The Magician's Way

These days I am often asked the question "so what are you reading at the moment?". It's a question that often gets asked of me when I get into conversation with people about books, especially when I mention that I see myself as a bit of a writer and that I have a fiction novel in the works. Truth be told, in keeping with my relentless efforts to challenge myself over the last year and a half or so the majority of my reading hasn't really been in the area of fiction. In fact I've been suffering a bit of a mental overload from studying all manner of non-fiction "how to" books. Books about attraction, self improvement and indeed a bit of card magic too.

It's not that I feel any need to maintain secrecy that these are the food that my brain is demanding these days, but I do feel in a way that saying that I am reading this stuff communicates a feeling of inadequacy so I tend not to advertise it, at least when I'm not around people who are also passionate about their own personal journey. There's no drama or high emotion to this sort of non-fiction either.

Also, I'm told that saying to your date that you're enjoying reading "The Game" isn't going to go down well.

The Game is a good read though, especially the ever-forgotten ending; I recommend it.

In any case my usual answer has been that I'm reading "Time to depart" by Lindsey Davis, one of the Falco detective novels, and then I just hope that they don't ask me how the story is progressing as the bookmark hasn't moved in the last 18 months.

In the last week though I have read an outstanding book that fits into both the category of self help and fiction. It's called The Magician's Way, written by a guy called William Whitecloud, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. It was also a bit of a new experience for me because it was the first book I have read on an iPad, an experience I was very skeptical about but I quickly warmed to. It's the same device I am writing this blog post on, and I have to say I'm a big fan.

The book is set in the present day, I think in Australia although it's never placed specifically, and it follows the journey of a man who is having trouble with his job and his marriage in his journey to discover magic, magic not being some mystical supernatural force, but rather a life attitude that can be used to find abundance and happiness in ones life. The details are kept reasonably ambiguous about many things within the book and it is clear that the main protagonist is intended mostly as a vessel through which the author can communicate a set of life principles, which are referred to in the book as laws of magic.

I am very much taken by the idea that magic really is a real force in the world, but that anybody who looks to the metaphysical is looking in the wrong place. No, magic is much more elusive, and yet far more potent. I find myself thinking back to the first few weeks of when I discovered hypnosis, when the boundaries of what I thought was actually possible seeme to melt in front of me. Indeed, I had a similar experience when I started to learn about attraction. In both cases I dared to do things that it had never even occurred to me to do before and amazing things happened.

And what's more, learning magic for a specific purpose has the interesting effect that it spills out into other areas of your life. You start to develop new habits, the world changes, and it becomes difficult to recognise who you were even a year before.

The principles, such as using your focus to create your reality, are all very potent in their own right. For example, if you focus on what your are trying to achieve, your target, you are far more likely to have success than if you instead apply your focus to the goal of not failing.

I tried exercising this principle a couple of days ago when I went out for a ride on my mountain bike. There's a track that I occasionally ride on that features quite deep ruts. These ruts are too deep to cycle in because my pedals hit the sides, so the only way to ride the path is to use the narrow bit of earth in between the ruts. It's quite a psycologically difficult situation to cycle in because it leaves a very narrow path to ride, you feel like you're very high above the ground and putting down your foot isn't going to be easy if you start to topple. So I found the experience of cycling along trying not to fall down one of the ruts in the past has been a fraught one. It could not have been more different from this time, when I mentally ignored the presence of the ruts and instead focused all of my intention on the line that I wanted to cycle. Magic!

The example the book uses, in the first chapter in fact, is a golf lesson. I can relate to a lot of it, especially as I did archery when I was still at university, another sport that depends on good technique, but for which becoming consciously distracted by technique can seriously compromise performance. I of course had a lot of this "focus on the the target and visualise" blah blah when I was being coached, but it wasn't until I read this book that I think I really started to understand what it's all about.

Incidentally, guess what keeps popping back into my mind when I'm trying to go into a hypnotic trance? Yup, I keep trying not to come back up, and guess what happens. I think there's a lot of mileage in this principle for hypnosis too.

Magicians are portrayed in the book as those who not only subscribe to the principles, but as those who differentiate themselves from the majority of individuals by not settling, rather constantly pushing themselves to follow a journey. One of the characters in the book refers to life as a journey to a magnificent palace, but that most people find a liveable hovel by the wayside and are content to make do. It's an analogy I can definitely relate to.

