I used to take a lot more pictures than I do now. Snapping shots of the family growing up, holidays, birthdays, etc. was something I really enjoyed. Now, I do more looking at pictures than I do taking them.

I like to look through photo albums – even of people I don’t know. Pictures tell you a lot about people.

There are Native Americans who refuse to be photographed. Crazy Horse would never allow his picture to be taken while he was alive. In Mexico there are certain towns that hold on to Mayan traditions which include not having their picture taken. The religious belief is that your soul is captured and imprisoned within the photograph. I believe they were intuitively on to something.

I went to visit one of my mentors, Dr. Dave Dobson in 2001. I always like to know what people who have skills that I admire are reading. What captures their fancy? Dave told me about a book called Sanctuary: The Path to Consciousness.

It describes the story of Jane’s experience with uterine cancer and energy balancing. “Sanctuary” also maintains that a person’s energy is captured in a photograph and doing energy balancing with the photograph is the same as doing it with the person.

“Sanctuary” will challenge your beliefs and jumpstart your curiosity that there is more to this than meets the eye. Quoting Plato:

“Take a look round, then, and see that none of the uninitiated are listening. Now by the uninitiated I mean the people who believe in nothing but what they can grasp in their hands, and who will not allow that action or generation or anything invisible can have real existence.”

If you ever come to one of my seminars, you will likely hear me say, “You can’t eat a whole cow in one sitting.” What I mean by that is illustrated in the following story.

I was working at a radio station that had lots of family listening. That means the parents who controlled the selection of our station had children ages 5 to 13 within earshot of our programming whether at home or in the car. Our general manager accepted advertising for a “gentleman’s club.” That meant topless dancing etc. I asked him to reconsider. He said he would put the ads on after 6 p.m. and that would minimize the “exposure.” I asked him to think about the mother or father picking their son or daughter up after soccer practice and how uncomfortable that parent would be with that specific content on the air with their children listening, not to mention lost listenership. I lost the argument.

Fast forward to about 3 weeks later . . . A radio consultant we hired was in town for a visit. He sat down with me and the GM and his first question was, “Why are you running those ads? Don’t you know you will jeopardize your listenership?” The GM gave his rational for generating more revenue blah, blah. Then the consultant said, “I’m not asking you to change your religion, I’m requesting that you get a little religion.” He suggested that people who would frequent that establishment already knew what was featured there and it wasn’t necessary to jam it in their face with the explicit descriptions that were in the ads. He recommended that the ads contain only the words “gentleman’s entertainment” regarding content, along with the words “fun, entertainment and excitement” plus the address and hours of operation. The GM got a little religion. Also, he eventually dropped them as an advertiser all together.

Regarding the message of “Sanctuary,” I request that you get a little religion. Here’s a starting practice to break this philosophy into a bite sized chunk. Find a picture of someone that you have certain intentions for. Do your own version of praying or intentioning with that picture in hand. Send the person in the picture your love, you best wishes, your gratitude for their existence, and then see what happens.

You are working with the energy of the person even though it is in picture form. Don’t attempt to find out if this exercise is true. That means don’t judge the idea in your head. Rather, find out if it is useful. There is really no downside to giving this a go. If it proves fruitful, yea you! If you find it not to be helpful, the worst you have done is express the love in your heart.

Maybe Crazy Horse wasn’t so crazy!

All the best,

John

http://JohnMorganHypnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com

I was talking with my friend, John Leslie and he was describing a neighbor who had just moved in down the road. He said you could see all of the moving boxes stacked in the garage and you intuitively knew they needed to be unpacked. He watched his new neighbor look at the mountain of boxes and then proceed to grab a broom and sweep the driveway.

How many times do we sweep the driveway and ignore the task at hand? Sweeping the driveway is a diversion. It’s like continually talking about your problems. It’s a diversion for doing.

I love philosophy. I love learning about all the different perspectives and approaches. Some of the most knowledgeable people that I’ve met, who are schooled in almost all the philosophies, seem to do the least. They get caught up with the driveway broom. Their approach seems to be if you talk about it enough, something will happen. Or, if I learn a little bit more, then I’ll know enough to do something. These folks are perpetual procrastinators.

