Big Brother can heal thyself

Big Brother began as a dubious social experiment and as this final UK celebrity edition concludes, the validity of this emerges.

Every series begins with a group that feels utterly incompatible yet ends with intense bonding. The sharing of the journey, needs and goals gradually aligns consciousness of participants who might never give each other the time of day otherwise. It demonstrates our mostly unconscious capacity to find companionship in the most unexpected places – if we choose to initiate or allow that experience.

What an empowering realisation!
Who would have expected Stephanie Beacham to find a pal in Ivana Trump, for instance? In such circumstances participants have often made the conscious or unconscious choice to adapt or reject.

Similarly, you might adapt to or reject each person you encounter on the way to work, or at a party. Most of this process is unconscious and you have to wonder how this shapes our social and familial networks.

One of the great lessons I gained from nursing was that I invariably came to bond most deeply and transformatively with the patients I had initially felt a desire to avoid. Often they were totally misunderstood by other tittle-tattling staff and were waiting in frustrated suspended animation until someone plugged in and acknowledged their real identity or feelings. I seemed to intuit such feelings very rapidly and it was often noticed.

More recently, my experiences giving hypnosis have revealed the enormous impact of the unconscious upon rapport and how any healing ‘adaptation’ tends to be shared, part of an unconscious to unconscious transmission – just as happens in the Big Brother house.
Perhaps there is hidden meaning in the phrase, ‘Physician, heal thyself’, for the best therapy is delivered with the assurance that the journey is worth taking . . . possible and perhaps even enjoyable.

This is a great reason to practice self-hypnosis. By making the unconscious a little more familiar, one also alters the path of relationships through life, including your relationship with yourself.

This is a gift you can get anywhere, including Big Brother house.
What a practical and useful advantage!

Blessed Boundaries and Big Brother

The final Celebrity Big Brother (UK) is almost over and although I don’t watch them all, this one raised an interesting issue.

One contestant calls herself ‘Sov‘ and is a stereotypical teenager trapped in shame about the ‘chavvishness’ of her upbringing whilst also trying to assert herself in ways that really backfire socially. All the rebelliousness does little to mask the fact that she desperately wants attention and approval . . . yet she unconsciously persists in playing out behavioural patterns that prevent anyone genuine wanting to be around her for long . . . which is her underlying need.

Sov is a gleaming example of the ultimate con. She thinks she is asserting herself, but actually she is initiating a self-distructive cycle that will repeatedly block her from getting what she wants in life.  Such contradictions emanate from an unconscious which has not adapted to current life events. Instead it replays behaviours that were deemed to be the best option in earlier experiences . . . and this lack of adaptation to current events leaves her primed to repeatedly create estrangement in her relationships. On this path, she will always be ‘stealing the key’ from those who would otherwise be great pals and offer genuine affection. It is sad to see anyone so committed to such a lonely path.

Also of interest was actor Stephen Baldwin‘s response to events. Baldwin, who once announced in a gay magazine that his wife held his thighs and ass in such high regard that she called him a ‘stallion’, is born again into Christianity and depends upon the faith in a very ‘mid-western’ style attempt to stay off drugs and women etc. I am happy he has used it to his advantage, but saddened that he has not progressed beyond the literal ABC of the Doctrine. It could have been George Bush Jr. sitting in Big Brother house asking dumb-founded Alex Reid if he would choose to shoot his own daughter. Somehow, despite all his aiming for the profound, it all resorted to a good old fashioned US shootout that bore little real resemblance to genuine spirituality.

His response to the Sov situation was that the other housemates had responded in a very un-Christian way by isolating her, and to some I am sure this will have seemed true. However, in this Baldwin was being very naive and also robbing Sov of her own achievement. She had succeeded in unconsciously creating the very scenario she didn’t want, as so many people do. She had set up the whole scene regardless of her real need to bond with housemates, so you cannot really buy into the idea of her being victim of anything other than her own unconscious.

Had she been indulged as Baldwin saw fit, the group would have reinforced destructive unconscious patterns. Without any marker to indicate any form of healthy boundary, her maladaptations would have intensified and this would have posed more of a problem in closer and more meaningful relationships.

I expect she entered the programming with the notion of being an icon for youths in a similar predicament, and maybe she will be . . . but not in the way she expected. She showed more clearly than most how important it is to take control of unconscious habits before they control you.

As for Baldwin, he was likeable when not preaching and obviously painting spirituality by numbers when he was. His intentions appeared genuine is somewhat hampered by the imprint of being the younger of four very strong-willed brothers, so respect is deserved for that at least.

The real gems appear to be Stephanie Beacham (without sparkling shoulder-pads but with a remarkable ability to adapt to whatever is thrown at her), her buddy Ivana Trump (also minus shoulder-pads and shockingly able to slum it) and former singer Dane Bowers, who not only manages to be a nice and genuine guy, but also would appear to be level in his judgements and  . . . likeable.

It remains to be seen how Dane, Alex Reid and ‘Basshunter‘ Jonas‘s past use of anal sex toys will push the societal boundaries of straight male sexuality. What emerges is the truth that they at least know more about their own bodies than many. I wonder what it all means unconsciously though. In essence, perhaps sexuality is not about fitting into boxes but instead about sensations and attachments (with people and objects, it seems!) Ultimately, this would be helpful for many to realise, since one is here to be oneself with integrity, I feel, not here to pretend to be someone else and then regret when it is too late.

Like a Bible, any belief or object, there are potentials for wonders as well as harm.
It is all down to the creativity and intention of the user.
Messrs. Baldwin and Bush, please take note.

Of course, these are just my observations. Who knows what the truth of any celebrity is, really?

Ghost Radar on Iphone and Ipod Touch

If you own either an Iphone or Ipod Touch by Apple you may be curious to check out the Ghost Radar app. It scans the environment using the host of sensors in each device for irregularities in the ‘quantum flux’  – which may or may not be ghosts. Upon a radar display, either a red, yellow or blue spot appears and often moves rapidly around but whether this is any more than fun programming or meaningless electrical curiosities is anyone’s guess. Even more tentative is the linking of the quantum irregularities to a dictionary which if I am mistaken seems to cut off after about an hour or so. Before then, the idea is that anything with intelligence might be able to communicate through the ‘onboard’ dictionary which is very Americanised.

I probably sound quite cynical, but having tried it regularly since Christmas there are just about enough irregularities to make my curiosity continue. In some places, it will be totally silent. Take it into a converted former asylum and suddenly it springs to life and virtually tells a story via a stream of words that seem to speak of recuperation after a concentration camp experience in which the ‘irregular’ individual functioned as a singing teacher in order to keep spirits high.

Now and then the stream of words seems to hit on something. Watching The Gadget Show reviewing TV’s, it comes out with ‘TV’. A doctor enters the room and it says ‘Dr.’ I head downstairs to do some work on my novella and it says ‘Plan . . . Story’.

I come to the conclusion that even if the programmer programmed it as a con, there is an element of synchronicity in it that could indeed be used, perhaps by the owners own unconscious mind, and in a way this is a metaphor for an approach to living. It isn’t so much what we are given or what we experience, but how we utilise it.

And so I let that app run now and then, just to see how I am doing. You have to laugh . . . and wish that ipod ghosts would string together sentences properly

Twitter no more . . .

My Twitter updates are no more. Whilst I can imagine the site has uses for PR, I would rather concentrate on meaningful updates here as well as on the website ( www.carycharles.com ) and facebook ‘page’ and profile.