Trance de Orishas

Late at night in the quiet of my bedroom which with its heavy velvet drapes and solitary stillness suggests that of a tomb I have recently and gradually become somewhat proficient at a new activity that is only now coming into fruition.

I suppose it can best be categorized as a self induced trance.  I seem to have access to it when I wake up in the middle of the night (1-4pm) and then endeavor to enter this state.    How this is accomplished varies, but there are some common characteristics.  First, it involves a degree of concentration on a single point, with my eyes closed.  The point can be moving, such as the vibrating colors and designs that you can sometimes see with you eyes closed.  Second, patience is required.   It just takes a while of staying with the point.  Its like a mediation that you keep coming back to your object of meditation.   In fact, though my general objective to this activity is often to go back to sleep, it is helpful not to try to go to sleep, but only try to meditate.  Third, and most importantly, is the breath.  Slow and deep breaths, especially in harmony with the object of meditation are helpful.  Fourth, it helps to move into the body, feeling all of its sensations while at the same time focusing on the point.  The object is to get out of your thinking mind.  And any of these practices, or combination of them can be helpful.

Eventually, I can feel that all my thoughts and awareness are more or less coalescing on this single point or object of meditation.  When this occurs my awareness of who I am or what I am doing drops away and there is only the point.  I can almost feel this physically.  As if my entire consciousness is wrapped up in that single point and everything, time, space, awareness disappear.  If there are any thoughts, I bring them into the point without analyzing them.  Everything goes into the object of meditation.  Sometimes I feel this point is in the frontal part of my brain--like the mystical third eye.
Often the end result of this practice is that I fall asleep and dream either vividly or lucidly.  Case in point last night.  The vivid dream started with an awareness that I can been hurt in my head somehow, and I went back to investigate.  During this process I went back to a room that was vaguely in Gillette Wyoming, perhaps near the old Alco store and I was with Patrick Russell.  (Earlier this week, I spoke with this musician about brain wave entrainment and trance states at the Studio Show).  I became aware that I had the power to levitate.  He was shocked.  Then my powers increased.  More people arrived and I had developed advanced powers of telekinesis with small gestures.   Everybody was scared of me.  I remember looking into the mirror and seeing three aspects of me.  One of the was unfocused.  One of them was for lack of a better word evil--or at least certainly foreboding. 
The lucidity of the dream developed as I became aware that I could induce this trance state at will within my dream.  And with it I developed enormous powers.  I remember thinking of the Orishas that are accessed through trance states and how I had summoned one of them.  I woke up with a chill and fear.  I was alone in an apartment late at night and I felt an electrifying presence all around me.  Sleep did not come again that night.