The Chinese adage I use as a mantra when I find myself ready to sweep is this:

“Talk doesn’t cook rice.”

It brings me back to the present and put a prioritizing focus on what needs tending to.

There is the other side of the lazy-boy philosopher’s coin. That’s the pattern of “activity.”

Activity is also sweeping the driveway, and the hallway, and the porch, and the deck, and the basement, etc. These folks are perpetual doers. They can’t just watch TV. They must fold laundry and watch TV. They read and watch TV at the same time. They iron and watch TV. Activity is a diversion as well. Believe me, if I were hiring someone to clean my house, I would pick someone who runs the pattern of activity.

This pattern will eventually burn you out. Your body has rhythms. There is a time you are loaded with energy and a time you could just take a nap. Activity prevents you from resting due to the parental, social and cultural conditioning that you must be doing something – otherwise you are being lazy. When you push through your down cycle once too often, your body will send you something to slow you down – aches and pains or a disease process. The message you are receiving from your innate intelligence is, “if you won’t slow down, I will slow you down.”

So where is the ecstatic psychic? (happy medium).

That’s really for you to discover. You probably fit closer to one of the profiles than you do the other. The first step, as always, is recognition. Recognizing a pattern of behavior while it is going on is the first step to outgrowing that pattern. Regular recognition and then interruption of the pattern will bring you to a new threshold – one you can step across into a new place for you. Then you’ll instinctively do what truly needs to be done.

All the best,

John

http://JohnMorganHypnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com

I found 3 entries from my Grasshopper Notes Journal from 3 years ago that I thought I would blog about today.

“Our minds become resistance mechanisms. Once they were acceptance mechanisms, thus the expression: ‘Your old hound will remain trickless.'”

“Resistance is holding on to what was; acceptance is seeing what is.”

“Acceptance removes all pseudo-choices and streamlines your thinking.”

We really were spongy at one time. It was so long ago and hardly anyone remembers the experience of learning how without knowing how. Just think about the accent you speak with, the mannerisms that you have that were your parents, the way you walk, and many of your beliefs. You absorbed these traits and beliefs before you knew what a trait or belief was.

Then a very interesting thing happened. Our intellect flowered. We learned to say “No,” and resistance was formed. We started to lose touch with reality right then and there. We learned to impose our will on reality in an effort to get what we wanted. Never mind that we were blind to the fact that the strategy rarely worked. But that didn’t keep us from plowing on. We learned that “rail against reality” strategy and most of us keep it for a lifetime.

We hold on to beliefs that don’t work and wear glasses that make obvious things seem invisible. Reinhold Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer opened our eyes to reality.

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.”

The holding on to the notion that we can bend reality to our whims seems stronger than the force of gravity. Persisting with a strategy that doesn’t work is what keeps monkeys in tribal Africa from retaining their freedom.

The monkey hunters carve holes on each end of a hollowed out coconut shell. They insert a rope in one hole and tie a knot on the inside on one end. On the other end they carve a hole just big enough for a monkey’s hand to fit into. They place a peanut inside the shell and put the coconut in plain view. They take the other end of the rope and hide waiting for the monkey to arrive. The monkey discovers the shell and puts his hand inside and grasps the peanut. While his hand is fisted around the peanut, it cannot fit back through the entrance hole. The hunter then pulls on the rope and captures the monkey. The monkey could let go at any moment and be free but his focus is getting the peanut with a strategy that isn’t working. He won’t let go.

What makes us different from monkeys is that we have the ability to make a choice, but we rarely do. We continually get captured by a strategy that doesn’t work.

The choice that works is to remove the illusional choices that we have been conditioned to believe. Acceptance is that subtraction process. It narrows it down to the only choice there is – to accept reality. Not accepting reality is some form of the thought, “this shouldn’t be happening,” or “this can’t be happening.” How hard would you laugh if you heard the trapped monkey say, “This shouldn’t be happening?” Our internal conversation to circumvent reality has yet another drawback. It keeps us focused on the denial and allows no room for a solution to our dilemma to pop in.

This is in no way a defeatist attitude – quite the contrary. When you accept what is happening, without all the diversional spin, your thinking gets streamlined and you make room for a solution to show up.

