Occultists have always known the true power of imagery. There are books out there that introduce creative visualization in order to manifest goals, but it takes a little more searching to find those books that really hit hard, and if you think books on the occult and magic are the work of the devil, you’ll probably not dig that deep.

Franz Bardon’s Intitiation Into Hermetics is a wonderful book of exercises that lead to full control of your mind. Many of the beginning exercises train you to create any image at will in three dimensions with your eyes open. This level of mastery is not really necessary to affect the brain and modify behavior. Unfortunately these days most people have weak visualization skills since movies, TV, and video games create their images for them. They are programmed by someone else’s images. This may be one reason why the masses are programmed to fear occult and esoteric practices, since that might lead to self-mastery. The more you fear, the easier you are to control.

There are different types of hypnotic imagery, each resulting in its own unique phenomena.

The first type is when, for example, an athlete imagines themselves already achieving their goal. They practice visualizing their goal until the unconscious mind really believes it is a reality, making the necessary changes in their physiology to actually achieve that goal. This is the type of imagery most books on the market teach.

The second type of imagery will create specific experiences within your mind and body. Dr. Milton H. Erickson was known to do this through metaphorical imagery. For example, if the patient imagined being cold, it would result in anesthesia. This type of imagery is taught mostly in expensive hypnotherapy textbooks and in a few schools.

The third type of imagery, which some might consider experimental, works at recreating past experiences with vivid color, sound, and sensation. For example, if you can remember the feeling of walking on the beach, with practice you can recreate that experience within your mind until you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the imagined experience and the real one.

If you can master the third type of imagery, the first two fall naturally into place. If you can master the third type of imagery, you can create reality as you want to. Think about this. All your memories are nothing but images, sounds, and sensations stored in your head. They aren’t “real” are they? How are they any more real than an image you might create?

You may argue that it is more real because you had the experience, but if you could create an image just as real as any memory, think of the consequences. You could change your levels of consciousness at will. If you ever had social anxiety, you could recreate all your memories portraying you as a self-confident speaker with a charismatic personality.

You are who you are now because you believe in those past images. Learn how to change them and you will literally change reality.

My technique Psychic Sleep is designed to condition your body to experience the deeper levels of relaxation necessary to create the vivid imagery I’m writing about. Anyone who has received or bought Psychic Sleep will have access to the future audio files I’m working on which will teach the listener systematically to construct hypnotic imagery that will produce deep relaxation, time distortion, dissociation, age regression, post-hypnotic triggers and anchors, and overall permanent behavior modification. Yes, these kind of results are for real. This is the real secret of “The Secret”, but you’re not going to really learn these things in a DVD produced for the masses.

I’m not looking for numbers here. I’m looking for sincere people who are willing to really learn the power of these techniques and then teach other sincere people as well. Learn how to deeply relax and create vivid imagery at will, and you will learn the secrets to being anybody you want to be. Unfortunately, there are those that use the same techniques to shape people according to their own design. Propaganda and brainwashing are alive and well.

Magic and mentalism rely much on misdirection. They lead your attention to one place so you’ll overlook what they’re really doing. Conversational hypnosis and persuasion, of course, work in a similar way.

Derren Brown caught my attention because he supposedly uses hypnosis, NLP, and other methods of persuasion. Sometimes he will explain what he did at the end of the show, like using embedded commands for example. I wasn’t always convinced. His conversational hypnosis skills are not THAT good from what I’ve gathered, but his skill of misdirection is phenomenal.

It wasn’t until I began to study magic and mentalism that I realized what he was really doing. His misdirection had persuaded me to accept his explanation, but his explanation may not have been what he’d really done at all.

Although it helps, you don’t have to study magic and mentalism to understand and use misdirection in conversational hypnosis and persuasion.

Any type of language pattern that causes a person to go inside themselves can be used for misdirection. Also, misdirection doesn’t necessarily have to be verbal. You can interrupt any kind of physical pattern or routine by simply deviating from it. For example, when you shake a person’s hand you have certain unconscious expectations because you’ve gone through the motions so many times.

When someone shakes your hand in a way you’re not used to or not expecting, it causes you to pause and perhaps start an internal dialogue, “What the hell was that?” Every so often someone comes and shakes your hand with a grip of steel or a hand which feels dead. Although they may not be consciously misdirecting you, the action still causes you to go internal and assess the situation.

So far I’ve covered a few different techniques.

