the Sock Puppets of Post Traumatic Stress

[Mystress]

... is the title of an ebook I have been working on for way too long. Every time I read someone committed suicide from trauma I feel bad. This tech is miraculous and original. I want to nail down my copyrights... book already has an ISBN number.

  Like with anything tearoom, DO NOT SHARE!

I am hoping to get more feedback on the tech, maybe some quotes I can use to get this book finished.  Let me know if I can quote you in the book. All quotes will be anonymous.

  Gustaf successfully used the tech to resolve his anxiety, animism is useful for many internal things. Easier to share it with FST students because you already accept that mind is a committee of psyche parts, not an individual I.

  So... book excerpts!

  -----------------------------------------

DRAFT COPY FOR FIRE SERPENT TANTRA STUDENTS ONLY!
DO NOT SHARE.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the Goddess that I serve:
the Planetary Consciousness,
and to World Peace;
one traumatized mind at a time.

Preview

Guiding a newly awakened Shaman, teaching him how to do what is the essence of this book.
We are working with his Guidance, but having a spiritual guide is not at all necessary for the technique.

[4:21] Mystress: ok ask (your Guide) to give you a past bad event that still gives bad memories
[4:23] Mystress: maybe one you have tried to surrender
[4:27] E: I have tried - did not get the pic/idea.
[4:27] Mystress: ok
(M: I know that he did get something, because the guide is always responsive so I wait.)

[4:29] E: now she is cruel to me: I asked why do you do not show me?"
Guide: "Because I am not real."  She reflects my fear ...
[4:29] E: when does this stop, Mystress?
[4:29] Mystress: lol
[4:29 Mystress: that will do.
(She *is* showing him.  Learning to understand the strange, riddles & reflections language of the Shaman guide takes years, thus his fatigue. Translating for them until they learn it is a big part of mentoring. The guide and I are kind of, talking over his head. Shaman Guides are totally telepathic so she already knew where I was going with this. She is telling me; what issue is to be used for the demonstration.)

[4:30] Mystress: ok, ask for the part of you that is in charge of holding that fear, to show itself to you
[4:30] Mystress: you get an impression somebody showed up, like calling an employee into the office?
[4:31] E: oh got it quite big guy
[4:31] Mystress: ok, thank him for the job he's been doing.  It was an awful job but he did loyal service.
[4:31] Mystress: shake his hand
[4:32] Mystress: give him a gold watch.
[4:32] Mystress: tell him the job is done and wish him a happy retirement.
[4:32] Mystress: he goes
[4:33] Mystress: you can imagine a doorway of light like the beginning of twilight zone for him to go through if you want
[4:34] Mystress: when he is gone, ask if he had any staff, call them into the office
[4:34] E: lol - just a very small one
[4:35] Mystress: staff gets the retirement package too. Thanks for the job, sorry it was awful, handshake, gold watch, happy retirement. See them go.
[4:35] Mystress: then look for where the fear used to be
[4:35] Mystress: and you will find nothing but a hole full of peace
[4:36] E: wow - I feel like a big stone has been removed
[4:37] Mystress: it is awesome
[4:37] Mystress: and that is just about the whole technique
[4:37] Mystress: hard to put a book around something so simple that I can teach it in 15 minutes
[4:38] E: Oh my Goddess - what a relief
[4:39] E: that is sooo cool
[4:39] Mystress: it's miraculous
[4:39] E: I am clearer
[4:39] Mystress: and it is so easy
[4:40 E: yes - this is super - how did you discover this?

[4:41] Mystress: well you know (another shaman) had PTSD and I have a strong imperative to succeed training him so I had to work out what was really going on to get it sorted in him. I noticed that flashbacks look and feel, a lot like possession states and started to investigate, what was taking over and why?

[4:42] Mystress: the book is called 'The Sock Puppets of Post Traumatic Stress' because that is what they are, parts of you that were split off and given a job of protecting you from the trauma by holding the fear so the rest of you could still function.  They want to be retired, so they can re-integrate with you. They know they are intended to be temporary.  The emotional content of the trauma, is their calling card, it is how they tell you what their job is and it is the key for how to locate, identify and retire them.
[4:42] Mystress: when they go they take the trauma with them, and all the triggers
[4:43] Mystress: when a trigger calls, nobody answers the phone.
[4:43] E: so simple and so efficient

You may find it hard to believe that PTSD could be resolved so easily: yet this technique has worked for everyone I have taught it to.

You do not lose the memories, only the toxic emotional component of the memory. No amnesia, but a cleansing. The emotional weight of the memories, is gone. Memories that loomed so large as monstrous mountains in your path, cease to haunt you. They feel less important than what you ate for breakfast last Tuesday. The memories take their proper place, firmly in the past so you can move on. 

Along with that, comes a mysterious peaceful feeling of becoming more whole: like you regained a part of yourself that you did not realize was missing, until you got it back.

You are not broken. You are only stuck part way through the process of an elegantly designed fail-safe system that went to work protecting your mind as soon as the trauma occurred. If the system had not compartmentalized the trauma by separating it, you would be experiencing it all the time and probably be catatonic and quite unable to read this book.

Part of that system, is the reminder flag (flash backs) that plays back the contents of the compartment when something resonant comes up, (a trigger) to provide you with an opportunity to get un-stuck and complete the process.

The only problem is, you misunderstood the message and did not know how to respond, to tell the system "Yes I am done with keeping this stuff" in a way the unconscious mind can clearly understand and obey.

When it gets the right message, the system immediately responds to complete its work. It disposes of the trauma and re-integrates the compartment seamlessly.

You are not broken. The trauma did not break you. You are strong and resilient. You are temporarily in a stuck place with what has not yet been resolved. The trick to getting un-stuck turns out to be built into the system's resilience and incredibly simple, once you know the key.
I find, genuine truths can often be recognized by the elegant simplicity they demonstrate. Sometimes these truths can be found by looking at what is right about something, instead of looking for problems and flaws.

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.
~Confucius
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
~Leonardo DaVinci
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
~Albert Einstein
Simplicity is indeed often the sign of truth and a criterion of beauty.
~Mahlon Hoagland (Toward the Habit of Truth)
Purity and simplicity are the two wings with which man soars above the earth and all temporary nature.
~Thomas a Kempis
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius-- and a lot of courage-- to move in the opposite direction.
~E. F. Schumacker
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.
~Charles Mingus


Chapter 1
What Are The Sock Puppets?

The dictionary definition of a sock puppet is a hand puppet made out of a sock. We pretend the puppet has its own mind, and independent thoughts and talk to it, or have it talk to others. The separation is illusion; the puppet is a part of you just as the hand that moves it. A Sock puppet is more personal than a shadow puppet or a marionette, because it is part of you: your hand is its body.

I use the term to refer to different parts of your own mind that seem to act independently, outside of your control.

You may have encountered the term sock puppets, referring to people on the internet who create secret, alternate accounts to make it appear that they have support of other people agreeing with them. That definition does not apply here. 

The unconscious mind, speaks not in words so much as in symbols, images, clichés and metaphors. So, in the language of symbolism, let me tell you a story about sock puppets.

There is a sock puppet factory, located in the region of your deepest instincts for survival. It is a surgical suite, hidden like Frankenstein's castle in the dark hidden forest of the unconscious mind.

When lightning struck in your world and some part of you experienced some trauma so great the rest of you could not function, the sock puppet factory sprang into action. An emergency amputation was performed on the part of your mind that experienced the trauma. A little piece of you that took so much damage got split off, just as a surgeon might remove a mangled, diseased, cancerous or gangrenous limb to save a life; preserve the rest of the body.

This surgery was performed, on your mind, your identity.  This sacrifice is made so the rest of you could continue to function.  A bit of who you are, was separated, but it did not die. It cannot die, it is a part of your consciousness. The amputation is an emergency measure, and it is meant to be temporary. You do not feel truly whole, without it, although what feels missing may be hard to define- you probably will not feel the difference until it is restored.

The amputated part became a sock puppet. This splinter of consciousness was given a bad job, toxic waste storage supervisor of your most traumatic memories. It was put away in a dark dungeon like space, a timeless place, all alone with its portfolio of trauma. Where most memories fade with time, the toxic emotional storage room is timeless.  No time passes there. The sock puppets portfolio does not age, the toxic memories remain fresh and perfectly preserved. The lonely sock puppet waits for instructions, permission to finish its work.  It listens for the call from the President: you.

When there is something in your life that sounds like what the sock puppet is holding, it rushes into your conscious mind and shows its portfolio of memories because that is the only way it can tell you what its job is. The poor sock puppet is hoping to be told that its work is done, but it cannot tell the President what to do! The sock puppet cannot tell you what it needs to hear, to get the message that it can complete its work. It can only show you the toxic stuff it is holding for you.  Your conscious mind experiences the call as a trigger, and the portfolio display as a nightmare or flashback, being suddenly flooded with distressing memories and emotions of the past as if no time had passed at all.  The President did not make the call deliberately, it was triggered. The sock puppet’s message is not understood, and the President responds by trying to repress the memories, send the sock puppet back to its timeless prison.

The sock puppet’s mission becomes more urgent each time that happens, because it loves you and knows having it splintered off is not in the best interests of your long term mental health and well being. It is lonely being split off, away from experiencing life with you. It becomes more hypervigilant in listening for the call, new triggers are created, and with each new trigger the sock puppet gets a new staff member to listen for the calls. You experience your PTS getting worse.

The turn around: the resolution is teaching you, the President and CEO of your sock puppets, how to call on your sock puppets and tell them that their work is done. This is the message they are waiting for and longing to hear. The message is in words but also, most importantly, in the powerful symbolic language of the unconscious mind.

