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WAKING UP IN TIME The process of keeping up with our personal potential is one of being as awake as possible. I am reminded of Peter Russell’s book, Waking Up In Time. A key point he makes is the concept of a cultural trance. Cultural trance refers to the beliefs we live by which are learned through teachers, parents, books, etc. In order to wake up in time he says, “if we are to deal with the root cause of the crises now confronting us, we must awaken from our trance and regain a fuller contact with our own inner wisdom. We need the cultural equivalent of de-hypnosis.” This theme is a large part of my coaching work –this process of becoming and staying as alert and conscious as possible. During my career in healthcare I studied hypnosis and was profoundly influenced by psychotherapist Milton Erickson. He used hypnosis as a therapeutic tool in the pursuit of having a client wake up to his potential. I often quote Dr. Erickson in my work, especially one interview when he was asked what it was like for a person to be in the deepest trance possible. His answer: “The deepest trance a person can get into is the one he is already in.” That statement woke me up. He proposed, as does Peter Russell, that we are mostly living in a trance induced by our culture, our family of origin, and our educational and organizational systems. To heal and to grow is to come out of the “consensus trance”. By consenting to live with the predominance of left-brain skills such as logic, analysis, and linearity which carry heavy reward in our culture, we close ourselves into a narrow channel of possibilities. When we are able to step out of the logic box and access some of the qualities of right-brain thinking such as imagination, wholeness, and spatial awareness, a new world opens up for us. As we expand our perspective, we refine our vision.
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