Hypnotized by Someone's Command: How You Gave Your Power Away

## Hypnotized by Someone's Command: How You Gave Your Power Away We've all been hypnotized by someone's aggression or judgment of us. Forgetting our pure, powerful, and authentic selves, we relinquish control, believing others to have great insight for us - guidance that could be wonderfully beneficial to our lives. We release our egos and fold into their aura with the hope of feeling loved, inspired, and encouraged to be the best that we can be. But what happens when this surrender leads us astray? When we find ourselves trapped in a false sense of self, shaped not by our own desires and values but by the expectations of others? We may justify this surrender, convincing ourselves that the voices in our lives are worthy of shaping our destiny. But deep down, a nagging doubt remains - a whisper of the authentic self we've abandoned. ### How the Hypnosis Happens It happens in families first. A parent's certainty feels like truth when you're five. A teacher's authority feels like wisdom when you're ten. A partner's confidence feels like leadership when you're twenty-five. A spiritual teacher's charisma feels like grace when you're forty. Each time, the mechanism is the same: someone projects certainty, and you - uncertain, seeking, wanting connection - mistake their certainty for your guidance. You fold into their vision of who you should be. You adopt their values as your own. You organize your life around their approval. It's not weakness that makes you susceptible. It's longing. The longing to be seen, to be guided, to be loved. That longing is legitimate. What's illegitimate is anyone who exploits it to reshape you in their image. ### Waking Up From the Trance The path to liberation starts with one recognition: the voice guiding your life may not be yours. The values you're living by may have been installed. The "self" you've been defending may be someone else's construct. This recognition feels like vertigo. If this isn't me, who am I? If these aren't my values, what do I actually believe? If this life was shaped by someone else's vision, what's mine? That vertigo is healthy. It means the trance is breaking. The disorientation you feel when you start questioning everything is not a sign that you're lost - it's a sign that you're waking up. Your rebirth awaits on the other side of the trance. As you shed the layers of conditioning and expectation, you will rediscover your own unique gifts, passions, and purpose. You will step into your power, embracing a life aligned with your deepest values and aspirations. The journey back to yourself may be challenging, but it is rawly rewarding. And it starts with one question, asked with genuine curiosity rather than panic: "Whose life am I living?" If the answer isn't "mine" - you know what to do. *Om Gum Ganapataye Namaha*

The Seduction of Certainty

Why is the command of another so intoxicating? Because it offers a vacation from the terrifying responsibility of being your own authority. When someone else is certain, you get to be uncertain. You get to rest in their conviction. This is especially true when you’ve been taught that your own inner compass is broken. Bear with me.In my work with clients, I see this constantly. They come from families where their intuition was punished, their emotions were invalidated, and their desires were dismissed as selfish. They learned early on that survival depended on outsourcing their sense of reality to the loudest, most confident person in the room. This isn’t a character flaw; it’s a brilliant survival strategy. Stay with me here.But the strategy that kept you safe as a child is the very thing that keeps you imprisoned as an adult. The hypnosis is so deep that the voice of the other feels like your own. You mistake their approval for self-worth, their guidance for your own soul’s calling. Breaking this trance requires a fierce commitment to your own inner world, a willingness to sit in the discomfort of not knowing, and the courage to disappoint those who have grown accustomed to your compliance.

Palo santo has been used for centuries to clear negative energy and invite in the sacred. *(paid link)*

Rose quartz is the stone of unconditional love, keep one close when you are doing heart work. This isn't some bullshit new-age fantasy either. Your heart center holds all the trauma from giving your power away to others. Every time someone commanded you and you obeyed against your gut instinct? That shit gets stored in your chest. Rose quartz helps soften that defensive armor you built around your heart after years of letting other people run your life. I know this sounds weird, but try holding one when you're feeling that familiar chest tightness that comes from remembering how you let yourself down. That constriction you feel? It's decades of swallowed rebellion. All those moments you wanted to say "fuck no" but said "yes sir" instead. The stone won't magically fix you, but it creates this gentle space where you can actually feel what's trapped in there without wanting to immediately slam the door shut again. Think about that. *(paid link)*

Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now remains one of the most important spiritual books of our time. *(paid link)* Look, I've read a shit-ton of spiritual books over the years, and most of them are either recycled platitudes or academic masturbation. But Tolle? He cut through the noise. The guy took ancient wisdom and made it accessible without dumbing it down. Think about that ~ how rare is it to find someone who can explain consciousness without making you feel like you need a PhD in philosophy? His core insight about the ego's addiction to past and future literally changed how millions of people relate to their own minds.

Nisargadatta Maharaj's I Am That is one of the most direct and powerful pointers to truth ever recorded. *(paid link)* This isn't some flowery spiritual text that dances around the point. Nisargadatta cuts through the bullshit like a hot knife. He doesn't give you comfortable concepts to chew on - he demolishes every idea you've ever had about yourself. The man was relentless. He'd look right through your stories, your seeking, your desperate need to be someone special, and point you back to what you actually are. Not what you think you are. What you ARE.

Reclaiming Your Throne

The process of reclaiming your power is not about fighting the hypnotist. It’s about withdrawing your attention from them and placing it firmly back on yourself. It begins with the body. Your body is the one thing that cannot be hypnotized. It holds the truth of your experience. When you are in a situation that feels off, where does it land in your body? A tightness in the chest? A knot in the stomach? A clenching in the jaw? These are not random pains; they are sacred messages from your soul. Your body is your bullshit detector. Learning to listen to it is the first step out of the trance. From there, you can begin to cultivate your own certainty. This doesn’t mean you’ll always know the ‘right’ answer. It means you trust your ability to work through the unknown. It means you value your own experience above anyone else’s opinion of it. In my own 35-year journey with my teacher Amma, the greatest gift she gave me was not her certainty, but the relentless way she pointed me back to my own. A true guide doesn’t want your power; they want you to own it. So, where have you given your power away? And what is one small step you can take today to call it home?

Breaking the Spell: A Practical Guide to Reclaiming Your Sovereignty

Waking up from this hypnosis is a process of radical self-reclamation. It begins with the courageous act of admitting to yourself that you've been outsourcing your authority. You have to be willing to feel the discomfort of your own uncertainty, to stand in the void of not knowing, without immediately reaching for someone else's map. I've seen this in my own life and in the lives of my clients. The first step is always the hardest: to consciously withdraw your energy from the person or ideology that has been holding you captive. This might mean creating physical distance, unfollowing them on social media, or simply making a firm, internal decision to stop seeking their approval. It's a detox, and you will likely experience withdrawal symptoms: fear, loneliness, a desperate urge to return to the familiar comfort of their certainty. But in that space, something new can be born. You begin to hear the faint, tentative whisper of your own inner voice. It's the voice you've been ignoring for years, the one that knows what you truly want, what you truly value. The practice then becomes one of amplification. You boost that inner voice by honoring its guidance in small, concrete ways. You choose the restaurant, you wear the clothes that make you feel alive, you say 'no' to the invitation that feels draining. Each act of self-honoring is a vote for your own sovereignty, a declaration that you are the ultimate authority in your own life.