Content Slider - control externally with javascript

I see from this post that the content slider uses the bxSlider library.

Is it possible to control the slider (ie: use .goToNextSlide() to simulate the forward arrow) using javascript on the page? if so, how do we access the slider object?

Is there a global object that’s created when the content slider is initialized, that I can use to control it?

I also tried to re-initialize using both $(".fl-content-slider-wrapper").bxSlider(); and $(". bx-wrapper").bxSlider(); with no success. thanks!

Chris