Chaining nominalizations is a wonderful method of losing someone’s attention because they have to think constantly about what you’re really trying to say. They are forced to start applying their own meanings to the words you are using. Chaining nominalizations and using them with double binds actually takes a lot of practice before it really starts to flow, so it isn’t a method I recommend to beginners. For example…

“I can really appreciate your ability to make the excellent decision to commit to this project or the wonderful experience of your realization to accept this opportunity for growth.”

Uh, yeah…what did he just say exactly? Misdirection. There it is.

Or you can embed commands within stories. You’re not telling them to do anything, the characters in the story are.

One of the most simple ways to misdirect is to use an interrupt. Humans are pattern machines. They get into a rhythm and let their conscious minds drift. You can confirm this just by going out to the store or a restaurant. Look for someone who has a job which is routine. I’m always using interrupts to break people out of their trances.

For example, there are so many stores now that offer some sort of rewards card, be it a book store, grocery store, or coffee store franchise. It is routine to ask the customer if they have the right card or not. The usually expect one of two possible answers, yes or no. If you deviate from this pattern, you will interrupt their trance, and they will briefly go internal to make sense of what you just said. Perfect misdirection, allowing you to throw in whatever you want.

I usually just interrupt people’s patterns, but I don’t take it any further than that.

“Do you have our preferred rewards card?”

“What colors do your cards come in?”

“…” A few seconds pass. “Um, I’m sorry what did you say?”

“Do you want the red one or the blue one?”

Adding words that represent the dimension of time in a double bind can be very powerful as well.

“Do you want to go now or in a few minutes?”

“Will you be hiring me today or shall I start next week?”

These questions presuppose your intended outcome and bind the listener to make a choice either now or later.

I wrote yesterday about the autonomous flow of thoughts arising during trance, and this can be used as an advantage in time binds.

“Please let me know when your ready to make a choice. We can proceed as quickly or slowly as you like.”

You strongly imply here that your desired outcome will definitely take place. It is difficult not to presuppose something when using any of these advanced language patterns. Even if there is a gap in time, the unconscious is given a strong psychological implication which it feels it must carry out. So if not today, then certainly later.

I know reading about these patterns day after day can be overwhelming, and it does take time to digest before you can go out and begin using them naturally, which means perhaps you’re beginning to recognize now how you’ll be utilizing this information almost if by magic before the end of this week or the next.

In a therapeutic setting, the hypnotist is usually focused on getting the subject to physically relax. They may tell the subject to keep still, stop talking, and close their eyes. These are direct suggestions, but if the subject is already relaxed, they may find the indirect approach easier to accept.

“You don’t have to talk or move or make any sort of effort. You don’t even have to hold your eyes open.”

In a relaxed or trance state the subject is already predisposed not to do anything, so by suggesting they don’t have to do anything, makes it that much easier to accept. You have of course actually suggested they shut up, keep still, and close their eyes.

In terms of persuasion, I haven’t seen that much written or applied using suggestions of not doing or not knowing. I tried thinking of direct suggestions which could be turned into indirect suggestions of “not doing”, but then it occured to me that people use these type of suggestions all the time with each other.

“It’s only 11:00pm. You don’t have to go home just yet.”

“You don’t have to worry about it. It’s only money after all.”

“You can just sleep over here tonight and not worry about driving home tired.”

I’m sure you can think of many other examples.

After some time you’ll begin to see how all these patterns begin to build upon each other.

I don’t know whether you’ll read all of my posts today, tomorrow, or throughout the week or just make frequent visits to this site, because you don’t have to learn this material all at once, which means you can just take your time and read through slowly and enjoy yourself now.

That last sentence consists of an illusion of choice, several presuppositions, cause and effect, not-doing indirect suggestion, conjunctions, and embedded commands. Again, it works better spoken than written. The more you practice writing and talking these out, the easier it gets to construct them on the fly. It’s almost like learning a new language, but once you get it to flow, you’ll be surprised how easy you’ll be able to apply it to any situation.

I hope by now you can begin to appreciate your acceptance of the decision to commit yourself fully to learn conversational hypnosis, metaphor, and persuasion using this site. You’ve come a long way.

And now something completely different, maybe. I think it was in Bandler and Grinder’s Frogs into Princes, Bandler stated that everything is hypnosis, and Grinder disagreed by saying, “all communication is hypnosis.”

Not all conversations have the same effect, but we’re basically hypnotizing each other every time we speak. Hypnosis is not, as so many people falsely believe, a state where you lose control of your will and start clucking like a chicken. Or as the late Steven Heller says, “There’s no such thing as hypnosis.” because hypnosis is just a word to represent a myriad of different states of consciousness. Maybe I will say something to you that your mother always said, something which made you furious, and presto! You instantly relive that state. Could that be hypnosis?

