Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:03 Welcome to the doctor's awake show, where I show you how bad states of mind, difficult life issues. Aren't pathological, but rather signs of personal growth trying to happen. All right, let's get into it. Hey people, are you ready to use spontaneous attractors to discover your process? What
Speaker 1 00:00:35 The hell is he talking about? Well, that's what we're going to do today. Don't do this exercise while you're driving, operating machinery or doing anything that requires your full attention. Now, each of you is totally unique in how you process things. So at each step of the exercise, turn the podcast on and off, however you need. All right, spontaneous attractors. Why that tone worry. We're not doing a physics experiment or wait, maybe we are well, we'll see this exercise uses the things that spontaneously catch your attention as a way to bring awareness to your process, which in turn will help you transform your problems. Your mind functions, according to two things, your conscious intentions, and what's going on in your subconscious, your conscious intentions guide, the things you're in control of and your subconscious is responsible for all the things that happen to you that are out of your control.
Speaker 1 00:01:51 That is until you make them conscious. One of the things that happens to you that you don't consciously intend is when your attention gets spontaneously, hooked and occupied by random perceptions. Sometimes this is experienced as a distraction from what you want to focus on. While other times you just go with it, not necessarily conscious of what you're doing. Think about sitting in a restaurant, randomly gazing around what kinds of things catch your attention and why are they just a bunch of meaningless perceptions? Or is there some kind of implicit purpose behind the specific things that grab your focus? The things that draw your focus do. So for a reason, namely, to wake you up about what's going on in your subconscious, your subconscious processes, all we seek to show themselves to you in some way, why? Because they need your consciousness for them to express themselves.
Speaker 1 00:03:04 They have an internal honing mechanism that continually searches for something that can reflect your process back to you. The world is your mirror. In fact, everything you experience aims at making you more aware, feelings, moods, symptoms, problems, dreams of events, relationships, and in this exercise, trivial things in your environment that irrationally hook your awareness and take your attention, all carry meaning and purpose for you. They're trying to spark your attention, light a fire under you, take something out of the shadows of your psyche and place it under the spotlight of your awareness. Before doing the exercise, I want to share an example to give you a sense of what you're about to do. I did this exercise yesterday in my kitchen. I gazed around the room to see what would catch my attention. And I got really attracted to a bottle of wine. I tried to pass over it, but it wouldn't let go.
Speaker 1 00:04:21 So I meditated on the bottle. I looked at it and I felt into it. Then I made some weird sounds that I thought sounded like wine. Don't worry. It doesn't have to make rational sense yet. Then I stood up and moved like wine. For me. This meant standing still with my eyes closed and swaying back and forth in a euphoric state. I became wine imagining I was a bottle of wine was really interesting to me. It put me into an altered state in this state of mind, I felt like the creator of carefree, fun and play. It was an ecstatic childlike feeling. Then I asked myself, how do I need to be more like this in my life? And I realized that I had been apprehensive lately about my future worrying about this and that. Well, the wine fixed that it showed me that I should quit worrying and just flow with life.
Speaker 1 00:05:37 Let go and have fun. This relieved me of a subtle undercurrent of stress I'd been feeling, and I didn't even need to open the bottle. I had been identified with worrying about where my life was going, but my deeper process was to let go jump into the stream of life and have an ecstatic time. Whew. Now I often check my work on myself or with my clients by looking at a dream dreams, don't lie, but sometimes you can work on something and it sort of feels right, but you miss a crucial element without realizing it. A dream can alert you to this, or it can simply give you a confirmatory picture of the work you did. Well, the night before I did this work, I had dreamed that a friend asked me what my five-year plan was. And I got an, a complex because I don't have one.
Speaker 1 00:06:37 And I don't. Then in the dream, my vision got blurry and I felt dizzy, but it was euphoric at the same time. Pretty crazily right on by association to this particular friend was that he's a bit uptight about things, nothing too bad, but he's not all that relaxed to the cat. Him and his five-year plan was the part of me that was worrying about my future. My blurry vision and dizzy euphoric feeling was like the wine experience. It was my subconscious reacting to my uptight attempts to see my future and to get me into an ecstatic, fun state of mind in the present. Now it's important to say this doesn't mean anything about planning one's future in general, it's only a statement about what my process was yesterday. Who knows maybe tonight I'll dream that I'm lazy ass that I need to get my life together very possible. There's no one correct way to be. The only authentic path is to follow your process.
