Rebirthing


When I was on the hot learning curve in bodywork and hypnosis, I was taking seminars in everything I could find that dealt in hands-on hypnosis. Just calling something "rebirthing" is a hypnotic suggestion that the problem, whatever it is, will be solved. You don't have to spell it out to somebody, which is a good thing because it is specific, in that it is a basic pattern in the unconscious. Let me give you an example of it from a tribe that has been entirely cut off from the modern world.

In his and Petru Popescu's account of his being lost in the Amazon with a band of Mayorunas, explorer and National Geographic photographer Loren McIntyre and the stone age Indians had no shared language. This can be a problem. He discovered that there is another way of communicating, in language. The information is transmitted and triggers the inner language centers, so that the recipient "hears" in his native language. Of course his rational mind doesn't accept this right away.

So, he has no way to get away from this band of men, cannot communicate in normal spoken language, and is wondering if he's crazy because he seems to be able to send and receive information directly with the head man. Finally they meet up with another group, and there is a young boy who's learned some Portuguese at the local Mission school. He tells McIntyre that what the head man is doing is "the old way." He also tells him that the group is on it's way to start time over again.

And that's what they do. They burn down their village and they take some heavy hallucinogenic drugs and they have a big communal rebirth session to start time over. Out with the old, in with the new.




There are some advocates of the idea that this tendency toward destruction and rebirth is at the heart of the decision to go to war, and variations of the idea come up in writings about ritual murder of children.

(The implication that anybody who doesn't agree with deMause, -- previous link -- is a child molester is disingenuous at best. From Freud, it has been understood that people have a taboo against sex with parents because there is in fact a libidinal attraction which is transferred to a potential mate, and the stronger it is the more powerful the energies around it. The taboo is necessary because it keeps one from regressing. It is pretty normal, though, for the energy behind the taboo to create fantasy material which could be interpreted as if it was remembered from some ritual abuse, especially if the person is in fact in a regression. The author writes that he discovered that the founder of the false memory foundation was accused of ritual abuse by her daughter, as if that is unusual. On reflection, who else would form such a foundation?

(That doesn't mean there is not a pattern in the psyche which demands self-destruction and rebirth in some form, ritually or in unconscious acts, such as warfare, and that it is not in fact the unconscious motive behind much ritual abuse and murder, even under socially sanctioned conditions.)

The pattern in the collective unconscious is exposed by Burroughs in the link from yesterday's blog. It repulses us, but it is one of the hidden patterns in the psyche. That's why Burroughs said you have to wade through a river of shit to reach Wagdas, the city of knowledge. You have to overcome revulsion at what you see in order to stop escaping into fantasy, or scapegoating and killing, and look objectively at what lies in the darkness of forgetfulness.

As I focused on rebirthing, I first learned a technique which involves breathing in a large volume of air directly to the chest for an hour. It's harder than you think it will be. You think it's almost up and you realize you've been doing it for ten minutes. The infusion of oxygen has a couple of effects, the first of which is autonomous movement in the arms. It feels like they are turning to crab claws.

The other effect of the super oxygenating was an experience of body consciousness that was very pleasurable. There was so much oxygen in the body when the hour was over that there was no point in breathing very often. It was easy to dive into the sea and explore beneath the surface at leisure. I was reborn, maybe, because I had ritually satisfied some old pattern in the psyche which has to be balanced if you want to move past it into deeper material.

The story I was told varied with the practitioner. One would explain that the process involves going back and experiencing the original birth, and in doing so, working through unresolved trauma stored in the body. Another would explain that by keeping the breath going (one person breathes while the other monitors and reminds at any lapse to "breathe") the darkness is filled with light. That is to say, what is unconscious cannot hide when there is so much oxygen in the body, and it wilts like a vampire in the sunshine.

Rebirthing was like most things I encountered in bodywork. The story is not "true" because it follows the conscious mind's understandings. It is true because it connects down into basic patterns which will be satisfied ritually, or be unconsciously projected. This is what I was addressing when I wrote that "you have to make the choice now, ritual or war; sacraments don't work if you don't know what they are for." In fact they do work if you don't know what they are for, but if you become conscious of why you have to have the rituals, you don't degenerate back into war as a way of satisfying a pattern which could be satisfied in other ways.

There were a lot of hands-on hypnosis techniques I found, and they were called one thing and another, but what they held in common was a suggestion; you knew what was expected. in Polarity therapy, for example, you know you are expected to become balanced between two opposing charges, and you don't have to be a genius to see that as one way of looking at your ego formation from that of your parents.

The most basic story of ego birth is that father sky was once right on top of mother earth, but there was no room for new life there, so a hero had to come and push father sky upward. Between the mother and the father a third thing. When ego strengthening suggestion is combined with skilled hands-on work, it can be especially powerful.

Between the conscious and the unconscious, the mind has put up a swing:
all earth creatures, even the supernovas, sway between these two trees,
and it never winds down.

Angels, animals, humans, insects by the million, also the wheeling sun and moon;
ages go by, and it goes on.

Everything is swinging: heaven, earth, water, fire,
and the secret one slowly growing a body.
Kabir saw that for fifteen seconds, and it made him a servant for life.

When I began focusing in on trigger pointing, I was working in a doctor's office, on people who'd been in auto accidents. It was the tool I needed for the job, and I moved away from the more abstract forms of hands on hypnosis.

I moved away from formal use of hypnosis altogether. My idea was that I would learn it but would not consciously practice it. I would be able to observe it, having become conscious of it to some extent. Sometimes I laugh because it takes paths I would not consciously choose, but it feels like the right balance of power between the conscious and the unconscious, induction and deduction, that swing Kabir writes about ...

Well, enough of that. Now for something completely different ...

Posted: Fri - November 17, 2006 at 01:46 PM