Entering a State of Trance
When your conscious mind's ability to think clearly is interrupted, you enter the state of trance. All people, whether they know it or not, go in and out of trances many times a day. When you are in a trance, your critical reasoning becomes confused. The power of suggestion, whether it's by your unconscious mind or by someone else, takes control of your thought process.
You can be guided or induced into a trance in several different ways. The trigger can come either through external stimuli — if, for instance, you were to enter a specific location — or through internal stimuli, such as thoughts or feelings. Trances can be positive or negative, and they can continue to influence you long after your initial experience. You can remain in a trance state for a few minutes or for days. The state will continue until something interrupts it. Once you recognize the trance state, you have the choice of remaining in it or not.
Sometimes a trance experience can be so powerful that the individual loses total touch with reality. This is more likely to happen when the person is in a highly suggestible state. The images that are received into the conscious mind can occur with such strength that the individual's reality shifts into the trance reality.
Moving Through Time
Your mind moves through three different phases of time: the past, the present, and the future. Everything that you have experienced in your lifetime — your past — is deposited in the memory bank of your unconscious mind. Sometimes the information is held there for years before it suddenly comes back up to the conscious mind. When you experience these memories again, you have actually entered a memory (also called a past) trance. The stronger the memory experience, the stronger the trance.
Your memories of the past help you construct trances relating to the future. When you experience a future event, you are entering a future trance state. The stronger you experience this image, the stronger the trance experience will be.
Your mind also experiences the present. In this time phase it can distort speed and distance. Sometimes a minute seems like an hour, and sometimes an hour seems like a minute. In athletics, being in the present is called “being in the zone.”
Have you ever driven down the highway and become so absorbed in thought that you actually went right by your destination?
You were in a state of trance when this occurred. Even though you were not totally aware of your location, you were still driving your vehicle safely. This phenomenon is called highway hypnosis.
It is easy to get caught up in such a deep trance that you are unaware of what time phase you are in. To break the trance, you must be able to balance the three phases of your mind and be aware of each one.
Psychic Trances
Psychic trances occur when your conscious mind is flooded with information that cannot be deduced by critical reasoning. Usually, this information comes from the unconscious and/or the Universal Mind. Quite often this information comes at a time when you are least expecting it. If you are not prepared, a psychic trance can catch you by surprise and may cause a great deal of mental chaos. Many people try to block this information. However, it often finds its own way to the surface again.
We all enter psychic trances. Some have a great deal of meaning, while others seem to be there just to verify that you are capable of experiencing something unexplainable. Perhaps you knew the telephone was going to ring, or you thought of a song just before it played on the radio.
