After my disastrous two years in London at The Bartlett from 1991 to 1993 – an expensive non-event that amounted to sweet fuck all and that cost my father a fair amount of money that at that time he could ill afford to waste – upon my return to Portugal I began to have intense recurring dreams of my time at boarding school. I don’t recall them being unpleasant dreams but they were very visual and interactive, manifesting themselves several times a month – sometimes more –  and leaving me feeling drained when I woke up. I might not have thought anything of them had they occurred only every once in a while but it was the continued persistence of the same tiresome projections of my time at school that confused me as I could not understand why it was that my unconscious mind kept taking me back to those years. I had found the experience harsh, if not brutal at times, and when I left the place in the summer of 1990 I felt I had finally been freed from an edifice of stuffy and rigid constraints that I felt did not suite me at all. I was no doubt also an ungrateful adolescent brat who had a lot of growing up to do and, looking back on it all, I’m certain I might have got a lot more from my experience during those five years had I not turned into such a blinkered nonconformist. If, on the one hand, Tonbridge turned me into an anti-authoritarian for life I also emerged from its grasp as a young adult with numerous positive attributes. I was confident, creative, self assured and I had firm principles. Moreover I had a clear idea of what it was I wanted from life and where I planned to go. Herein lies the key to understanding the meaning of all those recurring dreams that plagued me continuously in subsequent years although it is only recently, with the benefit of hindsight, that I have come to fully understand what it was I was trying to tell myself. It all seems terribly obvious now that I think of it. I returned to Lisbon in 1993 utterly lost and adrift. The career that I had wanted for myself from a very early age had evaporated, all my ambitions and illusions were in tatters and I had no clear idea of how best to procede with my life. Around me I saw nothing but caos and rubble and walls and it took me a long while to settle down and find some sort of peace with the demons of defeat and self doubt that had taken possession of me. And so for years I had those recurring dreams of finding myself back at school. I can only suppose that my unconscious mind was trying to reel me back psychologically to a place and moment in time where I had nurtured structures, plans and ambitions for myself, a place where there was light and clarity and where things made sense. It was telling me to regroup and return to that person I had been. And yet I failed to grasp what it was desperately trying to tell me.

Not too long ago I experienced one of the most subtle yet intense psychological experiences I have ever felt. Miguel C, and old friend who is a psychologist and hypnotherapist, advertised on social media that he was offering a free one hour online workshop on hypnotherapy to those who might be interested in being introduced to this discipline and its potential benefits. What he proposed we address were any limiting or blocking elements in our lives that were hampering our personal development. The date was set and all he asked was that we gave some thought to an issue we wanted to address and that we have it in mind when he began his workshop. He would then talk us through it.  I was very clear that I wanted to address the issue of my creative potential and that is what was on my mind when I sat down in front of the computer at ten o’clock on that Thursday night. First a colleague of his gave a brief introduction, Miguel then spoke some more before beginning his workshop in ernest. As far as I know I have never been hypnotized and I wasn’t all that sure of what to expect. I can honestly say that, during that hour that Miguel talked us – for want of a better term –  into a state of “psychological receptivity” and then back out again, at no time did I feel I wasn’t fully aware and in command of all my faculties, albeit in a state of profound relaxation. Perhaps it was naive of me to  think that for an hour I might be turned into some sort of zombie but I remember seeing a hypnotist give a show at university where he had people biting their way through onions believing they were apples and grown men scrambling about on the floor playing with imaginary toy cars and behaving like four year olds. None of that nonsense here, of course. Miguel started off by coaxing us gently into a state of relaxation, urging us to breath deeply and using his voice to lull us towards the optimum state for us to begin our inward journey. At a certain moment he asked us to imagine before us a staircase that descended. As he talked us down these steps, one step at a time, each step we descended was to take us further into a state of deep relaxation and hypnosis. I seem to recall there were ten steps in all. When I got to the bottom I found myself on a granite landing. Behind me were the stairs, bellow me the granite floor and all around me nothing but inky blackness like I imagine one might see in outer space. He gave us a moment to take this in before commanding our unconscious mind to project an image of the blocking issue we meant to confront. What suddenly appeared before me was a huge silver chalice, perhaps two meters high or taller. It was sleek and elegant but cold to the touch….and what struck me most was that it was completely empty. He urged us to contemplate this image (to my mind it was an object), to consider it, to observe it well. This, he went on to say, was the projection of a blocking mechanism that did not serve us. And in a moment it would be gone. I walked around this “thing” and felt how huge and cold and useless it seemed. Miguel then commanded our unconscious mind to substitute the projection of this blocking mechanism for an image of an enabling mechanism that would serve us well. The chalice disappeared and in its place a tree began to grow at a phenomenal rate, its roots spreading out bellow me, its trunk shooting up and its lush branches being projected outwards at tremendous speed and as far as the eye could see, all of this making a tremendous rushing sound that I can only compare to the noise large boulders might make whilst being washed down a very fast river. It was quite overwhelming and magnificent as an image, as a sensation.This was now to be my touchstone. Miguel allowed us a few moments to connect with this new projection – to savor it, I suppose – before beginning the process of extracting us from this deep hypnotic state, taking us gently back up those stairs and eventually back out into the real world. He wrapped up the workshop with a few more words before saying goodbye. I switched off my computer and sat there blinking for a good while and feeling rather odd, in a good sense. On the one hand I felt a little overpowered by the experience but I also felt very moved by what I felt I had witnessed and I went to bed that night with the distinct sensation that something important and good and quite powerful had just happened in my life. Have I noticed a significant shift for the better? Yes, I believe I have. The powers of suggestion, you might say. I would agree with you. I believe that is exactly what this exercise was about.

Whilst I’ve been observing myself it has amused me to notice certain other changes in me over recent times that are of little or no real importance. I’m not suggesting they are related to the episode I experienced under Miguel’s guidance but I’ve noticed them nonetheless. Until a year or so ago, had anyone suggested we go out for Sushi every other night I would have said that was a terrific idea. I remember saying once, in one of those desert island discussions you have with friends, that if I had to choose a type of food that I would have to eat exclusively for the rest of my life I’d choose Japanese cuisine above all others. It isn’t that I don’t like it anymore. I just don’t remember what all the fuss was about. On the other hand I now crave heat in practically everything I eat. I’ve always liked it but now I love it more. I’ve started to accumulate a small collection of hot sauces from various different countries and I’m not afraid to use them on everything except perhaps my cornflakes.

As many of us are, I’m passionate about music and over the years, between hard copies of various kinds and others in digital format, I’ve accumulated a fair amount of it. I’m eclectic in my taste and I don’t restrict myself to any one particular genre. I’m partial to certain things but I’ll give most things a whirl, no matter what genre, if only out of curiosity and so long as they don’t break my subjective cardinal rule of erring on the side of being absolute shit! Lately I’ve often found myself waking up with a tune on my mind and I’ll spend half the morning humming it to myself. It is nearly always something from all that classic sixties and seventies rock and roll that I was so into when I was at school.