Dr. Dylan MorganM.A.(Oxon.), D.Phil.(Oxon.), MNCP, MNCH Personal Consultant

Tel. (0113) 2306333. Leeds Complementary Therapy Centre, 249a Otley Rd. LS16 5LQ. Multimap

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Your Path in Life

Dylan Morgan

Introduction

A book for the general reader, designed to increase understanding life and how to lead it more successfully.

Eildon Press, 1990. Not in print but freely downloadable from this site

What is more important: to be able to do mathematics or to be able to run your own life? And so what does society put into your school curriculum?

What is more important: to understand how mankind has changed through history, or how you change through life? And what does society put into your school curriculum?

I will be provocative and say that society teaches us in school those things that could make us useful to society , and leaves out those things that could actually help us to know ourselves .

In this book I am redressing this, in a small way. I am writing of everyday things that I find that even very intelligent people have simply missed being told on their path in life. I am giving information that can make all the difference between a smooth, successful life and a disastrous one.

You will find that I continue as I started: by asking a lot of questions with the aim of stimulating you to provide your own responses and ideas. It is a good idea, when you find a section of the book that strikes a chord, to write down the answers to these questions. This increases your involvement and makes it more likely that you will discover more about yourself.

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Chapter 1. Paths

I would like you to see if you can imagine a new land, vast and unexplored. It could be a bit like North America as seen by the early settlers, or a land of your own imagining. It is to have no inhabitants and no roads or man-made paths. Can you picture the first person walking a little way inland, and see the footprints in the sand: the first human path on your virgin land?

From this simple beginning I want us to watch how new paths form and change and grow. By the time a month has elapsed the first settlers have created recognisable paths to a stream for water and to the woods for timber. If you imagine yourself as one of them you can see that it is nearly always easier for you to follow an existing path which will be more free from brambles and other obstructions, and as you use it you do your part to make it even clearer. This gives us one of the rules about paths:

IT IS NEARLY ALWAYS EASIER TO FOLLOW AN EXISTING PATH THAN TO MAKE A NEW ONE.

But of course, from time to time new paths are made into the interior of the new land. It may be in search of food or better land, or it may be that one of those people who actually prefer not to follow the easier path sets out and accidentally discovers a better place. Once he has found the path and brings back the news, then others will follow. I wonder which kind of person you tend to be? Do you prefer the easy, populated paths of life, where there is plenty of company, or do you like striking out for yourself?

Notice that neither is good or bad in itself. Society has needs for both kinds of people. Without the trail-blazers there would be no improvements. But if everyone insisted on walking an unmarked path there would be no society at all. Now let us look at the country again after a few years. There are now a lot of paths running from the initial settlement to other places of interest, and they are much clearer, often big enough to be called tracks if not yet roads. If we were talking I would find it fascinating to explore with you these places of interest. It would tell us a lot about your deeper needs and motivations: your inner nature. What sort of places would you make paths towards? mountains or plains? sheltered spots for gardens? places rich in game? or streams rich in gold? What would you imagine into your new land?

But notice also that some of the initial paths have disappeared. Why do people stop following a path? There can be a number of reasons. Sometimes it is that there are two paths which achieve the same end. If one is significantly easier to follow than the other then the latter can easily disappear. As an example it was once the case that the only way to cross the river Tay to Dundee in Scotland by car was on the ferry. Then a bridge was built, making a second way. The ferry then disappeared at once. In the new land that we are picturing it might easily have happened that an early path took a long way around, perhaps by chance or perhaps to find a fording place across a river. When a shorter way is found, or a bridge built, then the early path may disappear. Equally a better source of food or water or timber may be found, so that the same end may be achieved on another path, and again the earlier path will fade.

A second big reason for a path to disappear is simply that there is no longer any need to travel it. If, for example, all the trees on a hillside have been felled for timber, then the path leading to the hillside would no longer be used and would gradually disappear.

A third reason is that the path may become blocked - by a landslide, for example, or by a fence or wall built by someone, a No Entry sign, a taboo, or by the more intangible barrier of fear of some danger: wild animals or enemies. I think that these are the three main reasons why a path may no longer be travelled. And once a path is no longer travelled it tends to disappear in time. I have wondered if there are any other possible reasons, but have been unable to find any that are not one of those three:

a) There is no longer any need for it.

b) There is a better path which fills the same need.

c) The path has become blocked.

Can you think of any others which do not fall into one of

these categories?

As an example of these three principles in quite a different context, consider the path of a rapist which runs: need for sex; desire for a woman; forceful possession of a woman. If we wanted to get rid of this behavioural path by method a) we would be thinking of what is called chemical castration: using hormones to remove the sex drive. There would then be no need to follow the path. If we were thinking along line b) we would, perhaps, see if it were possible to find him a wife, which would provide him with a more satisfactory path to fulfilling his needs. On line c) we find that threats of penal punishments might act as a barrier or deterrent.

Coming back to the picture of the new country, let us continue to picture its growth as more and more people live there. The paths have grown to become roadways, followed by thousands of feet, pack-horses and wagons. Small settlements have grown into towns. Then you can imagine the arrival of motor vehicles and with them more and more surfaced roads. So that what was once a solitary trail of footprints across the prairie became a footpath, then a mule trail, then a stage coach route, then a simple surfaced road, until in the end it becomes a multi-lane highway carrying more people in one minute than the first path carried in one year.

This picture is designed to give some feeling of how paths behave. Notice that a path never stays quite the same. This is most noticeable for the earlier paths in the picture. Each person, each horse, each wagon along a dirt track makes it clearer, or perhaps changes its course a little, or broadens it. It is easy to change these new paths: you can easily alter your through the woods. But when paths become more frequented it takes more than a few people to change their course. By the time the footpath has grown into a highway it is too expensive and difficult to do more than a very little re-routing or widening.

It is useful to find a single simple word to stand for this quality in a path which makes it hard to change. Notice that in searching for such a word we are creating a new mental path. So far, no-one has explored this field of thought in quite this way. The word we choose will tend to be followed by others and its use will become common in any talk of ways of changing our paths in life. After some thought I felt that the best word would be heavy . A heavy object is hard to move. A heavy path is one which is hard to change. A light object is easy to move. A light path is one which can be changed easily. These words are familiar and suggestive and easy to remember.

So in this language a simple dirt track is a light path, and a multi-lane highway is a heavy path. Next I am going to describe some other kinds of paths. Suppose you pick up the pencil and write your name again here:.

How many times in your life have you written it, I wonder? An adult who signs an average of three cheques or letters a day can expect to write it at least a thousand times a year. Some people have written their signatures over a hundred thousand times in a lifetime, and a very busy person, who has to sign 60 letters a day, can turn out a million signatures in a lifetime! Perhaps this will help you to estimate the number of times you have done it.

The point of this is that in writing your name you are following a certain path involving your brain, the muscles of your hand and arm and eye, and all the nerves in between. Each time you sign you are following the same path: the signature is recognisably the same. How easy would it be to make your signature unrecognisable?

Because the path has been followed so often it is normally quite a heavy path and is quite hard for most of us to change. The same is true of the style of all our handwriting which usually remains recognisably the same over a whole adult lifetime.

Let us think of another path: that of the language we are using. I am writing this book in English because it is the only language that I am really familiar with. The mental paths involved in understanding the language are heavy: I have followed them very often. It would be a very big job for me to change my mental paths so that I could understand a translation of it in, for example, Urdu.

Or again, consider the way in which we write numbers: 1,2,3,4.....9,10,11..... Countless millions of people have followed the path of writing them in this way. There are other ways, of course, such as the Roman I II III IV V VI ..... But our present way is sweeping the world and will, I suppose, become in time the only way used by mankind. You might suppose that this is because it is in some sense the best : that there are no competitors. But surprisingly there is at least one way which is arguably better. I discovered this some years ago, only to find that others had discovered it previously from the 17th. century onwards. If you want to know more about it you can read my article in the New Scientist for the 22nd. of April, 1982. But my only reason for mentioning it here is to say that even if this other system were quite overwhelmingly superior, it could still

not replace our existing method. We know it too well. It is a very heavy cultural path. Like a multi-lane highway it would be too expensive and hard to alter.

At another level, have you ever tried to change the views of someone with a life-long political or religious conviction? The paths of their thoughts on these matters are so heavy - they have followed them for so long, and so many times - that it is almost impossible for them to change. By contrast it is comparatively easy to change the views of a young person who has thought very little about such matters: their mental paths are lighter. Do you agree in general?

Again notice that I am not saying that heavy mental paths are any worse or better than light ones.

By giving these examples of paths, the idea that I wish to share with you will be becoming clearer in your mind. Each time you read the word "path", you are establishing new pathways in your brain all running roughly in the same direction. If this is your first reading of this book then the idea is as yet only lightly present. By the end of the book frequent repetitions will have made it much heavier: you will have a firm grasp of the idea. Can you see that this is the way in which we learn most things: by simply travelling over certain paths of experience many times?

In describing some further examples of paths I will be using a sort of shorthand which I find quite useful. I have used it informally above. You will soon see what it consists of. Eating: place food in mouth; chew it; swallow it; repeat.

Dressing: underpants; shirt; trousers; socks; shoes; tie; jacket.

What path do you follow in dressing? Dressing:

The amount of detail that you put into describing the steps on the path can vary enormously, and it is usually the case that any step is also a path which can be described in more detail.

