Autogenic: Learning New Things In Sanctuary
by Silvia Hartmann
Can we learn from experiences we have had not in the hard, but in Sanctuary? Is autogenic learning possible? And if so, how difficult might true autogenic learning be?
The answer is absolutely yes. We can create Sanctuary experiences so we can "learn from our experiences" without having to put mind, body or spirit at risk, and the learnings we derive from these autogenic experiences translate across to hard activities - they "hold in the hard" as we say. This is awesome and practically so useful, it is little wonder that those who have mastered this human skill go on to be very successful in whatever they do.
Most people only have ONE lifetime's worth of experiences.
You might think that's a lot, but if we consider that people make sure they don't step outside their comfort zone, and this really means outside anything that's not comfortable, and never mind those many further situations and experiences that may be slightly painful, or really painful; truly terrifying or altogether "out of the question" then we might well find that a general lifetime's experience is a lot of repetition of the same old same old, and not that much learning at all.
But we human beings are by no means bound to a single lifetime's worth of experiences.
- We can also have autogenic experiences in Sanctuary.
Over the millennia, there have been all sorts of ways to describe what happens when a person steps into what we now term Sanctuary and starts autogenically interacting with a matrix world that is as real as any hard may be. It's been called meditation, journeying, shamanic experiences and many other things besides; fact of the matter is that to enter into an autogenic reality where everything is as real as you would experience in a full on dream is a human ability that can be further developed with practice by anyone with a basically sound mind - if they want to.
For beginners and newbies to Project Sanctuary, let me make it clear that we are not talking about a simple daydream or fantasy or such; we are talking about consciously stepping into and inhabiting another world completely, with sound, taste, smell, vision, feeling and all the sensations of clear awareness being present here.
With Project Sanctuary, we can set up Tesla Machines - workshops to do something, to learn something, to experience something, that will count AS A LIFE EXPERIENCE and is just as powerful and valid as any hard experience that teaches you something about the world, and reality absolute (the hard PLUS all the other realms).
The other day I was telling a person who had problems with selling themselves as a therapist (and therefore no clients!) about a gypsy woman I knew once who had four small children.
She arrived at a seaside town one day and was given emergency accommodation by the council, but it would be a week before any money was forthcoming.
This did not phase her in the slightest.
She sent her kids down the beach under the leadership of the oldest, an 11 year old girl who took charge of the 9 year old, 5 and 3 year old brothers respectively, with some felt tip pens.
The children spent half the day drawing little pictures on beach stones and then sold them to tourists for 50p each.
When they felt they had enough money, they took that money home to mother, who went forth and bought provisions. As the sun went down on the day they arrived, they had their first meal together in their new home.
Now, the reason I told this therapist this story was because they had been brought up with parents who both went to work in mysterious and unknowable places and whose wage packets were never actually seen.
This person had no concept of the pathway between goods/and or services and being paid, how this works at the most basic level. How exactly money was earned remained an "experiential mystery" to this person, even though intellectually they understood the concept of trading work for money well enough.
If the person had actually been one of the gypsy children in their youth, they would never have found themselves so all at sea with how to make money. They would have grown up from an early age to understand the processes of creation and selling, of time in relationship to earnings, how to approach users and so many other things besides.
Can such a thing be learned now?
Would a day spent at the beach now, painting stones and selling them to tourists for £1 each, teach this person the basics to the point where they could also then go out and create a therapy package that they could sell to potential clients?
In theory, yes.
In practice, the person threw their hands up and said, or rather cried out, "I'd die of embarrassment! I could never! It would be awful! I can't even draw ..."
Now we can either drag them to a beach and get them over themselves "the hard way" - or we can send them off into Sanctuary and do it there.
An autogenic experience.
Entirely under the person's control.
Where they can rewind time, try different things to draw on the stones that might sell better than others, might be easier to sell.
Where they can try different approaches, such as being pathetic and effectively begging for a handout; or offering the stones with bonus blessing and a smile (what a bargain! You lucky customer, you!); being more or less mystical; being practical instead of mystical ("What a great memento of a great day by the seaside - and just £1 pound!").
They can control the level of difficulty in their users, too. They might start off with autogenically selling to friendly hippies who would be well up for a "magic stone" to get their confidence going before trying out other customer target groups, such as the retired, or single people; family groups; pairs finally and really stroppy users who turn abusive and start to yell, to find out what happens when that happens.
They can play out "worst case scenarios" such as police officers chasing them away, pistols drawn; or the entire beach population starting to pelt them with pebbles in disgust.
You can do this, and as you do it autogenically, you actually learn things from experience.
A day spent at the beach selling gypsy stones can take as little as an hour in an autogenic world - and all the learnings hold when you really do go down to a hard beach and test it out for yourself.
And what does that experience do for the therapist and their trouble "marketing themselves"?
Well, what they did say after running the autogenic gypsy stone story for a while was, and they laughed as they said it, "If you can draw funny faces on stones and sell them on a beach, writing an ad for your therapy business becomes a piece of cake in comparison, I tell you!"
This is only one example of infinite possibilities inherent in gathering autogenic experiences.
You can really expand your range and intensity of true life experiences in this fashion - even if you never leave your village at all. Just ask Emily Bronte if to her Wuthering Heights was a real place, and Heathcliff and Cathy real people. They're real enough to many others but they were not the authors, the creator, for whom the autogenic experience is ten thousand times more personal, and more direct in every way.
There is another aspect to this, which is that each autogenic experience also teaches us and gives us experience about working with autogenic realities themselves.
This is a virtuous upward lifting spiral - the more you do it, the better it gets, and the more profound your expansion, your learnings and your threshold shifts become.
And so we then have many more than just a single lifetime worth of experiences to draw our conclusions and our learnings from.
It's a truly fascinating thing that is wildly under-used at this moment, even by those who have the natural talent and capacity for creating autogenic realities and stepping into those already.
The more experience we have, the more wisdom we accumulate.
And finally, autogenic experiences do not lead to only wanting to have autogenic experiences. In my experience, autogenic experiences always inspire people to do more in the hard as well, expand their capabilities there also. This then feeds back again on the autogenic experiences - which lead to even more confidence and willingness to try out new things in the hard.
This solves one of the real riddles of human development and evolution, namely how to get out of your comfort zone safely, easily, and eventually, make your comfort zone the whole world, and all your life.
Silvia Hartmann
Author, Infinite Creativity
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