You do not have to wait for a flashback- it is better not to. All you need is the memory of having had a flashback or nightmare in the past to call up the sock puppet. When you call for “the one who is in charge of holding that traumatic memory,” you are demonstrating that you already know what the sock puppet’s job is.  It does not have to introduce itself.  Calling on it deliberately in this way, does not trigger a flashback.

The symbolic language of the unconscious mind is often rooted in cultural clichés. The message “your work is done” is expressed through the symbols of retirement. “Handshake and a gold watch.” The handshake is the thank you from you, the president and the watch is the reward for good and loyal service. The sock puppet is delighted to finally be instructed to complete its work.  It cleans out its desk, disposes of the toxic waste- the emotional content of the memories -  immediately, invisibly and seamlessly. The amputation is reversed as the sock puppet re-integrates. The memory itself is retained, but the toxic emotional charge it once held is gone.  It no longer has the power to disturb you. The memory of the traumatic event recedes to its proper place, as something of the past.  You experience a subtle sense of greater wholeness. When a trigger calls there is nobody to answer the phone. No reaction because the sock puppet has retired, been re-integrated.

You may experience the sock puppet’s joy and gratitude at being released from its office prison and its terrible job. Afterward, some people experience something like, a hole filled with peace where the trauma used to live. It really feels miraculous. When the sock puppet retires, it is gone for good, re-integrated. You may find other sock puppets related to other traumatic events, but the retirement resolution for each sock puppet, is permanent.

Next you can check if the sock puppet had any staff: call on “the ones whose job is related to the sock puppet who just retired” and retire all of its staff members too.  Thank you handshake, gold watch, happy retirement! 

At this point, you might be shaking your head at the idea that the nightmare you have been living with for so long, could be resolved so easily. In my experience, and the experience of everyone I have taught this to: yes, it really can.

  The sock puppet was always intended to be a temporary measure, not something you are stuck with, for life. It knows this, it knows you will be better off when its job is completed. All what you have been experiencing, the flashbacks, the nightmares, all the distress of PTS was just the sock puppet who held the trauma, popping up over and over again, asking for your permission to complete its work. You are not broken, the traumatic events that caused the PTS did not break you. You were just stuck part way through an elegantly designed process of survival and resilience. The only problem or issue was not knowing how to get unstuck, how to send the signal for completion to that part of your mind, in a way it can be understood and obeyed.

So to summarize, a sock puppet is part of you that got split off from the main part of your consciousness or identity.  They show up when a trigger hits, when a flashback takes you over like you are possessed by a memory from the past, so vivid like it has grown stronger with time instead of fading.  That is the nightmare of PTS, the trauma memories that don’t fade.

I know, it seems like the sock puppets have been torturing you. Before you start hating on your sock puppets, let us look at their world.  They have a very bad job, they are locked away in a cold dark place guarding the files and toxic waste barrels of your trauma. They have no free will of their own, to be able to quit the job no matter how much they want to.

Some areas of the unconscious mind, do not experience time passing and that is where the sock puppets live.  With out time, the traumatic memories and do not fade away as other memories do. They stay fresh and perfectly preserved.

You are president and CEO of all of your sock puppets. You are the boss of them, and completely autocratic because they have no free will of their own. They have function, path and purpose but no choices. They are trapped in their job until you recognise them and set them free.

As the lovely song goes:
"In a castle dark, or a fortress strong,
With chains upon my feet.
You know that ghost is me.
I can never be set free,
so long as I am a ghost that
you can't see." 
~Gordon Lightfoot

Locked away in their dark prison of a basement office, all they can do is listen and when it seems like their name is being called (what we call, a trigger) they rush into the boardroom displaying their portfolio of the highly charged emotional content they are storing for you. Begging to be allowed to retire. To finish the terrible job and rejoin, be re-integrated with the whole. 

We experience that, as a flashback. The mental boardroom is flooded with old memories and emotions, fresh as the moment they were imprinted. We struggle and resist and medicate and do everything and anything to lock the sock puppet back up in its cage again.

Everything, except tell the sock puppet what it most desperately needs to hear, from you, its boss: "Yes your job is done, you can retire now."

We have to speak to it, in its own language for it to understand and accept the message. The unconscious mind speaks in a symbolic language of images, icons, metaphors and even clichés.
We do not have to re-experience a flashback to recall having had one. Avoid getting so involved that you are pulled back in. The memory of a memory, is enough to be able to mentally point to the trauma, to give it a label: 'that stuff.'

You can be as detached with your labeling, as a librarian taping the Dewey decimal system number onto the spine of a book. No need to read the book to give it an identifying label that summarizes the topic.

Any way you can point to it, mentally, is enough to call for the sock puppet in charge of holding those memories. Calling it deliberately is very different than when it shows up in response to a trigger, bombing your life with painful flashbacks.   

When you call on it like that, you show you are already know what its job is. You are well aware of what is in the contents of its portfolio. You are pointing to it, "that stuff."  There is no need or reason for it to replay the bad flashback movie for you, now that it has succeeded in getting your attention and being recognized.

In the symbolic language of the unconscious mind, the western clichés` for retirement, tells the message that the sock puppet has been waiting to hear, in a way that it can understand. Then it can complete its work. Dispose of the toxins safely, and rejoin with the whole.

We refer to retirement: 'A handshake and a gold watch.' Both are from the president, with a little speech thanking for the years of loyal service.  If the retirement package is especially generous, it is sometimes abbreviated to a "Golden handshake."

It is important to pay them off in gold. Gold watch is traditional, other gold, coins or jewelry is acceptable. The job is done, the worker gets paid. It is part of the symbolism of completion. You have an endless supply of imaginary gold to give to them.

When I was developing this tech, one of the shamans I mentor started getting sock puppets appearing in his dreams. He did not always recognise them as such; interpreting his dreams is part of mentoring, teaching the symbolic language. In one dream, he was chatting with someone who looked like a co-worker, and they were eating Hostess twinkies. (They are small packaged cakes with a sugary filling.) As the dream ended, and the friend was leaving he asked to take the rest of the twinkies. Shaman said yes, the friend took the box and left.

My interpretation:  Hostess Twinkies are described as “Golden cakes” on the package, referring to the colour. In the symbolic language of the unconscious mind, it can be taken literally, to mean cakes made of gold. They are shaped like little gold bars. His dream illustrates the willingness of the sock puppets to be integrated. The shaman did not know it was a sock puppet, but the puppet prompted him to give it the symbol that it needed to affirm its retirement.

How do you feel about your flashbacks if you see that behind every one is a lonely sock puppet, a splintered off part of your own self, desperately begging you to be allowed to finish its work, and retire from the awful, lonely job of holding onto your trauma?


Chapter 2
Preparing Yourself  For The Work.

The Agreement.

Before we begin, I would like you to make two commitments, to yourself. The first is you will be patiently persistent. The second, is that you will be very gentle with yourself.

There is no need to push anything with this: persistence, patience with yourself and gentleness are the keys.

If your PTS stems from a single incident, and it is relatively recent, you may have only one or a few sock puppets. If it comes from a longer period of stress, like what used to be called "Shell shock" in soldiers in WW1, then there may be dozens. If you have been carrying it long enough to have experienced an increase of triggers- your puppets have increased the size of their department by adding new staff. A new puppet to mind the hotline for every new trigger.

If it is cPTSD, like from long term child abuse, there may be hundreds, and resolving them may not have much effect on the deeper, developmental disorder aspects but you still put the past to rest and find some peace.

Objectively, it does not matter if your sock puppets are few or legion: Patience and persistence wins the day. The more you work with this method, the easier it gets.  Keep at it, eventually you will identify and retire them all.  Whether it takes a few moments or a few years, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Sooner or later, you are going to run out of PTS sock puppets.

The cool thing is, PTS is not the only issue you can use the technique to resolve. The focus of this book is resolving trauma, because PTS is so widespread and causes so much suffering and suicide but the applications are much wider.  I gave some of my advance students a suggestion to play with the method, experiment and test it out with other issues to see what else it could do? They discovered they could call on sock puppets that are in charge of many types sorts of fear or self esteem-based issues: every thing from anxiety to obesity. Maybe you do not have PTS but are reading this book to help someone else: you can still use the technique for your own self improvement.  More about that, in the chapter titled Animism. 

The first key is persistence. If you are going to do this process, then stick with it. The hazard is that once the unconscious mind knows there is finally opportunity for resolution, your sock puppets can get to be like a classroom full of eager schoolchildren who all know the answer, waving their arms trying to get your attention. "Pick me next!!" You could get an increase of flashback incidents if they feel forgotten, and they go back to their old way of reminding you that they exist.

If you are the type of person to do the process a few times and then forget about it, then give yourself lots of persistent reminders. Put up a lot of post-it notes to remind yourself to ask "Who is in charge of holding these emotions?" when traumatic memories come up.

The second key is gentleness.

Some people go the opposite direction  are so thrilled and relieved to find something that works that they push too hard trying to resolve everything at once, and things get a little chaotic.
Take the process slowly and do not try to push anything. Choose to be kind and gentle with you, including the splintered bits of you.

Make an agreement now, with your self, to be very gentle with yourself as you work through this process. You have been through enough pain already. You do not need to re-experience the trauma or flashbacks to get resolution. The memory and knowledge of having had them, is enough.

This is important: you know your self, you know your trauma, you know the sorts of things that can trigger an event.  That is all you need to find your sock puppets.

You can remember the effects, without re-activating them. You can remember a flash back you had in the past, without immersing yourself so deeply in the memory as to trigger another one.
You can remember the sleepless night haunted by traumatic memories circling your mind like hungry rats in a cage. You can tell your spouse about the bad night you had, over morning coffee without falling back into that nightmare state again.  That sort of second-hand detachment, is ideal for this work.

