My route to becoming a qualified hypnotist (insofar as anyone can lay claim to that dubious title: Qualified – Keep in mind any certificate to this effect is issued by an organisation that has absolutely no checks and balances on it whatsoever. Sort of like banks really. Or government. And you trust your government don’t you?) was a strange one and I was extremely lucky in that I learnt the basics from a guy who is without a doubt excellent at teaching how to do hypnosis. Beyond that, it was my own obsessive nature that prevailed in making this skill really useful and more importantly, NOT DANGEROUS for my clients and other guinea pigs, victims, good friends. A hypnotist that actually has the ability to hypnotise and does so indiscriminately can cause serious damage to people. This is not discussed much in the hypnosis world, because well…you don’t want to scare off prospective meal tickets do you? Fortunately, as with my martial arts, I never required to make my living from hypnosis.
I do it because I enjoy it and because it is a truly useful skill to have in order to help people who really want to change some aspect of their life they may be struggling with.
The path to learning hypnosis however is a rather difficult one. Danger in the form of snake-oil salesmen lies at truly every turn. If you do manage somehow (more by luck perhaps than any particular skill) to come through unscathed and learn the skill well, it does open up a fascinating world to you. Religion and sects lose much of their distinctions one from the other and you begin to see them as two sides of the same coin. Fraudsters and confidence men become more obvious and plentiful in everyday life as they become far more visible. And so do the number of deluded people leading others into further delusion.
The blind leading the blind if you will. As time passes you begin to truly despise the circumstances that get the original idiots to buy into the scams and then go on to perpetuate them themselves. After a while you even stop caring if people who scam are aware that they are scammers or not. Because sad as it is, some of the scammers are so fully invested in bullshitting themselves as well as you, their potential client that they are, like many peadophiles, both victims and abusers. Of course, just as with the pedos, in my mind, it’s generally been fine to hang them all and let “god” sort them out.
There is a distinction though, between the consciously evil scammers and the merely deeply brainwashed ones. There is also, I have concluded, a very real piece of information that is the only sure-fire proof against the scammers in the main. It’s a powerful belief in self. A conscious understanding and trust as well as a very deeply ingrained unconscious belief in yourself as the best arbitrer of what is ultimately best for you. It is rare. It requires a fundamentally powerful loving presence in childhood from your parents that is stronger than anything life throws at them or you. I was lucky. I had this. Even then, bad things can still happen. You could be violated at a young age and the damage this does is so deep it also damages that deeply engrained self-esteem. Again, I was perhaps lucky in this regard. I never suffered such attentions from the unfortunately high number of perverts that roam the planet. Partly, I think, because the first effect was so strongly embedded in me that I have no doubt even as a small child, if I had fallen prey to a molester, I would have had to be killed to be kept silent.
These may seem like disjointed points, but bear with me reader. Internet marketers and generally bulshitters who try to sell you pipe dreams are a corrosive presence on the planet we share that are in their own way just as bad as battery acid. Slowly but surely they corrode the human parts of us if you allow them to filter in.
I have written before about the desperate snake-oil salesman that inhabit the PUA culture, and the self-help culture and also the internet marketing culture. And in each of these cases I use the word culture, more in its biologist’s sense, that is a putrefying bio-mass of bacteria feeding on the corpses of dying cells and producing so much excrement that later gets consumed by others.
I have, in general, been rather a lot more kind to many self-help gurus and PUAs and so on. In part this is because human nature is fallible and I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, but that is not to say I would so much as have a cup of coffee with any of them. I have met a few of the people I write about and while I have no qualms calling a fraudster a fraudster, I do not honestly have the time to dig all that deep into any of their miserable little lives. Luckily though, someone does. Salty Droid. I strongly suggest before you buy anything related to selling things online, you go and visit salty droid’s site. His style is brutal and harsh, but if you read a few of his articles you will get the jist of it and return to read more. Eventually you will even laugh out loud for real at some of his sentences. He definitely tears the scammers a new one. And I only wish we could clone him and build a much wider net of honest citizens that ferret out the weasels. But it’s not as easy as you think. Here’s a test that should wake you up a little.
Try googling for anything bad on Tony Robbins. It’s not as easy as you think.
That’s right. Self-made billionaire (or is it only multi-millionaire?) Tony “big-assed teeth” Robbins. You think at least a couple of articles about him on the websphere might be critical right? I know first hand I had some not-good experiences with his organisation, and personally know others who had similarly negative experiences. I went to some of his events, which are by no means free, and in one a young kid, who I happened to know through his dad who I had also met at a similar earlier event won a Harley Davidson motorcycle in a raffle. Do you think that kid ever actually go that bike? Dream on. I corresponded with his dad for years on it and he never did get it. This is just a tiny incident, but really, aside from a forum that deals with LGAT (Large Group Awareness Training – or if you prefer, brainwashing 101 for large crowds) there is precious little on the net telling you anything bad about Tony. Because he’s such a nice guy surely. Right? Yeah…sure…believe it. Also: The government loves you, the cheque is in the post and I’m only going to rest it there a little without pushing.
As it happens anyone writing anything meaningfully real about Tony that does not meet with his PR machine’s approval gets a cease and desist letter and a threat of a lawsuit it seems. You know; allegedly.
Go visit Salty Droid. It’s entertaining and educational. And as such it is a sad reflection of the state of our 1984 reality that it has to be hosted on a special server that aggressively defends the right to free speech. Go figure.
My cousin has recently got into this internet marketing and life coaching bollocks. I think it’s his mid life crisis hitting, the verbal bullshit version of growing a ponytail, buying a sports car and shagging your PA. He won a trip to San Fransisco for some bullshit life coaching conference that should have cost £25k (who knew there were idiots about with that much cash to spunk on nonsense?) and since then he has amused the family no end with his Facebook status updates, which include “”You probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do.” (Chris, mate, did you REALLY read that and think about it before posting it on your ‘Monday motivational messages’ section?) , “You must dare to disassociate yourself from those who would delay your journey… Leave, depart, if not physically, then mentally. Go your own way, quietly, undramatically, and venture toward trueness at last.” and my personal favourite “”It’s not your job to make other people more comfortable with who you are or how you live your life. Stop auditioning. You’ve already got the part. You get to play YOU!”. Utter shite, most of which means bugger all. I have very little time for any of this snake oil nonsense.
Indeed. It is a sad thing. I have spent more than my share on weird courses, but in general I certainly got what I wanted out of them. A few times I did not and I learnt the hard way that getting a refund is NOT easy. I did manage to get most of my money back eventually but you have to be a mean-spirited, tenacious and bloody minded bastard to get what is actually yours in the first place. To help your cousin I would suggest you send him some links to the saltydroid and specifically a link from that site referring to your cousin’s specific guru. Saltydroid makes for excellent and fun reading if you do not get shocked by rude language and suggestions of improper sex acts. First time you read it it sounds like the ravings of a lunatic, second time you can of see his point, by the third time you get his way of thinking and what he is doing and you begin to laugh, byt he fourth time you are hooked and go back to point and laugh at your screen.
Kisses to you and yours by the way. I’ve been manic so not read your blog in a bit, but going to catch up now.