Meditation, Trance and Different States of Awareness

A Common Question

What is the difference between meditation and trance?

Answer

Meditation and trance may share certain experiential features, but they are not the same activity and should not be distinguished simply by how altered a person feels.

Meditation includes a range of approaches in which attention, thought, bodily experience and the person's relationship with ongoing experience may change according to the method being used.

Trance involves a different kind of participation. Within the Spirit Wisdom Academy model, trance may include a reduction in ordinary self-directed activity while influence associated with a Spirit communicator becomes increasingly involved in expression.

The conditions can overlap phenomenologically. Reduced internal commentary, changed time perception or decreased interest in the immediate environment might occur in either.

Their distinction therefore rests primarily upon context, purpose and what is occurring within the experience rather than upon a particular sensation or degree of alteration.

Introduction

The phrase "different states of awareness" is widely used within spiritual teaching.

Someone may speak of entering a meditative state of awareness.

Another may describe a trance state.

A practitioner may say that awareness became deeper, wider or more spiritual as the experience changed.

The language is familiar, but within the framework developed throughout this book, it requires careful translation.

Awareness itself is not the changing state.

Awareness describes what has become consciously apparent within experience.

The condition that changes is consciousness.

What may vary within that condition is extensive: attention, thought, perception, bodily experience, sense of time, responsiveness to surroundings, self-reference and the relative prominence of different aspects of experience.

This chapter will therefore retain the familiar phrase "states of awareness" in its title while examining meditation and trance through the more precise architecture already established.

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Meditation Is Not One State

The word meditation can create the impression of a single identifiable condition.

Someone meditates and enters "the meditative state."

In reality, meditation describes a wide family of approaches.

One method may involve sustained attention upon a chosen object.

Another may allow thoughts and sensations to pass without extended engagement.

A contemplative exercise may center upon a question or spiritual principle.

Other approaches may place greater emphasis upon bodily stillness, repeated language, breathing or receptive observation.

These methods need not produce identical conscious conditions.

In one meditation, thought may become less prominent.

In another, thinking may remain active but more deliberately organized.

Bodily experience may become pronounced or fade into the background.

Time may pass almost unnoticed, or the person may remain fully capable of estimating it.

The existence of these differences prevents meditation from being defined by one expected internal condition.

Meditation is better approached as an activity or discipline within which different conscious conditions may occur.

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Trance Is Not Simply "Deeper Meditation"

Meditation and trance are often placed upon the same imagined continuum.

A person begins in ordinary waking consciousness.

They meditate.

They go further.

Eventually, they reach trance.

This makes trance appear to be an intensified version of meditation.

But increased alteration alone does not explain the distinction.

A meditation may involve substantial changes in thought, time and bodily experience without becoming trance.

A trance condition may sometimes develop with less subjective intensity than the person expected.

The categories therefore need more than a scale of "how different did I feel?"

Within the Academy model, trance has its own context and purpose, particularly where Spirit involvement becomes relevant.

That functional difference matters more than placing meditation and trance at different depths on a spiritual ladder.

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Similar Experiences Can Occur in Different Activities

There are genuine areas of overlap.

During meditation, ordinary internal commentary may diminish.

Something similar may occur in trance.

The surrounding environment may become less prominent in either.

Time may be difficult to estimate.

Physical sensation may change.

Self-reference may become less dominant.

If these features were used to identify the activity, classification would quickly become unreliable.

A shared experiential feature does not make two conditions identical.

The same outward stillness can accompany very different internal processes.

The same reduction in deliberate thought can serve different purposes.

The same alteration in time perception tells us very little about what the person is actually doing.

Context gives these changes their place.

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The Purpose of the Condition Matters

This brings us to an important shift from the previous chapter.

Chapter Nine asked what makes consciousness altered.

Here, we must ask what a particular condition is serving.

Meditation may be used for contemplation, attentional steadiness, spiritual reflection, receptivity or other defined purposes.

Trance, within mediumistic work, involves a relationship in which the ordinary balance of personal direction and Spirit influence may change.

The altered condition is therefore not the objective in either case.

It provides circumstances within which something else may occur.

This prevents students from evaluating success through internal sensation alone.

A meditation is not necessarily more effective because the body became distant.

