Facing The Unknown

This Trancework session addresses problematic subconscious thought patterns that arise when we face circumstances, situations, environments, people... anything really... where the causes or outcomes or both... are unknown to us.

Often our own minds prevent us from moving forward in our lives by projecting “worst case scenarios” from the shadows of our subconscious into any and every kind of ambiguity that we might face in our life, work, or relationships.

This pattern does tend to preserve the known and familiar status quo, but far more often it obstructs us from moving forward, making needed changes, or taking reasonable risks as we pursue goals, aspirations, and even our deepest souls purpose.

In this session, Eshu will offer your subconscious mind an entirely new way to approach the unknown that will open the doors to possibility and transformation in your life, your work, and your relationships.

Transcript

All right,

As we begin this session,

You can just sit back and relax,

Making sure your head is well supported,

So you don't need to use any muscles at all to hold yourself up.

And you can just let go completely.

And you can just allow your eyes to close whenever you're ready to.

Settle in deeper.

That's right.

And you can connect with your breath.

You don't need to breathe particularly slowly or especially deeply.

Breathing easy.

Simply aware of your breath.

And noticing if there are any sounds in or around wherever you are.

And you can just allow those sounds to drift off into the background.

Even the sounds of your own body.

The sounds of your breathing or moving.

Even your digestion can fade away into the distance as your attention,

Your focus goes deeper inside.

Inside.

Noticing which parts of your body feel at all tense or tight.

And you can just breathe into those areas and feel them softening,

Unwinding as if you could breathe out any tension or discomfort.

Well done.

And noticing where in your body you feel most comfortable and relaxed.

Nice.

And you can kind of lean into or dissolve into that comfortable feeling.

Comfortable feeling.

And if I were to ask you about a time or a place where you felt the most comfortable you've ever felt,

I wonder what thoughts or images or sounds or feelings,

Even sense,

Would come up for you.

And if you'll notice that just by remembering that time or that place,

You relax even deeper.

And it's wonderful to know that nobody knows better than you know what feels good to you.

What's relaxing for you.

And that just by feeling your way back there,

That wonderful,

Comfortable feeling can take you deeper.

Just like you're resting on a cloud of relaxation.

And I wonder if you've ever laid down on your back and looked up at the clouds in the sky passing by.

And if you've ever played that game where you see what you can see in the shapes of the clouds,

Maybe pirate ships or giants or animals.

And I wonder,

Are the pirate ships really there in the clouds or the giants or the animals?

No.

Those shapes are only there because of how you imagine them to be.

How you interpret the shape of the clouds.

And as we begin this journey together,

I want you to understand that so many struggles that you've experienced and may be continuing to experience can be caused by a variety of identifiable patterns of thought.

So many issues,

Anxiety,

Despair,

Fears,

Addictions,

Obsessions,

Are most often the result of how we interpret life experiences rather than being about the experiences themselves.

Now,

I'm not sure if you've heard of the famous psychological test called the Rorschach inkblot test or not.

And if you have,

Please just bear with me while I explain.

The Rorschach test is a process in which a person is shown an amorphous,

Ambiguous inkblot.

And it's kind of like what happens when you're looking at those clouds And it's kind of like what happens when you're looking at those clouds floating by.

And they're asked to describe what they see.

And people describe seeing all kinds of things in the inkblot.

And naturally,

The things they see in the inkblot,

They aren't really there in the inkblot.

Just like what you see in the clouds isn't actually in the clouds.

What a person sees is just what the person projects into that amorphous shape.

And the basic principle that underlies this test is called the projective hypothesis,

Which says that when a person is faced with an ambiguous stimulus,

An unknown,

They will project meaning onto it or into it.

And their projection will naturally be based on their own past experiences or their own frame of reference.

And so,

Sometimes I wonder,

What's the most ambiguous stimulus,

The biggest unknown that any of us can ever face?

Well,

As I see it,

The biggest unknown that any of us can ever face is the unknown of our daily life itself.

Life is like an ever-unfolding experiential Rorschach,

An endless sky of billowing clouds.

As I see it,

Human life as a whole doesn't have any overarching,

Predetermined,

Or universal meaning.

Each of us gives it our own meaning by the way we choose to live and the way we choose to react or respond to the things that we experience.

So,

Whatever it is that you decide to do for your work,

Whoever you decide to enter into relationship with,

Or even whether or not you want to enter into relationship,

However you decide to spend your personal time,

All of those decisions are based on projections about what matters to you,

About what's important or appealing or attractive to you.

And what I find interesting and what I hope you're becoming curious to explore is that it can be incredibly empowering even just being aware that there are some people in the world that face the great unknown of everyday life and say,

Life is an incredible adventure.

And there are other people who face the unknown of their everyday life and say,

Life is a total pain in the ass.

And I'm sure it's clear to you that these are two very different sets of projections.

And in my experience,

I can say with confidence that they lead to two very different sets of feelings and experiences.

And I can also say that in most cases,

Problems with stress,

Anxiety,

Despair,

Frustration,

And so many other struggles are most often rooted in ongoing series of patterns of intricate and interwoven projections that end up causing harm to the person who misunderstands their subjective projections and believes them to be somehow objectively real or true.

So I'm sure that you can imagine that virtually any adverse,

Difficult,

Or hurtful experience has the potential to create stress,

Anxiety,

Or despair when it's misinterpreted.

And then we go on to react to our misinterpretation ineffectively.

Now,

I wonder if you've ever had the experience of calling or texting someone,

Of leaving a message for someone,

And when that person doesn't get back to you in a timeframe you think is reasonable,

You might wonder what it means.

Whether the person is too busy,

Or whether the technology worked properly,

Did the message go through?

Or if maybe that person is avoiding you for some reason,

Or if they're upset with you,

Or any of many possible reasons.

