Mentales Training für jedermann

Not all painful conditions of the body respond always to medical treatment. The same is true for other unpleasant sensations - like for instance the queasy feeling in the stomach when you are fearful -, and emotions can be controlled even less with medical means, if you don't want to shoot with chemical bullets and become dependent on psychiatric medication.

The extreme case of a "psychosomatic illness" almost never manifests instantly. Severe health damages even up to cancer, which have partially or wholly mental causes (for instance constant stress) don't appear within a day. Normally there already exist more or less distinct complaints several years before their actual outbreak.

During this time, mental training can do a lot of good. In most cases the complaints are getting less, and the massive medical condition (for instance, the actual ulcer) doesn't manifest at all.

But even if a psychosomatic illness exists already, mental training can help in your dealing with the difficulties. In all known cases where cancer has been healed or brought to remission without any medical explanation, positive mental techniques have played a key role.

Of course mental training can never replace the medical treatment! But as it stimulates the self-healing capacities of the body and shifts the spiritual being into a positive mood, it often can speed up the healing of illnesses and operation wounds. And if it is being applied before the health condition gets to be critical, the step into the doctor's practice often becomes unnecessary.

The body itself and the part of the mind which works sub-consciously have an alarm system for dangerous situations (we have mentioned it already in the chapter "Inherited Functions of the Mind"). This system is a very successful protection mechanism for animals and is functioning completely automatically.

If for instance a cat hurts itself while climbing over a barbed wire fence, it will not try it again at the same spot. As soon as it comes close to the dangerous spikes again, its mind switches on a memory of the recent pain. The closer the cat comes to the spikes, the more it hurts.

Of course it realizes fast that it is unpleasant to fool around in this area. It turns away and tries it in another place - after all, there are opportunities enough.

For a human being that same system can sometimes have nearly the opposite consequences. Let's for instance assume that a man has lost his balance in a quarrel and has shouted at his wife. This produces fear symptoms in her body - a "queasy feeling" in the stomach, uncertainty, a compulsion to gasp for fresh air suddenly.

All this gets switched on again the next time she comes close to her husband. Maybe she even shivers or feels like crying. Of course this is not a good foundation for a reconciliating talk between partners. The man maybe feels accused by her visible fear and reacts even more irritated.

Here the great difference between human being and animal becomes very visible. An animal depends on the automatic alarm, because it cannot analyze a situation with an analytical mind. For a human being, this automaticity is too simple - his sharper mind shows him quickly that another reaction might lead to a better solution.

In the example described above the right reaction is even the exact opposite of that what the automatic alarm suggests. The automatic alarm screams "Attention! Go away, or you will get shouted at another time!" - whereas the analytical mind says "Go and talk to him; if you can find to an agreement this time, it will certainly will work better next time."

These opposing "commands" can produce the most lovely mental masses by the way (see previous chapter), as the impulse "Go away!" is always being fought by an impulse "Go near him!", and vice versa. A continuous back and forth of mental energy, which keeps accumulating and solidifying more and more.

It could very well be that the human individual, like he is built today, represents the one piece in the chain of evolution which so many scientists are searching for - the "missing link" between the primates and the real Man. We still have the primitive reflexes of our animal ancestors, but also the mental and spiritual abilities already of a higher developed human race, which might populate Earth maybe in a few hundred or thousand years.

Until then, mental training gives us a very efficient tool that allows us to bring the automatic circuits from ancient times under our conscious control.

The method is in broad use in medicine, especially in the treatment of allergies. If you have been treated for an allergy yourself already, like for instance hay fever (triggered by pollen) or cat's hair, you will know what we are talking about.

After the doctor has found out what the patient is allergic to, small amounts of the substance are applied in regular intervals, mostly through the skin. The dose is increased regularly, until the patient is capable of tolerating normal amounts of pollen, cat's hair or other substances to which he has been allergic, without any signs of illness.

For the spiritual being it is of course not a chemical substance which triggers the "allergy" (the unpleasant sensations, rage, fear, grief, or even physical manifestations up to strong pains). It's also not physical pain, like in the cat which has hurt itself on the barbed wire as it tried to climb over the fence.

Factors which "hurt" a spiritual being, are for instance catastrophes in life, rejected love, upsets, betrayals, guilt (if they have harmed somebody or failed to help in an emergency), secrets, broken promises or actions with which they have violated their honour (depending on the culture, these can be very different things). Of course these are only a few examples - there exist a lot more.

