Renegade Yogi

Reprogramming my morality

I’ve been experimenting with setting “spiritual” goals. Last night, I did a little reprogramming using hypnosis to achieve one of those goals. Specifically, I believe that love trumps morality, so I wanted to rewire my unconscious to be more in line with this belief.

Introduction

There’s a little background to this reprogramming. I’ll do my best to summarize it. But you should read more, because it is worth your time to know about and understand this stuff.

Robert Anton Wilson has developed and detailed an Eight Circuit Model of Consciousness. The origin legend states that he got it from Timothy Leary who got it from someone studying Tantric Yoga in India. Whatever the origin, it has proven useful for understanding personality, spiritual experiences, and other psychological traits.

The model describes eight circuits that are activated (or imprinted) at different points in human development. The imprinting is an epigenetic phenomenon that activates genes that will improve the survival of the individual.

My reprogramming last night was about the fourth (social) circuit. The fourth, social circuit is activated in adolescence and determines your sense of morality.

Wilson has expounded winner and loser scripts for each circuit.

Winner: “Love, and do what thou wilt.” (Anon. of Ibid)

Loser: “Everything I like is illegal, immoral, or fattening.”

These two “scripts” explain the two extremes of the social mindset spectrum. Obviously, you want to be a winner, not a loser.

The loser script is one of guilt, fear, and bad consequences. Break the rules and be punished. Adam and Eve, expelled from their bliss, after learning right from wrong.

The winner script sees the world as a fantastic opportunity to express love. Basically, when you have love in your heart, you can do no wrong. I’m no Christian, but I think Jesus hit this idea perfectly when he said “Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law.” (Romans 13:8)

Last night I attempted to reprogram my psyche more toward the winner script.

One more thing to introduce: Love is attention, which came up a little.

Method

I hypnotized myself into a light trance.

Then I elicited and intensified feelings of love.

While feeling love, I brought up various memories and applied the loving mindset to them, and played through what I would have done if I had been so loving at the time.

Since love is attention, a lot of what came up was just to be present to things a lot more. It was very scary when I started disassembling my morality. Because it seems like I’m getting rid of my guides to living with other people. But I am replacing them with something better, which is to take everything on a case by case basis, trust my heart, and support the consequences with love. Very scary.

My first objection was that if I was in a foreign country, this could get me into trouble. But if the culture really is foreign, I’ll have trouble anyway. I can always ask for the help of a local. Another objection was that I might hurt somebody. It’s true, I might hurt somebody, or myself. This is true no matter what. Acting through love means making myself vulnerable, and that could bring stuff up that wouldn’t be brought up by following the rules. This was the hardest objection to deal with, since it was so true.

But that’s what love is for. Love is greater than pain. So I just sent love all over the fear of hurting.

Results

I don’t know how well this worked, but it seemed to have learned something. I had the epiphany-style feelings of revelation and transformation. Time will tell.