You can spend your time making a fist at reality or you can find an organ grinder with tons of peanuts.

All the best,

John

http://JohnMorganHypnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com

Are you asking for a sign? My experience tells me that’s like a fish asking where the water cooler is.

Did you ever notice that you set up the framework for the sign you are asking for? You may say something like, “if this or that happens, then that will be a sign.” Again, I can only judge from my experience, but the success ratio of that strategy seems less than casino odds.

I do have experience with seeing signs – mostly after the event happens. The signs are always there; many of us just don’t see them.

The collapsed bridge usually had fissures in its framework that were discovered after the tractor trailer fell into the river. They were there before the event. My friend, Jim was a long time member of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. He says that you always bring something into a crime scene and leave with something from a crime scene. Clues are always present.

So the question becomes how do we spot ever present signs? Your body will tell you.

Your body is a sign Geiger counter. We just don’t pay too much attention to our bodies. We rely mainly on our thoughts. That means we stay in our head and rarely visit with our body.

Animals are in tune with their bodies. They don’t take the time to think. The 2004 deadly tsunami in the Indian Ocean had prior clues. Humans missed them; wild animals headed for high ground. They were in tune with their bodies.

How did your mother know you were lying? She sensed it in her body. There was no conversation in her head needed. She had subconsciously catalogued many experiences with you over the years and stowed away the clues. Then when a similar experience came up again, she received a certain feeling in her body that produced the word “fib” in her mind.

Culturally, we have gotten away from trusting our bodies. That’s because so much attention is given to the intellect. Our whole educational system is based on facts and figures. We have given short shrift to such an important part of our learning.

I offer a CD called RELAX in 2 MINUTES which is designed to put you back in touch with your body – to notice what goes on there.

When you start paying more attention to your body, you see more signs. You don’t have to ask for them.

The two step process of seeing more is feeling more.

1. Start noticing that you have a body complete with sensations.
2. Pay attention when your “spider sense” starts to tingle and you’ll start seeing signs beforehand.

All the best,

John

http://johnmorganhypnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com

Yesterday was the annual hanging of the outside Christmas lights. I said to my son, Andrew (Sparky Jr.), “you had to pick the coldest day of the year to want to do this.” It was freezing and the wind was blowing and mucous was flowing. We have a 30 foot spruce tree that requires assistance to reach the top. We drove his 4 wheel drive vehicle up on the lawn and put a step ladder on the roof of the car. My job was to hold him and the ladder in place while he affixed the lights to a painter’s extension pole to try and lasso the top branch. It was high comedy for anyone watching this annual tradition unfold.

We managed to laugh at our stone age methods and eventually the tree was covered in lights. The good news is I remembered to dress in layers. This was to protect me from the elements. It got me to thinking about the layers we add to protect ourselves from others.

Some people have thick skins. That’s a layer. They weren’t born that way; it came from conditioning. Possibly they grew up in a very large family where no one was allowed to get too full of themselves and other family members kept them in check with critical remarks. They may have built up immunity to criticism due to this environment – thus the thick skin. Take the same family and focus on another member. This one, exposed to the same environment, develops a giant aversion to being criticized. Both have a layer of insulation.

Every human being has developed his or her own set of layers. Most often they isolate us from others. When we have these layers between us and others, rarely do we have a deep human interaction. All activity happens on the outer layer keeping our communications superficial. We hardly ever get closer because of the built up barriers.

There is a prescription, but for most it will be a bitter pill to swallow and it will remain in the medicine cabinet.

The answer is to show your underbelly. Take off your layers and let people have a peek at the real you. Remove your layers for a day and see how deep you can go with another. Drop all of your conditioned protection and experience a depth you may have never plumbed before.

It can be as simple as being honest with someone. Drop your story, drop your lies, and tell the truth. As it says in the Bible,

“And the truth shall set you free.”

You can be free of your unnecessary layers. It takes some bravery and the results last a lifetime.

You don’t have to undress in one sitting. Remove one layer at a time until you have a comfort level with the process. Soon your authenticity will be exposed for all to witness and the depth of your connections will be unfathomable.

All the best,

John

http://JohnMorganHYpnosis.com

http://GrasshopperNotes.com