And that's the thing about The Magician's Way. It has this way of reaching inside of you and describing, by metaphor, thoughts and feelings that you may always have had but may never have admitted to anyone, or even yourself, perhaps constructs that are common to most people. Then it addresses them.

So I must recommend Whitecloud's book, it is one of the best reads I have ever come across.

On the day I finished The Magician's Way, reading about a man becoming a modern day magician, I had my own bizarre magical moment. I was stopped in the supermarket by one of my fellow shoppers with the words "Hey magician man!". It turned out this guy had been present when I performed some magic tricks to a group of people on a train, but bizarrely our conversation led me to discover that he actually works in the same Industry as me, and we swapped business cards. Magic indeed.

First Timers I ½ - Magical!

Earlier this year I wrote a blog post intended to give advice to all those wannabe hypnotists out there who have yet to take the plunge and hypnotise a subject.

I made a start at the second post, plunging into details for a routine that these hypnotists could try but every time I started writing there was always something that kept nagging at me. Something was missing from the first post, I knew that. What was worse was that I knew exactly what was missing and the reason I hadn't brought it up, which was that I didn't have the answer.

What is the biggest problem for most of us when it comes to starting out in hypnosis?

I don't know about you, but for me the problem is scarcity. It feels as though willing subjects to try this out on are few and far between. What this inevitably means is that we end up subcommunicating neediness whenever we approach a potential subject. They feel as though you want something from them and can get defensive. Some may be curious enough to get past this and give it a go, but the next pitfall comes from being worried about failure because who knows when the next opportunity will be.

This is a biggie. It's THE biggie as far as I'm concerned.

What we really need is a different frame to the situation, and I did hint at this in my last post. Your potential subject should be the one asking, begging, you to hypnotise them.

Indeed, some of the best impromptu subjects I've had in the past have actually thanked me afterward for the huge favour I've done them. One actually apologised for spoiling my quiet evening out.

So how does one arrive at this desirable state of affairs? I figured it out recently and, believe me, what you are about to read could possibly be the most useful lesson you will ever learn as an aspiring impromptu hypnotist.

6. Get a pack of cards. Learn some tricks.

You heard me.

I should explain. A couple of weeks ago I was at a party in London that John Morgan had invited me along to. It was a charity fundraiser, and so John had also invited along another of the London Magic and Hypnosis crew, a magician called Mike Stoner.

Now, Mike is absolutely awesome at what he does, and he's also a people approaching machine. So after we'd spent a little while catching up we started wandering around the tables and Mike wowed each with some incredible magic and mentalism. Now, when I say incredible I mean "that card you chose and signed with a pen isn't in the deck, it's actually here in my wallet" and "also, the name of the card you chose is written on the pen I gave you at the start" incredible.

More than watching Mike at work though, both in seeing how easy he found it to approach people and in his presentation, I am indebted to him for what did next, which was to say this:

"If you think that's impressive, my colleague here is a hypnotist."

And I was in!

Did I mention that this party had the largest number of attractive young women I've seen in one place? It's a hard life it really is!

What's the lesson here?

I'd say it's this. There's a reason why the thought of approaching a group of people and saying "Excuse me would you like to be hypnotised?" feels weird, and that's because it is! It's such an unexpected and unusual proposition that a lot of people will default to the safe "no thanks" answer before even considering it.

As I said before, a different frame is needed. If you approach a group of people with a pack of cards and whilst shuffling them in your hands ask if they like card tricks they are much, much more likely to be intrigued and keen to see what you have to offer. Often if you're at a party all you need to do is produce the cards and shuffle them before someone asks you if you know any tricks with them. Seek out any environment where people want to be entertained and you'll find an impromptu magician is always welcome.

You don't even need to learn that much magic. In these days of YouTube it's so damn easy to learn a few basic tricks too. I know just four, all based on the overhand shuffle, but that's more than enough. You can go from group to group doing the same few routines over and over and getting good at them. Your audience don't know that they've just seen your entire repertoire and they don't need to know.

Set out to do magic, not hypnosis. Set out to entertain others, not acquire something for yourself. Let the subjects come to you.

What you are doing with each group is you're setting the frame. In their eyes you become an authority figure on magic and that sort of thing, you're demonstrating to them that amazing things happen around you and that you can lead them through fun experiences.

I have found that people are naturally curious about how and when you learned magic and when the inevitable question about that comes you can reply thus:

"I'm actually a hypnotist; the magic's just a hobby."

Try it. You'll be amazed at the responses you'll get.