A New Kind of Therapy
Most of us naturally feel and kind of know that as we get older we become more affected by our past and the emotional and physical incidents that have happened to us. It is fairly obvious that after severe physical or emotional impacts we emerge from these situations slightly different. We might have less physical energy or emotional vigor than we used to. We might feel a little more tired. We even might feel less capable of achieving certain types of goals. We can become increasingly rigid in our thinking or, in some cases, develop chronic anxieties, loss of interest and sadness – feelings that were totally foreign to us when we were younger.
We think that these “feelings” are part of getting older and we suspect they are caused by our physical accidents or emotional upsets, failures, loss and pain from our past. Whether it is a car accident or a break up we know that we emerge from painful incidents a slightly less optimistic and sometimes less happy versions of ourselves. Time may go by and we may feel a little better but secretly we know that time does not heal all wounds. What is actually occurring here is a physiological phenomena that is and cannot be improved by simply talking about it. We see our friends in therapy and some improve, some stay the same and some seem like they may even be getting worse.
The above is not the fault of a well-meaning counselor or friend. This is actually the recent discovery and true story of what is called an Engram. An Engram is a very specific mental recording that occurs when one is under extreme mental pressure to the point of it being painful or when one is actually enduring physical pain. Have you ever noticed how when you have experienced mental or physical pain that you kind of lose your sense of time and place as you fixate on the feeling you are dealing with. This is the process of your analytical mind shutting down and your reactive mind (subconscious) coming into play. During specific incidents of physical and emotional pain this mind starts recording everything around you in terms of sight, sound, smell as well as your other senses. Once the pain subsides and you are back to looking outward and being extroverted. The recordings made during the incident become hidden from view and retreat in to your reactive mind (subconscious). Because it is hidden from view, talking about the incident when you are shut down analytically only tends to poke at it and if anything stir it up and in many cases make it worse.
The therapy Dianetics calls this the “Reactive Mind” because that is exactly what it does – cause a myriad of confusing and unwanted reactions, anxieties, physical problems and doubt. The reason this occurs is because the reactive mind impacts itself on the body in order to protect it.
For example, in the animal kingdom the reactive mind can be an evolutionary piece of genius in terms of helping an animal to survive. That is because animals are not sentient and the reactive mind operates in complete association. A dear is drinking water from a stream and it smells the wet leaves and feels the crisp cold air and tastes the algae in the water. All of a sudden a hunter shoots at the deer, grazing it in the leg and causing searing pain. Several years pass and the deer recovers fully without so much as a limp. Well this is where the “reactive mind” kicks in. If the deer ever drinks water that tastes of algae or smells those particular leaves again or feels a similar cold wind the deer will feel a pain in his leg and run away in fear – this is a protective mechanism that helps animals to flee potentially harmful circumstances. This is true even if there are no hunters and that is problem with unwitting association. It is a genius mechanism for survival among animals but it wreaks havoc upon sentient beings who are able analyze any situation that one is confronted with in the present.
These Engrams (moments of severe physical or emotional pain), aside from being hidden from view, actually have a command factor over your emotions, reactions and physical condition. And, yes, it is these recordings not getting older or more experienced or having bad things happen to you that are the sole source of all of your anxiety, unwanted and confusing reactions and most of your physical deficiencies or problems. Engrams become increasingly more complicated in human beings when language enters into the picture. If you were to be in a physically painful or emotional incident and aside from the sights and sounds and smells someone were to say something – this would be recorded as part of the incident and this often has disastrous effects on the mental and physical state of an individual. Someone says “you idiot” after a slip or “be careful” or “you always make mistakes” or “your leg must hurt” or any sort of verbal expression. These expressions if triggered actually have command over your physical and/or emotional state. Again this is the sole cause of most of your physical problems, unwanted feelings and reactions. Because the reactive mind operates in complete association – sounds, smells, touch, sight, words all jumble together in total free association and one similarity to only even one of these senses similar to one in a reactive recording can cause all of the feelings of that incident to return totally unwittingly to you. You smell burning rubber and your leg hurts and you feel afraid and you don’t associate it with the car accident that you had when you were five, you just wonder “how come I feel afraid?”, “how come I feel anxious”, “I never used to have unwanted feelings like this” and on and on in endless combination.
Entire physical conditions can be caused purely by commands that you are entirely unaware of because a verbal command was recorded while your analytical mind was shut down and this very specific recording occurred (an Engram) and then was stored in the memory bank of your reactive mind completely hidden from your view. It is hidden from view because when your analytical mind is shut down you do not remember what is happening around you – only the reactive, subconscious part of your mind does. Through Dianetic therapy you can contact hidden Engrams and return them to the conscious, analytical part of your mind. Ironically, once you are consciously aware of these incidents they no longer have any effect on you. Only something that you can’t see, that is entirely hidden from your view, can have an effect on you.
How many times have you reacted to a situation and then calmed down and thought “that wasn’t me, how did I even react that way”. Well, you are correct, it wasn’t you – it was an Engram. Again, because the reactive mind is hidden from view talking about these incidents does very little or nothing to handle them and could possibly make things worse. Dianetic therapy is the only one of its kind and through its procedure actually contacts Engrams and through a very thorough and specific process erases them. You can actually erase the entire content of the Engrams in your reactive mind memory bank. Thus returning to you the same mental and physical health, happiness, optimism, control, calm and vigor that most of us had as children.
Taken from the works of L. Ron Hubbard, DIANETICS: THE MODERN SCIENCE OF MENTAL HEALTH
If you are interested in receiving a free, introductory Dianetic Service, click here or call (503) 228-0116.
© 2010 CSPTL. All rights reserved. DIANETICS and L. RON HUBBARD are trademarks and service marks owned by Religious Technology Center and are used with its permission. Services relating to Scientology religious philosophy are delivered throughout the world exclusively by licensees of the Church of Scientology International with the permission of Religious Technology Center, holder of the SCIENTOLOGY and DIANETICS trademarks.