Woman: Programmed.

Programmed.

Dusty Miller

Much of what we think of when we think of gender is superficial. Girls have long hair and boys have short hair. Men wear pants and women wear skirts. It is only seen as a cultural choice, a social evolution over time, when viewed from afar—like from a country where the dress code is much different.

We tend to think of social and sexual roles as natural. Even the trappings are seen as natural.

What they are, is socially-accepted.

Anthropologists describe a sexual contract, a division of labour between the sexes, the rise of language and the nuclear family. Much history has passed, from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age to the age of iron and steam.

Skipping over all of that brings us to the modern family. When little kids are growing up, Christmas is a big thing, perhaps the biggest thing of all. Kids are taught their social roles from a very early age.

The little boy gets a little blue hammer, a building set. The little girl gets a pink dolly.

The little boy gets a plastic jet airplane. The little girl gets a toy stove, one that bakes a little cake and everything.

The messages received are not just about gender, they are about social role.

Little boys will tell little girls, “You can’t play with jet planes.”

The little girl asks why and they tell them, “Because you are a girl.”

They’re not very old when they figure this out.

They even know enough not to ask for the wrong gender orientation of toy—a little boy so rarely asks for a dolly, and the little girls so seldom ask for jet airplanes or tool sets.

At first, the little girl doesn’t have a problem with her new tea set. After all, she can now bake a cake and sit with kitty and her dollies, and they can all have a nice little tea party.

There is always this jealousy between siblings, isn’t there? And little Johnny better respect that tea set, or that little oven, or there will be hell to pay.

That’s hers.

And that other stuff is his.

It is only when the little girl sees the little boy with his jet airplane that she even perceives that such a thing exists. She hasn’t been exposed to too much of that so far.

Because it is new, she wants to play with it. That part is truly instinctive, and a kitten or puppy will do the same thing for the same reasons. They are exploring their environment. They are exploring the possibilities and the hazards of their environment.

When a little girl gets a dolly, and everyone is making a fuss over her, and her brother is strafing the cat or something with his new jet airplane, and then the dolly pees on her, (Wow! Isn't that great?) she gets a certain message.

“Mommy. It peed on me.”

“That’s a good girl. Better get used to it…”

Yeah. Learn how to feed it and care for it and bathe it and comb its hair and dress it...the list goes on.

Much of woman’s role is imposed by biology and evolution. The rest is imposed by culture, tradition, and the passage of time itself. Much of what we think a woman is and should be is programmed. 

Cultural programming stems right from birth.

It is imposed by the needs and prejudices of the day, but that isn’t necessarily to say that it is carved in stone or forever unchangeable.

Of all the animal kingdom, homo sapiens exhibits the greatest differentiation within species of any creature. All deer look alike, with very little in the way of individual characteristics. They rely on smell and not appearance to identify one another, sound as well. We know our parent’s voice and so do they.

The same becomes even more true the further one goes down the evolutionary ladder. Adult humans are big, small, dark and fair, heavy and light, ranging in skin colour and facial and cranial features that would be remarkable in salmon or mice or snakes. There may be deformed ants, but ones with big noses and no chins, or fat ones working alongside skinny ones would be remarkable. What is remarkable is their sameness—not the other way around.

Many other creatures exhibit social characteristics, humans have developed it to a remarkable degree.

It is for social reasons that we have seen the evolution of so many cultural modes.

And variety, as they say, is the spice of life.

It is also the spice, and arguably, the goal or end result of evolution.

END

Sexual and Other Imprinting.

 

How to Induce a Light Trance.

Bodidharma practicing zazen.

Dusty Miller

A light trance can be induced by counting backwards from ten.

These are the words to speak, (silently, inside of your head, unless you are working with a subject).

This method works best by assuming a fully relaxed position, lying flat on the back, with the head straight and supported by a pillow. Get the neck aligned before starting. 

Place the elbows fairly close to the sides and the hands on the hip-bones or thereabouts. The key to the whole thing is comfort and relaxation.

Remain immobile, although moving a hand up to the face is okay, as the odd little itches and tickles interfere with the process. Only a short way into the process, the fingers begin to feel a different sensation, a kind of tingling or buzzing sensation. That’s how you know it’s working. After a while, the heart rate slows, and if you relax enough, you might even feel the odd little pop in the spine, the neck, etc. As you go along, laying in bed for example, you can feel the tension leaving your body and you seem to settle, to sink in.