This is not like those shock therapy desensitization efforts where you are faced with your phobia over and over in hopes that the trigger button can be pounded hard until it breaks and stops working. That is just cruelty.

I know, some people really like to challenge themselves, to face their fear. There will be cowboys who immerse themselves in a situation that triggers their PTS in the hopes of having one big sock puppet round up.  Please, do not traumatize yourself like that.   Slow and steady, with kindness.

A memory of a time when you were disturbed by memories, is enough of a handle to point to, in order to pose the question "Who is in charge of holding onto those memories and emotions?"

I think it is fair to say, very few of us have the presence of mind, to remember to ask that question when trauma has taken us over. The post-it notes and reminders all over your world can help you, and it is the role of any support person to remind you to ask.

If you are reading this, seeking to help someone you love, a later chapter is dedicated to explaining how best to support your loved ones through the process. *

You are President of your sock puppet staff, you can dictate or negotiate your terms, and they must obey, …unless those terms conflict with their purpose, their prime directive of toxic waste disposal and re-integration. You cannot just tell all your sock puppets, to shut up and leave you alone. You already tried that, all the times you wished the post-trauma stress would just go away. Does not work.

Address your own unconscious mind: it is always listening! Make an agreement with yourself, selves to work through this process to resolve the old trauma.  Insist it must unfold at a steady, gentle and easy pace that you can easily handle.

Chapter 3
The Healing Value of Laughter.

Trauma is a very heavy topic, maybe the heaviest next to grief. I try to keep things lighter, not out of disrespect but to engage the release valve of laughter.  I use playful language and terms to dispel fear, but do not let that fool you into thinking this book is a bit of fluff.

The power of this process still awes me, even after leading people through it so many times.  You are going to learn to engage some hidden abilities of your mind, and your mind is a tremendously powerful and precious thing. Discovering the power of your mind, can actually be quite humbling.

An old friend used to say, "I tried to drain the swamp, now I am up to my ass in alligators." Another who suffered a lot of PTSD changed the Zen expression, "chop wood, carry water" to describe her days trying to stay afloat, emotionally: "Bite wood, tread water."

An old wise one said, "Laughter is how we handle pain." Like a release valve on a pressure cooker, it lets out the steam safely. We joke about the things that scare us: death, embarrassment and taxes. We make our monsters look foolish, like bad politicians satirized in a newspaper cartoon, to dispel our fear of them. Imagining the forces behind your PTS as a bunch of goofy little sock puppets, is empowering.

You may learn some things about yourself that you do not like much.  There is no purpose to beating yourself up about what you find:  by becoming aware, you gain power of choice to not repeat things you wish you had not done.

Everybody has stuff. We are human, we err and fail sometimes, and do not live up to our own expectations or other people's and then beat ourselves up about it, trying to whip us into shape. The result is rarely successful, usually we only end up stressing our health and damaging our self esteem. 

Sometimes people fall into anger of regrets for the past, for all the lost years spent suffering. The types of trauma that occur as a result of abuse, especially, it can be hard to let go of the anger and victimhood: but these emotions are part of the fuel that keeps the trauma patterns active. You can retire the puppets that are holding onto those emotions too!  Sometimes, in hindsight when those puppets have been retired it can be humbling and eye opening to realize what we did to ourselves in response to trauma is often much worse than what was done to us.

Do not poison your future with anger from the past. Stay aware. “Who is in charge of holding these emotions?”  Handshake- thank you, gold watch, happy retirement. Off they go.

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.
                                  ~Eleanor Roosevelt

Chapter 4
Making Friends with Your Unconscious Mind.

I know it sounds like a strange idea.

Unconscious Mind is an umbrella term for all the parts, aspects and activities of your mind that are not part of your conscious awareness. That is quite a lot, possibly infinite depending on your outlook and your physics preferences. Every part of you, has your best interests in mind and wants the best for you, even if it does not seem like it. If relative size and activity could be measured, your conscious mind would be the moon and your unconscious would be the sun and all the space between.

So, your unconscious mind is already on your side, and it is extremely powerful. It is very life-enhancing to develop a relationship with it.

For much of my Mystic teaching work, and some schools of hypnosis invite the unconscious mind to communicate with the consciousness through a representative. For Shamans, the guide shows up in early childhood as a terrible monster of nightmares that become night terrors, and that is how we are taught to be fearless from a state of unconditional love. So we really don’t get a choice about that. For my Mystic work, tantra students work with the Divine Beloved, a representative of their unconscious mind anima/animus as Divine soul mate for the Sacred Marriage. That Divine self that guides and supports them through the process and turns it into a passionate love affair.

We do not need to create any kind of internal or mental guide for this work. The sock puppets come when they are called and integrate when retired.

Still, it helps to become more in tune and we begin by cultivating and attitude of gratitude. You might be mad at your unconscious mind, blaming it as the source of your crazy. It will also be the mechanism of your resolution, but for now let us look at all the ways it serves you.

It runs your body. It controls all of the automatic processes, from keeping you breathing to the minute operations of every single cell of your body. It has conversations with the parts that are you but not-you, like the bacterial ecosystem of your gut flora.

It translates all the raw data coming from your senses into meaning you can understand. Your eyes, only pick up patterns of photons, they do not make sense of them. It is your unconscious mind that compares the data with all of your education and past experience to name the objects and people around you. It stores and organizes all of your memories, yes including the traumatic ones. It assesses them too, downgrading the commonplace and retaining the memorable.

It compares data. If you see a creature with lizard feet, feathered wings and a beak, your unconscious mind will identify it as a bird even if it is a type of bird you have never seen before. A penguin has feathers like fur and wings like fins but you would still recognise it as a type of bird.

Your unconscious mind is responsible for your learning anything you can learn well enough to do without needing to think about it, from riding a bike to playing the violin. Muscle memory- the skilled musician never needs to think about where to put his fingers.

This topic could be endless, scientific research is constantly learning new things about how the mind, and the body mind works to take care of us.

Did you ever think, to stop and thank it? We begin to make friends with our own unconscious mind, by cultivating an attitude of gratitude. Thanking it for all that it does for us.

Say out loud, “Thank you, my unconscious mind” with real gratitude, then take a deep slow breath. Repeat 10 times.

Do this as often as you like.

If it is difficult for you to invoke the emotion of gratitude, then just spend some time thinking of the things in your life you are already grateful for to get into a grateful state of mind and then apply it to the words thanking your your unconscious mind.

After a few repeats, you may notice a curious effect, like some part of you is responding with warmth and love.

Chapter 5
The Shaman's Quest

There are many tribes in the jungles of the Amazon basin, and each tribe has its own, local recipe for curare, an important arrow tip poison for hunters. Curare paralyses the prey so it goes limp and falls out of the tree. It cannot run away wounded, and curare does not poison the meat.
The recipes are not simple, the preparation requires steps that would challenge a modern laboratory, and the variations depend on using local plants.

When asked how they got the recipe, the tribes all say, they asked the shaman who asked the spirits and the spirits gave the solution. Of course, if the shaman was not already familiar with all the local plant life, the information might not be understood.

Consider the ancient Sumerians. They are the oldest civilized culture known, long predating the old testament, the ancient Greeks and Romans and all the Chinese dynasties. They seem to have invented everything from writing, to agriculture to the wheel. How did one early civilization evolve so quickly and attain so much?

They left behind thousands of clay tablets and artifacts with writing and art, and the code of their cuneiform symbols has mostly been cracked.

Their own writing and art says, the spirits taught them how to do everything. This has led to boatloads of conspiracy theories and wild speculation about alien intervention, none of it feels true to me.

I feel the curare recipes and the Sumerian invention of the wheel, all spring from different channels of the same source.  I believe evolution is guided by God the Mother, the wisdom of the Planetary Consciousness.  It is part of the natural and intrinsic teamwork dynamic of our species that into every culture are born a few people who are gifted to be able to tap into a wider source of knowledge.

Some are the artists, inspired by the muse to show us, ourselves reflected. Some are spiritual leaders, like Christ or Buddha, showing us a new way to live in peace and harmony.

The Shamans, are the problem solvers. It is a service position, so we are more empowered if the request, question or problem to be solved, comes from someone outside of ourselves.

That is me, modern shaman in the western world: problem plus experience leads to inspiration, and I return from my spirit walk quest with answers to share with the tribe.

It is difficult to trace all the sources of inspiration, all the ideas events and insights that led to the discoveries. Discovering some PTS in myself was the first motive, years spent trying to find healing for myself. Exploring its patterns and how it affected my thoughts and behavior. 
Even then, it was not my own issues but the imperative to help others that offered the key. 

Much is written about PTS flashbacks, nightmares. New studies can identify it by stress hormone changes in the brain, but much less is written about how people with PTS often act out in ways quite different from their usual selves, or about how it feels to be dragged along for the ride when something triggers a flashback or emotional disturbance.

Consider the phenomena described by so many frightened wives of war veterans, "when he is triggered he is not the same person. I do not know that man."

Modern people do not usually use medieval language to describe what they observe but they are witnessing a possession state. It was not the same person, only speaking from the same face.
I observed that activated trauma looked and felt exactly like other possession states I had experienced or seen in others.

Sometimes the trauma-self had different goals and priorities from their regular self. Often the memories of what people said and did when PTS had hold of them, were patchy and blurred afterwards.

Communicating via text, instant messages and chat gave the opportunity to compare someone's memory of what they had said with the chat history.

Modern psychology does not speak of possession states, but to a shaman that is clearly what people suffering from PTS and those close to them are describing and experiencing. The feeling of being taken over is such an odd shift most do not recognize it happening. 

