Your Imagination as Guide and Mentor

Here’s an insight I recently got into the Hero’s Journey — and it took learning hypnosis to get it.

The supernatural aid that ushers us across the threshold from the world of consciousness into the world of the subconscious or unconscious, can be our own imagination.

You learn in hypnosis training that your imagination is the thing that connects consciousness from your subconscious.

In the Hero’s Journey, a character feels compelled to leave the safety of her village and her normal waking world, but she realizes she’s basically stepping into the wilderness — a strange, liminal territory that she has no experience navigating. In the Hero’s Journey, a guide or mentor shows up so serendipitously, that you could imagine they were sent by the heavens. This is your Obi-Wan or that big hairy guy in Harry Potter (sorry, not well acquainted…). This guide knows the new territory and gives our traveler the insights and tools needed to traverse the new world.

Now Campbell was explicit — the hero’s journey is a round trip from our conscious life, into our subconscious, to bring back elixirs and cures for our consciousness.

There’s no evidence Campbell had hypnosis in mind, but the hero’s journey perfectly describes hypnosis.

And in that case, in the case of hypnosis, the role of a guide or mentor is played by our imagination.

Our ability to effectively enter trance, to navigate our inner, invisible world, and interact with what we find there is dependant on our imagination.

You may be thinking, “Well, I can’t be hypnotized then, because I have a terrible imagination.”

I guarantee you don’t. If you ever think about what you want for dinner, what you had last night, or even do something as simple as raising your had to grab a doorknob instead of running into a door and having to figure out your next step to get outside safely, you’re using your imagination.

And that imagination is the thing that ensures your ability to be hypnotized and will escort you quickly and expertly through your subconscious.