Hypnosis, spiritual advancement, and the subconscious

[Cheyyne]

I should be doing physics homework right now. That said...

    I've wondered and debated with myself for a long time about hypnosis and how it could be use to help one's spiritual development. Originally, the question that led to this topic was whether or not one could use hypnosis to help astrally project. Then, the question was extended to include many aspects of energy work, and even psychic phenomena. These are the conclusions I've come to based on logic and (what I consider to be) sound thinking.

    First off, it should be established that hypnosis CAN be used to help a person's energetic development. For that matter, it can be used to help a person with many problems through which they may be suffering, many of which can be quite detrimental to energetic development in their own right. However, it should be made quite clear exactly how hypnosis helps. Hypnosis helps by removing obstacles. It cannot change you per se, it cannot make you raise more energy or activate chakras any faster than you could normally. What it can do is take away limiting, self-imposed factors to your own development.

    Use hypnosis to help you focus your resolve or will power during energy-raising sessions. Use it to help quiet surface thoughts and place your concentration where it belongs. Use it to block out chatter, and to loosen your astral double, when that time comes.

    However, you will find hypnosis ineffective for strengthening will power, which can only come through practice and knowledge. You cannot use hypnosis to automatically project-on-command if your energy body is not significantly advanced and/or the condition of your physical body is not conducive to the effort, i.e. completely relaxed. Hypnosis can't be used to unmake objective limits on psychic phenomena. It can only help you remove the limits your subconscious contains.

    You must still practice dilligently if you long for psychic powers. You must raise all appropriate energy while still not overtaxing yourself. However, if you find your mind wanders often during energy raising, or that you can't really seem to find time during they day, despite having plenty of time to browse these message boards, perhaps hypnosis can help remove subconscious obstacles to your spiritual development. It seems counterproductive that our minds create these, but your subconscious doesn't have the advantage of reason that our conscious mind does. I don't know any psychology, but this is how the facts appear to me through experience

    As always, any and all comments are welcome, nay, encouraged.

[sapphiregem]

A friend did some hypnosis on me a couple of months ago and it accidently started up my medium abilities, Ive been avoiding them for a while as I find it a little uncomfortable. However I was so deeply relaxed that I got in touch with a man who had lived in my friends house. Hypnosis also helped me open up my chakras and im considering training in it myself.

[Chimerae]

Hypnosis is a tool, and can be very effective.

One aspect of the tool is the tendency of the hypnotists prejudice and limitation to affect the outcome.  Like most tools, the more you use that particular tool, the more the tool itself shapes the result.