SELF HYPNOSIS LESSON 21 Offstage Goal To allow yourself to express genuine feelings and emotions, and to enhance your ability to communicate meaningfully with others. Time Before doing this exercise within a structured time frame, you may have to put in time on two other specific exercises: {1} to construct a refuge location {real or imaginary} in your mind; {2} to establish an interpersonal relationship in your mind, with someone {real or imaginary} to whom you feel you can talk freely and naturally. Introductory Note If you have performed the Mind Room exercise in Section 1,you have already built your refuge; if not, look for the right place now. Let your mind roam freely. The refuge may be a house or a room, it may be indoors, outdoors, spacious, small, majestic, cozy, elegant, homey, ot anything else you want it to be. But once you have chosen your place of refuge, stick with it, and furnish it with great attention to detail. In the future, these details will be your landmarks. They will always show you the way to your refuge quickly and easily. Preparation An imaginary person is sometimes harder to create than an imaginary place. You may already know someone wide enough to be a trusted advisor-teacher, a grandparent, a community leader. But this person is likely to be older than you-too old, really, to serve as a close friend, to understand the feelings of someone your age. Yet, with a little trance-alteration, that person may well turn out to be the perfect choice for the present purpose. Put yourself into an altered state of consciousness by counting from ten to zero and relaxing muscle after muscle. The Exercise When you have reached your deeper level of consciousness let the image of the person you have imagined fill your mind. The eyes are sympathetic, intent. The poise of the head expresses readiness to listen and to respond. Now, while keeping your trance at a steady depth, allow this image to recede slowly, very slowly, as if it were going down the length of a tunnel. This is the tunnel of time. As the image recedes into the tunnel, it travels backward in time, one year, two years, five years, ten years...until the person has reached the age you want him or her to be. Your friend's appearance has not really changed; the face is still the familiar one you know so well. Only the generation gap has been eliminated. You can talk freely, confident that you will be understood on your own terms. Now, together, go to your mental place of refuge. Settle down in your haven of security and peace. Feel the current of silent communication flowing between you. Now let that current express itself in words that travel from one open heart to another. There is no fear of being misunderstood, of getting enmeshed in man-made static. Your every word is carried along on this strong current of communication. You are at one with the person to whom you are speaking. The moments of silence are filled with a relaxed oneness. It is pure joy to understand and to be understood, to know that every inflection of your voice is heard, every nuance of your mood perceived. You know, too, that you are being yourself at last, that you have surrendered your mask. It is as if through this communication a new, more genuine, more real you had come to life. At the end of the exercise, just before awakening yourself by counting from one to three and opening your eyes, tell yourself that next time your words in conversation will flow very smoothly and confidently; and that you will, today and always, emerge from this experience with a feeling of great serenity, peace and self-confidence, more capable than ever before of dealing with problems of communication and of relating to others-in all states of consciousness.