The Mastery Of Awareness

If you can read this, you are of the select few that I will talk to about this. Your thoughts are welcome, very. Oh, and following Aberdeen’s fine example, if you live with someone or know someone with whom you would discuss this (or think I ought to), then feel free to do so.

Three months ago, I started hypnosis to try to become more aware of my needs, more aware of my gut instincts, more willing to follow my urges, hunches, and muse. It’s been working, working well, things are moving in all sorts of ways not necessarily related to my writing.

My mind tends to buzz when it’s bored. Thoughts flicker and pop, sometimes flashbulbs, sometimes strobes of consciousness. This isn’t as helpful during hypnosis as you might think; the idea is to focus and relax, not follow superball thoughts bouncing off the walls. To deal with this, I try to visualize — anything. If the mp3 file is asking me to visualize a garden, I do, but if my brain has leftover capacity and wants wombats digging in the rose bushes, then I let the wombat in and try (in a relaxed sort of way) to visualize the wombat. It works. Visualization doesn’t take enough of me to take away from listening to the file, and keeps my conscious mind distracted and out of my way.

Fine.

Yesterday was such a day. There were no visuals in the script, so wombats couldn’t wander in to dig in the flower beds without bringing the flowerbed with them. I’ve learned to deal with that; I’ve seen lots of hypnotic spirals by now, and there’s enough variety to pick and choose as they wander through my brain’s foyer.

Blue spiral. Orange spiral with streaks of red and yellow. Black and white spiral. Skate key. Skate key. The skate key became very clear before me. The skate key developed a solidity and personality that I am not accustomed to finding in my brain’s theater. The skate key was reflecting the light in appropriate ways, had texture from long use, the skate key had weight. A flash of awareness, not in words, just an awareness of fact: I have a skate key.

The mp3 went along, and I was guided through a series of rooms, instructed to lie down in a series of recliners, and, somewhere, each time I lay in the recliner, as I settled in, I shifted so my skate key would sit easier in my pocket, patted my thigh to make certain it was still there, considered running a string through the hole in the key so I could wear it on my neck….

When I was brought back to normal, awake, alert, and refreshed, as I blinked against the light and re-established contact with gravity and inertia, my first fully conscious thought was, “I have a skate key.”

Within five minutes I discovered that a UK friend of mine, Fay was going to visit her estranged father, who is hostile and toxic, so that she can see her sister for the last time, until the sister is old enough to decide for herself when and if she sees Fay. Father believes that Fay is deviant and unnatural and wrong and a bad influence, since she is a bisexual pagan. Fay’s been trying to stay balanced through the preparations for this, and more or less succeeding for the first time ever. I wrote to her:

I am giving you my mystical skate key, used for the roller skates I keep in the depths of my mind’s closet. With this key, you will be able to adjust your skates to roll sweetly and swiftly around obstacles, to outrace anyone without the key, and to return unharmed to those who truly love you.

I googled an image search of “skate key” and immediately found the one I was thinking of, and sent it along. Fay accepted it with a

Blimey.
Thanks!
{lost for words}
{tight hug}
Love you.


Okay, y’know, I’m deeply superstitious. No rabbits feet or new moons over my left shoulder; I believe in hunches and presences and all sorts of whatever-feels-right when I feel it.

But I don’t find skate keys in my mind. And I don’t generally share what I suddenly know is right with people outside my subjective experience — which is everyone. I know what is objective reality, and what is subjective experience, and that there is a difference to anyone who is not in my subjective experience. The physical world, for instance, does not share my subjective experience.

But I did find a skate key, it seemed very important to have it, and I knew exactly what I had it for when I read Fay’s post, and exactly what needed to be done with the key.

This is not the first time that odd things have popped out of my head in trance, and they have been useful (for some value of the word “useful”) each time. I’m becoming schizophrenic, or delusional.

Or some sort of mystic.

I think schizo and delusional would be easier to deal with.

4 thoughts on “The Mastery Of Awareness”

  1. What was the mp3 for?

    I don’t even know what a skate key is, what it looks like, nor what it is for. Adjusting the skates’ rolling, though, would not be my first, uninformed guess. Yes, I’m aware of Google Image. 🙂

    I think odd but useful things often pop out of your head, trance or not. You may be learning to focus that aspect of your mind. The persistance of the idea of the key may be new, but the spontaneous use to which you put it seems normal to me. I want to say “Anybody would have done the same thing.” but that would be going out on a limb, certainly beyond my direct experience.

    I’m interested to learn if the key did her any good. Any device which could help her stay centered in those circumstances would be helpful.

    I think that’s not even remotely like schizophrenia.

    1. The mp3 was for inducing trance, deepening that trance, and installing a trigger that would accellerate the process next time.

      Skate keys are used to tighten the clamps that hold your roller skates onto your feet. Sloppy skates ==> slowed movement and lack of control.

      I’m sort of interested in the outcome, too. Where’s Don Juan when I need him?

      1. Oh yeah, bring on the peyote. “Look, beams of light are streaming from my mouth. Here, let me shine them on you! Hey, they don’t flow so well with your fist in my mouth….”

        …anyway. Did the trance have a point? Or was it an end in itself? That’s what I meant.

        You don’t need Don Juan. David Bowie, “Did You Ever Have a Dream or Two?”

        1. The trance’s point was to make it easier to go deeper and faster into trance the next time. Like most things, trancing seems to work better with direction and practice.

          The intention of the mp3 is to increase my efficiency and ability in using other mp3 files.

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