AUTOSUGGESTION - How many of us really live in the moment? Most people seem to be anticipating some eventuality a week or a month hence or else complaining, "I was so much happier a year ago!" This is never so evident as at New Year when we brood over the disappointments of the past and resolve to do better in the future. The determination to start afresh is admirable but, without self-knowledge, completely meaningless. "This year I'm going to assert myself," someone might say, oblivious to the exchanged glances of friends who think he asserts himself quite enough already and might benefit by being a bit less of a bully. "I'm going to get myself really fit," pipes up someone else, somehow refusing to recognise that pathological jealousy rather than a lack of physical activity keeps her awake all night. The resolutions we make are merely distractions from the unacknowledged issues we carry through our lives. Only the harshest reassessment could possibly contribute to a genuine change. For any resolution to be truly effective, it would have to be made for us and enforced by neural implants or auto-suggestion cassettes. "Never mind stopping smoking, this year you have to stop leering at schoolgirls! And you have to stop spreading spiteful rumours about your neighbours!"
The '...With Hamilton Coe' series of auto-suggestive c.d.'s were recorded as an aid to addressing issues identified by reassessment. With the assistance of Drumfeld Parish Church organist, Helen Protheroe, herself a beneficiary of the Coe method of self-analysis, I made ten recordings ranging from 'Managing Wrath' to 'Maybe You're not as Special as You Think You Are'. Helen's musical arrangements provided the perfect backing to my narration which was reinforced by subliminal messages. Unfortunately, members of Christine's encounter group, on whom I tested the c.d.'s, all identified the same problem. My voice, while mellifluous enough in normal circumstances, is not pitched at an appropriate level to induce relaxation. Several of the listeners referred to a catharral burr, as if something was caught at the back of my throat, while others complained about a nasal parp. There was a nearly unanimous consensus, however, that my voice was an impediment to self-transformation. The only subject who persisted with her c.d., Diane Noble, was hospitalised when she complained that she could hear me chiding her in the supermarket and while she was trying to watch television. The Examiner, latching onto the fact that the c.d. I'd given her was entitled 'In Many Respects, I'm a Parasite', ran such a hysterical piece about the initiative that Helen withdrew permission to use her music.
Even when the will to change is combined with clinical self-assessment, is it possible to impact on attitudes that have hardened since infancy? In some instances, we might as well will a mountain to get up and walk. It's one thing for someone to shamefully acknowledge being a liar or a backstabber, something else entirely to desist in patterns of behaviour that may be as integral to his make-up as D.N.A. Despite this apparent hopelessness, though, it remains incumbent on him to at least try.
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