Plastic Paths: The Astral Travel Chronicles

The Dry Spell Continues

Several months ago my parents invited my brother, husband, and I to dinner and announced over dessert that they were combining years of holiday and birthday presents into one spectacular gift: they were taking all of us on a cruise to the Caribbean! There was a collective thud as three jaws hit the dining room table. And so, during the middle of December, my mom, dad, brother, husband, and I set sail from snowy Colorado to warm tropical islands.

Even though I’m an Aries I’ve always had a great fondness for water. Spending 7 days on the ocean made my heart flutter in delight and during the trip I spent many hours floating and swimming in the ocean and in the pools on the boat. But what I looked forward to most about the cruise was sleeping with the patio door open and listening to the sounds of sea as I slept, being lulled by the boat’s rocking. I fantasized that such an experience would end my astral traveling dry spell and ignite powerful, life altering experiences!

Nope.

Everyone I spoke with on the cruise confirmed this was the rockiest boat ride they had ever been on, and while my husband and I weren’t prone to motion sickness, this ride got the better of us. After three days of being thrown around hallways, buffet lines, and stairwells, he and I were both about to heave. My grayish-green complexion and I went to the onboard store where a perky brunette seemed way too happy to inform me that they had run out of Dramamine and any other motion sickness cure they normally carried.

“But we’ve only been at sea for three days,” I said, struggling to keep breakfast down.

“Yep!” she proclaimed with a smile. I went to poke her in the eye for being so upbeat while I was miserable but the ship lurched and I stumbled into a rack of souvenir t-shirts instead.

My brother is a certified hypnotist so I called him and asked if we could hypnotize the motion sickness away. He met me in my stateroom and hypnotized me into feeling better. During the session he also told my mind to remove any stress or worries before he counted me awake. I don’t really talk to him about my problems so at the time I wondered why he decided to throw that last bit in there, or if it was just standard procedure for a hypnosis session.

For the past six months or so I’ve been sleeping about three or four hours a night, wide awake for the rest of the day. That night, with the patio door open and the sounds of nighttime ocean singing a gentle song, I slept a deep sleep for nine hours. The sickness was gone, the anxiety attacks were gone, and I felt rejuvenated all day.

Every night after that repeated the same pattern. I was (and am) a bit disappointed that I never left my body and the dry spell is still in full force. But I haven’t had a panic attack since being hypnotized (which had been a daily occurrence) and I’ve been sleeping six to eight hours a night. The outer world can really shake me up, twist me around, and send me reeling off the path I want to be on. I feel like a “reset” button has been pushed from somewhere inside which has given me a chance to course correct.

I miss astral traveling very much and when I ask that quiet inner voice of truth when I’ll start up again the answer seems obvious yet insightful, gentle and full of love. “Not just yet.”