This method will induce a light trance in a normal subject in good health, as long as there few external distractions and no major worries at the present moment. Quiet is best for the exercise. Long, slow, full breaths help to induce the light trance state. If you seem to be working too hard, or even fighting it, (which I’ve done myself) it simply won’t happen. The best thing about it is the sagging, the relief, and the release of tension. It’s a kind of letting go. For that reason, it is best to establish a bond of trust with any potential subject. Not every subject is capable of doing this. A professional hypnotist is a perfect stranger. Your mother-in-law trying to hypnotize you might be an entirely different story. In the latter case, underlying tensions and social expectations may interfere with the process.

Here’s how it works.

What you are going to do is to count backwards from ten and tell yourself good things. If working with a subject, initially set them at ease, explain what you are going to do. Get them in a relaxed position. Speak the words aloud in a soft, calm voice, and observe and correct if the subject's neck or legs aren’t properly aligned for example.

Ten.

Your toes are completely still. Your toes are totally and completely relaxed. The balls of your feet are completely relaxed. The soles of your feet, the arches, the insteps of your feet are completely relaxed. The outer edges of your feet and the bones of your ankles are totally and completely relaxed.

Nine.

From your ankles to your knees is totally and completely relaxed. Your calves are totally relaxed. Your Achilles tendons are completely relaxed, and the tendons in the backs of your knees are totally and completely relaxed. Your shin bones are totally and completely relaxed.

Eight.

From your knees to your hips is totally and completely relaxed. The biggest muscles in your legs are totally and completely relaxed. Your knees and kneecaps are totally and completely relaxed.

Seven.

Your pelvis, your hips and your groin are totally and completely relaxed. Your gluteus maximus is (or are) totally and completely relaxed.

Six.

From your hips to your diaphragm is totally and completely relaxed. Your lower back is totally relaxed. Your stomach muscles and the diaphragm are totally and completely relaxed.

Five.

Your chest, and your upper back and your shoulders are totally and completely relaxed.

Four.

Your hands and your fingers, your thumbs and your wrists, are totally and completely relaxed.

Three.

Your neck is totally and completely relaxed.

Two.

Your face, your eyes, your mouth, the muscles in your face, your jaw, under the jaws, the muscles where the head joins the neck, are totally and completely relaxed.

One.

Your eyes, your brain, your mind, are totally and completely relaxed.

Zero.

I am totally and completely relaxed. My body is totally and completely relaxed. My mind is totally and completely relaxed.

***

If this method doesn’t work, you can always go back to ten, take a couple of deep breaths. Stretch, move around a bit. Focus the mind on what you need to do. Then try again.

At certain points, physical, sensory manifestations occur. These include the feelings of heaviness in the lower limbs, this will happen as soon as you tell it to happen. This is the great revelation of the light trance, the fact that you can in fact control certain aspects of how your body feels and performs.

There are feelings where the body seems to be floating. The trance is assisted by having the eyes closed, and the sensation of being on an air mattress, on a warm sea, with light wavelets lifting and lowering the subject is actually caused by hydrostatic forces. The heart contracts, and the wave-front of blood pressure can actually be felt. It’s very much like the pulsing in our ears, or our wrists when we put our finger on the vein. Only now, it’s our entire body that we have become aware of.

Our entire body is pulsing, when people are extremely tired, they say they are ‘vibrating.’ This is their racing heart, high blood pressure, on a frame that is under extreme tension—no wonder they’re vibrating.

We’ve all been there and it doesn’t feel very nice. We actually feel it when we slow down, and only then do we become aware of what our body is trying to tell us.

There is a point when we are on the verge of a deeper trance, which is not unlike falling asleep. There is this borderline panic state when we get to the old familiar falling sensation that all humans have reported while on the borderline of falling asleep.

Yet if you know it’s happening, it’s kind of like a ride in space. Just let the mind go and see what pictures it projects. Try not to think about anything at all.

At some point you realize that you are fully conscious, fully in control. You could snap out of it in a heartbeat, but now you are in a completely different place.

You are floating in a void of infinite internal space. This space exists only in your mind.

There is nothing to be feared there. You are wide awake, you’re just lying on the floor, and yet now you are totally and completely relaxed.

It’s a false sensation, and there is some lesson in that as well. Only you will know what it is.

Long, slow, deep breaths, and yet relaxed breaths are key. There is no need to be hyperventilating like the expectant mother in a Hollywood romantic comedy film. We are not grunting up a storm before a dead lift of 350-kilos, either.

The whole process is simple and natural and provides great benefits. It reduces stress, relieves pain and headaches, reduces neck pain, and helps you to go to sleep at night. It gives you a little power over your body and frees you from it at the same time.

I’ve been hypnotizedby a professional, years ago. I didn’t actually quit smoking, but it is perfectly possible to put your self into the lighter sort of trance, one where you are fully aware of the background but it seems somehow insulated.

End

Constance 'Dusty' Miller on Smashwords.

.