Putting on trousers: pick them up; left leg in; right leg in; zip up; fasten belt. Do you know which leg you generally put in first??

Have you ever programmed a computer? In that case you will recognise that a computer program is an example of a very precise form of path. Name of program: first subroutine; second subroutine; ....; last subroutine. Each subroutine is of course also a path.

A quarrel: He is getting dressed; he can't find a clean shirt; he shouts to his wife for one; she resents his tone; she shouts back, "It's in the wardrobe."; he sulks because she did not come to help; he is sullen the whole evening; when they get home she screams at him; he goes and sleeps in the spare room.

One reason why it can be useful in life to look at what is going on in this way is the following. The things that really stick in the mind about a path like the previous one are the later, very unpleasant stages. If the couple start to think about the quarrel once it is over, those are the things that come to mind. But if you want to change the entire path, then it is the earlier steps which are usually the easiest to change. It will be a great deal easier to get that couple to change the arrangements about clean clothes than to try to change the way they behave when things have gone completely out of control.

Sometimes changing just one small incidental feature of the path can lead to great alterations. For example Erickson was once dealing with a couple who were quarrelling frequently, and all he did was to get them to agree to continue to quarrel, but they must do it in the bath! This was enough in that case - and Erickson was extremely adept at choosing the right change for each case - to eliminate all the nastiness from the quarrels and to bring the couple closer together.

Can you imagine quarrelling in the bath?.

How would you feel about splashing or being splashed?

Do you notice any change in feelings?

Returning now to the theme of paths: I have listed a number of different paths to get our minds running on those lines. But it should really be obvious that there are no isolated incidents in life: life is a movie and not a still photograph. Everything that we think or feel or do is part of a process, it lies on some path.

How do you think that men who are involved in managing giant constructional schemes - a new factory or oil refinery, perhaps - go about it? Do they just take a blind run at the problem? . No, they work with large and complicated flow charts on which each part of the work is represented by a line or path, joining up to all the others. There is a whole field of knowledge, going by the name of Critical Path Analysis, associated with such maps of big schemes, to ensure that they proceed smoothly and efficiently. Now I am not saying that we should try to run our lives as if they were businesses. What I am saying is that it is only by looking at the various paths involved that the Management of a big project can avoid the most embarrassing mistakes. And that if the Management of your body - the brain - fails to look at the paths involved in your life, rather than just isolated incidents, then it also will not be able to make things run smoothly.

Path: a woman wants to lose weight; she eats little for breakfast; works all morning; light lunch; more work; comes home; feels tired; prepares a meal; nibbles as she makes it; eats very large helpings; feels guilty; gets more miserable as the evening wears on; eats more to comfort herself; next morning is determined to be still harder on herself.

That path is a terrible one to follow each day. How could it be changed? What do you think would happen if it were changed at one point to: feels tired; makes warm drink; dozes off to some music for half and hour; makes a meal?

Or what if we could change: guilty; miserable; eats, to guilty; miserable; goes out dancing to comfort herself? Or perhaps some other pleasant activity?

All too often it is the case that someone trapped on such a path thinks only of the one step that she is worried about - the bingeing - and quite overlooks the possibilities of changing other steps on the path which could have a very beneficial effect on the whole of the life.

This might be a good place to pause and to see if you can take some problem in your own experience and try writing down a simple path description of it. It some ways it is easier to do this for someone else's problem, but perhaps more interesting to think of your own. There is no need to worry about going wrong: there is nothing hard and fast about it. It is just a matter of getting used to putting the "problem" in the setting of the whole of the processes leading up to it and on from it. I am leaving a space for you to do one or two examples here, though of course others can be done elsewhere.

Now I want to start to think about another characteristic of paths which can be very important in practice. What is the difference between a footpath across a common, and a walled path between houses? What is the difference between the path of a plane and that of a train?

The answer as I see it is that that it is much easier to move off the former of each of these pairs of paths. Some paths are very easy to wander off deliberately or by mistake. Others are as if they have walls on either side and you cannot leave them. As a shorthand for this quality I am going to suggest the following words: a soft-edged path is one which it is easy to wander off. A sharp-edged path is one which it is difficult to wander off.

The path of a boat in the open sea is soft-edged. The path of a boat in a canal is sharp-edged. The path of a child at school is fairly sharp-edged, though it used to be sharper in days gone by. The path of a child when playing is soft-edged. The path of an assembly worker is sharp-edged: there is little room for initiative. The path of a artist is quite soft-edged: a freshness of approach is to be encouraged. I wonder if these new words have now been met in enough sentences - verbal paths - for you to understand what I mean? Can you think of some examples for yourself of pairs of paths to illustrate the difference between softness and sharpness of the edges?

Let us look at an example of a man who is involved in sharpening up one of his paths in life. This is his golf swing: hold the club; look into the distance; look at the ball; swing the club; hit the ball; watch the ball fly. If you are quite an expert you may analyse this path into more steps, but you will still be describing a whole path of action. Now the beginner who follows these steps will follow quite a different form of this path each time, as will be evident from the erratic behaviour of the ball. The path is very soft edged: he very easily wanders off into sliced shots, misses and turf-digging. By contrast the professional will usually follow almost exactly the same narrow, sharp-edged path for each of his strokes. The process of learning to play golf better is one of sharpening up the path, which in this case is mainly one involving the muscles, nerves, sense of balance and eyes. But again notice that in the end it is the whole path that is important. If all the attention is focussed on the grip, for example, then the rest of the path may become worse, so that there is no overall improvement.

Now here is an example of when a sharp edge is not useful. When this woman was a girl of eight she came home from school proud of a new naughty word - "shut up." It seems mild to many of us today but her mother was old-fashioned or bad tempered and was incensed when her daughter told her to "shut up." She gave her a blow on the head which she recalls to this day. The effect of this was, I suppose, satisfactory to the mother because the girl stopped using that language. But the problem from the daughter's point of view is that this, and similar incidents, resulted in her being virtually unable to dispute anything with anyone, and as a result she has been taken advantage of very badly ever since. On the path of discussion she has a big wall to prevent her moving off onto the side of saying "no". On that side it is very sharp-edged.

There are other people who go to the other extreme. They are unable to say "yes", and seem forced to disagree with any suggestion made to them. I don't think that they have much choice in the matter. Their psychological paths have a wall to prevent movement in the direction of saying "yes": of moving in a direction that someone else wants. Have you ever come across someone like this?

Would you like to know how to handle them? Or perhaps you know already? The basic idea is simple. We will consider it for a young girl who refused to bath at night. The trick is then to say, "Now, whatever you do, don't get into the bath!" and display annoyance as when in fact she does a few minutes later do just that, and add, "Now, whatever you do, don't soap yourself!" And then she will. Of course she knows at one level that you do want her to bath, but taking this approach allows her to feel the independence that comes from disobedience but also allowed her the satisfaction of being clean. Can you see that we are softening the line between "yes" and "no" for her, giving her more freedom to decide on her own path in life?

By contrast if I make an issue of her having a bath because "I am your father. You do what I tell you." then one way or the other it would create a much more sharp-edged attitude in her to disagreements. If she wins then it would edge her towards being a person who will disagree on principle. If, on the other hand, I win, then it edges her towards being someone who could never hold her own. Perhaps you disagree with what I have suggested? I know that there are some people who would.

Does this story give you any ideas on how to handle a person who is forced to disagree?

It seems to me that a tendency to make paths more or less sharp-edged is often a basic characteristic of a person or even of a nation. In Europe the more Mediterranean peoples seem to follow paths with softer edges, while the more northern ones tend to be more sharp-edged in their writings, daily habits, morals, speech and structures of society. Compare, for example the fluid vowels of Italian with the rigid consonants of German, and you will get a feeling for the difference mean. This is not to say that one is better or worse than the other. People have a habit of wanting to make all differences moral differences. Most differences are just differences.

Equally some individuals tend to be very precise and exact in all their thoughts and deeds. All their paths are sharp-edged. Others can be very flexible. If these characteristics are disliked then they may be termed rigidity or pedantic on the one hand and sloppy or woolly on the other. Mathematics is a field of thought in which the paths are very sharp-edged. Concepts are very crisp, very clear and very well defined. Poetry contains very soft-edged paths, words are used in ways which make meanings sparkle from them like rainbows scattered by the multi-faceted diamond and feelings flow from them as living water from the fountain. I feel that neither is superior to the other: they are simply different, and each has its own value to humanity. What do you feel?

I hold the same position about sharpness and softness in general. There are times and places where it is essential to be able to break down barriers on the edges of our paths, if they have started to become prisons. But equally there are other times and places where it is important to erect barriers at the edges of paths, perhaps to prevent collisions between flows of traffic, or to hold back floods or other dangers. It is important to have the rigidity of the skeleton or we would flop into blobs of jelly. But we must also have the soft flesh or we would be no more than skeletons or robots.

