When the first edition of Finding True Magic was released in 1996, readers were quite surprised. It wasn't that I had brought together East and West in the context of hypnotherapy and NLP, but that the book looked through the lens of Eastern philosophies to show how the ego shapes our thoughts and experience. The result astonished people, many of whom previously believed that, if they (or their clients) came to therapy with a "problem," that problem demanded a solution. My approach, however, rendered the problem itself null and void, even absurd . . . .
By the time I encountered Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) and hypnotherapy, I had been studying Buddhism for 14 years. It was fascinating to discover that the most valuable insights and techniques presented by hypnotherapy and NLP were fragments of the Buddhist wisdom teachings that I had already encountered in a much more comprehensive form.
The teachings of Buddhism add crucial insights to psychotherapeutic work. Primarily, Buddhism holds an exalted view of our human consciousness and being. A therapist's basic assumptions and attitude about the nature of a human being profoundly affect the outcomes of his work with clients.