Trances

This cool video is great to gain perspective on the universe

If something the size of our brain can contain consciousness, well there has to be consciousness in all of the universe don't you think? There are infinte states of mind other than the ones we are used to. How do we explore these? As you watched the video your mind undertook a journey across the universe officially known by modern man. How much more is documented and lost in ancient tongues?

I know for sure that a trance culture existed in India. Trances were portals into the great unconscious. It's possible that the same unconscious that controls your breathing and heart rate could be controlling the movement of the stars. Swami Rama had demonstrated great control on his 'involuntary' functions. We break bricks with a small tap from our hands in kickboxing class. Neville, one of my teachers gets behind you when you even think of hitting him. All demonstrations of the power of the unconscious mind.

Anyway all of these have one thing in common, they are all achieved in altered states of consciousness or trance.

Kung Fu does not actually refer to a martial art. It means spending energy and time in the cultivation of expertise. Expertise in anything, cooking, gardening, advertising, developing software, whatever... not just martial arts. Now people with Kung Fu are all doing things unconsciously. Look at the matrix below


This is the famous conscious competence learning matrix. Kung Fu is Unconscious Competence.
So as you can see the final state of learning something is a state of entering trance and being able to access capabilities of the unconscious at will.

With this post I hope to start you out on a study of trance. Trances are not only useful to do change-work but are essential to learn and master new skills. Useful? You bet. So isn't it worth practicing?


EXERCISE

To initiate and deepen trance and contact the unconscious

1. Sit comfortably in a chair with your hands on your lap and make an image of yourself sitting opposite yourself looking at yourself (phew!). You can keep your eyes closed or open, whichever makes it easier for you to visualise.
2. Now take this vision of yourself and make it larger while simultaneously dragging it away from you. So it gets bigger, but it's moving away from you, until it's really big on the horizon.
3. You'll begin to experience a somewhat altered state now, your breathing will deepen and your body will begin to relax.
4. Now tilt the image a bit one way and see if your state deepens, try both sides, also try tilting it forward and back, also try turning it so that it faces you at an angle. Do all these slowly and notice the effect of it on your trance and relaxation. Keep yourself tuned to recognise if this is taking you deeper into trance or not
5. Now turn up the brightness and check your trance, the idea being to get deeper. If you're not going deeper, try dimming the image and notice the effect on your trance.
6. Now make the image breathe along with you and see the trance deepen.
7. Imagine a control panel in your mind, imagine a large clickable dial with trance written on it, turn the dial up to 10X deepen and click it gently.
8. Feel yourself drop into a 10X deeper trance
9. Repeat 7 and 8 a few times
10. You must be in a really deep trance by now.
11. Imagine another large button on the control panel called unconscious communication switch.
12. Click it on.
13. Tell your unconscious mentally "If you hear and understand me please make my right index finger warm"
14. See if this happened, if it did congratulations! You have established communication with your unconscious. If it didn't go back to step 1 and try again before you proceed to 15
    
15. Now tell your unconscious "Please make it so that I can reach this state by going to my control panel and clicking the button called unconscious communication. If you have made it so please make my nose warm"
16. If your nose becomes warm, thank your unconscious and slowly come back out of trance by becoming aware of the sounds in the room.
17. Test the button by going in and clicking it, repeat steps 13 and 14 to see if it works.

You now have a great way to enter trance specifically to communicate with the unconscious part of you. Please practice this everyday. This is a useful relationship! I will elaborate on it's uses in future posts.

Great going!

Exquisite States of Mind

How do you get into a state of mind? To answer this try to get into a state of anger now. When was the last time you got angry? 

Lemme guess what you did... You made a picture in your mind of the situation, ie. you saw what you saw when the situation happened, you tried to draw it closer and made it more clear, coloured, large etc. You heard what you heard in that situation and drew that sound closer, made it louder... until...

You intensified the feelings of anger in your body. You looked down and to your right to access the feelings in your body, then you vibrate and rotate them faster till you're hopping mad, all the while hearing your own or others' angry voices.

Even if you didn't exactly do what i have described to arrive at your state, you surely did three things internally saw pictures or movies, heard voices or sounds, felt the anger in your body. 

You may or may not have accessed smells and tastes internally.

All states of mind can be arrived at by manipulating these five internal processes!

In NLP these are called the 5 modalities of thought. In Hindu texts these were called Tanmatra.

States can be deepened or made less deep by changing the location, size, colour, distance, brightness etc of the images or movies you see internally and by changing the tone, tempo, distance, volume, location etc of the sounds/ voices that you hear.

You can also change the location, intensity, direction and path of movement of the feelings generated in your body to tinker with the depth of the state.

These things like location, direction etc. are called submodalities.

Changing submodalities changes the quality of mental states.

Now let's see how much pleasure and good feelings you can generate!

EXERCISE

Make a list of the three greatest feelings you've ever had, instances in your life where you felt simply exquisite!

Situation 1

1. See what saw in situation 1 
   
2. Make the visuals more bright, more clear, bring it closer, then you step closer (mentally of course), make it larger, make it a movie, slow it down
   
3. Hear what you heard in situation 1
   
4. Make it 360 degrees surround sound, make the tone more pleasant, turn up the volume,
   
5. Become aware of the exquisite feelings in your body
   
6. Go inside yourself and locate a beautiful push button with the label 10X, this button will turn your feelings up to 10 times the intensity
   
7. Pull the lever enthusiastically 10-15 times so that you're feeling 150 times more exquisite than you were feeling when situation 1 happened
   
8. You must be exploding with pleasure if you did this right
9. Imagine a cool control panel in your mind and create a large icon of situation1, much like a computer icon in the control panel of your brain. Keep the visual on the icon simple and representative of the state, like  logo for this state.
10. click on it with your finger to load this state

Steps 9 and 10 are called anchoring. Anchors trigger off states of mind.

go through the same steps for situations 2 and 3 where you felt exquisite

You must have 3 icons one for each state on your control panel. You can click these anytime you want to feel exquisite. If you want to feel all three click all three.

Any time you want to intensify a state of mind just go in find the 10x button and jab it enthusiastically a few times.

If you're feeling low click the icons on the control panel and jab the 10X button a few times :)

If this is happening now, great. If it's not try again after you mute all voices of doubt in your brain. Just turn the volume down to zero on all dissenting and arguing voices. It's your brain, you know!

Repeat and practice this exercise until you're satisfied that you are feeling really exquisite!

It's a great tool to have in your mind.