Shamans have a facility for loaning our bodies and minds out, to other consciousnesses on a temporary basis to allow them to communicate with others. We call it "horsing" as if they ride us. Channeling old gods, aspects of my own unconscious mind and others, even spirits of the dead: particularly for a deceased mom who did not get the chance to say goodbye. Those are startling, sudden and brief. I studied acting and improvisation for years, and the experience of acting and the experience of horsing, or channeling are distinctly different. The voluntary possession states of Shaman work, are benevolent.  The PST flashbacks were traumatic but underneath, they had the same feel of having been taken over.

I started asking:  What is taking them over? Why? What is the purpose?  Clearly, it was some part of their own consciousness that rose up and not something external.

First impressions of the system that was taking people over, seemed protective. The alternate self seems to rise up so defensive when triggered, as if to stop a similar event from occurring. I had nicknamed them "Defenders" but frankly, if protection is their job then they suck at it. Really, so ineffective that it actually seemed to attract more of the same, like bad karma coming around again and again.  Every time they rise the trauma seems to get worse, and new triggers get added.

Working from the perspective that what is happening is right, a natural process unfolding as it should, it becomes clear that the defender theory is flawed. There are many different types of protection, and not all involve defenses.

The pattern of triggers and flashbacks looked a lot like the process of karmic release in my Kundalini students.  Part of the spontaneous process of awakening is a profound cleansing of the psyche. Stuff of old fears, unresolved emotions from the past, all sorts of forgotten mental baggage from the past, rises up into conscious awareness to be released. Thoughts and feelings can recur, over and over, stronger and stronger until the individual consciously chooses to let it go.

The opportunity to make that choice is the only reason the old stuff rises into consciousness instead of staying buried and forgotten. Your sock puppets know you are better off with it released and them integrated. You would be more whole, stable and happy without the trauma haunting you.

It is like the kundalini works with the unconscious mind to help you clean your mental closet, and pulls stuff out of the closet, one item at a time and asks "are you done with this? Can you let it go?" It keeps showing the stuff persistently, until you say "yes" in a way the unconscious mind can understand.

Learning to flow with the process is imperative. Resisting the cleansing process can become destabilizing, as the increasing pressure grows into psychosis or obsession. 

With Kundalini, the key is to give ownership of the stuff, to the part of your unconscious mind that is bringing it up. 'Thy will be done.' The part of you that knows what needs to be resolved, also knows how to release the stuff and give you back the core insights so you become wiser and more at peace. The process is called "surrender," but think of it as the legal term for a transfer of ownership. It is not about any kind of failure, or defeat.

The mental purification of Kundalini works to erode the limited ego ideas about one's self, to open the channels of enlightenment.

I had been trying for years, to use surrender to resolve my cPTSD with very limited success. It is a different sort of stuff; it is not happening on the same level.

The contents of PTS cannot be ego related because animals can get traumatized too, and an animal does not have an ego like a human mind does. Animal rescue shelters are full of traumatized pets needing rehabilitation. If animals can get PST too, then it goes deeper than ego identity.  So I looked deeper, into the deepest levels of the unconscious mind where there is no thought, only the reflexive mechanisms of our most ancient survival instincts.
In deep trance, I sought answers.

Quest-ion: What is really going on in people with post-traumatic stress?

Expressing the topic: Some of the answers I already knew: Shaman's observation of myself and others, seeing the change that comes over someone whose trauma has been triggered: it looks and feels, exactly like a possession state.  What I really wanted to know:
What, or whom has taken them over?

A protective aspect of themselves, born from the deep unconscious survival instincts has taken over their mind, body and emotions.

How or why is this splinter identity born?
It is created to be the scapegoat, it holds the emotions of the trauma, separating it from the core identity so the core can continue to function.

Oh!
That is quite genius, actually!

I am awed by perfection for a moment and that open state triggers the 'download.' Shamans get those. A holistic dump of information coming in all at once in different forms. Only fragments of it can be understood, and those give clues to decoding the rest but it takes time to unpack it… sometimes, years. A download, is like hearing the squeal of a fax machine sending information, but it has to be printed out and read before the message can be understood.

Human minds are persistently linear. Unpacking and translating a download is like, at the beginning of a class you are given the textbook, you can read the title and hold it in your hands. It contains all of the information the class will teach, but it is still going to take all semester to go through the book page by page to absorb and understand the contents.  A bit longer still, to comprehend it well enough to be able to teach: to translate it into words you can share.   

If you have PTSD the words "possession state" probably rang a loud bell for you… and likely you find it to be a disturbing idea, especially if you associate it with old horror movies like ‘The Exorcist.’ Really it is nothing like that, nothing external. Your sock puppets are part of you, and they LOVE you. Their whole gig is about taking care of you. Might not feel like it when a flashback hits, but if not for their sacrifice, you might be stuck in a traumatized state full time.

You feel possessed when something triggers you, like the old trauma takes you over and you have no control even though part of you knows the emotional memories are old news-  you are stuck reliving a nightmare.

From a shaman's perspective that is exactly what is happening. An aspect of your identity got splintered off because of trauma. The splinter was created because you needed it to do a harsh job, to be scapegoat and toxic emotional waste containment. The sock puppet’s protective function is to contain and separate out the emotions of the trauma, so the rest of you could still function. 

The idea that our identity might be splintered into multiple selves, has a very high creep factor to most people. Our horror and crime fiction loves to play on the theme of lethal insanity, the serial killer turns out to be some kind of Jekyll and Hyde monster. The news stories of the neighbors saying, "he seemed a nice, guy, quiet, kept to himself…" and they never would have guessed he had all those bodies buried in the back yard.

I will address these fears, and explain how the true nature of consciousness really is more like a committee than a solo act, in a later chapter. For now, let's just look at a gentler imprint.

Put a sock over your hand, poke a mouth shape, folding the sole between fingers and thumb, sew on some buttons or use a felt pen to draw eyes. Now you have a snaky-looking sock puppet, with a face.

Every child knows how to pretend the sock puppet is a separate being, capable of independent thought and speech. When a toy is well loved, the child may come to really believe it really has its own identity. They will talk with it, give it emotions and a history, even blame it for things they did. ("The teddy bear ate all the cookies!")  It seems to take on a life of its own but it is still their own creation, their servant.   It truly has no free will.

The sock puppets of post-traumatic stress, are these splinter selves created in the sock puppet factory of in the deep instinctive levels of the mind where the patterns of survival live. We create them unconsciously, because we need them to do a job for us. That they keep on doing the job, long after we wish they would stop, is not their fault. They have no free will.

The puppets seem like enormous powerful monsters when they take you over but they are actually your servants, they are doing the job another part of you gave them to do, as best they can. For sure it is not a fun job for them to be locked away from the rest of you, alone and lonely with just a barrel of trauma.  They cannot change anything about the job on their own, because they have no free will.

Giving you a flashback is the only way they have to let you know they are there and what their job is. It is horrible but you have to admit, it is very motivating!

There is a tragic comedy here. Every flashback, is a sock puppet asking “Can I stop holding this stuff? Can we let this trauma go now? When will my job end?"

Every time the trauma has hold of you, I bet, you are thinking "How do I get this to stop? How do I let it go? When does this nightmare end?"

Different sides of the same desire. So, in a way, yes, their message is getting through but most importantly, you and your puppets are on the same side. You want the same thing!

Unfortunately, sock puppets are very simple creatures, they are just a little bit of consciousness with pre-programmed functions, not a whole mind. They have no free will to be able to make the decision to integrate, on their own.

One trick ponies. Store the stuff, keep sending memos to head office, outlining the contents when a related topic comes up. Waiting for the day when head office tells them the job is done.
They have no ability to tell you what needs to be in the head office memo. That is what this book is for.

Like a little flag comes up, "Error message -Consult user manual" but the system did not come with a manual! Nobody had the manual. So we think it is broken and we don't know how to fix it.

It is like me, Windows user, at my husband's Linux computer. Nothing but a black text screen and a blinking command prompt, and the computer is waiting for instruction but I got no idea what I am supposed to type in there, to get it to do what I want. Fortunately, if I am on my man's computer then most likely it is because he is on the phone asking me to look up something and he will tell me what to type. Linux has a manual, user groups, forums.

Nobody wrote a manual for the sock puppets of PTS until now. Nobody even knew where to look for one, or that the issue might be a possession state, or even that a sock puppet splinter identity might be the source.

It took a shaman, to figure out where the system is made, track down the factory and ask the designer "What do I type in, at the command prompt to get "sock puppets.exe" to complete its program cycle, dump the data and merge again?

The system is not broken, it is paused waiting for the correct user input, a blinking command prompt that also pops up reminders of what it is waiting for permission to delete. Unfortunately, the reminders are a trip back to the worst moments of your life, and you cannot stop the pop-ups until you enter the correct command into the prompt. There was no one in the world who could tell you what to type to make the nightmares end.

The lightness of my tone, is not intended to disrespect or diminish your experiences or your suffering. The purpose is to engage the healing power of laughter. It is a Zen expression that if caught in the Zen Madness, which is a paranoia of demons, you are cured when you are able to laugh at them. Like Alice shouting "You are nothing but a pack of cards!" before awakening from her dream and seeing them scattered. The monsters of her dream, nothing but toys made of cardboard and paint.   

Referring to a serious disorder by the label of a child's toy may seem frivolous, even offensive... but it is about putting a new face on your monsters to get past your fear. As you learn the process of resolution, and get to know the nature of the trauma splinters that have been ruling you, you will learn how appropriate the label really is and that will be a joyful breakthrough of personal empowerment.

The sock puppets are splinters, bits of you that got separated from your core identity, and they live in your unconscious mind.  You did not make the splinters deliberately; if the trauma was severe then the core 'you' probably "left the building." You were out of your mind with pain or fear and the deep unconscious survival part of your body-mind took over.