A trance session is not necessarily more authentic because the practitioner remembers less.

The state should serve the work.

The work should not become an excuse to pursue the state.

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Awareness Retains the Same Meaning

Because this chapter discusses significant changes in conscious experience, our use of awareness must remain especially disciplined.

If a person enters meditation and internal commentary becomes less prominent, we should not describe awareness as having changed in quality.

Thought has changed in prominence.

If imagery becomes more vivid, awareness has not become more visual.

The perceptual content has changed.

If mediumistic material becomes consciously present during trance, awareness has not opened to admit Spirit.

What has become consciously apparent differs within a changed condition of consciousness.

These distinctions may initially seem technical, but they prevent metaphors from acquiring explanatory functions.

The more unusual an experience becomes, the more important precise language can be.

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Alteration and Effectiveness Are Different Questions

A person may enter a pronounced meditative condition and gain little from the session.

Another may experience only modest change yet find the meditation highly useful.

A trance practitioner may undergo substantial alteration without producing meaningful communication.

Another may remain relatively close to familiar waking experience while valuable work develops.

This tells us that two questions should remain separate:

"What condition did I experience?"

and

"What did that condition support?"

The first concerns consciousness.

The second concerns function.

Neither can substitute automatically for the other.

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Meditation and Trance Do Not Form a Spiritual Ladder

There is also no need to arrange the two activities according to spiritual importance.

Meditation is not a preliminary stage that someone eventually graduates beyond.

Trance is not proof of superior spiritual ability.

They ask different things of the practitioner and may serve different purposes.

A person may find meditation deeply valuable without ever pursuing trance.

A trance practitioner may continue to use meditation without regarding it as a lesser activity.

Difference does not require competition.

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The Central Question of This Chapter

Rather than asking:

"Which state is deeper?"

or:

"Which state is more spiritual?"

we can ask:

"What changes within conscious experience, what purpose does the activity serve, and how does that particular condition support what is taking place?"

That question allows meditation and trance to be examined on their own terms.

It also preserves the framework we have built.

Consciousness may change.

Attention may shift.

Perceptual content may differ.

What is consciously present may vary considerably.

But awareness itself does not need to acquire a new definition each time the condition of experience changes.

Meditation is often spoken about as though it produces one identifiable condition.

A person begins meditating, settles sufficiently, and eventually reaches "the meditative state."

That description is convenient, but it compresses a wide range of possible experiences into a single category.

Meditation can involve very different methods, intentions and forms of engagement. A contemplative exercise centered upon a spiritual principle does not necessarily affect conscious experience in the same way as sustained attention upon a single object. A receptive meditation may unfold differently from one organized around repeated language, bodily observation or reflective inquiry.

For this reason, meditation is better understood first as an activity.

The condition of consciousness that accompanies it may vary according to what the person is doing, how they are engaging with the method, and how their experience changes while the meditation unfolds.

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Meditation Does Not Require One Particular Internal Condition

Students can easily acquire expectations about how meditation is supposed to feel.

Thought should diminish.

The body should become less noticeable.

Time should disappear.

External activity should recede.

A particular sense of stillness should develop.

When those features do not occur, the meditation may be judged unsuccessful.

But none of them provides a universal definition.

A person can meditate while thought remains present.

They can retain a clear sense of the body.

They can remain oriented to the room.

They can estimate time reasonably well.

They may finish without having experienced a substantial alteration from their familiar waking condition.

The relevant question is not whether a prescribed state was reached.

It is whether the person participated meaningfully in the method being used.

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Different Methods Shape Experience Differently

Consider a meditation involving sustained focus upon a single phrase.

Attention may become increasingly stable around that phrase while competing thoughts receive less engagement.

Now consider a reflective meditation exploring forgiveness.

Thought may remain active because reflection is part of the exercise.

Images, memories or questions may arise and contribute to what is being considered.

A third approach may ask the person to observe bodily experience without extending analysis.

In that case, physical sensation may become more prominent rather than receding.

These meditations need not converge upon the same condition.

Their differences are not deficiencies.

They reflect different forms of participation.

This prevents the word "meditation" from being used as though it automatically tells us what consciousness should be like while the activity is taking place.

