, spontaneous regressionall these are signs and qualities that traditionally indicate a deep state of hypnosis, And yet all of these take place in our ordinary waking consciousness.
We will examine the signs and qualities of hypnotic depth from the traditional standpoint, and then explore how they blend into what is usually considered the non-hypnotic or “conscious” state. In this way we will begin to understand why it has become so difficult for us simply to see a tree.
Therapeutic Hypnosis Defined
Conscious, subconscious, unconscious: these concepts pervade our culture, and we freely use them in talking about ourselves. To the degree that we do this without having contemplated the meaning of these terms in the context of personal experience, or to the degree that we haven’t determined the usefulness of labeling various kinds of experience with these terms, we really don’t know what we are talking about. We are merely engaged in hypnotizing ourselves by the very familiar process of sloganeering.
For example, the political slogan, “America! Home of the free!” has no specific, universal meaning, but can trigger strong emotional responses of varying kinds depending on the audience. Likewise, a phrase such as, “I know this problem is in my subconscious but I can’t get at it,” gives a person a false sense of knowledge that is really a state of confusion (i.e., a hypnotic state). The idea itself creates the dilemma.

Here’s one we all can identify with: “I know that intellectually, but I can’t stop…”. The phrase, “I know intellectually,” is one of the most common supports of ongoing trance. Its most important characteristic is that it short-circuits the possibility of accessing or maintaining an awake state of openness, while affording a bit of comfort in seemingly knowing something. What “I know intellectually” usually means is not that we know something at all. (Knowing it would meaning that it is alive within us, an actively available resource capable of facilitating change.) Rather, saying “I know it intellectually” indicates nothing more than our ability to pronounce the words, saying them over and over in our head like a lullaby, with little or no effect on our awareness.

I point this out in order to alert you, especially while you are a student, not to settle for this false kind of “learning.” It is what most of us are conditioned (hypnotized) to do. Bearing that in mind, here are a few of the definitions that successful, highly recognized hypnotists have applied to hypnosis:

“Hypnosis is the use of suggestion, whether direct or indirect, to induce a heightened state of suggestibility in which there is bypass of the critical faculty of the mind, and selective attention to suggestions given.” –Dave Elman

“Hypnosis is a state of awareness dominated by the subconscious mind.” — Michael Preston, M.D.

“Hypnosis is a ’shrinking of the focus of attention.’”

– Milton Erickson

Can any useful sense be made of these statements? What is “the use of suggestion…to heighten suggestion”? What is “the bypass of the critical faculty”? And how can “a state of awareness” be “dominated by the subconscious mind”?

What are these expert hypnotists attempting to describe? Can you relate the terms they are using to your personal experience? First, it is helpful to recognize that such labeling, which we have all been trained (hypnotized) to do, dissociates us from the experience we are labeling and creates subtle and not-so-subtle limitations.

It is important to note the difference between labeling, which diminishes interest and awareness in ongoing phenomena, and descriptive activity, which keeps us engaged with the phenomena. When descriptive interest is reduced to labeling, something alive and vital is lost in the process. The ability to label is, nevertheless, valuable when used appropriately. Labeling is inappropriate in the learning process when it does no more than satisfy the urge to say, “I know that intellectually.” Because no sooner do we say it, than we have put ourselves into trance, and are living in the box created by our words.

We all do it. In fact, this tendency lies at the root of all our worldly difficulties, personal and political, social and cultural. For once we have created a label, a conceptual box we can hold onto, we will grasp it and defend it, even in the face of irrefutable evidence to the contrary. It is easy to observe this everyday phenomenon in the prejudices and politics of our times, but have you ever thought about some of your own problems from this point of view? Take a moment now to remember being in the grip of some personal limitationone of those times when you acted and felt like a helpless two-year-old, despite the truth of your six-foot-two-hundred-pound-body-having-taken-care-of-yourself-daily-for-years experience. That’s hypnosis!

The phenomena these men are trying to describe as hypnosis are marked by the same qualities that pervade our conscious functioning. There is no clear distinction between the two. Even the “critical faculty” is actually a trance conditioned function. From this perspective, it is not so important to create a neat label to apply to the phenomena, because that so easily leads to a lazy, and false, sense of knowledge. It is more challenging, and more helpful to the client, to develop and access more resourceful trance states that expand the client’s awareness of choice and powerto the point that, ultimately, she comes into an awareness that is beyond trance states altogether.