Ever hear the phrase, “Fake it ’til you make it?” If you pretend something, most people will pretend along with you, but it’s possible you’re the only one who is aware of it. This reminds me of a story Milton Erickson told either Bandler or Grinder, I’m not sure.

“You don’t consider yourself a therapist, but you are a therapist.” And I said, “Well, not really.” He said, “Well, let’s pretend . . . that you’re a therapist who works with people. The most important thing . . . when you’re pretending this . . . is to understand. . . that you are really not . . . You are just pretending . . . And if you pretend really well, the people that you work with will pretend to make changes. And they will forget that they are pretending . . . for the rest of their lives. But don’t you be fooled by it.” And then he looked at me and he said: “Goodbye.”

Think about that one for a bit. When you think you got it, then go ahead and apply this advice to any situation you want to.

This makes me think of an old TV series called The Pretender about a character who could integrate himself into any walk of life.  Some of it may have been a little far fetched, but it is really amazing how far you can go when you pretend, and those surrounding you pretend right along with you.

What a creepy image, but there might be some truth to it…

As you read this, there is nothing to do now, nothing you have to think about or respond to. You don’t even have to expect anything in particular in this post because you don’t know how your unconscious mind is responding to my words. And after reading all of the material within this blog, you don’t even have to concern yourself at all about how you’re going to integrate this material.

We need a lot of skills to get along in this world. Everybody knows the importance of doing some practicing. Perhaps it’s been a long time since you remember being interested in something. I’m not really sure though. Each person is different. And you’re probably wondering how you’ll ever get turned on by this stuff.

I don’t know if you’ll ever want to actually use this information now or maybe just find yourself using it later on. How would life be different as an excellent conversational hypnotist, capable of weaving covert metaphors like a master story-teller? People have different ways of learning this material.

Some, of course, are interested in learning everything, but others pick and choose. It might only be one little thing that you will find of interest here, one or two subjects in their entirety, just a little part of each, and some of my material may not really be your cup of tea.

Which of this material is easiest for you – Advanced Language Patterns, Metaphor, NLP, Conversational Hypnosis or Storytelling? Which one of these do you have the least chance of giving up on?

What do you want to do after you master all these skills you read about at covertmetaphor.com?

A master at work.

Make sure and turn up the volume. The sound quality is low.

Each chosen story you intend to memorize needs to be
considered from all sensory angles. The story can be
memorized using all major representational systems
including visual, auditory, and kinesthetic (VAK) methods.

Repeat the following steps as many times as necessary
until the story becomes a part of you. I recommend choosing
healing or positive goal-oriented metaphors and stories
which will affect your listeners by helping them to discover their latent
capabilities. In addition, the following exercises will
embed the story deeply into the unconscious mind
transforming the storyteller as well.

1. Write it out.

After reading the story several times you should have a good
feeling of what kind of theme or moral the author is trying
to convey. Start by writing the story down on paper while
considering each word. Say every word out loud as you write
it. Think of different reasons the author may have chosen
that particular word and why. Perhaps you would have said
it differently?

2. Sing the story.

Sing a few sentences at a time. Apply any familiar melody
you can think of to it. The more absurd the melody is, the
easier it will stick. Sing in a high voice, and then sing
in a low voice. Repeat two or three sets of words over and
over until you memorize the full sentence and move on.
Do not be embarrassed. After all, no one is watching you,
right? Just belt it out.

3. Alter tonality and accent.

Use different tonalities as you read through the story out
loud. Slow down your voice and then speed it up. Play with
pitch. Again, read in a high voice and then try it out with
a really low voice. Read the story with different accents,
even different types of personalities.

4. Use a digital recorder.

A digital recorder comes in very handy for memorizing
large amounts of text. A computer with a microphone and a
free audio editor and recorder like Audacity will work just
as well. Write out the story again, only this time leave
one or two words out of each sentence. Now record yourself
while you read back this story, pausing where the word you
removed should have been. Now burn the audio file to CD or
transfer to your MP3 player.

As you listen back to your recording say the appropriate
word out loud when you come to its pause. Record your story
as many times as necessary until you have covered most of
the major words in each sentence.

5. Practice a mental rehearsal.

Imagine yourself in vivid color telling your story to a
group of people. Create your perfect setting. Feel the
temperature on your skin. Are you sitting or standing? How
does that feel? Work out how your voice will sound. Put on
your best clothes. You can even change the time period.

Is your audience smiling, laughing, or crying? This is
your inner landscape so do what you want. Tell your story
to as many imaginary groups as possible.