Why, you may be asking, is this distinction important? There are a number of reasons. One very important one is that a great deal of misunderstanding and irritation can be caused by expecting others to be using the same standards of sharpness as yourself - and that you have a right to expect them to follow your standards. The very neat person, who follows very sharp-edged paths in every movement, can be driven wild by the behaviour of a husband who is very soft-edged in his movements, puts his things down anywhere and never tidies a thing. The very intuitive, emotional person, who is always following very fluid and soft-edged paths of feeling, can feel constantly crushed and trapped or bludgeoned by a mate who is unable to proceed except on very rigid tram-lines of thought and behaviour. These problems can be considerably eased if each can recognise that the other has a right to their own behaviour, just as they have to their own. Each kind of behaviour has its own advantages and its own drawbacks. A couple who go out of their way to look at the advantages of the other's approach, and to see how life can be organised to use those, can go a long way together on the path of life very amicably. On the other hand if attention is focussed only on the disadvantages , then life becomes hell.

Perhaps those remarks have set you thinking about your own situation? This might be a good time to think about how your paths compare with those close to you: perhaps your spouse, or parents, workmates or friends. Notice that it is much easier to compare the softness or sharpness of two people than to decide if someone is, in some absolute sense, sharp- or soft-edged in their behaviour. The other important thing to note is the areas in which the differences occur. It can happen that you are more soft-edged than him in one area of life, and more sharp-edged in another. A man may follow very sharp-edged paths where his car is concerned but very soft-edged ones when he is gardening. The slightest blemish to the paint-work may have him polishing urgently and fastidiously, while a whole mass of weeds may evoke only a cursory bit of digging.

So here is an example of a table that you might like to use.. The first column will contain the area you are thinking about. Then there are two other columns, the first labelled softer and the second sharper. In these you can put either your name or the name of the other person that you are thinking of. For example, I would have:

Area of Thought	Softer	Sharper
Spelling	Dylan	Trudi (my wife)

Another reason why this distinction is valuable is that it tells us a lot about how we can change our own paths in life, and those belonging to others. Different methods apply to sharp- and soft-edged paths. For example suppose we are dealing with a person whose paths are as sharp-edged and inflexible as a railroad track. There is then simply no use in suggesting that he changes "a little bit". It will make no sense to him. But if you can open up a branch line which attracts him, then once he has set off in the new direction he will go along quite happily under his own steam.

If you think on the other hand of someone lost in an open country, with no sharp paths at all, then it is very easy to change the path a little bit. But on the other hand it is equally easy to slip back again - there are no sharp edges - and so attention has to be paid to such a person for quite a long time to see that the initial changes are built on, and real progress is made.

On the whole, but it will not apply to everyone, people whose paths tends to be sharp-edged will come over as being high in self-motivation and independence. Those people, on the other hand, who tend habitually to follow softer-edged paths are easier to change for a while but the ease with which they will slip back makes it look as if they lack will-power and self-motivation. On the other hand a sharp-edged approach to life can lead one into a dead-end, with walls all around. Such a situation will typically be felt as depression. (I am not saying it is the only cause of depression.) I repeat that both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages, just as planes and trains do.

(By the way, you probably realise that the answer to the question about how to deal with people who will always resist doing anything you want is to always give them the impression that you want the opposite of your real desires. One woman wanted her husband, who was a little older than she was, to take her out to livelier places. But he was the sort of person we are talking about, and he resisted the idea. I suggested to her that she should start to say things like, "Let us go out to the Jolly Geriatric. At our age it is so much more peaceful." And he promptly and predictably suggested spontaneously that they went to the younger and livelier places that she enjoyed. Of course the art of the thing lies in making the suggestions in just the right way for the person, but the strategy is always the same.)

Now it is often the case that the cause of a particular problem in life that is brought to me is caused by a person having the wrong degree of sharpness in a given area. I therefore need to find ways of sharpening or softening paths. And I hope that you will find it interesting to think about how this can be done. There are two key words which are important here. The process of sharpening paths in life generally involves paying attention to differences . The contrary process of softening involves paying attention to similarities .

Here is a little girl learning to speak: she strokes a cat; her mother says "puss"; the girl says "puss"; the mother says "puss" again, warmly; the girls says "puss"; later the girl picks up her teddy and says "puss"; her mother strokes the teddy and says "teddy"; the mother strokes the cat and says "puss"; the child begins to notice the differences between the two things and is able to call each by its proper name. What is happening here is that the mental path on which the word "puss" lies is initially very soft-edged, and could apply to any small soft thing. The drawing of the attention to the differences between cases sharpens up the verbal paths. It is probable that even at the end of the learning path I have sketched above the word "puss" would still be soft-edged enough for any small dog also to be called "puss".

For an example of softening let us suppose that the same child has, for some reason, become unable to sleep in any other bed but her own. There might be a very simple path: strange bed; fear; crying; sleeplessness. While at home the path is: own bed; security; relaxation; sleep. The key to changing the first path is to make the idea of "strangeness" much more soft-edged. And it can be done by drawing her attention to similarities . For example, let us suppose that her bed at home has a very distinctive cover, and she always takes her teddy to bed with her. Then, if the cover is taken with her to her grandparents, because "teddy will only sleep in his own bed, and wants to take it with him", then the sharp edge between "own bed" and "strange bed" is softened considerably, and it will become a much easier task to get her moving along the remainder of the good path, even when away from home.

These may seem rather simple examples, but I hope that you can see what I am saying. Perhaps you would like to comment, or to think of some other examples from the way in which you handle children, if you are a parent, of when you have in fact used one or other of these approaches without thinking of it in quite this way?

Here are two examples from adult life. The first is a woman who had developed the habit of sulking in childhood when her father scolded her. When she married she continued down the sulking path whenever her husband was angry. But while it always brought her father around, it simply made her husband worse. To improve the path of her married behaviour we must work to get her to notice vividly the differences between the two men when they are angry. The husband could help by changing his behaviour a little. This will help her to begin to work out two different paths: one with an angry father and the other with an angry husband. The second path will be lighter, because it will not have been followed so often, and so will be easier to change to a useful one. The change in the husband can be something quite silly - he could stand on his head or the table - and it can be enough to establish a difference from her known paths with her father, and get her to start off on a new one.

My second example is one that I have used to soften the edges of the path of a smoker to make it easier to get off it. First of all we pay attention to the smokers path: desire for nicotine; reaching for the packet; placing cigarette in the mouth; breathing out the smoke; the ash going into a special receptacle. We picture in detail the path that I have outlined briefly here. Then we go back a hundred years or so and picture in similar detail the similar path: desire for nicotine; reaching for the tobacco pouch; placing a chew in the mouth; spitting out the saliva; the chewed leaves finally following into the spittoon. Finally the smoker can visualise himself or herself smoking, with every step mirrored by the chewer across the room. Now there are some people who would regard spitting saliva across the room to be gross bad manners but have no qualms about blowing smoke across the room. If we soften the edge between these two paths then the disgust that exists on the one path can begin to flow into the other, and this will generally help such a person to change their smoking habits.

Now we can begin to see why some people follow sharper edged paths in life than others. Such people typically are always noticing differences : they are discriminating and selective or critical and judgmental. Others make a habit of only noticing similarities : they are undiscriminating and uncritical, tolerant and easygoing. Again I would ask you to notice whether you, or some of your friends, make a habit of one or other of these approaches to your lives.

There are some people who are like the gardener who has learned to prune. But only to prune. If a plant is thriving, he prunes it back. If it is ailing he prunes it as well. It is his only skill. There are others who are like the gardener who has learned the importance of fertilising. But only of fertilising. He will never cut anything back: never remove a plant however feeble it has become. When I try to picture the gardens each of these would produce I seem to see the first as an austere and joyless near-desert and the second a riotous near-jungle. Is this what you see?

Would it not also be better if each of these gardeners learned some of the other's the other's skill?

In the same way I am suggesting that it is of great use for us to be able to notice both similarities and differences: to be able to choose to make our paths either sharper or softer edged.

More abstract words for the processes of finding differences and similarities are analysis and synthesis. But in this book I am trying to keep the language fairly straightforward so that it can connect up with the paths of thought of a large number of people.

Next I am going to move on to describe quite an important kind of path. And that is a tunnel . A tunnel has walls all around it. You can only get in or out at the two ends. It is more sharp-edged even than a railway line, where you can at least see on either side. As I am writing these words work is well under way on the digging of the Channel Tunnel, linking Britain and Europe. The advantages of the tunnel are clear. It will provide a fast and efficient way of getting across the channel. A tunnel is immune to disturbances on the surface. The traffic flow in one-way, with no junctions or intersections, and so travel is smooth and usually trouble free. The disadvantage lies in the fact that if something goes wrong then there is a chance of being totally trapped in the tunnel.

The last paragraph should have made you think about tunnels. I wonder how you feel about them. Which looms larger in you, the advantages or disadvantages?

Now let me describe a spectacular example of a tunnel-like path in a person: the path of a post-hypnotic suggestion. This is the way it works. In a trance the subject is instructed that in response to a certain cue a certain path of action will be followed. The instruction will typically be repeated several times. (Remember the rule that repetition makes any path firmer, heavier, harder to change.) Then amnesia for the suggestion is induced. This may happen spontaneously, but more usually active steps will have to be taken to prevent the subject consciously remembering the words of the suggestion. This amnesia is what makes the path into a tunnel: "out of sight, out of mind". It prevents any connections with conscious paths of thought.

