Piano Lessons or Barbecuing a Sacred Cow

I have a piano teacher and I like her a lot.  She is sweet, kind, talented, and, above all, patient.  I have been playing instruments since I was ten when I got my first guitar.  I played professionally for a decade starting in my teens mostly playing cover songs in the genres of Motown, Rock n Roll, Pop and more. And now I am taking piano lessons.

I recently decided to give reading music a chance.  Most of my life I found sheet music too difficult and not useful or essential to bother with.  Both my sisters took piano lessons and their playing reminded me of typists typing in time.  So I am learning to make sense of all the dots on the lines and spaces along with the symbols interspersed throughout. I write many songs on piano all by ear and writing is passionate creation. Learning a new skill helps keep the plasticity of my brain functioning.

But I am not writing about learning to play sheet music.  I am writing about my conversation with her after my last lesson.  We found ourselves outside enjoying a moment of sun in an otherwise typical bleak Northwestern winter when the subject of hypnosis came up and she expressed an interest in the education involved along with other questions.

In our conversation, she spoke of the discipline she does every day and I am very familiar with it as I learned it decades ago.  She and I are part of a group in which we would best be described as students.

We spoke of the school’s process that involves the breath and particular mind focus.  It is said to be a powerful process for creating new understandings, brain empowerment, and manifestation in the physical world.  She is what I would call a dedicated student and works with this process daily.

As she was talking about this process, and how much she enjoys it,  I was remembering my decades of watching the students using this method to change and my observations over the years of their lives.  I believe this process works to some extent, however, many have not manifested well using it in my personal observation. For myself, I have found other processes that work as well or better for me.

As she was describing her experiences I was reminded of my personal experience of working with clients and their misunderstanding of the trance state.  The trance state is used to make changes in the subconscious mind which then manifests in the conscious mind.  It is my opinion that our “choices” made in everyday life are ninety-five percent driven by our subconscious mind, not our conscious mind.  Getting into the state she was describing as being a trance state was not a trance state because in a trance the conscious mind is “asleep” not observing.  In a trance state such as I am describing the subconscious mind is the active mind.  Hypnotherapists make use of the trance state to reprogram existing states or patterns with new states or patterns the client desires to have and experience in their lives.

I mentioned how and why the exercise of breathing and focus does not work nearly as well as a true trance state with a competent therapist. To make a change in the subconscious mind generally requires a true trance state which means that the desired change one holds in the conscious mind must be presented to the subconscious mind and must be presented in a proper manner.

This reminds me of a client from many years ago who was very interested in hypnosis.  He was so interested that he recorded his own hypnosis MP3.  He sent me a copy and I listened to it for a few minutes before I turned it off and communicated to him to not use it at all.  His misunderstanding of the science and art of hypnosis was so flawed that he was creating the very opposite of his stated desires.

I explained to my wonderful piano teacher that the likelihood of communication with the subconscious using her method was flawed for two reasons. The first reason was that generally if you are “aware” of the wonderful place you are, her experience in the void, you are mostly in your conscious mind observing. If you are in the conscious mind you are not in a true and useful trance state.  So if you truly want to communicate with the subconscious the conscious must be “asleep”. 

So, the difficulty of getting information to the subconscious on your own means that as you do induce a trance state on your own, at the moment of entering the trance you have to be holding the thought, best held as a symbol, that you wish to have planted in the subconscious.  That is tricky as the mind is a linear serial process, a stream of consciousness consisting of constant thought about one thing or another, and, any of those thoughts may be the one you present and you most likely will not know what you presented. Could that thought be one of worry or fear or something else you don’t really want to present.. Well, you won’t know because you would have to be disassociated (watchful) conscious state to really know.

Now I am not saying that we humans are not powerful consciousness.  We are and we do create our reality.  However, the beliefs, limitations, fears, and other thoughts and concerns we have in our subconscious were adopted primarily in our first seven years of life.  These patterns were adopted because during that time we exist in a theta mind state, the same mind frequency while in a trance. We learn a great deal in those first seven or eight years and we learn it from our immediate environment and primarily from our social context of the family structure. The subconscious mind can be changed through the conscious mind. But it is difficult and usually takes an exceptional amount of time, energy, and focus.

We are all gods and we do create our reality.  And there are methodologies to do so.  And if you want your piano tuned to its full potential a piano you had best find someone with the experience and skill to do so skillfully.  And, of course, you can learn to tune a piano.  I am learning to do so and it has required a great deal of time and practice and I am still not up to professional standards.  If you want to change your mind or tune a piano it is much easier to find someone who is trained and practiced to do so.  Learning to do something yourself is a worthy quest, after all, you don’t still want your mom tying your shoelaces.  At its core all learning is self-learning given no one can force you to learn something against your will. Learning to read music, and tuning the piano, I am doing these things because I desire to do so.

I have a piano teacher to guide and assist me and she has the experience and the tools to do so.  There are masters in every field and there are those that aspire to mastery which is why studying with a master is best if you want to progress as rapidly as possible.  If you want to change your deeper mind, your subconscious mind, finding someone you are attuned to and trust is a way to do so rapidly.