I remember that almost every evening I used to go to the theatre, especially theatre Sofia which had a very strong cast of actors at that time. I would sit in the audience and wait. If the play was good I knew that towards the end or at the very end a moment would come in which all of me would change. Later, at university, I learned about catharsis: the hypnotic experience which purifies the audience, makes it cry and clap, turns separate people into a unity which yearns and allows to be led on the path of inner transformation…

as Richard Bandler says, NLP is about one thing - freedom. The more “windows” to the unconscious one has the more choices are open to him/her. With the progress of our knowledge about the unconscious, unfortunately (and this is true about every field of knowledge) increases the application of this knowledge for various corrupt goals. Never before has the unconscious been targeted as much in everyday life. Politics, advertising, corporations find newer and more powerful ways to destroy old and useful brain programmes and replace them with what in computer language is called viruses or spam. They do indeed employ the knowledge acquired by NLP and similar methods. In the same way the discoveries of physics were used to develop nuclear weapons. Attacked in this way the individual turns more and more into a defenceless spineless creature, which doesn’t know why he/she does what he/she does and doesn’t do what he/she wants to do.

Suddenly words were power. Suddenly there was the realisation that words and images can influence the unconscious and in such a way that every remnant of conscious psychological activity is totally destroyed. If before communication had been addressed only to the conscious and had been boring, now it attacked the deepest layers of the unconscious. And it was interesting, exciting, beastly powerful. It gave the unconscious the power to seize and squash the conscious; it empowered the most basic instincts and suffocated rationality.

I don’t remember much of this impossible night, ominous ice towers all around me, the snow under my feet and how suddenly I felt that I had enough air and maybe I was safe. Then I realised that there were no limits to man’s potential, that we ourselves impose the limits, supposedly for the better, for peace of mind. Man rarely realises his full potential. We have to push ourselves, to try to make the next step… and the next one..

People came to us because they wanted a change and couldn’t realise it by themselves. We shared the understanding that this was their job and the hope that in our presence they would complete it. And it wasn’t surprising that in most cases they failed. Not only with us, the trainees, but also after years of sessions with expensive therapists, the clients continued to be unhappy and unfulfilled, with the only consolation that they were seeing a “psychoanalyst”.

Intonation, the choice of words, the interruption of the discussant, speaking at the same time and last, but not least, switching him/her off at the most convenient moment, were all elements of Lili Marinkova’s approach. The message wasn’t directly conveyed. The format attracted the audience as moths are attracted to the light. The method was easy to imitate and soon a whole flock of young, ambitious female journalist from the countryside started to copy it as it gave them popularity and the feeling of power.

When we enter the state of fear the decision is made for us; it is to flee. It means that any psychological activity will shrink to the absolute minimum and within seconds the brain will retrogress to the onset of evolution. This is the decision to give up rationality, both conscious and unconscious, and its magic power to turn man from a survivor to a creator of his own environment.

Once you get onto the dark half of the planet, the sun will never shine on you. The fault lies with your mother, father, spouse, colleagues, the children’s nursery, the country’s political parties, world conspiracy. Everybody violates you, offends you, denies you or simply doesn’t love you. Such people carry the burden of their long, accusing facts and every new piece of information, every new communication only confirms their deep belief, that they have drawn the short straw to always be misunderstood, unvalued and unhappy.

Our brain is a gigantic computer, digital camera and MP3 player in one. Every machine has instructions for use. We can decide what part of the information to take in. We can decide in what way, what combination and where exactly to save it. We can decide how to organise it so that it is useful for our goals, rather than the goals of those who are selling it to us.

A man is never a blank sheet of paper. When he is born, there is already writing. Then things get crossed out, new paragraphs start. Day and night, pain, hardship, joy. Growing up. Learning and more learning, starting with basic skills: walking, cycling, dressing oneself. Before these skills become automatic one has to find the right way. Then one has to record this information so that he doesn’t forget it. Every little movement. The muscle coordination. The victorious feeling when you don’t lose balance. Mummy’s smile. Your smile and the pride that you’ve done it! And repetition, which brings precision. The feedback - something is not right, I am falling. Next time I’ll have to modify this movement slightly. The way I breathe. The wind in my hair. Billions of details which matter.

The meaning of inspiration is to know who you are and why you are doing whatever you are doing. To have a goal and be totally devoted to it. To be somewhere, not to make a living, but because this is your place. To feel behind your back the support of the light and to know that nothing can stop you. This is the power which makes some sportsmen world champions, some composers great, some psychotherapists and teachers good. It is inspiration, which pulls them ahead of the masses. To be interested in something, curious, to want to learn is the beginning. To be inspired means to climb up the peak.

We can leave our future empty, but it won’t stay empty; it will fill with information by default. These will be chance signposts, sometimes correct, most often completely wrong, which will define our stumbling towards the aim. I’ve done something or nothing today because I don’t care and not because this was a step to the first road mark, to the goal. When the road marks are not there, this happens often and gradually you get lost in the nothingness in which all directions seem open and you never reach any.

The swamp is the space of our inner world in which there is no place for ecstasy. In the swamp all states are flattened and make us somewhat happy or somewhat unhappy, in other words indifferent. Suffocated, stifled. From here depression is only one step away when the flattened states will overpower the positive and paralyse any further attempt at processing information.

In the organisation of our inner space there is no place for information, which is completely disconnected from the already-existing information. In our inner cosmos there are (sometimes very powerful) forces of attraction and repellence, but there is no vacuum where these forces are not felt at all. The new perception is either attracted by an already existing nucleus, or turns into a nucleus and starts attracting new perceptions. This is how stars - and our emotions- are born.

Any attempt to go against our values always ends in their victory and sometimes it is expressed in illness, frustration, psychological disturbances, unexplainable dissatisfaction with ourselves, painful inner struggles. Pills won’t help. The harmony in the body cannot be restored before the harmony in the values is recovered. Something, which is not important for us, is not us, cannot fulfil our life and make us happy.

The same techniques which used to be employed by magicians to exorcise evil spirits and recover the individual’s inner strength are now used to make us buy margarine, new car or to choose a government. First, attention is diverted and the inner structure of information becomes accessible. Two: connections and inner states are changed, attacked and ready-made beliefs are implanted, three: values are destroyed, so that the victim is completely mouldable. Four: welcome back home - in the world of puppets, take a deep breath and drink up your coke.

Fairy tales are not textbooks. They don’t deal with facts or logic, but speak the language of that complex and entangled organisation, for which we have no knowledge on the level of facts and logic. Fairy tales are the most important textbooks. The recent wave of returning to the mythical shows the difficulties people nowadays have in creating an inner model of information, which can respond to the quickly changing outer environment, to adjust to it. People turn to the world of fairy tales, which has been a constant source of help from their childhood and the childhood of humanity.

Sometimes it is difficult to choose. Sometimes there is fog, a snowstorm and no visibility. Then you try to feel your way with your hands, to make a single step without knowing if it is right. Sometimes all you have to do is wait for the clouds to disperse. In my mountain walking I’ve had to hide under the rocks on the ridge to escape from lightning. After an hour the sky magically clears. Blueness and little fluffy clouds as if there never had been a storm. And then you tell yourself: I’m glad I didn’t flee, didn’t descend. Man is neither a tree nor a rock. But sometimes he needs to be stronger than either.