When this procedure is followed perfectly, then when the cue - perhaps the click of fingers - is later given, it will be followed by the requested behaviour. Have you ever seen this done on stage? The stage hypnotist has the advantage that the whole of the situation is unfamiliar to his volunteers, taken from the audience. Little of what happens lies on paths which connect up readily with everyday experience. It is therefore easier to create tunnels: sharp behavioural paths which are immune from the usual inhibitions and influences of familiar ways of behaving. Have you ever wondered what it feels like to perform a post-hypnotic suggestion? Well, it varies. In extreme cases there is no recollection of having done it at all. If it has taken a significant time to perform the action then there is going to be an unusual sensation at the end of the tunnel: "how did I get to be here?" Whether a person feels alarmed, bemused or amused depends on the personality. But these cases in which the whole thing is forgotten is the exception rather than the rule. More commonly people will execute the action, and if questioned about it say something like, "Oh, I remembered that he had told me to do it, but there seemed no reason not to, and so I went ahead." In cases where the path is followed with full awareness of what is being done, and why, then I would not call it a tunnel, though of course it is a result of the hypnotist's words.

Now many people find the idea of such suggestions repugnant. They feel that it is wrong for anyone to be forced to do something which they did not consciously agree to. What do you feel?

My feeling is this. I dislike the idea of making anyone do things contrary to their will, and I am deeply suspicious of anyone who desires to do this, by whatever means. It is my experience that it is a great deal easier, and more common in the world, for people to be forced against their will by lies, bullying and emotional manipulation, than it is by hypnosis. For one thing people can usually resist entering a trance quite easily. And there is also plenty of evidence on record that any attempt to make a suggestion running strongly contrary to other paths of the personality only results in the subject coming out of a trance.

My reason for following up the path of hypnotism a little is to give us a viewpoint from which we can look down on a lot of other, more common, experiences. Imagine that you nose is beginning to itch. Just a little tickle somewhere. The kind that you are only just aware of, that can happen at any time. That is a cue. What happens next, at least if you are in private, is that a hand rises to scratch it. The path that it follows is one that you have probably been following most of your life with little modification. It is probably quite a heavy path. If someone started to express irritation with the way in which you do it, it would be quite hard to change. On the other hand you are normally not at all aware of doing it: which makes it a tunnel. By the way are you aware of having scratched your nose since we raised the subject? Some people respond very readily to the merest suggestion of a cue like that. In fact I found myself scratching my nose as I was writing this. Of course one can resist the temptation, as one does in company, but there remains a good chance of the suggestion being carried out later, when the attention wanders. How does your nose feel? Have you noticed any itches?

There are plenty of other examples of tunnel behaviours. If you can drive then you may well have had the experience of arriving at your destination with no clear recollection of any of the details of the drive? It is as if you are on autopilot. At the beginning of the journey there was a decision about where to go. Then your consciousness can be on other things - work, friends or memories - until you arrive. Provided that there were no emergencies en route to draw your attention you will have followed the whole path of driving as smoothly and unconsciously as if it had been a post-hypnotic suggestion. By the way, how is your nose? Have you scratched it yet?

Then you probably know people who readily enter conversational tunnels. At a certain cue word or idea they start, "That reminds me of the time when ....." or "Have you heard the one about the...." Do you know the sort of thing? While the reminiscence or anecdote is being spoken there seems little awareness of any reactions from the audience, and frequently no recollection of having told it before. Here again we see something which follows the tunnel-like path of a post-hypnotic suggestion: a certain cue arises; it is the start of a given path; the path is followed with little awareness of the surroundings; at the end there is little recollection of having followed the path. Can you name someone who is often plunging into conversational tunnels?

I have now given three examples of what I mean by a tunnel as opposed to a simple path. Each should have helped us to sharpen up the edges of the idea as the distinction becomes clear. Because we are talking about human behaviour and not physics or mathematics we cannot expect to have very sharp-edged definitions of our terms. But it should now be clear what I mean when I say that in human terms the less conscious awareness there is of a path the more appropriate it is to use the word "tunnel" for it.

Most of the daily habits that I have mentioned earlier in the chapter are in fact tunnels. Walking, breathing, leg-crossing, posture, eye-movements and thousands of other actions are performed with no conscious attention. Most of the time it is not only important but essential that most of our actions should be automatic in this way. If, on typing this out, I was still having consciously to think about how to move each finger, and how to spell each word, the whole thing would take ages. When we are doing arithmetic the cue "5+9" should lead swiftly, by some neurological tunnel, to the answer "14". It would be terribly inefficient to have to do it on our fingers each time. A good memory relies on there being a neurological tunnel which takes us from the cue of a person's face to the end of the tunnel where we find the name that goes with it. Imagine the problems that would arise if it was still necessary to think consciously about keeping balance when walking, as a child has to. It is essential that there be tunnels so that the cue of a slight sense of imbalance leads swiftly and smoothly, with no conscious intervention, to the correct muscular adjustment. Can you see this?

Perhaps you could make your own list of some more of the thousands of things that we do automatically, without thinking of them.

There are of course examples of tunnels which are a nuisance, and people want removed. For example here is a common enough path: sight of a cookie (the cue); hand moves out; the cookie is eaten before the mind had really noticed what was going on. Sufferers from this tunnel feel exactly as if they had been given a post-hypnotic suggestion, "When you see a cookie, you must eat it." For many smokers, too, the path of smoking is a tunnel which they are seldom conscious at the time of having followed. Do you have any tunnel-like behaviours that you want to remove? If so, name them.

This naturally raises the question of how to change a tunnel, and in particular, how to remove it. Let us begin with the case of the post-hypnotic suggestion. You will remember that one of the important tasks of the hypnotist was to try to detach the suggestion from all other conscious paths: to build walls around it and a roof over. In short to prevent conscious attention to the path, so that it will act like one of the thousands of other tunnels which arise naturally, as we have seen. The reverse process is therefore to attach the path to other experiences by paying conscious attention to it.

This may be a little difficult at first, but any suggestion which produces a noticeable change in your behaviour is bound to draw your attention to the fact that something has changed. Or it will draw someone else's attention. If you have been told to take off your tie at an unusual time then it will soon be noticed. If you have been told to write with the opposite hand then the messiness of the writing will soon become apparent. Once you attend to it then the force of the suggestion is immediately weakened. (A post-hypnotic suggestion is seldom very heavy : it is not like a lifetime's habit.) Very careful attention to the feelings associated with the act of picking up the pen with the wrong hand is very likely to bring back associated ideas such as the hypnotist's voice. From this point the whole path becomes weakened and a small act of will can remove it.

There is a whole chapter on hypnosis later in the book which you may find interesting if you want to follow up some of these ideas. But for the time being I have only followed this path to give us a slightly unusual viewpoint from which we can look down on a lot of more familiar ground.

The point is that most habitual paths of behaviour or thought or feeling behave in much the same way as a post-hypnotic suggestion. The origins are forgotten. It is triggered by a certain cue. It is followed automatically with little or no conscious thought. Many motorists have had the experience of following a familiar route and arriving at their destination with no conscious memory of any event en route. This is a tunnel-like path. The path of driving my daughter to school had become a tunnel for me. A little while ago I was supposed to be going with her to the supermarket, which is half way along the same route, but ended up at the school. If I had been attending to the path this would not have happened. If you now imagine this problem becoming more severe so that I became incapable, once my daughter was sitting in the car of going anywhere but to school, then something would have to be done, wouldn't it? Does that sound silly? Well, is it so different from being unable to put down a drink once it is in your hand, or to resist a bar of chocolate on the shelf? The use of the silly picture is that it can suggest ways of getting someone out a tunnel behaviour. For example you could help me by coming along in the car for a few weeks, and ask me to take a different route each time. This would first of all jolt me into conscious awareness of driving again (take the roof off the tunnel), and secondly make me aware of all the ways off the route (connect it with other paths.) While these steps might not be enough to cure me if I had a very bad problem of tunnel-driving, I think that you can see that it would help me to weaken the force of it a lot?

These principles can be very useful if you are trapped in any tunnel-like behaviour. My next example is of a very severe emotional tunnel. This young man suffered from very black moods, ranging between panics and depressions. He had had them for a very long time: they formed a heavy path in his life. Now a key step was for me to accompany him and allow him to attend to the feelings in a more detached way and with a feeling of comparative safety. He then found that attending in this way brought to mind images of being very small, in hospital, alone, in pain and of being ignored by the doctors. It turned out that the actual experience behind these images was that he had been run over at the age of two. An ambulance had taken him to hospital. Years later, while I was seeing him, he dreamed of a flying saucer which landed outside the house, and of people emerging from it to take him away to another world. Not a bad picture of how a two-year old would see an ambulance! In the hospital the initial fear, pain and anxiety at being without his mother for the first time in his life would gradually be replaced by loneliness, isolation and depression. This was the first time he followed the path. But that one experience in childhood was so intense that it established it as a very heavy emotional path that persisted, and could be triggered by being too far way from his mother even when he was much older.

Now the power of this path was very much stronger than any hypnotic suggestion, but you will notice the similarities in the way it was weakened. In both cases attention to some detail - in this case the emotion itself - brings back to mind memories associated with the first impression of the path - in this case the hospital - and thereby opens up the tunnel, and reduces the hold of the path.