Separated out the debilitating trauma, packed it away into a puppet. This solution that was the best it could do, and it was not made to last. The puppets are intended to be short term and temporary emergency repair so you could come back to yourself.

To be human, is to adapt. Humans more than any other creatures on this planet have adapted to live in all climates and countries around the world, and even off it. We adapted tools to survive in space, on the moon, in deep sea or hottest desert, and have our sights set on colonizing Mars.

The famous story of Victor Frankl is of someone who adapted to survive as a prisoner of Auschwitz concentration camp, by changing his thoughts and focus. He noticed that the people who survived were those who had a strong reason for living, their lives had purpose and it gave them strength.  The purpose itself could be entirely subjective, very personal. He focused on his love for his wife as his purpose in life, even though he did not know if she was alive or dead. It gave him strength to not only survive the most notorious death camp of the 3rd Reich, but he went on to write a book about his experiences called "Man's search for meaning" that became a global bestseller in dozens of languages and so he is considered a father of the modern self-help movement.

Our bodies evolve relatively slowly, generation to generation but our minds can evolve quite quickly in response to various challenges, trauma or inspirations. PTS is an evolutionary response to ensure survival despite extreme trauma.

There is a human tendency to assume something is bad, or useless if we do not understand the true purpose of it. For decades, doctors routinely removed children's tonsils, considered a useless organ prone to infection. Now we know that tonsils are an important part of our immune system and removal is rare. This effect shows up even more with environmental issues. The more we explore the interdependence of ecosystems the more we see that every part of it is necessary to keep the whole in balance. Your PTS is a result of your mind and body acting as it needed to, to maintain balance, and keep you functioning.

You are not broken, your mind has engaged some important base survival mechanisms and the problem is you do not understand the purpose.  Imagine if the trauma memories and feelings were with you all the time instead of coming up when triggered? You would be unable to function at all.

When you understand the purpose, the resolution becomes possible.

Case Study
Male, early 40s, previously hospitalized for a catatonic state caused by emotional trauma and compassion fatigue.
[10:50] Mystress: good to know someone believes in you?
[10:51] B: ahh,...  you know how Messed up my psyche is... A lot of land mines... to defend against... encouragement. lol
[10:52] B: but I'm trying to remove them... and not get all CRAZY ego about it.
[10:52] Mystress:
[10:52] Mystress: it is the stick man, give him a gold watch
(Stick man is a term we used for the parts of his ego that obsess about his fears and bring him down.)
[10:52] B: Hmms... nods
[10:56] B: I've been working on something.
[10:56] Mystress: oh?
[10:56] B: I have a theory.
[10:58] B: one of my hang ups ... is... I can STILL feel, vividly, pieces and moments from my past. I think that sometimes limits how well I can GROW beyond that.. and let things go... in a way.. Its Astral Projection gone haywire that I need to Limit and Control.
[10:59] B: I even recently found... I STILL have hang ups with my freaking Dad... which ticked me off!
[10:59] Mystress: heh
[11:00] B: while exploring WHY... I was RIGHT THERE... 12 years old... standing in my room the day I got my first Bass Guitar.
[11:00] Mystress: that is excellent
[11:00] Mystress: these memories return to be released
[11:00] B: I even remember the feel of the carpet under my toes as he stood in the door and said...." Ya know, only maybe one out of a million who try to play music ever make a living with it."
[11:01] Mystress: oooooooooooo
[11:01] B: yeah... I know.
[11:01] Mystress: I have imagined you on American Idol, you have a great rock voice and you sing with passion
[11:02] B: well...  that was a path not taken now.
[11:02] Mystress: give that boy a gold watch
[11:03] B: Hmm... the boy?...
[11:03] B: why?
[11:03] Mystress: try it
[11:03] B: nods and obeys
[11:04] B: ok

(Instead he gets distracted from the retirement process, caught up in the emotional memories of the sock puppet. The process is DIY but a support person to help you stay focused can be invaluable. Be patiently persistent but don't push it. Let them have their space to process and sort their thoughts. )

[11:06] B: I still resent my dad for that...  I inherited that... Negativity and  .... self discouragement.
[11:06] B: My reply to him was.... to Show how much I agreed...  and showed him I had No expectations of anything Valuable.
[11:07] B: ... which makes me sick now.
[11:07] Mystress: after the gold watch?
[11:07] B: ok.. retiring the little boy who was seeking approval.
[11:08] B: no that was my reply back then.
[11:08] Mystress: I meant about the sick feeling
[11:08] B: Oh.. ..  sighs
[11:08] B: I'm trying to let it go
[11:08] B: just wish I didn't see so much of it in myself now
[11:08] Mystress: retirement party for the boy...
[11:08] Mystress: Now?
[11:09] B: nods
[11:11] B: ok..
[11:11] B: stick man?
[11:13] B: nods and accepts
[11:14 B: breathes

[11:16] Mystress: how do you feel?
[11:16] B: breathessss again and just accepts
[11:17] B: I am ok.
[11:18] Mystress: the vivid memory flashbacks are the calling cards of sock puppets
[11:18] B: Hmms... not astral projection?
[11:18] B: or time travel?
[11:19] Mystress: no, they have no names but purpose and the purpose is to store the trauma or negative content
[11:19] B: ooo
[11:19] Mystress: so showing you what they hold, is telling you "Hi Boss! This stuff has been my job. Can I retire now?"
[11:19] B: that totally makes sense
[11:19] Mystress: yes
[11:19] B: ummm...
[11:19] Mystress: think of the memory again
[11:19] B: there are a LOT of them..
[11:19] B: ok
[11:20] B: its less... Jolting now.
[11:20] B: still ... some resentment at my Dream Killer dad.
[11:20] B: some... some of the responsibility is mine too
(The sock puppets take the emotional content of the memories with them when they go. Reintegration with the core self transmutes trauma into empowering wisdom, self knowledge. Taking responsibility is taking back your power, that was given away to victimhood.)

[11:20] Mystress: ask for other related puppets to come forward for a retirement party
[11:20] B: nods and obeys
[11:23] B: ok too many... a lot of blurring
[11:23] B: just accepts
(You do not have to be able to clearly visualize the puppets! Some people have no ability to visualize, and it does not matter for this. Your clear intention that the sock puppets' job is done and they can retire, plus the handshake thank-you and the imaginary retirement gift is what matters to the process.)

[11:23] B: invites them ALL to the party
[11:25] B: Hands out watches
[11:26] B: Breathesss
[11:26] Mystress:
[11:27] Mystress: now look at the memory again
[11:27] B: nods
[11:27] Mystress: feels like just.. old news?
[11:27] B: yeah.... it is a little more.. distant.
[11:28] Mystress: like it happened to somebody else...
[11:28] B: not quite... that distant... but more than it was, yes
[11:28] Mystress:
[11:28] B: breathesssss
[11:29] Mystress: you are free of it. Anything else comes up; gold watches…
[11:29] Mystress:
[11:30] B: how is your book coming along?
[11:30] Mystress: you just helped me write it, thanks for permission to excerpt a case study
[11:30] B: *smiles* my pleasure to assist in anyway I can

  Chapter 6
The Resolution Method

You know what your trauma is, you know what your flashbacks feel like and the content of them. That is all you need to call upon your sock puppets for resolution. There is no need to re-experience the trauma with flashbacks, that is actually a bit counter-productive, a distraction.
Yet, if you are caught in a flashback, calling on the sock puppet responsible can snap you out of it quickly. It creates some emotional distance: the traumatic emotional memories belong to the sock puppet. You are the boss of it, the president or CEO.

We can start by creating the mental space to do the work.

If you have a good imagination, you can mentally design your CEO office. Decorate it any way you like, so long as it has a door. If you want, you can give it one of those office announcement intercoms, but it is not necessary as your staff can hear your thoughts.

I am an artist, I am very good at visualization, I can even imagine an object in 3-d and mentally turn it around to see all sides. I tend to speak in terms of visual imagery. If you are good at imagining things too, then this work can get kind of fun, interesting.

I know there are people who have no ability to visualize, at all. They simply cannot conjure pictures in their mind. If you are not good at visualizing, it does not matter. You can work by intention. You can act it out, and use props and visual aids like the cover of this book. You can empower your intentions by "thought, word and deed." You have many ways to communicate the retirement message to your unconscious mind.

https://www.ecosia.org/images?q=sock+puppet

If you like, you can search for a picture of your dream office on the internet, download a picture and print it up to focus on. Choose a picture that shows the door.

You can skip making an office, just have an intention, that you have an office and you are in it- even if you have no idea what it would look like.

You can be like one of those Hollywood bosses in the movies that takes calls and meetings while lounging beside the pool. Your door might be a garden gate.



The language of the unconscious mind, is one of symbols but ultimately, so is all of our verbal, visual and written communication. We have many different alphabets. This is written in a phonetic alphabet but there are also runic alphabets of the Vikings, pictograph or hieroglyphic alphabets like the Chinese or Egyptian...

[Mystress]

Book excerpts: Chapter 6 continues...

The language of the unconscious mind, is one of symbols but ultimately, so is all of our verbal, visual and written communication. We have many different alphabets. This is written in a phonetic alphabet but there are also runic alphabets of the Vikings, pictograph or hieroglyphic alphabets like the Chinese or Egyptian, and we have specialized symbols for science, chemistry, astrology, alchemy, mathematics and musical notation. All visual symbol languages, except Morse code and braille.

My point being, regardless of the symbolic language you are using, mixing the symbols up in a different order or skipping some of them, is not going to send the same message.
Same with this, your idea of your office can be expressed as you like, or just be an intention you hold in your mind: "I am in my office. I am CEO of my Sock Puppets."