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Attention Can Change Without Becoming the Goal

Many forms of meditation involve a different relationship with attention.

Focus may become more sustained.

Distractions may be noticed without being followed.

The person may repeatedly return attention to a chosen point of engagement.

In another method, attention may be less narrowly directed, allowing several aspects of experience to remain available without prolonged focus upon any one of them.

These changes can influence the overall condition of experience.

But meditation should not become a contest in attentional control.

A wandering thought does not mean the exercise has collapsed.

Having to redirect attention is not proof that the person has failed to reach the correct state.

The act of returning may be part of the meditation itself.

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Thought Does Not Need to Disappear

The phrase "emptying the mind" has created considerable confusion around meditation.

Thought is often treated as an intrusion that must eventually be eliminated.

But different meditative methods have different relationships with thinking.

In some, internal commentary may become less prominent.

In others, thought remains necessary because contemplation itself involves examining an idea.

A thought may arise and pass without further engagement.

Another may become relevant to the inquiry being undertaken.

The presence of thought therefore tells us very little about the quality of the meditation unless we understand the purpose of the exercise.

This distinction also protects the architecture established earlier.

If internal commentary diminishes, awareness has not changed in quality.

The content of conscious experience has changed.

Thought occupies a different place within the condition.

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Bodily Experience May Move in Either Direction

Meditation can also alter the person's relationship with the body.

Some methods make physical experience more noticeable.

The person may become more conscious of posture, breathing, tension or contact with the surface beneath them.

Other forms of meditation may result in bodily sensation receiving less consideration as attention becomes engaged elsewhere.

Neither direction should be treated as spiritually preferable.

A reduced sense of the body is not proof that the person has entered a superior state.

Likewise, a pronounced bodily presence does not indicate that meditation has remained superficial.

The significance of bodily change depends upon how it relates to the activity being undertaken.

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Time May Change Without Becoming a Measure of Success

Meditation can affect the experience of duration.

A session may seem brief and later prove considerably longer.

On another occasion, the person may remain conscious of time throughout.

Neither tells us whether the meditation was more effective.

Time distortion can occur when attention becomes highly engaged, when repetitive activity reduces temporal reference points, or when ordinary self-monitoring receives less emphasis.

It may be an interesting feature of the session.

It should not become a credential.

A person does not meditate better simply because they lost track of the clock.

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The Self Can Become Less Central Without Disappearing

Another change may involve self-reference.

Ordinary experience often contains a running commentary about the self:

"Am I doing this correctly?"

"How long has it been?"

"Why am I thinking about that?"

"Should something be happening by now?"

As meditation continues, these self-referential questions may receive less involvement.

The person has not ceased to possess identity.

They have simply become less occupied with repeatedly evaluating themselves as the one performing the activity.

This can substantially alter the character of experience.

It also demonstrates why changes in self-reference should not be interpreted too quickly as spiritual transcendence.

A person can become less self-preoccupied without leaving the self behind.

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Physical Stillness and Conscious Change Are Not the Same Thing

Meditation is often practiced while sitting relatively still.

This can create another misleading association.

Because bodily movement decreases, the person may assume consciousness must also have entered a particular state.

But posture tells us only so much.

Someone can remain motionless while mentally planning the next day.

Another person can shift position occasionally while remaining deeply engaged in contemplation.

External stillness may support certain methods by reducing competing demands.

It does not authenticate the internal condition.

The same caution applies when observing someone else.

A composed posture reveals very little about what their experience is actually like.

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Expectation Can Turn Meditation Into State-Chasing

Once someone has a session they regard as especially meaningful, they may try to reproduce its internal characteristics.

Perhaps self-reference diminished considerably.

Perhaps time passed unnoticed.

Perhaps the body felt unusually distant.

The next meditation begins with a hidden agenda:

"Can I get back there?"

Now the person is not simply participating in the chosen practice.

They are monitoring whether a previous condition is returning.

This can alter the entire exercise.

Instead of allowing today's meditation to unfold according to its own circumstances, the person compares it with yesterday's experience.

The state has become the objective.

That is precisely the reversal we want to avoid.

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Meditation Can Be Effective Without Feeling Special

Some of the most useful meditative experiences may not feel unusual at all.

The person engages with the exercise.