This process of bringing back into the conscious mind an awareness of some early traumatic incident is common in many schools of psychotherapy since Freud. It can go under the name of "release of repressed material from the subconscious", or "regression to a childhood state." It is well known that this process frequently produces benefits to the person in many ways in terms of release from problems. What I am saying is that, stripped of the technical language, the process is not very different from the method I have described to free someone from paths which do not have their origin in early traumas. In each case that I have mentioned above the crucial step has been the paying of close attention to the path. I have likened this to removing the roof of a tunnel so that it is possible to escape. Does this make sense to you?

With these ideas in mind I would like us to think of the word "subconscious". It is used very freely these days, but have you ever wondered exactly what it means? For many people the subconscious is little more than a very big bag into which can be thrown any human behaviour which cannot otherwise be explained. Do you have a clear picture of the subconscious?

Now I would like to propose for you a slightly more detailed picture of the subconscious. I would suggest seeing it as the sum of all the buried paths or tunnels in a person's experience. That is to say all those paths to which conscious attention is not readily turned. I wonder if you like this picture?

There are many other things which can be said about paths, some of which we will meet later. One thing I have said nothing about, for example, is the differences between people who only have a limited number of paths which they can follow, and those who are free to follow very many. Some countries are rich in roads and others poor: some people are rich in behavioural or mental or emotional paths and others are poor. Perhaps you would like to make a short list of people you know and see how they rate in this way?

We will also meet, later on in the book, circular paths. Paths that people go around time and time again. Often these can be destructive. You will have heard of vicious circles. These can be seen as circular paths which get worse for the traveller each time (s)he moves around them. Here is a little story to show the kind of thing I mean, and also show again the importance of looking at the whole path of what is happening, and not some isolated feature.

Once upon a time a father was watching his small son on a swing. The boy was naturally seeing how high he could go. At one point the father noticed that he was reaching what seemed to him a dangerous height. So he pushed the seat down firmly. The immediate effect was to make the boy go down, but of course it did not stop there, and the swing was soon soaring up to an even greater height. Seeing this the father again took action when the swing was at its peak, and pushed down even harder. Again his action seemed fine in the short term, but made things worse in the long term.

Now you may think that this is a silly story: no one behaves like that. But they do. There are many fathers who only pay attention to their sons when they are behaving badly. They then shout them down. In the short term this can make the son quieter. But in the long run it can build up more inner anger each time, and the quarrels can get more and more violent. Does this ring a bell? I hope that you can see that the path is almost precisely the same as the man with the swing.

And there have been sad cases in the medical world where a drug seems to have a good effect in the short term. It might be a tranquilliser for example. But as time passes it has been found that the problem keeps returning, and with greater and greater force. So more of the drug is prescribed. It works for a while. Then more is needed again. And the patient can get trapped on a vicious circle which it is impossible to get off because of the powerful dependency that has resulted. So in the long term the patient is far worse off than when (s)he started. I have met a few of such people, who have suffered enormously. Perhaps you have done so too?

I hope that as a result of my talking around and about the idea of paths, and the way in which they behave, you will have begun to see the paths in your own life. As you go further into the book you will meet many different kinds of paths and you will get more and more used to recognising them. And you will also find more and more ways of thinking about the different paths so that you can begin to change them usefully. It will therefore give you the power to take control of the Path of your Life so that you can walk it with greater confidence.

Finally I am leaving some space for you to jot down any thoughts that have come to you on reading this chapter. I hope that I have said something new to you, for in that way I will have helped your thoughts to move along new paths. On a new path there is always the chance of discovering something of value to you in your life. And you may find something valuable by disagreeing with me just as much as by agreeing. Remember that this is not one of those dogmatic "this is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth" books. It is a "this way of looking at things has helped others, it may be useful to you at times" sort of book.

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Chapter 2. Head Paths

In this chapter we will be thinking about thoughts. There will be a certain path of words on the pages which your eye and mind will follow. This is an example of what I will refer to by the phrase head path . As we continue, this idea will gradually sharpen, and in particular I will begin to distinguish it from another way of thinking which I will term imagination . At this point it is enough to think that head paths have to do with words for the most part, while imagination paths are much more likely to involve pictures in the mind. Head paths will also be distinguished from Heart paths, which are the ways of feelings, Habit paths, which are the habitual paths of action of the body, Heaven paths, which at this stage we can think of as to do with our spiritual aspirations and Health paths which have to do with the way the body copes with self-preservation. Of course in any particular life all these strands are interwoven, but since each has its own rules it is useful to understand something of each to make it easier to change.

So in the chapter we will be using words to describe something of the ways in which we use words. The human facility with words is the source of many of the differences between ourselves and animals. Using words we can strive for and attain new truths and understandings, but we can also lie. We can achieve far greater understanding of each other, which can lead to greater love, or use words like knives to cut deeper and hurt more. Words can be a great blessing or a great curse, like fire they can warm or destroy. They are good servants but bad masters. I wonder if you feel that you are happier in a world which has speech?

It is interesting to think for a little about how life would be if words and writing were to be removed from the world. In many ways we would at once revert to the nonverbal paths of communication used by our ancestors of some 5 to 9 million years ago, before the time we presume that mankind became distinguishable from the other higher apes. (And if you have not read my mother, Elaine Morgan's, book "The Aquatic Ape," describing the evolutionary path which was probably followed in making this change, then it is worth doing so.) In those days you had to communicate by gestures, facial expressions and pheromones: essentially smells. Learning in the child would have to proceed mainly through the instinct-driven tendency to copy its elders' behaviour, together with the basic conditioning reflex of tending to stop following behavioural paths which lead at once to pain. If jumping onto Daddy was followed by a swift cuff you soon stopped doing it. You did not have to balance complex alternatives like "If you don't stop doing that then you won't go to the zoo next week." If in your community all the men banded together to go further afield to fish, while the women remained with the children to cook or to gather shellfish or seaweed, then as a child you would have quite a simple path in life to copy and to follow. There would be no complexities such as having a truck-driving father whom you love and want (by instinct) to copy, saying to you "No, son you should become a qualified engineer. That's where the money is."

Suppose that words disappeared. What would the politicians do? What would happen to the legal system? Since there would be so few ways of communicating what has happened in the past, justice could only really be seen to by any witnesses present at the time of the crime. History would become little more than one person's memory. Science would become the slowly accumulated practical skills passed on, by imitation, from one generation to the next. Literature disappears. And so on.

If you play with this picture for a while you will, I think, find that very little of what we now call civilisation would, for good or bad, exist. Do you think that you would prefer it that way? Out of all these changes there is one that I want to single out. People can now lie. When all you know is what you see or hear or smell then generally what you sense is what you get. If, as a dog, you smell a bitch on heat, then you can proceed with little doubt about whether or not she is going to be interested. A bitch, though for some reason the word has unfortunate connotations, cannot think "I'll just act like I'm interested to get him going until I get a new fur coat out of him, then I'll drop it." What you smell is what you get. But once speech becomes possible a million lies can arise. "I love you" are three magic words. Spoken with truth they have opened a door to heaven in many hearts. But they have also been used very many times for lower ends, deceitfully. And to make things worse we may quite easily be told a lie by an honest person who has simply and honestly swallowed a lie himself. Beyond this are many misunderstandings, distortions and misconceptions which arise out of the fact that any word can mean quite different things to different people. Think of the words Jew, Justice and God, to take but three. What do they mean to a Nazi, a murderer, an atheist or a Jew, a Judge or a priest? A single word can mean totally different things to different people.

But one of the most common unspoken assumptions we make - and we are all doing this all the time - is that WHAT I MEAN BY A WORD IS THE ONLY REAL MEANING. Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland was at least honest and open about this when he said plainly that since he paid the words they had better mean what he wanted them to mean. The number of arguments and quarrels that arise out of an inability to recognise this fact is legion. Let us take those three words "I love you" again. They can mean anything from "O.K. for sex now?" to "I intend to devote my entire life to you, and put you before anyone and everything else." It seems to me that we can only grasp what a word means for a person by observing the many paths of thought on which it lies. Do you agree?

If a woman uses the word "Republican", then before we have any idea what it means to her we must hear it several times in sentences (verbal paths) before the meaning she has in mind comes also into our minds. The word "path" in my mind as I sat down to write this book was different from yours. I have now incorporated it into many verbal paths so that my meaning may be grasped by you. It does not mean that you have to agree with me, or the lady. But there is no point in agreeing or disagreeing until you understand what it is that the disagreement or agreement is about. This should really be an obvious fact, that most of us can agree with in theory. But it is ignored in practice to an amazing extent. Perhaps you could pause a moment and think of the names of some people that you know who are obviously unable to grasp what you mean by certain words?

The rule to bear in mind, then, is that if you desire to change any idea in anybody, including yourself, you should first pay careful attention to the paths on which the idea lies. For the whole meaning lies in the paths, just as the whole means of changing the idea lies in altering the paths.

I would like you to pause and think about this. A word means nothing unless you meet it on a verbal path. "Crwth." There was a word which was not on a verbal path. Does it mean anything to you? (It will only have done so if you have previously met it on a path, which is unlikely unless you speak Welsh.)

This path dependent quality of meaning is one reason why a person can hold quite contradictory views on a subject. It depends which path he approaches it on. A man is likely to say quite different things about parking regulations when they come up when he is given a ticket from when someone else has parked across his driveway.