The working world has changed in the past few decades. There is no longer an expectation that someone can work for one company their whole lives and then retire with a pension. The "handshake & a gold watch" meme persists though and expressions that are old and widespread like that, make the clearest symbolic messages to the unconscious mind. You can tell your sock puppet that its job is done, clearly in a way it can understand and obey, by giving it the classic retirement ritual of the western world.
...

We could jump in and tackle the biggest baddest trauma that you have, but we agreed to be gentle so let's start smaller. Some thought or memory that makes you uncomfortable, even something that is merely embarrassing.

The next bit, stick to the script. Ask yourself, your unconscious mind:

"Who is in charge of holding these emotions?" Mentally, pointing to the memory. You can have a little bit of variation:

"Who is responsible for holding those memories?" The important word, is holding. The sock puppets, are containment. "In charge", or "responsible" refers to their job.

I tried to teach this to a real self-help, go-getter type as part of his healer training. When I told him to present the question, he answered it for himself instead. He said "I am." Yes, technically he is right, as President we are ultimately responsible but if that attitude could resolve post-trauma stress I would not need to write the book. Resist step one, there is nowhere to go from there. It stops the process cold. Like they say in Vegas, you have to play, to win.

Even if you are still a determined skeptic who refuses to believe you have any sock puppets, or that such things exist, you have nothing to lose by following along with the instructions and trying it out anyway to see what happens.

If you are good at imagining, you may already see something come into your mental office, or feel like some sort of presence has shown up in your mind.

Visual people may get a presence with (or without) a face, and it is important not to attach too much significance to appearances. I am very visual but I often do not bother to look close enough to see a face, a faint vaguely human shaped presence in my mind is good enough. It could show up as a lobster, it really does not matter.

A sock puppet can show up as anything, its appearance is not important except that you might get an emotional reaction to seeing some faces. If it shows up wearing the face of someone who hurt you in the past, know that it really is not that person! It represents all your thoughts and feelings about the person, not the actual person.   The face is just the identifying label on the file.

Face to face with our abuser, how many of us could be masochistically Christian enough to turn the other cheek, shake their hand and thank them for it? Not me, and I would not ask it of you either. The sock puppet with the abuser's face is not the monster, it is just a little kid wearing a monster mask. Your kid, it is a lost and lonely piece of you.

Maybe you think you got no response. It does not matter. Some people have no ability to visualize and that does not matter either. You can choose a face for your sock puppet and interact with that. Even if you see or feel nothing, your unconscious mind is always listening.

The command has been heard and the sock puppet has no choice but to obey and it will. It does not matter if your ability to detect it is nonexistent. It is there, because you told it to be there. It has no free will to be able to argue with you about that. It has been waiting for the call since the moment it was created. You can be sure it is there and it is listening attentively.

If you did not get a face, if you did not get anything, it is ok to choose a face for it. The visual appearance of your sock puppets is like a software icon. Looking at my desktop, I count 9 different software icons that have some sort of face on them.

If you call for a sock puppet, and then hold an intention that the picture or prop you are looking at, represents its face, it will accept that what you say to that face is addressed to it.
Let’s call the face you choose, its icon. Makes me think of old Russian religious icons, saints and martyrs with big sad eyes, gilded and  adorned with mother of pearl and gemstones. We do not pray to sock puppets, though! You are the boss of them.

There is a sock puppet on the cover of this book for you to use, along with a gold watch and a doorway. Visual aids. You can decide it represents the sock puppet you called for, and talk to it. It does not matter if all your sock puppets look the same: the cover puppet will do it all.

Your sock puppet has no free will. If you, the President, decrees that all of the sock puppets of your internal staff, look like a cartoon character, they say "yeah, Boss" and accept that what is directed to a picture of that face, is said to them. You can print a picture of it, or keep one on your phone to talk to when any hint of a trigger shows up. Any face you want, even a smil-icon sticker can be the face of your sock puppet. 

You can draw a stick figure on a piece of paper and decide that is what the puppet looks like. You can choose some other picture of a face- do not choose the face of a living person though, it confuses the message. If the sock puppet, itself shows up wearing the face of a person, accept the label but do not choose an icon that represents the face of someone.

Sometimes your sock puppets may look like you- they are aspects of yourself. Some may look like people you have had issues with in the past. It is not actually those people, it represents your thoughts, ideas, beliefs and feelings about them. Sometimes your sock puppets may have no face at all, sometimes when I am clearing the staff of a manager puppet I just see a lot of arms reaching out for a handshake and gold watch.

Wikipedia defines Animism: (from Latin anima, "breath, spirit, life") is the religious belief that objects, places and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence.

Potentially, animism perceives all thingsâ€"animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems, human handiwork and perhaps even wordsâ€"as animated and alive.

This is quite a widespread concept. Some say “God-dess is All that Is” suggesting that consciousness abides in everything. Zen Buddhists say the essence of life and consciousness, the Buddha nature is in everything. Hindus say the same of Brahmin, the supreme consciousness that is in everything.

It is not only a religious or spiritual belief. Some scientists believe in panpsychism, the idea that all matter has a particle of consciousness. Physicists notice that subatomic particles seem to behave differently when observed. Scientist John Archibald Wheeler coined the term “Black hole”and wrote about the proto-consciousness field. He believed in panpsychism. UK physicist Sir Roger Penrose put forth a theory that consciousness is present in matter even at the quantum level.

I define it more simply, for our purposes. Putting a face onto something so you can have a conversation with it. It is a thing shamans do all the time. Shamans can potentially talk to anything from trees to viruses, and often do. One shaman I mentored, likes to talk to subatomic particles. He works for a cable company and takes a ride on an electron to diagnose transmission errors. How do you have a conversation with something that only exists for a tiny fraction of a second? Shamans can do odd things with time. It is much like Albert Einstein imagining what it would be like to be a photon, and coming up with the theory of Relativity. He also said “Imagination is more important than knowledge” and that works for us, with this. Resolve trauma via imagination.

Some types of animism is used in different forms of healing and counselling, like how some cancer patients are advised to talk to their cancer.

Now your sock puppet has a face to talk to, it does not matter if it has arms or hands. If it has no face but only arms or hands, that works too.  What matters is your intention, and you can reinforce it with action. Reach out and shake hands with the puppet. Shake hands with the sock puppet in your mind, or put your arm out towards the icon and shake hands with the air.
Look at the sock puppet on the book cover, mime shaking hands with it. If you have a physical prop, like an actual sock puppet on your hand, shake hands with yourself.

Say out loud, addressing it while you shake its hand:
" Thank you for your years of loyal service. I am sorry it was a rough job. Your work is done and you can retire. I wish you peace and a happy retirement!"

The words are important, and we will examine them more later.

Handshake is completed. Give the sock puppet, a gold watch. This is important, the gift of a gold watch from the President, is a powerful symbol of retirement.  It can be any sort of watch you like so long as it is gold. A fancy antique pocket watch on a chain, or a big new Rolex in an open jewel box, or something sparkly from Tiffany's, adorned with diamonds. The details are flexible, and an endless supply of imaginary gold watches costs you nothing. If you cannot imagine, then can cut a picture of a gold watch from a magazine, print one off the web. 'Drag & drop' on the book cover, like it's a touch screen. Put your finger on the picture of the gold watch and drag it to the sock puppet picture with the intention of gifting. 

You may find sometimes you get a feeling that the sock puppet is very grateful to be allowed to retire. If you are visualizing, it might want to hug you or express its obedience by kissing your hand like it is the Pope's ring, or expressing devotion to a King. Accept it. I have never encountered a sock puppet that wants to punch you or anything like that. It is not part of their nature. 

Time to go. Point towards the door, see the puppet exit. Take a nice, slow deep breath, and let it out with a sigh like sitting down to rest after a long day of work. Relax.

Sock puppets, sometimes have staff. You may have retired a middle manager. Some have supervisors too. It depends on the trauma. If it has been with you long enough to grow some new triggers, imagine behind every trigger is the puppet who waits by the phone for the trigger to call. Looks like a call center for a charity telethon! Puppets are waiting to take your call!
If the trauma period was longer, like for military service, then there may be an assortment of puppets for different events, they are related but individual.

I usually assume there are staff and take the opportunity to call them in, instead of waiting for some future sign that the process isn't completed yet.

Return your attention to your mental office. Send out the message:
"Calling all associates. Anyone whose work is somehow related to the one who just retired, present yourselves in my ofice."

If you are working with internal visualization, you may see a few more show up. Repeat the retirement process with each of them, one at a time until they have all gone out the door.

If you are working kinaesthetically (with feelings or body sense) then you might get a sense of a number. If you want to get fancy you could use intuitive, divinitive or biofeedback to detect a number. Pendulum dowsing or kinesiology. Really not necessary, and could become an excuse for procrastination. Just repeat the retirement steps until you feel done. There are rarely more than a handful of puppets (count on your fingers!) except for longer trauma.

Puppets lined up to get their watches, like war heroes (or rock stars) getting presented medals from the Queen. Waiting to be called like graduates getting their diploma.

For complex type post-trauma… Sometimes, the puppets can be legion. Might need to rent the hotel ballroom for the corporate retirement event. Will talk more about that in a later chapter.

When you have the sense you have retired all the staff and associates of the first puppet, focus on yourself. Gently revisit the troubling memory you started with. How does it feel? The change may startle you. The memory of the events is still there, but the usual emotional reaction is not happening. You may find yourself wanting to search for it, like a lost child.

Ask yourself, "Who is in charge of these feelings?" Retire the searcher puppet too. If there is any lingering or disturbing emotional reaction to the memory, then you have detected another puppet. Gentle and patient, retire those too.