Speaker 2 00:07:55 Okay, let's begin. Close your eyes and take some nice long, deep breaths. Collect yourself and come in to the present moment. When feel ready to begin working, open your eyes and in a relaxed way, gaze around the room or your surroundings. Let your attention wander wherever it wants to go. Don't force anything or notice anything in particular, just relax and look around in an easygoing way. Do this for a minute or so. Okay. Continue gazing around and gently notice. If something catches your attention, something that stands out and grabs you in some way, either obviously or subtly, it could be a color, a shape, a texture, a movement, an object, a sign, a person, or if you're outside, even an insect or an animal, it may not happen right away. So relax, be patient and take your time.
Speaker 2 00:11:34 Once something catches your attention, go back to it a few times to see if it really does grab you more than other things. Again, don't try too hard, stay relaxed and wait for something to call you to it. <inaudible> once you find something that grabs you, focus on it, look closely and try to notice. What about it attracts or repels you, you may not even be able to put it into words and that's okay. Just stay with the experience. In fact, exaggerated observed every aspect of the object or color or texture or whatever it is, study it. <inaudible>
Speaker 2 00:13:54 now really feel into it. Feel it in your body, become it. Imagine you are this object or color or texture, et cetera. <inaudible> now translate it into a sound you can hear, and maybe even express if no sound comes to you. That's okay, but maybe your imagination will come up with something. Now translate your experience into body movements, stand up and move what you see feel. And maybe here don't worry about feeling silly or awkward doing this. You're simply amplifying a process from your subconscious it'll eventually make sense. So go ahead and express your experience in a free form movement process. Let it go wherever it wants. Don't choreograph. It just let your body do its own weird thing. Follow your impulses. And don't try to figure anything out. Maybe you'll just stand there, waving your arms, or maybe you'll crawl around on the ground. It could be anything there's no right or wrong way. Only your way follow and observe it with your awareness. Use all your senses and imagination to embody it. Pretend you are this thing that caught your attention and now it's come alive in your being. Let it possess you. <inaudible>
Speaker 2 00:18:34 okay. Stay with the experience and see if you can identify a particular feeling or state of mind or a way of being, or even an attitude in this experience. Do you feel powerful, relaxed, playful, emotional, spiritual, creative, or something else. <inaudible> all right. Here's some questions to help you complete the process. What is the significance and meaning of this state of mind and body for you? How do you need this more in your life to figure this out? Think of an opposite way of being you experience in your life. The experience you're having right now is the antidote.
Speaker 2 00:20:47 What part of you needs this new way of being in other words, what part of you is this experience meant for, in my case, the wine bottle was meant for the uptight part of me. The part of me that was worrying about my future needed the wine bottle experience. <inaudible> how could this way of being help you with your problems? <inaudible> how could it inform your inner life, your relationships, your work, and your spirituality. <inaudible> by the way, you can also do this in situations where you're attracted to another person, specific people attract us because we need to be more like them in some way. Great work. You just
Speaker 1 00:24:07 Learned how to use spontaneous attractors to discover your process. You did this by gently and mindlessly gazing around your environment, waiting for something to catch your attention, looking, feeling, hearing, and moving your experience of it. Describing the state of mind. The experience puts you into and then identifying how you need to bring this way of being into your life. Take as much time as you need to absorb what you just did. If you feel like it, you can listen to some bonus material where I share some of my client's experiences doing this exercise. That's up next
Speaker 1 00:25:04 Here are some of my clients' experiences doing this exercise, a very conventional 55 year old businessman, gazed around my office and said, my guitar caught his attention. We explored an amplified his perception of the guitar, and he discovered a sexy, fun, ecstatic part of himself. Then we worked on what stops him from being this way in his life, which turned out to be his conservative upbringing, a lonely single 28 year old woman looked around my office and said she was attracted to my little Buddha statue. We amplified and explored her perception and experience of it. And she discovered a part of herself that wasn't lonely at all. In fact wanted to be alone. This was a revelation for her since she thought the only cure for her loneliness was to find a relationship. A 34 year old male alcoholic, gazed around my office and said he was attracted to the door.
Speaker 1 00:26:19 It was pretty weird. When I asked him what attracted him to the door. He said he wasn't sure, but after pondering it for a while, he said, because that's where I can get out of this damn therapy and go get a drink. We both laughed. And then I had him imagine he was the door as the door. He said he was locked and wouldn't let himself out until he confronted his addiction. This was the beginning of him stopping, avoiding his problem. He was only in therapy with me because people had more or less forced him to come. He hadn't yet gotten to the point where he was ready to do the work, but this crazy little exercise change that we spent the remainder of the session, talking about how his drinking was his escape from the pain of his recent divorce. And this was the start to his recovery. See you next time, stay aware.
Speaker 0 00:27:27 You can follow me on social media at Dr. Swig, and you can sign up on the mailing list at doctors, wake.com, where you'll receive discounts on private coaching events and merchandise starting in 2021 weekly personal growth tips and lots more be well.