In a smaller way many jokes and puns rely upon the fact that a word can lie on different paths, and the sudden jolt of moving from one path to the other creates amusement or some other, less pleasant, emotion. Groucho Marx is alleged to have said to a telephone operator "Extension 482? 482? sounds like a cannibal story." Some people like the sensation of being jolted from the path of numbers to the path of "four-ate-two", others hate it. But if you notice it then it is enough to drive home the fact that the meaning of the phrase depends entirely on the mental path on which it lies, and this is true of all we think, say and hear. I wonder how you feel about this kind of verbal humour?

And I wonder if you feel something of the same feeling about riding on dodgem cars, where again you can find yourself suddenly jolted from one path to another? Which is another experience which makes some people laugh and others feel upset.

I would next like to move on to look at some different patterns of thought. Again we all tend to assume that everyone else thinks in much the same way as we do ourselves, but we have to remember that this is not true.

For example if you read any book by Bertrand Russell, the famous British philosopher, then you will find a mind of enormous power and clarity. The picture that I would form of his mind would be of a great country with many straight, broad and sharp-edged roads. There are no fuzzy or meandering paths and no sympathy, I fancy, for the spirit of G.K.Chesterton writing warmly "The rolling English drunkard / made the rolling English road."

For a complete contrast listen to John Steinbeck in Sweet Thursday describing Hazel thinking. "Thinking is always painful, but in Hazel it was heroic. A picture of the process would make you seasick. A grey, whirling furore of images, memories, words, patterns. It was like a traffic jam at a big intersection with Hazel in the middle trying to get something to move somewhere."

Hazel's is a mind which is at the opposite extreme from Russell's, with few clear paths at all. It is all uncleared undergrowth. Notice how difficult would be the task of writing a book which would be of use to both of them. The fact that both can speak, and use words to communicate, disguises the enormous difference between them. Yet, in my experience, the same is true of each of us. As I have got to know many people deeply I am constantly amazed at how very different each person's inner world is. In one person each thought may be coloured by vivid associated pictures; in another thinking is like walking through mud; in another thought is little more than hopping from one feeling to another; or yet another is a running over old memories. Have you never listened to an old person whose paths of thought consist entirely of a few very well-trodden reminiscences of younger days which are gone over time and time again? Or to a young child whose paths of thought are like her actions, quick and quickly changing their direction? Or the man whose paths run only towards power and status? Or the new mother for whom the only paths are those on which the baby lies?

It would now be good for you to think about the minds of some of the people that you are closely involved with. Try to form some picture of the kinds of paths that their thinking follows, a little as I have done in the last few paragraphs. Try to notice particularly the differences between their world and yours. But first notice what Steinbeck said of thinking "it is always difficult": is this true for you? .

Why have I given all this all this emphasis to the difference between minds, the way they think, and the meaning they give to words? Because I have noticed time and time again the problems that arise when this fact is neglected.

Think of any kind of machine a TV, car or what have you. What do you think would happen if you overlooked the difference between different models and replaced a faulty part with one from a different model?

Or, if you are more sensitive to decor, how would you feel if, in a room that you had designed harmoniously, you were forced to include a piece of furniture that was hideously out of place there even though it might be quite a good piece in its own way.

Now something similar can happen in our minds: they can contain ideas which really do not fit in well with the rest. They may for example be ideas which suited your grandparents or parents very well indeed, but suit the rest of your modern thinking no better than their clothes would.

How many of your parents' clothes are you wearing, and how many of their things are you still using?

In a similar way we may have followed many paths of thought to which we have been introduced by friends or teachers or the advertising industry or books or newspapers, without ever really taking the trouble to check if they really suit us. "You are a really reliable boy", a mother tells her son. He grows up with this idea in his mind, using it to decide on career and lifestyle. It could have been that what the mother meant by the words was, "Don't be like your father, who is always chasing women, but the son interprets it as, "Be serious, always ready to help, never have fun." Such a severe attitude can lead to trouble later on in life if he really has a carefree and fun-loving side. One possible consequence is that he will find in alcohol a way of killing that "Be reliable" voice for a while, and break out into an exuberant personality. When he sobers up, however, the guilt will set in and he will remorsefully return to his "reliable" path again: until the next drink. This can lead to a dependency problem, or contribute to one. A path common to many alcoholics is this the rational self is very "good"; many paths of action are deemed "bad" and avoided; a drink anaesthetises the higher brain centres; a door opens to those forbidden paths; they are followed for a few hours or days; sobriety returns; the mind returns to the "good" paths; it finds again the verbal path "that was a bad thing to do"; guilt sets in; an attempt is made to close the forbidden door yet more firmly; the "good" paths are followed again; until the next time.

Here is another example. A girl of sixteen wanted to go off camping with some friends. She was something of a tomboy, and the friends included boys. Now her father, not too unnaturally, did not like this idea. What he said was "If you go you will become a slut." The trouble was that this idea stuck in her mind for years afterwards. So that when, in her twenties, she was trying to form close emotional relationships with men, those early ideas got in the way, and she would shy off the minute the relationship moved beyond simple friendship, because of a fear of becoming a slut.

We can perhaps think of ideas like that as being like sign posts on the path of life. Some people have a lot of "No Entry" signs or "Turn Right" or "Stop" signs. Let us see what some of these sound like. "I can't do that."

"It would be wrong of me to do this."

"I could not bring myself to do that."

"I have to stay in this job."

"I dare not risk upsetting him."

"I must say at home with my parents, they need me."

"I can't go out looking like this."

"Sex is dirty."

"I will never settle down."

"Marriage is for the birds."

"Only morons work for a living."

"I always speak my mind."

"I'll do it my way."

"All women are sluts."

"All men are bastards."

"Honesty is the best policy."

"Always brush your teeth."

I could go on and on. What I would like you to start looking out for are phrases or sentences like this in others first, and then in yourself. (It is always easier in others.) What you are listening for are things that come up many times. These are key ideas which the person is using to guide his or her thinking. They are the signposts. You could usefully jot down any that you hear.

The problem of wrong ideas arises not just in you and me but also in mankind as a whole.

"The world is flat."

"Heavier than air flying machines are impossible."

"The world was created in 4004 BC."

The history of thought shows time after time that highly intelligent men can nevertheless be very mistaken in the mental paths they follow, even in subjects that they have devoted their whole lives to following. So it is really no disgrace if we occasionally find that we need to change the way we think in our day to day lives as well.

How do we know if there is a need to change? Well, it seems to me to be a matter of common sense that there is no need to waste time worrying about whether we need to change unless there is some clear sign that we have a problem in life. There must be a feeling of "there is something wrong", or "nothing goes right for me", or "I feel terrible/depressed/anxious" or "why can't I manage to do this others can, easily?". Or to put it another way. If you are at present moving smoothly and happily along your path of life then there is no need to be concerned about whether your mental road signs are faulty. The time to start checking them is the time when the going starts to get rough or bogy or you no longer feel happy about the direction your road is leading you. Does this make sense to you?

What then should we do when we have some reason to feel that we have drifted off the right path in life for ourselves? Please notice that I am assuming here that the right path for one person is not necessarily the right path for another. The path your parents have taken, no matter how right it has been for them, may well be wrong for you. Your best friend may be a teacher, and happy. This does not mean that you will be happy following the same path. So the question is what should you do when you feel that you have lost your path.

The first step for most of us should be to find a sympathetic listener to talk the matter over with. As we talk we will be going over most of the mental paths relating to the problem area, and there is a very good chance that in this way we will find at least one idea on how things could be improved. I am a professional listener. And I find that at least the kernel of the answer to most of the problems brought to me comes out in the first session in perhaps half the cases. The client really knows the answer, but does not know that (s)he knows.

It is far better to choose a listener than a talker. A talker is usually far too fond of giving advice before really understanding the problem:

YOU: I am having a problem with my marriage ....

TALKER: (interrupting) Yes. I know what it is like. You should do what I did. I've been through it all. Let me tell you about it.

With someone like that there is no chance to go over your own mental paths, and every chance that their signposts will land you in an even greater mess since they have not bothered to find out where you are, or where you are going. It is as if you are on the phone, lost in the middle of nowhere:

YOU :I am lost on my way to ..

TALKER: (interrupting) Yes. I know what it is like. You should do what I did. I've been through it all. Let me tell you about it. I just drove straight on for two miles, turned left and was back on my road.

Abraham Lincoln had many difficult problems as President. On at least one occasion he sorted out his thinking in the way I am suggesting. He did not call in one of his experts but an old friend from his home town. The friend came all the way to Washington, sat down and listened. He listened for the best part of the day while the President walked up and down, talking, explaining things that were for the most part above his listener's head. When he had finished, the friend was thanked warmly for his invaluable help and went home. Notice that Lincoln did not need any advice. What he needed was a way of sorting out his own thinking. Thinking is about words. If even he found it far better to think out loud when it is was a matter of exploring and straightening out his mental paths, then it is no disgrace for you or me . So the best way to begin to sort out mental paths is to find a good listener .

There are a few alternatives. Some people are good at talking to themselves. Some are good at talking to a piece of paper: writing. Talking into a tape recorder may also help. Talking to the dog may be even better because you can often rely on more sympathy there than in most people. But for most of us a good sympathetic human listener is best. I wonder what order you would place these options in?

Of course you may do better than this and find someone who is not only a good listener, but having listened is able to ask questions that help you to straighten out your thoughts still more, and even offer advice. But remember that if you have lost your way you need to find someone who not only knows where you are, but also where you want to go, and something of the roads in between. Now most of us have acquired a reasonable skill in running our own lives and there is a strong tendency to think that the paths which suit us must also suit others. This is not true.