Buddhism calls this the state of No-Mind. In all trance states, the thinking mind is busy labeling and defining reality, whereas the No-Mind state allows the direct perception of reality without conceptual mediation. (That’s a euphemism for “distortion and interference.”) No-Mind is a state in which the heart/mind and the head/mind functions merge, releasing one’s true, clear intelligence. The mark of this union is one’s reliance on the spontaneous guidance of intuition, direct perception and recognition of identity between subject and object. This intuition of identity engenders an unwavering sense of spaciousness, luminosity, and love. It manifests in a person as the revived capacity to be moved by the beauty of a flower, to see the focus, love, and attention of the whole universe in the movement of a fly’s wings, and to care for the life of all beings as one’s own life.

I define therapeutic hypnosis as taking hold of the mental functions we use every day to contract our focus and numb our sense of being (or to maintain the status quo of an already acceptable contracted state) and using those same functions to expand our awareness of being organically alive. Therapeutic hypnosis releases this mental contraction, the nature of which is fear, into an expansiveness, the nature of which is love. As with natural medicine, we distill the very poison that causes an illness in such a way that we produce its antidote.

Using this as our working definition of hypnotherapy, there is no real or solid boundary between the conscious and the unconscious to get in the way. No borderline exists to stop our own mental processes, skillfully used, from destroying the hypnotic state that keeps us boxed up in the world of our words, that prevents us from truly seeing the tree. If one understands this definition of therapeutic hypnosis, not as a label, but as a phenomenon being displayed by the mind, it becomes very delightful to do hypnotherapy. We do not have to be concerned about who can be hypnotized and who cannot be hypnotized. We need only develop the sensory acuity to notice how each person does it to themselves, how we do it to ourselves, and then make the kinds of adjustments that this course intends to teach.

To do this kind of work, we as therapists must place primary emphasis on our own daily practice. We must cultivate greater and greater awareness of our own habitual states, of when these states are triggered and what triggers them. And we must notice these states in ourselves with a growing capacity for spacious, kind-hearted acceptance of their presence. Our daily practice must include some form of body-mind coordination through physical activity. It must also include a meditation or contemplation practice, to develop the capacity to detach from the hypnotic turmoil of subconscious thoughts and feelingsthe constant “internal gossip” that we all generally accept as a given and therefore rarely challenge in ourselves.

©Copyright Jack Elias, 2006, All Rights Reserved. Excerpt from Finding True Magic: Transpersonal Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy/NLP by Jack Elias. Contact jack@FindingTrueMagic.com , www.FindingTrueMagic.com

Jack Elias, a Clinical Hypnotherapist in private practice since 1988, is founder and director of The Institute for Therapeutic Learning, a licensed Vocational School in Seattle training and certifying Transpersonal Clinical Hypnotherapists since 1988. Jack presents a unique synthesis of Eastern and Western perspectives on the nature of consciousness and communication, teaching simple yet powerful techniques for achieving one’s highest personal and professional goals. For 39 years Jack has studied Eastern meditation, philosophy and psychology with masters such as Shunryo Suzuki Roshi and Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Before beginning his teaching and counseling career, Jack worked for 20 years in sales, marketing and financial planning. Jack offers dynamic experiential workshops and seminars, and his Finding True Magic courses are eligible for credit at universities, and for CEUs for Registered Nurses and other clinicians.

Luke 22:14
When the hour came, Jesus took his place at the table, and the apostles with him. Then he took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”

“In a High Spiritual Season,” Joan Chittister:
“One of the most poignant of our community customs is the Celebration of Memories ceremony. The night before a sister is buried the community gathers at her coffin to remember together the moments of her life that taught us all something about life. The simple ritual turns death into life at the very moment we feel its loss most. It is a model, this finding life in loss, for dealing with death of all kinds.”