Later these unpleasant sensations are then no longer triggered by the subject itself, but additionally by perceptions which have been connected with the original circumstances - a similar environment, the same faces, voices, weather etc.

The real key to these feelings is the exact location, where they have been triggered for the first time. If you really want to help your training partner to come clear with a matter that is a burden for him, then go with him to the place where it happened.

Bring him to the street where his house burned down, or to the car in which he detected his girlfriend with his best friend.

Accompany him into the office where he has betrayed his business partner, to the intersection where his son came under the truck, into the garden where he told his wife that he would leave her, or into the hospital room where his mother died.

Don't leave him alone there. Let him touch things and encourage him to tell you everything which goes through his mind, until he feels better and his fear, his grief or his guilty feeling disappears. If he was in motion during the experience, it helps enormously to let him go through the same motions for a few times - as precisely as possible.

Don't think that this will be easy for you - it can become rather brutal. Start such a thing only if you really are certain that you can bring it to a good end. Your training partner depends fully on you at this moment - please don't let him down.

If he is crying, screaming or raging, don't give up. He is just about to bring stuck emotions back to flowing. You don't help him if you interrupt him in it or even go away. He needs to experience these emotions completely and express them in full.

If he has told an experience from the beginning to the end, let him tell it again. Watch how he is doing while he is telling it. If you have the impression that nothing bothers him anymore; or if he is losing his interest in the matter; or if he suddenly tells a big realization - something which he never could understand about it and now suddenly grasps -, you know that the experience has dissolved for him.

From now on he keeps only the memory of the plain facts, but the torturing pain or guilt has flown to the past, he will no longer carry them with him. Just make sure that you don't let him run away from the matter! This is very different from the loose lack of interest which comes up when he has made his peace with it. As long as he wants to run away, the matter is not de-sensitized, and it will torture him again when he gets reminded of it.

Of course it is not always possible to return to the actual location of an event. Sometimes (most times even) a matter has happened at several different locations. If the location is in another continent or in the past, or if it would require long travelling to visit it, then work through the "Procedure for the Resolution of Unpleasant Sensations" with your training partner. This procedure uses the principle of systematic de-sensitizing on a mental-spiritual level.

It causes the spiritual being to "touch" (in a spiritual sense) the unpleasant sensation, emotion or the pain again and again, and after that to create it deliberately (to imagine it), until it has no negative effects anymore.

The following procedure is also always of use, if during mental training an unpleasant sensation manifests. This can be a physical sensation like prickling, itching or any form of pain, or emotions like embarassment, guilt, fury, grief etc.

If your training partner answers your question for an unpleasant sensation by telling you about tiredness, stupefaction or feelings of pressure, ask instead whether he can perceive a mental mass, and if yes, use the "Procedure for the Resolution of Mental Masses".

Ask your training partner to name the unpleasant sensation as precisely as possible, for instance not "fear" or "embarassment", but "a fearful embarassment and shyhess".

Procedure for the Resolution of Unpleasant Sensations

by Alan C. Walter

Comments by Heidrun Beer

1. "From where could a spiritual being experience [exact name of unpleasant sensation]?"

Repeat over and over until your partner has a rise in mood level, an increase in certainty, a realization (or Aha!), regained abilities, a big win, and huge quantities of recovered life-force.

This first question is de-sensitizing the "spiritual allergy" which triggers the unpleasant sensation.

With "From where?" you ask for a location - an address or another actually existing place on this planet or in this universe. Don't be content with "What"- or "Who"-answers like "from a red car" or "from my father". After such a reply, ask an additional question like "At which location could this happen?"

Allow your training partner to talk about his own experiences, but about that of other people as well. Even disembodied spirits who live in his vicinity or closely together with him, can contribute to the experiences which are burdening him - exactly like parents would feel concerned by the experiences of their children.

2. "From where could a spiritual being create [exact name of unpleasant sensation]?"

Repeat over and over until your partner has a rise in mood level, an increase in certainty, a realization (or Aha!), regained abilities, a big win, and huge quantities of recovered life-force.

These signs of the fact that the procedure has brought the desired result, normally show up at the same time that the unpleasant sensation itself is no longer perceived.

A more simple form of the second question would be the command "Create [exact name of unpleasant sensation]." With that we of course don't mean that someone should hurt himself additionally in a physical way, if he already is hurting. With "create" is meant that he should create a mental image picture of the sensation.

This second question lets your training partner become more causative. The better he can create the sensation deliberately, the less will it be triggered involuntarily in the future by the obsolete alarm mechanisms in his mind.