Bandler and Grinder said that one of the purposes of NLP was to get people to do hypnosis without needing the label, to get round bad associations that label had, and for some still has. By allying yourself with the term ‘magic’, do you think you limit your appeal to those who already think of it in positive ways? Can you conceive of a version of what you’re doing that doesn’t rest on those associations?
Some years back I taught classes at a large hypnosis conference here in the US. Each year, I would submit a few class topics and they would pick the ones that they preferred. For a few years running, I submitted a proposal for an evocation workshop, figuring that it would be a useful skill for the hypnotists to learn. Each year, it was passed by. Then I simply changed the title from “Evocation” to “Metaphoric Reframing” and with all else being the same, they picked that as their top choice. I taught the whole class without reference to magick or even evocation. And at the end had a room full of hypnotists who were very enthusiastic about this “new technique.” “It’s actually not so new.” I attempted to explain.
On the other side of the coin, my book that was published in 2008 as “Meta-Magick: The Book of Atem” originally made absolutely no reference to “magick” and the working title was “The Book of Atem.” Having found a home at an occult publisher, the editors figured that it needed “magick” somewhere in the title (and NLP, as well). After a bit of editorial back and forth, the official title became “Meta-Magick: The Book of Atem: Achieving New States of Consciousness through NLP, Neuroscience and Ritual.” Similarly, my working title for “Brain Magick” was “The Way of Woohoo” (though I do discuss “magick” at moderate length in that one). There’s also an e-book, a popular item on my website and on amazon.com, called “The Book of Exhilaration and Mastery” that teaches invocation techniques without invoking the M-word.
So, I’m flexible about what we call this kind of consciousness technology. I’m happy to work with my publishers on different marketing strategies and I’m okay with title changes as long as the content of the book remains what I intended. Most labels that we apply will sell in some ways and limit in others, and that includes NLP, science, consciousness, and meditation along with much else.
While my bank account might benefit from mass marketing, I’m not at all sure that’s the best thing for these books. Some people are ready for these ideas – the books were written because there was an audience waiting for them – and a lot of people are not. Maybe that will change one day – one can hope – in the meantime I’m very happy indeed if even a few people get something useful from my work.
And with all of that, magick and NLP are just one part of what I do. I prefer to write fiction. I’m just now finishing up a (sort of) sequel to my novel The Great Purple Hoo-Ha (two volumes, Mandrake of Oxford, 2010) and have other novels in mind after that.
You don’t come across as someone who’s going to drone on about representational systems in front of a flipchart. What distinguishes your NLP trainings from those of Trainer X, or even Trainer RB?
I take the position that there’s not a whole lot to lecture about in NLP. You learn it by observing and practicing. There’s no substitute for that. When I teach an NLP course, it’s about the exercises and we start in right away. I put a lot of emphasis on calibration and sensory acuity skills and perhaps a bit less on learning techniques as recipes or knowing the names of every single meta-model or Milton-model case. I’m very concerned that, rather than getting their heads stuffed full of terminology and theory, participants come away with real skills that are anchored to real life situations.
Somehow, in my mind, having fun is inextricably mixed up with that process. I’m sure there are people who can come up with all sorts of reasons to learn things they don’t enjoy learning. Screw that. I think we all learn better and more permanently when it’s anchored to fun.
While I teach Meta-Magick workshops all over the world, I only teach the NLP courses here at my studio in upstate New York. We’re a couple hours travel time from the big city; it’s fairly rural here and as a result I probably get a few less participants that I might if I were in New York City or London. That’s a good thing. Working in small groups can be very intense and a lot of fun, too. In most NLP trainings you watch a demonstration of an exercise, then you grab a partner and go off to a corner of the room to practice. A trainer or assistant might or might not check in on you to see how you’re doing. With my smaller groups we do it a little differently, with some exercises practiced in a round-robin fashion where you get to observe not only my demonstration, but at least several other examples of practice, too. And I get to observe everybody, all the time. In short, participants probably get to experience a wider variety of individual responses to each exercise and they get quite a bit of personal attention from me.
The next trainings here will start in late March. Registration and info can be found here: http://www.hawkridgeproductions.com/events/nlptraining.html
A lot of your work is predicated on research of mirror neurons. To what extent are you using them as a convenient paradigm, a concept that helps get ideas across in the same way that you packaged a magic workshop as ‘metaphoric reframing’? And what would you do in the unlikely event of mirror neuron research being discredited?