Long before the movie “Pay It Forward” came out, my father used to help people in need, not asking for anything in return other than that they return the favor by helping someone else in need when they were able. He said that would be all the thanks or pay back he would need. Growing up we saw him fill gas tanks for stranded travelers while we were on vacation, help change a tire on a busy highway, and send money anonymously to a friend who’d lost a job. We weren’t wealthy by any stretch of the imagination. In fact we were on a pretty tight budget while I was growing up. But if my parents could help someone they would, and they encouraged us to do the same, a practice their children remember and practice in our own lives.

When I began to worry about the pitfalls of financing my own adulthood, I would often call my father and moan about the latest monetary catastrophe in our lives: a car needing an expensive repair, our house needing a roof, the furnace needing replaced. We usually had the money, in savings, but I was hesitant to use it, in case something else really big came along. I can’t tell you what I thought that might be — I’ve always had an “emergency” savings account, but I am loath to use it, even for an emergency, because then there won’t be any emergency savings. And Dad would calm me down by telling me two things. The first was, “It’s only money.” And the other was, “You can’t take it with you.”

That is just the tip of the iceberg of things I remember about my dad, experiences that continue to impact my life on a daily basis in spite of his absence. In the four years since his death, my family has practiced what Joan Chittister talks about, remembering together moments of a loved one’s life that taught us all something about life and living, as a way of finding life in loss, and dealing with death.

Memories are what sustain us; they keep our loved ones alive for us long after their bodies have given out. Ultimately we are remembered in death for the way we live our lives. We are remembered fondly, even honored, if it is generally believed that we lived to the best of our abilities, and if, for the most part, we loved more than we didn’t, accepted more than we judged, and gave more than we took. For in the ways we give to and participate in the world around us, we live on in spirit, even after our physical bodies are gone.

Jesus is the ultimate example of this. He lived on so powerfully in the memories of his followers that they continued to experience his presence, even after his death, which is what all of the stories of appearances after his resurrection are about. And now, over two thousand years later, he is still experienced intimately by people of faith around the world. The most powerful image of that is in the breaking of the bread and sharing of the cup, which Jesus is said to have invited his followers to do in his memory and honor.

Of course there are other, less divinely inspired characters who also live on after they die. My father is obviously an example of this in my own life, as his spirit lives on through us, in our memories of him, and through the impact he had on our lives and the lives of others. We still tell stories about him almost every day, remembering things he said or did, his music, the way he made us laugh. And as time has passed those memories have become less bittersweet and all the more meaningful and powerful. Although his physical presence is gone from us, his spirit truly lives on and continues to impact us in a variety of ways. And I suspect for many of you reading this, there is someone who has died who had a similar impact on your life, even after they have passed from this mortal plain.

Consciousness Studies go beyond the realm of the natural sciences and the social sciences. Consciousness Studies can include a variety of disciplines: humanities, critical theory, comparative religion, functionism, mysticism, neuroscience, phenomenology (which describes intentionality as the basic structure of consciousness), philosophy and transpersonal psychology. The discipline of Consciousness Studies explores the human experience as it pertains to psychotherapeutic practice, behavior, spiritual exploration, idealism and religious tradition.

Consciousness Studies courses integrate classroom studies and seminars, and incorporate critical thinking, methodology, research skills, the nature of philosophical knowledge and its foundations, as well as theory. Consciousness Studies avails essential readings relevant to various principles of consciousness and allows one to instill acquired knowledge into the application of practices of healing, spirituality, education, and community.

Additional coursework often encompasses a broad variety of relevant and unique topics including but not limited to quantum approaches to comprehension of the human mind; modern science in relation to the mind; exploration of conscious emotions; cognitive neuroscience interfaced with emotions and consciousness; and expansive dialogues. Furthermore, in addition to classroom settings, consciousness studies are often provided through online learning programs and distance education courses.

DISCLAIMER: Above is a GENERAL OVERVIEW and may or may not reflect specific practices, courses and/or services associated with ANY ONE particular school(s) that is or is not advertised on SchoolsGalore.com

Copyright 2006 – All Rights Reserved
K. Monteith in association with Media Positive Communications, Inc. for SchoolsGalore.com

K. Monteith is a staff writer for Media Positive Communications, Inc. in association with SchoolsGalore.com. Find Consciousness Studies at SchoolsGalore.com; meeting your needs as your educational resource to locate schools.