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Plastic Paths: The Defining Dilemma

Astral Travel: Greatest Method with the Worst Consequences

Guided meditation and hypnosis. Same thing, in my opinion. I’ve wanted to become a certified hypnotist for a very long time but don’t have the thousands of dollars to spend on the classes so I’ve had to make do with library books and the internet for my hypnosis/guided meditation education, which is fine. I just don’t get the nifty certificate certifying my completion of lessons. 😉

Up until recently I’ve used guided meditations from other people but found a great deal don’t really have an effect. Imaging myself walking through a forest and coming to a stream is neat, don’t get me wrong, but not something that I care to spend 20 minutes on.  I want a guided mediation that produces results! An astral experience, a meeting with my guide, a peek into universal wonders….something more than walking along a beach listening to the waves.

Another  problem I continued to encounter was that the majority of the guided meditations weren’t working for me. The Silva method was pleasant but only occasionally effective, and it was a struggle to work with the guide’s voice at times. I tried Quantum Jumping by Burt Goldman, and while it was an interesting concept I ended up asking for a refund because Mr. Goldman never changed his tone from teaching to mediating. I couldn’t tell when the lesson ended and the meditation began or where the meditation ended and the lesson began.

It has been suggested that one record their own guided meditations/hypnosis scripts before, but I always pushed such thoughts aside because I’ve heard my recorded voice and it sounds both silly and annoying. Do I really sound like that? There was no way I could relax listening to me speak. I would just be sitting there judging myself, my diction, pronunciations, timing, and that awful voice.

But then, at the peak of my “why can’t I find the right guided meditation?!” fit I came across another ‘how to make a hypnosis recording’ ebook and this one clicked. “I can do this. Oh yes I can!” I declared after reading the book….ok, most of the book.

The ebook reminded me that a good hypnosis script needs to sound dull, monotone, and many of the words need to be drawn out liiiiike thiiiiiis. Easy breezy! I can get over the sound of my own voice and I can make recordings that have only the stuff I want, none of the stuff I don’t. Why did I fight this so long, I asked with new hope.

I wrote out what I wanted to say so that I didn’t get lost as I was recording. “10…more and more relaxed…9…deeper and deeper….9….wait, 7…? Wait….” I also used first person point of view.  Hearing “you are very relaxed and only focusing on the sound of my voice” would cause my mind to wonder into “why am I talking to me like that?”

I used Audacity audio editing software (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) not only because it’s free but because it works really well. Then I found a free theta sound waves recording and made that the background. After that I just did it. My own personal mediation that I’ve been using mentally for years is now an mp3.

On the first night I put my headphones in, hit “play” and closed my eyes. Wowza! Holy Mother Goddess this thing works with a great power! I woke up 6 hours later with the feeling that I’d just gotten of a fantastical universe ride. I remember walking around my astral house, looking for something. I remember having conversations with people in a white room. I remember being in a place that always reminds me of an airport terminal (it’s a place I visit often for some reason). I travel a lot on a normal night, but this night seems like I was going for some sort of universal record.

The second night was the same thing. Vivid memories of the places I had traveled to, people I had spoken with , and the things I had seen. The down side is that I woke up exhausted. Down to the bone tired.

So on the third night I rested. By ‘rested’ I mean I didn’t listen to the mp3 at all that night. Instead, I tried it sitting on the couch during daylight hours. Allow me to describe this experience as delicately as possible…

It sucked. Like waking nightmare sucked. Until that day I thought there was nothing worse than sleep paralysis and I was wrong. Being awake but in a meditative state and paralyzed is so much worse. I don’t know what went wrong; my conscious mind and my astral mind were locked in a duel, of sorts. I was astral traveling around my house, again looking for something (I don’t know what) and then my eyes would try to open and I’d be back in my body, struggling to move and get my eyelids open. Only my body no longer responds to commands, or pleas, or bribes. My eyes wouldn’t open, my arms wouldn’t move, my legs were concrete, and as hard as I tried I couldn’t scream. My astral mind would have to calm my body down and stop it from struggling while I was split into two: the nightmare of being trapped and the wise astral self. It went back and forth like this for what seemed like an hour.

The next attempt was during the day again with the exact same results: astral traveling but with my body fighting it. In my recording I mention several times that I am calm and safe. I don’t know what keeps going wrong, but I’m determined to fix it. Recording my own guided meditation/self-hypnosis script appears to be the key to something big, but obviously I don’t have it right yet. There is a large hiccup in this system that will be found and corrected. Where to begin, though, is the question of the day. Where, exactly, to change, correct, and fix seems to be the mystery.

For now.