When puppets retire and integrate, you feel more whole, not diminished. Freed. They are freed from their horrible dungeon of a basement office and get to reunite and experience life with you. They are again a part of you so you feel freed too. Retirement, is joyous for them and as you can read in my case studies, the joy is shared.

Sometimes their integration gives you insights of wisdom that help you to mentally put the case to rest. Resolved. Often you will find yourself letting go of regrets for the past, or seeing deeper into events and realizing things could not have happened differently… or were predictable, in hindsight.

For me it was very powerful to accept that is unreasonable to wish a crazy person had behaved in a sane way. "Innocent by reason of insanity" is a messed up way of trying to forgive someone but it is better than not trying, because anger and resentment can eat away at you like a cancer, destroying any potential for happiness and good health. Makes no sense to want to hold onto bad feelings that doing more harm to your own self.

Unless, there is some hidden reward. Disability payments, ongoing lawsuits, bragging rights, blackmail opportunities, guilt tripping abusers, anger at injustice… 

I am not implying you have all or any of those. I am saying it is worth while to take a hard look at yourself and consider if any part of you has a motive for holding onto your trauma. I am not talking about sock puppets, I am talking about the natural, human resistance to change. We get into a groove, we tend to want to stay there because it is familiar, even if it is ugly as a WW2 trench full of mud, rats and death.

Being on welfare or disability for a long time, can be devastating to self esteem. People can lose faith in themselves, in their ability to stand on their own feet and provide for themselves even if the disability was healed. Be gentle with yourself, and dream big! 

Case Study
Early 30's male, Kundalini student, slightly bipolar.

14:07 Mystress: I have been working with a new technique lately... not being too public about it because I am writing a book... but also sort of collecting case studies. Want to try?
14:07 A: I love experimenting
14:07 Mystress: OK !
14:08 Mystress: I want you to think about when you were really overloading on computer time, neglecting your body playing online too much
14:08 A: k
14:08 A: uggg can already feel the contraction
14:09 Mystress: ok now ask to face the part of you that did that, like there is another 'you' in there?
14:09 A: k
14:09 Mystress: just in your mind ask him to show up
14:09 A: that brings tears
14:09 Mystress: well that is his calling card
14:09 Mystress: can you see him or just sense him?
14:09 Mystress: doesn't matter, just wondering
14:09 A: sense
14:10 Mystress: ok I want you to talk to him, tell him thanks for a tough job well done. Imagine shaking his hand.
14:10 Mystress: mime a handshake with him
14:11 A: k
14:11 Mystress: give him a gold watch in your imagination
14:11 Mystress: tell him happy retirement, your job is done. Sorry it sucked so bad.
14:11 A: lol
14:11 Mystress: yeah say it out loud
14:12 A: k did
14:12 Mystress: say thanks to Goddess and breathe like any other sort of surrender
14:13 A: k
14:13 A: wow feeling a deep release
14:14 A: my spine is straightening up on it's own
14:15 Mystress: Say out loud his staff are all done too, give handshakes and gold watches... any way you can imagine. Don't worry if you don't see.
14:15 A: k
14:16 Mystress: his staff can all retire too. Their job is done.
14:16 Mystress: Anybody in the same department, tell them to come forth to be released
14:17 A: wow lots of energy flowing
14:17 Mystress: tell them all thanks for their loyal service
14:18 A: k
14:19 Mystress: you will know when things calm down that you ran out of dudes needing retirement but until then, thanks and handshakes and gold watches and happy retirement party in your head
14:20 A: lol
14:20 A: I will do this till it feels done and let you know about the results
14:20 A: thank you
14:20 Mystress: ok we wait

14:21 Mystress: is cool eh?
14:21 A:  I'm feeling amazing right now
14:21 A: I don't know that there are any more people to do this for right now
14:21 A: I feel so clean and clear
14:21 Mystress: great
14:22 A: wait one more
14:22 A: k
14:23 A: lol I feel high!
14:23 Mystress: now think about before, too much computer overloading you, not respecting body limits... how does it feel?
14:23 A: in a balanced kinda way
14:23 A: there are still some tears... though they now feel like grief, for what happened
14:24 Mystress: ok ask for the one whose job it is to carry the grief to come to the retirement party
14:24 A: k
14:25 Mystress: Grief carrier, bad job but he did it to protect you from these feelings.
14:25 Mystress: so thank him for it, handshake... gold watch, happy retirement job is done.
14:26 A: done
14:26 Mystress: so now how do you feel?
14:26 A: hmm now there is compassion for having done that.
14:26 A: there is still a little sadness... I will ask for the whole department
14:27 Mystress: It is compassionate to release these aspects of yourself from a bad tough job
14:27 A: wow
14:27 Mystress: and they are happy to go because they were never intended to be long term and they know you are better off with their stuff released and them integrated
14:28 Mystress: feel how you are becoming more whole?
14:28 A: there is a sense of solid relaxation, peaceful strength
14:29 Mystress: yeah wholeness... fractured bits have been repaired, integrated without the trauma they held, it is gone released
14:30 A:  thank you!
14:31 Mystress: can I copy some bits for my book? I will hide your name
14:31 A: of course feel free to use it



Chapter 7
I, Committee.

It can be very distressing for some people to think that their identity has become fragmented. We have all seen the horror movie trope, the crime scene investigation where the criminal had alternate homicidal personalities they did not know about. Putting the idea out there, so you can recognise where the fear comes from and let it go. Sock puppets, are not about that.

In fact, everybody’s head is a committee, not a singular “I.”

Let’s break it down.

First, ordinary psychology splits our psyche into many parts, each with their own job to do, and not all the bits  are part of our conscious awareness.

There is the ego; who you think you are, and the shadow self; what you think you are not. There is the inner child self, the anima/animus and the id. The subconscious and the unconscious and the collective consciousness and the unity consciousness.

Just like that, you have gone from an ‘I’ to a ‘we’ and it is completely normal. Your identity is a committee; all the members have different jobs.

Speaking on a spiritual level, we have the Higher Self, the Soul and the Divine self. Buddha nature or Holy Spirit or, as you like. Some of these map onto the psychological aspects. I have been studying and working with the different aspects of consciousness and different types of identity splinters for a few decades.

Sometimes I hear people say "I want to find myself."  I want to poke them in the chest and say to them, "you are right there! "

  Who are you? Most people would answer that question with an occupation, hobby, or a list of personal statistics like age and gender. A Zen master might answer "nothing."  When illusions of personal identity are cleared out, what remains is a nothing that is joyous, peaceful and wise. 

  We think of our identity as singular," I am"… but if you observe yourself more closely you will see what seems like a single identity is really is more like a collective.  A team of aspects like different facets of a diamond.  Who you are at work, is not the same as who you are at home. 

You do not behave the same around small children, as you might at a nightclub with adult friends. 

These identities are social masks, we construct and use them as children learning to behave appropriately in different situations.  They are perfectly normal, just about everybody has them, and we have an ability to create new ones as we encounter new social situations.  A child who does not learn to create and use these social masks is likely to be labeled with some kind of social disability.

The social masks we create become a part of us, part of our identity "I am" but you probably do not really notice switching masks unless you really take the time to observe yourself for a few days or weeks. (at least a few moments if this concept is very familiar to you, if you have done the work before.)

  This self observation is an important step toward learning to relate to the parts of you that hold the trauma and reactions of PTSD. If your PTSD is bad, possibly even that idea makes you cringe a bit, but recreating the old traumas is not part of this process.  This is about gentleness, respect for your pain, and we are going to ease into the process by first looking at the normal, practical and friendly masks. They are not the same as the sock puppets born of stress, but understanding them and adjusting to the idea that your singular "I" is really a collective,  is an important key to this work of resolving your traumas. Take time to examine your own social masks, name them and get familiar with how your identity changes in different situations.

I sometimes refer to the masks  as hats, because I have an improv comedy background and a hat is a simple prop to indicate an occupation: fireman hats and nurse hats and construction worker hard hats,  all in a bin backstage.  We put on the hat (identity) to do to work, play the role and take it off after.

  What hats do you wear, in your life's roles?  Any role or identity, you can give it a hat even if you have to invent one. What would a parent hat look like? A disability hat? A survivor hat?
We sometimes create a mask to deal with a specific person too, especially people we find difficult to relate to, like a boss or the in-laws.

Think of how (who) you are around different people and in different situations.   You will be able to understand the flexibility of your identity better by observing yourself.  Get a personal perspective.  Take note of how flexible, or inflexible your social faces are.  If your boss at work makes you nervous, would it even be possible for you to act the same at work as you would at a sports event?  If you were at a very formal occasion, like a funeral and someone came up and started joking around, acting like a bar buddy you would probably get quite uncomfortable.
If you have ever spent much time on a boat, you know that it takes a bit to get your 'sea legs': for your balance to adapt to the waves and movement. Usually once you get your sea legs, you are no longer prone to sea sickness which is also related to the inner ear and balance.  When you get off the boat, does it takes a bit of time for your balance to adapt to a surface that is not moving?  Land legs, is when you feel you are still at sea for a while after you have stepped ashore.  It is a simple example of our capacity to adapt to different situations, and we do not all make the adaptation at the same speed.

My own ability to adapt, for this example is non existent.  I never get sea legs, or seasick because the inner gyroscope of my left ear was busted by a genetic hiccup in childhood.  I love sailboats but I fall down a lot, at sea. Years of yoga, I can stand on one foot for half an hour on a stable surface but it took me more than a year to learn to ride a bicycle and forget about skateboarding. However, as a Shaman it is a useful adaptation. There are many places in the dreamtime where there is no sense of up or down. I am perfectly comfortable working in some non-dimensional spaces that give other shamans vertigo.