In Brain Magick, I state up front that the neuroscience I cite is for the purpose of building operating metaphors. It’s no secret that I’m a science geek – but I’m the kind of science geek who understands that science is about theory, not immutable fact. The exercises in the book are designed as experiments that readers can perform for themselves. Test them out and decide for yourself if mirror neurons are a good explanation. I hope that readers will engage in the process of science themselves and draw their own conclusions and create their own theories.
Anyway, the theory that I outline in the book is based on what appears to be innate modeling functions of the brain. The research now implicates mirror neurons as well as the brain’s cortical midline structures and “default network” as areas that contribute to this modeling process. Mirror neurons help us to model motor function, while the cortical midline structures help us to model and predict psychological functions. However, ultimately it doesn’t matter to me if these are in fact the parts of the brain involved – just whether or not we can perform these experiments and notice that modeling process in action. We can easily replace “mirror neurons” with “motor function modeling” if we need to, though presently I think mirror neurons are a more compelling, interesting and fun idea. And the current theory allows us to design some damned interesting exercises – but I’ll encourage readers to test for yourselves whether the theory predicts the outcome that they get.
I’m really impressed with your proposal for raising the bulldog spirit here in the UK. What would be your dream consultancy job, and what ideas have you got for it?
You know, I did my share of corporate consulting and PR work back in the 1990s and these days I’m much happier writing my own books, working with individual clients and teaching classes. However, I’ve always been fascinated with Hakim Bey’s idea of Poetic Terrorism (http://sniggle.net/Manifesti/poeticTerrorism.php) and Robert Anton Wilson’s thoughts on Guerilla Ontology (http://www.subgenius.com/new4web/dynasormisc/ONTOLOGY.HTML ). So if some organization would like to fund a series of confusing and poetic acts, I would like to suggest a few.
Buying hookers for right-wing politicians here in the USA (or the UK, if it applies). Find out what they like and what services they prefer and set them up. There could be all kinds of fun and exciting consequences to this, including opportunities to expose hypocrisy. However there’s a more important reason to do this: I figure that if they’re busy with hookers, they’ll have less time to spend screwing the rest of us.
Flying military helicopters low over the homes of US Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske and Drug Enforcement Administration head Michele Leonhart and bombing their yards with fifty pounds of high grade marijuana. Okay, this might be a waste of good weed, but it would scare the pants off these people who order helicopter and SWAT team raids on their fellow citizens – and it would have a kind of poetic symmetry.
Here in the USA as we get closer to the holidays, homeowners compete to create the most elaborate holiday displays. These are mostly judeo-christian in theme (if we count Santa Claus as having religious affiliation). A major component of these displays are lighted plastic lawn figures, translucent, injection-molded plastic shapes of elves, saviors, wise men, reindeer, giant candles and crosses with lightbulbs inside. I propose the creation of a vast range of other entity-related lighted plastic lawn figures that might include deities from Hindu, Norse, and Haitian mythologies, as well as Lovecraft’s elder gods, J.R. “Bob” Dobbs, Looney Tunes characters, ridiculous politicians, religious leaders with big hats, and Lady Gaga, just for the hell of it. At first these would be distributed free of charge, but as the competitive nature of holiday decorations kicks in, lighted plastic lawn figures will increase in diversity, as hopefully will the thoughts and beliefs of those displaying and viewing them.
One piece of guerilla ontology I’ve promoted for some years is the QYFJ meme. The short version is that corporations have come to rule our lives in many ways. These corporations may provide employment for many people, but usually on terms that the people find distasteful. Most people hate their jobs and if they really examined what their employers were trying to do, in many cases they would find that the employers’ values and goals are contrary to their own. Some of these corporations are ruining the economy. Some are polluting and destroying the environment. Some are corrupting our governments with huge amounts of money. All of these corporations depend on employees being tricked to sell their time – parts of their lives they will never get back – for a finite amount of money, while corporate profits have no upper limit. The solution is – everyone who knows in their heart that the corporation they work for is in any way evil: Quit Your Fucking Job. If everyone did this at the same time, it would bring the corporations to a halt and, with some intent and effort, transform the way we conduct our business and our lives. This is explored more fully in The Great Purple Hoo-Ha. To further spread the QYFJ meme, please purchase and distribute many copies of these books.
