A question was posed by a member of the ConsciousHugs forum asking if there was a way to counter the effects of the subliminal programming techniques discussed in “The Mind Has No Firewall.” But “countering” an attack is engaging in rivalry, so let us discuss a rapport-based alternative to get away from the systems of competition.

If we start with basic neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) subliminals, the standard technique is to give you the desired conclusion (the action or objective), then arrange a logical path of patterns that are easily recognized to take you strait to that conclusion, while thinking you actually used your free will to get there. That way, you’ll defend that conclusion to the death, because you actually worked it out for yourself… right?

Subliminal rapport “programming” is backwards from this approach (after all, everything you know is backwards) and prevents you from reaching a specific conclusion so you are forced to examine your own knowledge base to find a conclusion that fits the examination.

Remember that the brain is a huge pattern recognition system. And why does it do that? Because by recognizing patterns, it can predict what is going to happen next, prepare for it by running “possible outcome” scenarios in our minds so when something close to that situation actually occurs, you stay alive. We call the patterns that work to keep us alive, experience. A sequence of events happened, I survived it and grew from it. This is analogous to the old saying, “if it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger.”

By understanding the predictive nature of pattern recognition, you can apply the same systems to the opposite effect, by supplying a pattern that leads to a dead end, a place where the train of thought gets derailed. This is called an “open mind,” because it is open-ended—you have to create a prediction from scratch, since none is given to you to “find” by accident. This means you have to consider alternatives and create scenarios in your head based on abstraction from other areas of expertise to see which would be the best solution. Your brain tends to give this a priority, as that path might actually occur, particularly since you just walked it it to reach that dead end.

Dead ends have two possible consequences, which are based on your knowledge and experience:

1. The most probable is how the bulk of the population responds: panic. They have reached a point where they cannot predict any possible outcome, because they just do not have sufficient knowledge and experience to abstract from similar patterns that might provide a solution (one of the reasons for the dumbing-down of education). When a person panics, they will turn to others that have solutions to save them. Sound familiar? You’re exposed to it, constantly, by all our beneficent world leaders. As long as you remain afraid, you will turn to them for solutions. And, curiously enough, they just happen to have them all ready to go and sign into law. We are just so lucky to have leaders like that! Not.
2. Occasionally, a person responds with curiosity rather than fear, asking themselves, “how the heck did I get here” and “hummm, I wonder where it leads?” Then they begin to draw on their knowledge and experience from other areas (this is called abstraction—the functions of the higher levels of the neocortex) to see if some other pattern comes close, then how it needs to be modified to fit as a potential “prediction” for the path under consideration.

If you notice, I put a great deal of time and effort in my papers to implement the second concept (one of the reasons why it takes me so long to write them). I take the reader on an information path that leads away from the preprogrammed conclusions that society and “education” have supplied, and leave you in the middle of nowhere. Then I provide you with the potential solution that *I* discovered—not you—usually after a lot of consideration and research, which is typically based on a recognized pattern and prediction from the Reciprocal System of theory— the famed “natural consequence” that I refer to so often. Since it is MY solution, not YOURS, it provides you the opportunity to see if it makes any sense—but does not force you into it. If my pattern does make sense, given your knowledge and experience, you may adopt a customized version of it into your own world view and now you’ve got a bigger perspective than you had before.

The process I use is designed to take you out of your “comfort zone,” without making you uncomfortable, by using curiosity instead of fear. What this does, internally, is to bring bioenergy into the higher abstraction layers of the neocortex (in New Age parlance, it makes your kundalini rise into the crown chakra) and with that system getting some light and energy, it can now start to be used elsewhere in the brain—it takes the blinders off, which is why you see Alchemical “muggles” (the caecus) in the old paintings walking around with blindfolds on.

This is why I get comments about my writing like “it melted my brain” or “like trying to take a drink of water from a fire hose.” Those feelings arise as a consequence of your psyche expanding—and remember, the expansion of the Universe (the progression of the natural reference system) is a natural consequence of the Reciprocal System, so an expanding psyche is good stuff! (See, I just did it to you again… path, dead-end, Reciprocal System correlation.)

In order to make that second consequence more likely, I employ humor. Humor makes things safe so people don’t panic when taken outside their interior landscape, because if I don’t take myself seriously, you don’t have to either. BUT, you have been exposed to the concepts—and they don’t go away… they linger in the back corners of your mind and make you wonder about the possibility… until curiosity takes hold and you go out exploring. That’s when the “Ahhhhh!” comes in.

So when faced with something outside your range of experience, understand that you’ve just ventured to a point where no behavioral patterns are matching, and DON’T PANIC. Consciously change that fear into curiosity, engage your imagination through abstraction and find a solution in some apparently unrelated knowledge. Dewey Larson’s research teaches that when you dig deep enough, everything is just a ratio of space to time, so everything tends to follow the same patterns of behavior. Once you can see this fundamental principle of the Universe, what was complex becomes obvious. But always remember Larson’s quote, “Complexity is entertaining; simplicity is not.” So ask yourself, are you willing to sacrifice a life of distraction and entertainment, to uncover the simple principles that form the basis of the Universe? If not… well, I guess ignorance is bliss.