This is all a surprise by the way. I was just following the trail of what turns me on.
But I had to learn how hypnosis works, and that's where the seed of these thoughts came. Hypnosis works by directing attention. Everyone can be fooled by magic tricks, and everyone can be hypnotized, because no matter how smart you are, you have a limited amount of attention. This is something that hit me like a thunderbolt when I was sitting in a college class in my 20s and was shown this video.
(Perhaps you've seen that video before and are feeling clever right now. Like you're a smarter person now, who can't fall for that kind of thing. In that case watch this video.)
It's good for analytically minded people like me to realize our consciousness is limited! And that developing as a person isn't necessarily being alert to more and more things. There's always something you're not paying attention to. This is liberating!
Here's another example of letting someone else direct my attention for fun and profit. I have a workout video I like. Here's what the voiceover says, in full, over the part of the video where you are swinging your arms over one another other:
We're going to switch to lateral steps plus a swing on those arms. And start up.
Swinging those arms back and forth in front of your chest, just a small step left to right, make sure that every single time you swing those arms across in front you have a different arm on top each time. So don't always bring your left arm on top, or don't always bring your right arm on top, even though your body's going to want to have a tendency to do that, make sure you always alternate. Let's go ahead and get ready for our last warmup exercise, slow butt-kickers...
Absolutely none of this is necessary. This is a stupidly easy move. And is there really a risk I'm going to forget to switch them? (Why not also remind me not to crash them together in mid air?) But I actually do double check my movements, every time - and all those little directions of attention add up to the time flying by. I'm going into trance, a little bit, and it's a good thing!
I've always had a lot of resistance to that, which might surprise you. When people talked about their trance-like states while running or exercising, talked about enjoying "turning off their brain", I would feel a little panicky. It sounded like drowning. If my value comes from my busy, probing brain, quick to find logical flaws and build shiny structures of thought, as I was told basicall my whole schooling, who am I if I were to wipe that out, even for a few minutes?
But are we really ourselves when we are at our most aware? I don't think so anymore. I think what we mistake for consciousness is really just hypervigilance. Rapidly scanning our attention around in an anxiety that we'll miss something - the same state of mind as when we pause with our suitcases before going out the door on a trip.
Ironically, in the state of highest consciousness we are not really the most responsive to our environment. If you ask a star athlete or an improv comedian, activities where rapid response is critical, most likely they will not say they were particularly aware when they were performing. Time went by quickly. They were less troubled by nagging thoughts.
By contrast, I had a Philosophy major friend in college who was the most principled, cerebral, top-down guy I ever met. I once saw him step on a furniture tack, and I could actually watch him deciding whether it was consistent with his beliefs to yell out. It took a full three seconds.
Awareness is often nothing more than layers of checking and cross checking. And those layers slow us down, and separate us from the world.
Layers of protection are appropriate when there's enemies. These could include unethical people, or advertisers, or any other entity seeking to manipulate us to an agenda. You need defences. And sometimes the defences are against yourself, and stupid or embarassing shit that you fear might come out if you didn't filter it. But I've been a little too proud of my defences in the past, and not valuing enough other people's ability to be undefended, and to abandon themselves to an experience or to self expression.
Thinking harder doesn't get you to be more creative, funnier, sexier, a better hypnotist, or better at solving tough problems. For all of these, I now think you are best served by letting go, getting out of your own way, and letting deeper parts of your mind work in an automatic fashion.
That person you are at your most introspective and self-conscious is not the real you.
Since learning about trance, exercise is better for me, and so is art and music: I know now that I don't have to have a conscious, verbal response to everything. I can just let it carry me along. In fact "trance music" sounds better, as does everything rhythmic.
Even more simply and more frequently, I want to enjoy those moments of just watching dust motes in a sunbeam, or patterns made by overlapping tree leaves in a canopy above me. Spacing out. Losing myself in beauty and repetition.
Most people are used to their consciousness not giving up without a fight, and only getting a solid vacation from it with alcohol or pot or sex. In the kink community people also get it from being suspended in rope, or caned vigorously. Being submissive, or, to some extent, dominating. And so on.
But there's more possibilities for trancing out. Meditation and hypnosis for sure. (and I want to get hypnotized a lot more) But also noticing those moments of everyday trance and abandoning yourself to them more fully, letting them expand out lusciously.
Don't listen to people who say the only way to grow is to become more awake, more thoughtful, more careful, more aware. Run the other way! Into trance!
