Gil Boyne was casually looking me straight in the eye. “You realize, of course,” he said, “that the only Therapist really at work here is Holy Spirit.” These words were from a man generally acknowledged to be one of the preeminent hypnotherapists of our time. Through hypnotherapy, Mr. Boyne had been helping people since 1956. He is the author of Transforming Therapy and editor of several other books on the subject of hypnosis, healing and mind training. He founded the American Council of Hypnotist Examiners, one of the largest hypnotherapist training and certifying bodies in the world. He also founded the Hypnotism Training Institute in Los Angeles as well as Westwood Publishing, providing educational media about hypnosis and the power of the mind.
Mr. Boyne was not overtly religious or even obviously spiritual. He taught and trained thousands of hypnotherapists over the years and his only preaching is about the power of the subconscious. Though he sometimes refers to Biblical allusions, one could not categorize him as being of any particular religious bent. That is not to say that he isn’t. It’s just that he doesn’t wear it on his shirtsleeve.
But in his words to me, Mr. Boyne, who has helped thousands of people make miraculous change in their lives, was deferring his role as therapist to a higher source. In that, he was portraying himself more as facilitator than therapist. In fact, he teaches students that what a hypnotherapist is truly doing is demonstrating a natural phenomenon that can bring healing.
Hypnosis and its role as an agent of change or healing recognizes the power of what is usually called the subconscious mind. In that and along with the comment Mr. Boyne made about Holy Spirit being the only Therapist, the subconscious can be seen as a link to that Healing Source. And hypnosis then can be viewed as one of the ways to access that Source.
I don’t care what you call me, just call me Of course, the very term Holy Spirit has Christian overtones. Other cultures and systems use different terms. The idea is that it refers to the connection that we all have with the conscious creative power of the universe. One word for that Creator is God. And Holy Spirit is often referred to as the connection with God or the Voice for God.
For a long time and for a variety of reasons, I avoided using the “G” word. I used every term but God: Cosmic Consciousness, Divine Awareness, One Mind, Creative Source, the Universe, Supreme Power. Finally I got tired of the extra syllables and reverted to “God”. It’s just a term, after all. Why struggle with a word?
Likewise, there’s Holy Spirit with a name that we christened. We could call him anything we want. The point is, all of us have access to a source of guidance that is beyond the intellect, the analytical. It can be called inspiration or intuition or inner guidance or whatever. And that source of guidance is actually a more valuable and successful guidance than the data-driven intellect. Or have you forgotten that the solutions to your most desperate problems, the course of action to take to answer your most vexing life changes have usually come out of nowhere, perhaps in the morning when you’re not thinking?
So, Holy Spirit sits there willing to guide our experience, our actions, our reality. And he not only maintains a direct connection with us but he has a hotline to God. He can confer – instantly.
Only as loud as your willingness to listen. The thing is, Holy Spirit isn’t really given to shouting. You see, he’s operating on a little different timeframe that we are. His is called eternity and certainty. So he just sits and waits for us to get a clue and give him a call. From there, it’s pretty fast and timeless results. One thing to remember is that the word eternity actually refers to timelessness. We mistakenly think it means simply a long time.
In our experience, that means that part of our mind is particularly interested in the world of form, the world of material goods. As the Bible calls it, that is the world of the perishable. Some sources call that part of awareness the ego-based mind. Hypnosis calls it the conscious mind. Whatever it is called, it is experienced as a yakety-yak, particularly noisome part of our awareness that buys into the idea that we can solve everything intellectually. It’s also the part of the mind that, like an incessantly barking dog, can keep us awake at nights as we worry about this or that. Pretty much all the conscious mind can do is analyze, crunch numbers and alphabetize. (Note: Computers do it better.) It retrieves data and presents it as if it were rule of law, despite the fact that the same data very often changes from day to day, even contradicting itself. (“Eggs are bad. They have cholesterol.” “Eat eggs. They’re good for you.” Et cetera.)
The other part of our mind is the subconscious. It basically does everything else. It runs our body systems from immune system to balance to heart rate to respiration – you name it. It also is the interlink with our highest self. It is, by the way, a mind system that relies and traffics more on feeling than on data. It is the connective tissue of the mind that embraces what we can call Holy Spirit, intuition, artistic muse, hunch, instinct, higher self, inner guide. That part of the mind depends on its connection with what always was and always will be. The subconscious can be swayed, of course, by ego-based programming. But Holy Spirit is always willing to give us directions on how to remove the glitch – if we ask.
What is left is finding an appropriate method of reaching the subconscious. There is no single way to invoke what we can call Holy Spirit. There are many. Trance, prayer, chanting and meditation are some of the common ones. Whatever quiets that barking dog of the ego mind. It’s like answering Wordsworth’s challenge that the “world is too much with us”. When we quiet that part of the mind that is so insistently infatuated with the world of form (the conscious intellect), we are stepping aside from the composite of our illusory self and directing our attention to the real being that we are.
There are several doors that can open the mind to healing from within. Find one and use it.
Be well.
Heartland Healing is a metaphysically based polemic describing alternatives to conventional methods of healing the body, mind and planet. It is provided as information and entertainment, certainly not medical advice. Important to remember and pass on to others: for a weekly dose of Heartland Healing, visit HeartlandHealing.com. and like us on Facebook.