"Oh. So you are depressed? I was depressed once. I just went for a thirty mile hike, came back exhausted, slept like a log and have never had any trouble since. You try it." There are of course people for whom this is the best advice: especially fit young men whose "depressions" are the result of too much drink or study. The cause and cure for them are on quite different paths from those followed by someone suffering from postnatal depression.

So before you accept advice try to make sure that the person giving it does at least have some idea of who you are, where you are and where you want to go. Remember that there is a good chance that you have lost your way in the first place because of poor advice.

This would be a good time for you to think over the various people friends, relatives or professionals such as priests, psychotherapists, doctors who might listen to you and rank then roughly on a scale of ten, with the above ideas in mind. Who can you turn to when you have a problem to sort out? It is worth thinking back over your life. There may be a distant aunt, or an old school friend who excelled at that kind of thing, and it could prompt you to get back in touch.

I have said that the first thing to do is to find a good listener. What is the second? It is to keep talking, and to go over the same ground several times. When you start you may feel that you know all about the problem which concerns you. But as you cover the ground you will find that it changes. Remember the golden rule: To change a path, first pay close attention to it . Each time you run over the paths in your mind they will become clearer and clearer until what was at first a chaotic mass is reduced to a clear picture which you can describe in about five minutes.

I remember one couple who had had severe differences over religion all their married lives. Little had been resolved because they had never really discussed their respective feelings, only argued about them. An exercise I set the wife was as follows. "Ask him to tell you what he feels about all that has happened; write it down; do not comment on it; discuss it with me later; a few weeks later do the same thing again; repeat it a few weeks later."

What did this achieve? Well, each time there was less written down, and each time is was more succinct and clear. He was having the chance, for the first time, to really sort out the important things from smaller irritations which might have been cleared out of the way years ago if there had been the chance to talk about things. This process did not, of course, resolve the religious differences, but it did make them far less of a bone of contention. Could a plan like this be of any help to you in one of your relationships?

So at the end of repeatedly going over the ground a young man may reduce the verbal path of his problem to a simple "I have no confidence; I want a girlfriend; but I am too shy to approach a girl; so I stay in and listen to records and play my guitar; if only I were confident!"

Now with any luck a great deal of the self-pity will have gone as a result of just talking it over, and it will be easier to move on to the next stage. That is to talk over what would happen if he changed any one of the verbal steps on the above path. For example he could wonder about what he would do with life if he did not want a girlfriend. His thoughts might run, "If I did not want a girl, I would have no problems. I would go out with my friends, get involved in the band again, perhaps play some gigs: man, life would be sweet if I did not want a girlfriend!" This is a new mental path for him. It has taken him off the stale, heavy, circular path that he has been following in his mind for months. It can lead to further paths such as, "Well, after all, maybe I should enjoy life for maybe three or five years and then worry about being shy with girls."

I was once faced with a similar problem in a young woman. She desperately wanted love but because of that, and some traumatic experiences, was unable to bring herself to take any steps to find a boy friend. I asked her to defer the desire for a time, and within six months she was engaged, and got married not long after.

Incidentally there is a general rule here. IT CAN OFTEN HAPPEN THAT TOO STRONG A DESIRE FOR SOMETHING ACTUALLY STOPS YOU FROM GETTING IT. Often people make a mess of exams or interviews because they want so much to do well. This makes them tense and nervous. Perhaps they do not sleep well the night before and are drained and exhausted as well. Men can make themselves impotent because they have so strong a desire to prove themselves that they drive themselves into a corner of anxiety and self-doubt which produces the very thing they feared. In the same way a woman whose greatest desire is that her husband remain faithful can arouse in herself such furious jealousy that she behaves in a way that he finds intolerable. He is then more or less forced into the arms of another woman if only for some peace or because he may as well have the fun of it since he is going to get blamed for it in any case. I can put the rule another way. IF WE GREATLY FEAR A THING THEN OUR BEHAVIOUR IS VERY OFTEN EXACTLY THAT WHICH WILL BRING ABOUT THE THING FEARED.

Perhaps you would like to think about this aside, connect it to your own path in life, and see if this has any bearing on past or present problems.

Notice that the examples I gave above all depend on there being a certain idea in the mind which is no longer of value or is doing actual harm. "I must pass this exam." "I must perform perfectly in bed." "I must get married / have a girlfriend." "I must keep my husband faithful." And I have said that if we are running into trouble then we should look closely at the mental paths that we are following, and then just think of what would be the result of changing one step or another.

Picture someone who is in despair on a walk because there has just been a landslide behind him, and he had planned to return by the same path that he came. "What shall I do?" he wails, "I am trapped. There is the river on one side of me, a steep mountain on the other, and ahead I know that the path only leads to a gorge and a dead end." And he lies down in his despair and prepares to die. If you question him about his situation you will find the following mental paths.

"You could cross the river, there is another path on the other side." "Yes, but I will get wet.

"You could climb up the side of the mountain." "Yes, but that would exhaust me, and I might get lost."

"There are climbers with ropes at the gorge, they could help you to climb up." "Yes, but I am afraid of heights."

I wonder if you have come across people like this? They are the "Yes, but" people. They are incapable of getting out of whatever predicament they are in because they are incapable of removing any of the No Entry signs in their minds. Do you know any people like that, and who are they?

Here are some more "No Entry" signs:

"I am too old to change."

"I could never get another job."

"I am just a housewife."

"I must have nothing to do with girls / boys of another faith / colour / politics."

Now it seems to me that it is nothing but common sense to say that if life has run into what seems a dead end, then there is everything to be gained and nothing to be lost by exploring all around just to see that the ways that seem to be impassible really are.

Here is an example. This man was a salesman and enjoyed the job very much. He believed in his product and he enjoyed meeting people and bringing them the benefit of the product. He was so good that in due course he was promoted. to an office position. Some time later he started to wake in the night sweating and with violent abdominal pains. A visit to the doctor revealed nothing wrong. But he was still in pain and still losing sleep. What should he do?

Once we had isolated the above facts he agreed that it was probably the stress of the office job that was causing the upsets. But, like many men, he had the idea in his mind, "You are not allowed to reject a promotion." And again the next step was the one I described above for the unconfident youth. "Yes, it is of course foolish to reject a promotion, but what would happen if you did ?" This is like saying to our walker, "Yes, you would get wet crossing the water, but what would happen then?" or "Yes, it is a steep climb up the mountain, but where would that way actually lead?"

Well, when we thought about giving up his promotion, we discovered that he would then be earning a little more, would have more time with his family, and would feel a great deal happier. This made him think further, though he was still not quite happy with the idea of demotion. And what he came up with was an idea of a sideways move which was not technically a demotion, but which took him back on the road again. End of problem. The pains went and he was himself again.

The moral of this story is that is well worth thinking yourself well beyond any blockage, or No Entry signs on your mental paths.

Clearly some mental road signs are very useful. "I must not put my hand into the fire." is a pretty sound one, and so is "I must not kill." But we are all carrying thousands of signs, many of which are just simple rules of thumb impressed on us when we were children. They may be fine up to a point, but we may have gone well beyond that point and still be obeying the rules.

I know one man who had it very firmly impressed on him when he was a boy that he should eat what was put in front of him, whether he wanted it or not. His life and mind, when I met him, were in a terrible mess because he seemed to have learned this lesson all too well he was still accepting everything put in front of him, words as well as food and his mind was hopelessly cluttered with mental rubbish that was of no use to him. He could not get rid of it because there was a mental rule "I must take in any bit of information put in front of me, whether I want it or not."

I would like you to remember this case especially because it puts much of what I am saying in this chapter in a nutshell. I have found that many of us get into greater or lesser messes by not exercising the right to spit out of our minds mental food which is not to our taste, or is not what we need .

What does the phrase, "freedom of thought," mean to you? In many countries today this is a battle cry. There have always been rulers and pressure groups which are determined to force into other people's minds the ideas which they themselves have. They are people who cannot bear others to follow a different path from themselves. It would take me too far out of my way to explore the interesting question of why they should want this, but perhaps you would like to think about it and add to this short list: a genuine feeling that their way is the best; a fear that it is not the best, which can only be allayed by forcing everyone else onto it; being brainwashed by someone who stands to gain power of wealth as a result; ...

Many of us today live in countries where freedom of thought is being accepted as a right. But I am saying that this is only a real freedom if each of us, as individuals, actually has the ability to get out of our minds ideas which are not right for us. We must have the freedom to explore any avenue of thought, which must mean ignoring at times various No Entry signs on the way.

There are a number of factors which influence the number and strength of such signs. People who have had an authoritarian upbringing in which at least one parent issued commands forcibly, unpredictably and with no explanations given, have an early conditioning in sign erection. People who are timid can turn even the mildest rebuff in life into a permanent No Entry. Signs are generally planted much more firmly at times of great emotional intensity, whether the emotion is pleasant, like love, or unpleasant like fear. Then again some people's minds are simply more receptive to new ideas. They can make excellent hypnotic subjects but are also vulnerable to the stray suggestions made by anybody they meet, some of whom are actually in the business of manipulating minds.

