yourself to sleep
By Morris Dean
Now I lay me down to sleep,I was reminded of this child's prayer recently by an episide of Blue Bloods, the family-oriented TV police drama starring Tom Seleck, Donnie Wahlberg, and Bridget Moynahan. The show features the robustly Catholic family, the Reagans, whose boys Jack and Sean—sons of Detective Danny Reagan and his wife Linda—are still considered young enough for pampering out of The New England Primer. After the episode in question, my wife said that the show had gone over the top in sappiness, and if it got any sappier we were going to stop watching it.
I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
...
Thy angels watch me through the night,
And keep me safe till morning's light.
...
Guide me safely through the night,
Wake me with the morning light.
I knew what she meant, for I'd already mentioned in a review of the show how trying it was for her (and me, too, although I didn't mind as much) to watch all those Reagan family dinners, with their revolving grace-sayings and their lugubriously wholesome conversations.
Plus, I had already been thinking about what people say to themselves or think about before going to sleep, for not only my wife but also a niece had recently had knee-replacement surgery, and my niece had been having a hard time of it. Unlike my wife, who has me around full-time to help her, including looking after Siegfried, my niece has two young grandchildren to take care of, and her husband has to go to work. She's had some bad days, often been depressed.
I suggested to her that she try an exercise that I had often used to improve my outlook and wakefulness the next morning: autosuggestion. [Wikipedia has an article on it.]
The way I practice autosuggestion is simply to preview the next day, concentrating on happenings or tasks that I can look forward to enjoying, and visualizing myself waking with a sense of eagerness to get up and get started with the enjoyment. Even things not ordinarily expected to be enjoyable can be reframed and endowed with some positive possibilities. Going to be audited by the IRS tomorrow? Well, that could be very interesting. Will the auditor be a jerk or a sympathetic human being? And how might I conduct myself to interrelate with either sort of person?
I suppose because of the Blue Bloods episode, I found myself telling my niece that autosuggestion is a sort of prayer. And I think it is—at least, of a prayer that seeks empowerment.
About the only glimmer of power-seeking evident in the child's prayer above, however—and this may be stretching it—is the phrase, "...till morning's light," which a child might (or might not) recite with an image of waking eagerly in the morning.
In any case, the difference between clerical prayer and secular autosuggestion is, of course, wherein empowerment is sought. The clerical, or theistic prayer addresses God or, as in the child's prayer, "the Lord." Of course, since there is nonesuch, any empowerment derived from prayer comes from the same source as that tapped by autosuggestion—the person's own brain, or "inner resources."
Suggestion in psychotherapeutic terms, or in terms of such trance-induction techniques as those formulated by Richard Bandler and John Grinder and known as "neuro-linquistic programming" (or NLP)*, comes from the therapist, who is presumably skilled in planting suggestions in the subject's unconscious. If you're having trouble picturing this in a therapeutic setting, think about a stage hypnotist.
With autosuggestion, you assume the role of being your own therapist, trance-inducer, or stage hypnotist. It's a lot cheaper, and you can have seven or more sessions per week.
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Copyright © 2013 by Morris Dean
* See Bandler & Grinder's classic work, The Structure of Magic I: A Book about Language and Therapy and The Structure of Magic II: A Book about Communication and Change, 1975, Palo Alto, California, Science & Behavior Books
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