At least once every six months I find myself promoting self-hypnosis to some acquaintance who is desperately in need of an outlet in their life to reduce stress, induce satisfactory sleep, or make some time in the day where they can feel like they are taking some measure against the insanity of their lives. Mind you, these people rarely speak these ideas as much as they wear them on their face or in the way they hold themselves.

My schtick is quite effective. I never play it off like I'm some super hero of mental being. I usually relate to their current experience and then explain how I've taken some initiative in the past to quell the helplessness of feeling away from who I think I should have been at the time.

I'm telling you all this because it has recently taken place and left me with some unanswered questions that I've been thinking over.

What is happening in the throes of meditation and how is it that we're so susceptible to the lure of mental limbo?

This is where I'm currently at on that:

I've come to believe that, as an advanced species, we've designed and invented a million ways to separate ourselves from our natural state of perception. We have enhanced our senses mechanically. We have supplemented our brains digitally. We have promoted our own physical evolution by developing means of elongating the shelf life of our bodies, teeth, organs and skins.

And all this has happened quite quickly, a majority of it taking place in our lifetimes. Perhaps a bit too quickly. Our minds have fallen behind. We have encountered an undertow, while psychologically wave-treading, in the form of complicated and inexplicable mental conditions that are exerting all their forces in an attempt to pull us to a point of least resistance. However, the lure of our luxurious new environment, and the comfort it affords, pulls back and we are left stretched too thin to exist in either place with proper substance. You can have the direct experience that you do not possess a nose if you concentrate too much upon the tip of it.

We exist now in the thinking prisons of our minds as if those thoughts are real. We introspect a certain psychological experience that enforces the conviction that the universe is composed exclusively of ideas. Anything we think up, we can elect to induce fear. This anxiety controls us as if it were real and not just the byproduct of that " certain psychological experience." All our enhanced sensory perceptions have left us without the means to naturally deduce the difference between contingent stress and the manifest risks of life.

Meditation is nothing more than breaking down perception to what is unquestionably not falsely imposed upon us. Granted, the common denominator of real things is "nothing", but that is a starting point. From there we can gradually introduce bits of our world that we can trust, and a little trust goes a long way in these matters. Usually, a little trust is all you need. When you fear water, that one finger on the pools edge is the difference between hysteria and a feeling of control. When you fear the dark, the smallest light can bring calm.

When you fear the competence of your soul, that small piece of nothing can be the whole world.

Please don't take any of this too seriously, unless you do . . . and remember, it's how you do what other people do their way that makes you special ;)