Notice yourself shifting, how fast or easily do your hats change?  Do you take your "work hat" off as soon as you leave the job, or do you wear it at home for a while after? How long does it take you to calm down after an argument? Do you forgive easily?

  Sometimes people start to look at their identity and its hats for the first time, they get very worried that they have some sort of multiple personality disorder.  From a shaman's perspective for sure there are similarities, but the differences are larger.

  The issue with multiple personality disorders is that the personas do not share information; instead there are gaps in memory that are often not noticed by the sufferer.  Most likely it is easy for you to remember what happened at work, when you are at home.  The social mask identities all contribute to the same pool of memory  that is available to any of them, representing the core "you".  They are not separated identities as would represent a mental illness:  they are all different aspects of you, different fingers of the same hand. On the other hand, the sock puppets vividly replaying the  memories they hold, defines the suffering from post trauma stress.

  For a few days, make a note to observe yourself, your behavior, thoughts and feelings in different situations.  Ask yourself "who am I right now?"  What aspect or social identity is in charge?

  When you have examined your own social aspects, and spent a few days observing yourself, then look outward and  consider the social masks of co-workers, friends and family.   Watch how they behave differently around different people, different situations and you will realize that these social masks are normal, most everybody has them.  It is a civilizing influence we learn as children. Children who cannot learn it are considered to have a social or communications disability!

  Talking to other people about what you notice of their social masks, is seldom appreciated - !Watch people and learn, but it is wise to keep your insights to yourself. 

<-- end of excerpt.

[Leos]

What a fascinating technique! Thank you for the lengthy and insightful excerpt!

I've been testing its effects on myself to see what it might do for issues with excessive anxiety, which brings out fears of health issues or "brokenness." I do not receive any flashbacks, but studies have shown it's not necessary for one to know the source to experience the stress related. Perhaps it's preverbal or visual.

Hopefully I'm doing it right. I'm not sure if what I'm doing is helping for the prescribed purpose yet or just a mentally more complicated form of Karma cleansing, but something happens for sure. I've tried using my body as the pendulum and asking if it was effective. Usually I'd be moved forwards if yes, backwards if no, or some variation thereof for more complex answers. When asking about this technique I'm not moved in any direction at all, which is bizarre since I'll get an answer about almost anything, whether it's true or not.

I take the position of the King or President. I'll try digging for a memory that had significant emotional content that may have led to trauma, dress it up in the face of whatever the incident was symbolically (whether it's a person, a version of myself feeling a certain way, or just an abstract representation), bring it to the the top of the steps of a grand building (a lot like the US Capitol building where the inauguration or important addresses are held), ask them to unmask, give them a medal and salute (or hug or handshake), then tell them they can retire from their mission and return to the greater community. I'll ask if they have anyone who worked under them, sometimes the image that pops into mind is singular, other times a few, and other times they've got a whole legion behind them. Everyone gets a medal and a salute and can retire.

What happens: when I recall a memory, I feel energy moving from different parts of the brain. Once the puppets have been bid to retire and go home, energy is pulled from that area in the brain down the throat and most often goes either to the heart or the solar plexus. Energy from the memories, especially the traumatic ones, is apparently extremely tasty for the vortex, far more than any other thing - huge amounts of pleasant feelings in the solar plexus and throat. It hasn't gotten rid of anxiety or the bodily reactions to stress yet, but it certainly must be doing "something." The biggest place it seems to draw from is the right side of the brain and body, it seems there's a never-ending amount there.

If this is working properly, and the stress I'm experiencing is a result of trauma and not some other disorder, I wonder just how traumatized and repressed must I be to go through all these memories and still have room to work on more.

[Mystress]

  Well. If that is what you got from what I wrote?? Guess I need to scrap it and start over. Wow.

  I have very limited patience for when I share a simple, elegant tech and the recipient adds so much bullshit and modifications I can barely recognize it anymore, and then wonders why it does not work the same. WTF, Leos?

  Capitol building? Medals and salutes? Unmasking? Dressing it up? Feeding to vortex? NO! None of that noise is part of the tech I shared. Why did you add it? How did you get that, from what I wrote?

  You are not even calling up the puppets, you are dressing up an emotional memory with a face.  Not the same at all. I asked dreamwalker to take a look, he said you are inventing puppets in your imagination and interacting with them. Useless.

  You could be a hobo, dressed in rags, laying in a ditch and covered with puke and your sock puppets would still accept you are their boss. The office could be a dog house, or a rat hole, so long as it has a door. All the aggrandizement is completely un necessary so why did you add it.

  Where did the whole military thing come from? A medal does not equal retirement, and they are rarely made of gold. A salute is not a handshake.

  I spent a lot of pages explaining the unconscious mind speaks in a language of symbols and the importance of using the right symbols, being the essence of why it works...  and you just made up new symbols that send a completely different message anyway. Why?

  Vampire vortexes have zero ability to even see or be aware of any sort of sock puppet, identity splinter, entity, or  anything like that. None. Absolutely useless at it, no perception of the issue at all. Ask it. No mention of vortexes in the book, it is written for people who are not familiar with my work.

  Every essential step of the process was skipped or distorted, except for looking for a lingering persistent emotional memory.

  I have to wonder of other lessons are being similarly scrambled.   

 

[Mystress]

 Create an office in your mind. Decorate it as you like, but make sure it has a door.

Find a persistently uncomfortable or traumatic memory, or a memory of having had a flashback.

  Such memories have a sock puppet attached to them.

  Ask your mind "Who is in charge of these emotions?" Intend you are calling the sock puppet into your office, and notice what shows up. The appearance of the puppet, how it looks is not relevant. If it shows up looking like someone who hurt you, it is not that person, it only represents your feelings about them.

  If you are unable to visualize, find a picture of a sock puppet online and do the following with it instead.

  Shake its hand and thank it for its loyal service. Apologize for it being a hard job.
  If you are using a picture, say the words out loud and mime a handshake.
  Give the puppet a gold watch. Any kind so long as it is gold.
  Wish it a happy retirement, its job is done.
  See it go out the door.
   Take a deep breath and thank Goddess.
  Notice the feeling of being somehow more whole than before. You are.

   The puppet is integrated and its trauma emotions are gone, the memory of the trauma event may feel a bit remote like it was a dream.

   Sock puppets often have staff. Sometimes they have bosses too.
  Focus on your office and call for any sock puppets that were in any way associated with the one who retired. Repeat the retirement process for any that show up.

  Handshake and thanks for service, apologies.
  Gold watch, Happy retirement, job is over.
  Sock puppet goes out the door.
Thank Goddess.

   You do not have to know how many staff, just keep repeating until it feels complete. You do not have to be able to visualize them clearly, so long as your intent is clear.

    Revisit the troubling thought or memory, see if there are still emotions associated. Ask who is in charge of the remaining emotions, repeat retirement process.
   If retiring puppets makes you feel sad then ask for the puppet in charge of those feelings and retire it too.

  It may take a few months to locate and retire all the puppets, unless your life has been completely free of trauma. Be patient and persistent. 
   

[Leos]

A dunce cap is probably the right symbol now. A wounded ego trying to exert itself and a lack of personal power leading to a tendency for aggrandizement - noise on the way out. There's nothing to defend. I apologize.

[Mystress]

 You do not need to apologize. It would be helpful to know what was confusing to you so I can rewrite.

[Leos]

There is an enormous amount I did not write in that post for the sake of space. There were multiple attempts at getting the technique right, I only described the latest. In the beginning of attempting the technique I had set up the scene as a normal office with a door, embellished it to look cozy with a desk, chairs, a large bookcase and antique furniture. I then looked for persistently troubling memories, asked "who is responsible for holding these memories," and... nothing. You mention that "A sock puppet can show up as anything... If it shows up wearing the face of someone who hurt you in the past, know that it really is not that person." This signals to me something might come to the conscious mind automatically from the unconscious if my brain were presently wired that way. Since it did not, I went to the next instruction: "If you call for a sock puppet, and then hold an intention that the picture or prop you are looking at, represents its face, it will accept that what you say to that face is addressed to it." One bit that is confusing, since you mention a sock puppet will accept the appearance you give it, and if you hold in your intention it appears as a picture or prop, it must obey. I would usually dress it up as a window into a particular event. However, this was ineffectual, as according to Dreamwalker's search I was inventing the sock puppets and not getting the real ones.

The natural consequence of the visualizations I did was feeling energy move downwards from the brain, either to stop at the heart or the vortex. I *never* mentioned intentionally doing that, it just happened that way automatically after dismissing the characters. The fact that this happened as a result of the visualization told me something was extremely wrong, and prompted me to post for feedback. I've read and re-read the vampire threads dozens of times now to have already got it through my head it cannot detect the splintering of the personality, having too broad a perspective for that. I know you wrote the sock puppet technique for someone without any prior knowledge of your work since it's intended to be a standalone book. If that wasn't clear enough, you described the "unconscious" in a non-mystical fashion and threw in the "God-dess" part in a tongue-in-cheek manner.

The jazz about presidents, capitols, medals, masks and military came afterwards. I reasoned that perhaps the visualization of gold watches, puppets, and offices wasn't working because the setting meant too little me, I felt uncomfortable there, or wasn't significant enough. I thought that perhaps I needed to find symbols that meant more to me. That's where the ludicrous modifications came from. Should have led in with the first attempts, gutted mentioning the latter.

The biggest thing unclear to me: if sock puppets come when called, and will take on the face of whatever I want them to be, how come I was inventing them and not getting the real ones? This isn't being billed as a technique for shamans, clairvoyants, or purple elephants, just anyone who can hold an intention. I want to know where I went wrong as well.