Indeed, it seems to me that a great part of my job is not so much hypnotising people as dehypnotising them of getting out of their minds suggestions planted at some earlier time in life which are now blocking further progress on their path. ( cf. article. ) And then again people who, as we described in the last chapter, are fond of creating sharp edges to all their paths, are likely to have to use a lot of "Keep Off the Grass" notices. These are just some of the factors which can be involved in how the flow of out thoughts is regulated. But what is likely to concern the average person is the simple practical principle: If you are blocked on your path in life then exercise your right to freedom of thought and feel free to think along any avenue, ignoring all restrictions for the time being. Do you know how to do this?

In the world of business you will at times come across what are called brainstorming sessions. There are times when an organisation needs some new ideas perhaps to get out of some terrible mess. They will then get together a group of people in comfortable surroundings, with no interruptions, and these people then start to throw around ideas, however wild, for perhaps a few hours. The only rule is that no idea must be criticised. This is another way of saying that any path of thought, however unrealistic, however wild or mad, illegal or immoral can be followed. Later on, after the session is over, there is a very good chance indeed that a few really good and practical ideas will have come out of it. And the silly ones can simply be forgotten.

When he was a boy Einstein used to daydream about what would happen if you were to ride on a beam of light. Now that is a path of thought that may not at once grab you as being very realistic. Yet it led him on into that vast field of human understanding that we call Relativity. You can imagine the result if Einstein had had a father who had said, "What would happen if you travelled at the speed of light? If you don't start travelling pretty damn quick to that pile of logs and get chopping, my boot will be travelling somewhere even faster than light."

If you would like to go further down this path of finding and following new paths of thought I would suggest starting with some of Edward de Bono's books. He has coined the phrase Lateral Thinking to describe something of this process, and his book with that title is a good starting point. Your library or bookshop will get you a copy. You probably knew that. But quite a number of people seem to think that they are only allowed the books they can see on the shelves. There is an unspoken barrier in their minds, going back to childhood, which may say something like "If you can't see it, you mustn't ask for it." I know someone who has suffered from this problem: me. I sometimes wonder if it was related to a particular incident when was around 11 and went into an electrical shop to ask for a small piece of equipment I needed for something I was building. The assistant treated me as if I was dirt. Experiences like that can implant No Entry signs which are accepted without question for years after.

But even without reading books on the subject perhaps you could arrange a mini-brainstorming session for yourself? I wonder if it would be possible for you to get two or three friends around for a relaxed evening during which you begin by describing a problem you have and then let them all throw in any suggestions, however wild, just following the simple rule, "no suggestion is to be criticised by anyone, even you." Can you think of the names of anybody who might quite enjoy this game with you?

Of course even one other person might do if (s)he is prepared to follow the rule it might well be the same person that you have chosen as your listener. Good listeners are often also good at suggesting a variety of ideas in a tentative way.

What other tools are there for changing the paths of your thoughts? What tools are there for catching fish? My answer to the second question is that fish are caught either in a net or with a hook. If you turn a hook upside down then you get a question mark. A question is a very good way of fishing for new ideas, new paths of thought. You will have noticed how frequently I have used question marks in this book for this very reason, to bring up to the surface of your mind ideas which are there, but which you may not have known were there.

We have seen that Einstein used a question to fish for the Theory of Relativity. Newton may not have asked himself the exact question, "Why did that apple fall on my head?" but he will have asked himself a similar one in order to fish for his theory of gravitation. If such mental giants as these use the simple fish hook ? then surely you and I need not be too proud to use it in our small concerns.

But what kind of questions are most likely to be useful to us? Well to begin with, almost any one. Some are, of course, more productive than others, but any questions are enough to start you off fishing. Part of my stock in trade is a collection of the more useful questions, many of which are scattered freely through this book. You would expect a fisherman who had had years of experience to know the right kind of hook and bait for a certain water, wouldn't you? But even a beginner can catch a fish, though it might well take longer.

We have already seen in outline how I will often start my fishing. The first question I am looking for an answer to is, "What is the path on which the problem lies?" This might mean looking in detail at the path of a typical quarrel in a relationship, or the pattern of stresses in a day, or the path leading to bed and then out the next day in an insomniac, or the path of hunger and eating in someone who is overweight, or of drink in the alcoholic and so on. In practice it often takes a lot of questions to get this path clear. The most helpful ones are probably questions like, "And what happens before that?" and "And what happens next?" Next come a series of questions which are really all forms of "And what do you think would happen if you changed that step in this way?" or "Do you think you would be able to change this small step?"

Erickson once had a client who was retired and was eating and smoking himself to death. He discovered that the man was getting his food and cigarettes from the store just around the corner. The only change that was necessary for that man was to agree that any time he was hungry or wanted a smoke he would go to a different shop on the other side of town. This small change in one step on his path soon reduced both eating and smoking and he became a great deal fitter with the walking.

I am going to add here a number of other questions which I have found to be useful at times, with certain people. It is unlikely that they will all be of use to you, but each will be of use to someone who reads this book, and I expect at least one to be useful to you at some time.

What is the path on which my problem lies?

Can I think of three ways, however wild, of changing each step?

Can I actually make any of those changes?

Suppose that I had a friend with the same problem, what would I advise?

If I knew that I was going to die in a year's time, how would that change how I would feel or act?

Call to mind someone who loved you, but is no longer around: someone you trust. Then ask, "What is (s)he advising?" (One woman recalled her dead father. The question brought tears but also the recollection of his last words "Go out and lead your own life and let them get on with it." which was in fact exactly the advice she needed.)

When did I start thinking / feeling / acting like this?

If I had all the money I wanted, what doors would it open, and what would I do?

Can I imagine being in a situation, or being of an age, where this particular path would be really quite acceptable?

How seriously am I taking this problem? How much would I pay to have it solved?

If I were writing my obituary, or talking to St. Peter, so that I had to look back along the whole path of my life on earth, what would I see, and what would I like to see?

How have I solved other problems in my life?

And you might add any questions that you have found useful in the past, or that you would use if you were talking to anybody else.

Perhaps you are wondering about catching ideas with a net? Well to catch ideas wholesale you need to find a place where there are shoals of them so you can go out and buy and read a book like this, or find someone whose mind is full of ideas, or organise a brainstorming session.

I wonder what you think about the fishing analogy?

The point about it was that the question about how can we catch fish led to a new way of thinking about solving problems. Analogies and metaphors can be very useful when it comes to finding new paths. You will find many in this book for that very reason, including, of course the extended metaphor of paths. They are very powerful tools of thought, but they are not primarily verbal, and so I will discuss them in the next chapter.

SUMMARY

I will end this chapter with a brief summary of what we have met on the way. Perhaps the central theme is that for most adults the greatest need is to GET RID OF OUTMODED ROAD SIGNS. We have all got ideas in our heads that are either plain lies that we have been told, misunderstood ideas, rules that we have grown out of, prohibitions which we hold too strongly and inflexibly and above all ideas which are fine for some other people, but are just not right in our heads. (I have written a poem on this theme, if you are interested.)

I have suggested that freedom of thought is only real if you have the ability to get out of your mind ideas which do not belong there. The process of getting them out is made easier if you can first find a sympathetic listener; then go over the paths that are worrying you until they become clear; then start to ignore No Entry signs; then explore all alternative avenues of thought at each step. In this way there is a much better chance of getting back onto your path. The path that only you will lead, and only you can tell if you are satisfied with.

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Chapter 3. Imagination Path

In the last chapter I was dwelling on one of the ways in which we think with words. You will remember that this way of thinking has not been around long: probably less than ten million years or perhaps 20,000 generations. In this chapter I would like us to think about another very important process which goes on in the brain, which can actually be a very useful way of thinking, and yet does not directly involve words. This way is what I am calling imagination.

Suppose I say to you "Imagine that you are in another room of your house." I wonder what happens in your mind? There are some people who can at once picture themselves in that room almost as vividly as if they were really there. They are aware of the detailed textures of all the furniture, can describe the colours in detail and even note the way the shadows are falling for the particular time of day that they are chosen. Occasionally they may also notice vividly the scent of flowers and hear the ticking of the clock or the crackle of the fire.

At the other extreme we may have a person who has only the vaguest idea of the layout of the room and may, if pressed, say, "Well, there is a chair." Detailed questioning may reveal no more than, "It is an armchair." "Comfortable?" "Yes, I suppose so." "Colour?" "Umm... a sort of brown?" And the same lack of detail will be found in all descriptions.

This quality which I have described above is a very important feature of the imagination. I will call it vividness. It is very important to me professionally, as there is a big difference in the way in which I talk to and help those people who do most of their thinking verbally and those who do the greater part of it accompanied with vivid images.

Suppose that we rate the first person above, who has an almost perfect imaginative recall, as 10, and the second person, who can see almost nothing at all, as 1, I wonder where you would place yourself? Think about it for a few minutes. Note down as bonuses anything you can recall through the other senses touch, pain, temperature, smell, hearing or taste, again on a rough scale of ten.

Some people can recall sensations such as these very vividly too. I would still call them imaginative in a broad sense, but for most people the imagination works mainly through pictures or images as the very word imagination suggests.

You may be interested to know that I come very low on this score. I can see no vivid pictures. (I know what vivid pictures look like because I can have them in dreams.) I could describe the layout of furniture quite well and describe it in fair detail. I could tell you the colours of some of the things, without being able to "see" them. If I was asked to describe a room I had only be