Lehal Library

Now your entire body is expanding in size ... You can feel your inner self expand all over, like a balloon filling with air... Your entire body is expanding all over ... your entire body is expanding by twenty four inches ... As your body expands, you can feel yourself getting lighter and lighter ... Like a balloon, you can feel yourself rising, rising ... Now your partner is in an ideal state to achieve a fully conscious, out-of-body experience. At this point you can immediately begin a favorite out-of-body technique. For example: As you float, you can feel yourself becoming lighter and floating higher and higher above your body ... As you do, you repeat to yourself, “I am floating. I am floating. I am aware I am floating. I am floating free.” If done correctly, this technique provides a powerful preparation for any out-of-body visualization or affirmation. Take your time and allow your partner to enjoy all the sensations associated with this technique. Feel free to enhance or lengthen the guided meditation to accommodate your partner’s visualization skills. Ideally, allow at least half an hour when doing the guided visualization. After the verbal, guided portion of this technique, allow your partner at least twenty minutes of silence to accomplish his or her personal affirmations and visualization. Although I’ve included only one technique designed specifically for partners, any of the visualization techniques can be easily adapted to a partner or group situation by designating someone to do the verbal guided visualization. Accelerating Psychological Change and Self-Improvement At some point in our lives we all seek a form of self-improvement or psychological change. In the past three decades, countless self-improvement techniques, books, tapes and courses have become available: positive thinking, neurolinguistic programming, inner-child work, self-talk, re-birthing, Twelve Steps, biofeedback, and a host of others. In general, our concepts of self-improvement are still linked to the conclusions arrived at decades ago by the founding fathers of modern psychology. Freud, the creator of psychoanalysis, and Jung, the founder of analytical psychology, believed that psychological change was a slow, deliberate process. Today this conclusion is accepted by psychologists and psychiatrists worldwide. Many consider psychological improvement to be the slow process of peeling away the outer layers of ego so that patients can see and understand the underlying cause of their current problems or blocks. Every year millions of people spend considerable time and money attempting to achieve some form of psychological change. Many have been conditioned to believe that positive psychological change is a long, arduous road. Most psychiatrists and psychologists expect noticeable improvements to take from several months to several years. A few years ago, during a conversation with a psychologist, I was told bluntly, “Psychological change is a grueling task that takes a lifetime.” My first thought was, I’m glad I’m not paying you by the hour. Studies have shown that the attitudes and expectations of the medical practitioner dramatically affect the results achieved; often the expectations, or lack of them, are transferred to the patient. If a psychologist expects positive psychological change to be a grueling lifelong task, it most certainly will. Over the years I have found many of the basic conclusions of the billion-dollar self-improvement industry to be severely lacking. I believe that the time has come for us to ask some serious questions. How can we effectively improve ourselves when we don’t know what we are, why we’re here, and where we’re going? How can we effectively improve something that we don’t comprehend? Do self-improvement and positive psychological change require years of grueling introspection? I strongly believe that it is within our grasp to bypass the unending maze of self-analysis and cut to the heart of selfimprovement. This observation is shared by a growing number of individuals and groups throughout the world. For a moment just imagine what could be accomplished if there were a more direct and effective way to achieve positive psychological change and self-improvement. Consider, for example, the experience of Michael Crichton, the internationally known author of Jurassic Park, who describes one of his out-of-body experiences in his autobiography Travels. He initiated this out-of-body experience with the assistance of a personal guide and friend, Gary. Anyway, the idea of the astral travel didn’t seem too alarming, and I tried it with Gary. It is, after all, just another kind of guided meditation in an altered state. I visualized my chakras glowing brightly, spinning like white spirals. Then I visualized myself leaving through my third chakra, moving up to the astral plane—which to me appeared as a misty yellow place. So far, so good. I began to see why people so often imagined heaven as misty or cloudy. This misty astral plane was agreeable. It was peaceful to be standing here, in all this yellow mist. I felt fine. “Do you see anybody here?” Gary asked. I looked around. I didn’t see anybody. “No.” “Stay there a minute and let’s see if anybody comes.” Then I saw my grandmother, who died while I was in medical school. She waved to me, and I waved back. I wasn’t surprised to see her up here. I didn’t feel any particular need to talk to her. So I just waited around. This astral plane was rather featureless. There weren’t any palm trees or chairs or places to sit down. It was just a place. A misty yellow place. “Do you see anybody else?” Gary said. I didn’t. Then: “Yes. My father.” I felt worried. I hadn’t had an easy time with my father. Now he was showing up while I was vulnerable, in an altered state of consciousness. I wondered what he would do, what would happen. He approached me. My father looked the same, only translucent and misty, like everything else in this place. I didn’t want to have a long conversation with him. I was quite nervous. Suddenly he embraced me. In the instant of that embrace, I saw and felt everything in my relationship with my father, all the feelings he had had and why he had found me difficult, all the feelings I had had and why I had misunderstood him, all the love that there was between us, and all the confusion and misunderstanding that had overpowered it. I saw all the things be had done for me and all the ways he had helped me. I saw every aspect of our relationship at once, the way you can take in at a glance something small you hold in your hand. It was an instant of compassionate acceptance and love. I burst into tears. “What is happening now?” “He’s hugging me.” “What are you feeling?” “It’s ... all over,” I said. What I meant was that this incredibly powerful experience had already happened, complete and total, in a fraction of a second. By the time Gary had asked me, by the time I burst into tears, it was finished. My father had gone. We never said a word. There was no need to say anything. The thing was completed. “I’m done,” I said, and opened my eyes. I had bounced right out of the trance state. 62