And I wonder,

How do you know what the real reason is?

Of course,

It's human nature to speculate about the meaning of things that happen in our lives and in the world around us.

And the real skill is knowing,

Being able to discern the difference between when you're just speculating and when you have facts,

When there's evidence to affirm your interpretation.

After all,

You probably don't want to react to something on the basis of an incorrect assumption.

And it's important to know that all of your speculations about why the person didn't get back to you are normal,

And they reflect our natural desire to make sense out of things that just don't seem to make much sense.

And whether you're wanting to understand something relatively simple,

Like why someone doesn't call you back,

Or something much more complex,

Like how the universe works,

It's really one of the greatest strengths of human beings that we strive to understand,

To make sense out of things that are going on around us and within us.

And the fact that you can generate so many different explanations for why someone doesn't get back to you,

Gives you an opportunity to realize you actually don't know why they didn't get back to you.

I mean,

You can make lots of guesses,

But you really don't know for sure.

And when you don't know how to explain something,

Of course,

It's perfectly all right to say you don't know.

After all,

No one really expects you to know absolutely everything.

In fact,

It's really a huge gift of honesty and clear thinking when someone says,

I don't know,

Instead of just making up an answer that might be at best unhelpful,

And at worst,

Totally wrong.

Isn't it true that there are so many times in life,

I'm sure you'd rather be given no answer at all than the wrong one.

And the fact that you can come up with so many possibilities means that you have a really well-developed and healthy imagination.

In my view,

Imagination might be one of the most powerful capacities that human beings possess.

It's like a superpower.

And just like any superpower,

With great power comes great responsibility.

And when it comes to your imagination superpower,

Responsibility begins with being aware of when and how you're using your power.

Are you using it for your benefit and well-being and for the good of those around you?

Or is your imagination being used to cause suffering for yourself and others?

Most people,

When they come up against an unknown or ambiguous circumstance,

They can easily imagine 10 or 20 or even 100 ways that the situation or interaction might turn out poorly,

Or even end up in utter disaster.

And they're able to come up with all of those negative possibilities without any effort at all.

And yet,

At the same time,

They'll never even consider a single possibility of how things might turn out well,

Never mind unexpectedly amazing.

And their friends or family,

Even their therapists,

Might start telling them to stop catastrophizing or say quit imagining things.

Well,

Personally,

I'd never tell someone not to use their imagination superpower.

Honestly,

I don't even believe it's possible for a person not to imagine.

But I imagine that you're a person that appreciates fairness and balance and equality.

So instead of trying to stop imagining,

I wonder if you might just consider using your imagination fairly.

Fairly.

What I mean is,

Can you challenge yourself when you're facing something that's genuinely unknown to be fair?

So go ahead.

Anytime you face an unknown,

You can still imagine a worst case scenario if you like.

But in fairness,

If the outcome really is unknown,

I wonder if you can choose to maintain the balance by also imagining a best case scenario.

And for every imagined problem you come up with,

You can imagine an equal number of unexpected bonuses when what you're facing is truly unknown.

It's well established by now that in unknown circumstances,

Projecting or imagining positive outcomes is far more likely to result in actual positive outcomes,

Just as negative projections are more likely to result in negative ones.

So obviously,

When you know that you don't know,

It just makes good sense to use your imagination superpower to project and imagine your success,

Does it not?

And so,

Before you reach a conclusion,

Any conclusion,

You may find it useful to ask yourself,

How do I know?

And if your answer is,

I just think so,

Or I just feel it's that way,

Then you'll realize and know for yourself that you're forming a conclusion without any real facts,

No objective data,

Which doesn't always mean you're wrong necessarily,

But it does increase the likelihood significantly.

So you can remind yourself to go to the next step and ask yourself,

Are there any facts,

Any objective data to support this?

And maybe there will be,

And maybe there won't be,

But even as you begin to ask yourself these simple questions,

You'll notice the quality and accuracy of your speculations and your conclusions getting better and better over time.

And each time throughout the day,

Throughout the day,

When you encounter a situation where the meaning isn't quite clear to you,

And you can even anticipate these events before they happen,

You will recognize and remind yourself that there are many different ways to interpret an experience.

And you will instantly and naturally,

Almost automatically,

Remind yourself you don't know what it really means just yet.

And you can choose to entertain a variety of interpretations,

And you can ask yourself directly how you'll know which one is correct,

If any.

And it'll lead you to look deeper,

And you can do so comfortably,

Knowing that you can look for evidence of your views if it exists,

And comfortably know you can choose to adopt any perspective that might feel good to you when one interpretation interpretation is just as plausible as another.

And so now,

You can just take a few moments while I'm quiet to stay with these ideas and consider them deeply,

Absorb them deeply into your very being,

Taking some time to just imagine how these new ideas can unfold in your daily life,

Offering new possibilities,

Opening to new opportunities,

Knowing that right now,

You don't really know what the future holds.

And because you don't know,

You can choose to imagine.

You can begin to shape what happens next when you decide to use the superpower of your imagination in ways that feel good.

And when you're ready to step into the amazing possibilities that are ahead of you,

You can begin the process of gradually bringing yourself back into the awareness and feeling of your body,

Gently moving your fingers and toes noticing the sounds and the atmosphere of the room around you.

And when you're fully prepared to,

You can awaken yourself completely and open your eyes feeling awake,

Alert,

Refreshed,

And ready for whatever comes next.

Reviews

I like the concept of using your imagination in a positive way to create a positive projection instead of a negative one of any unknown circumstances.

What a great recording. Eshu, so nice to hear your voice again. I used to listen to your podcasts for years, you got me into Buddhism. Thank you 🙏

Excellent expression of the how our super powered imagination can work for us !