Attention wanders and returns.

A question becomes clearer.

A spiritual principle acquires personal relevance.

A difficult emotion can be considered without immediate reaction.

Nothing spectacular occurs.

Nothing needs to.

Meditation does not require unfamiliar consciousness in order to have value.

Sometimes the contribution lies simply in creating circumstances in which something can be considered differently.

That function matters more than how distinctive the session felt.

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Meditation Is Better Understood Through Purpose

This brings meditation into clearer focus.

The condition of consciousness may change.

Sometimes considerably.

Sometimes only slightly.

But the purpose of the meditation should determine how those changes are understood.

If the activity is contemplative, did it support sustained engagement with the subject?

If it is receptive, did it allow the person to remain available without forcing content?

If it involves attentional training, could attention return after distraction?

If it supports spiritual reflection, did it provide a useful context for that reflection?

These questions keep the method and its effects connected.

They also prevent one person's preferred meditative condition from becoming the standard everyone else is expected to reproduce.

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Core Principle

Meditation can involve many different conditions of consciousness. Its effectiveness is determined by how well the condition supports the purpose of the meditation, not by whether the experience conforms to one expected internal state.

Trance requires a different conceptual treatment.

It may share certain experiential features with meditation, but those similarities do not make trance an intensified version of meditative activity.

A person may experience reduced self-reference in meditation.

They may experience something similar during trance.

Time may become difficult to estimate in either.

Ordinary surroundings may receive less attention.

Thought may change in prominence.

These overlaps tell us that consciousness can change in comparable ways across different activities.

They do not establish that the activities are the same.

Within the Spirit Wisdom Academy model, trance becomes distinctive because of what happens to the person's ordinary self-directed participation when Spirit influence is involved.

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Trance Is Not Defined by "Depth"

The language surrounding trance often relies heavily upon depth.

Someone enters light trance.

Then deeper trance.

Then a very deep state.

This may be useful as informal shorthand for degree of alteration, but it can also create the impression that the essence of trance lies in moving increasingly far from familiar waking consciousness.

That is too simple.

A person can experience substantial alteration without engaging in trance.

Likewise, a trance practitioner may retain a considerable degree of orientation to their surroundings while meaningful work develops.

The amount of alteration tells us about the condition.

It does not, by itself, define the nature of the activity.

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Personal Direction May Change

One of the more important features of trance concerns ordinary self-direction.

In familiar waking activity, people generally experience themselves as initiating speech, organizing thought, selecting responses and deliberately directing action.

During trance, that usual pattern may change.

Words may feel less consciously constructed.

The practitioner may experience less deliberate planning before speaking.

The usual sense of deciding each next movement or phrase may diminish.

Expression can seem to unfold with reduced personal management.

This change can be subtle or pronounced.

The key point is not that the practitioner becomes absent.

It is that their usual manner of directing the experience may no longer occupy the same place.

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Reduced Self-Direction Does Not Establish Spirit Influence by Itself

This requires an important safeguard.

Human beings can experience reduced agency in many circumstances.

Highly familiar actions can feel automatic.

Absorption can reduce self-monitoring.

Speech can sometimes flow before the speaker has consciously planned every sentence.

Dreaming can involve experience without familiar voluntary control.

For that reason, the feeling that "this did not seem like me directing it" cannot authenticate Spirit involvement on its own.

Within trance mediumship, Spirit influence belongs to the wider context of the work.

The changed experience of agency may be part of that context.

It is not proof standing independently of it.

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Spirit Influence Should Not Be Modeled as Personal Erasure

Another common description suggests that the medium must "get out of the way" so Spirit can take over.

The phrase may capture the subjective sense that ordinary self-directed activity has diminished.

But taken literally, it can become misleading.

The practitioner does not need to cease being themselves.

Their identity does not disappear.

Nor should trance be conceptualized as one spiritual identity simply replacing another inside the same body.

Within the Academy model, influence does not require erasure.

The practitioner remains involved in a relationship whose expression may increasingly involve Spirit while their usual self-directed participation changes.

That is a more precise model than disappearance and replacement.

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Speech May Feel Different

Trance often becomes especially interesting when vocal expression changes.

The practitioner may feel that sentences arrive with less deliberate construction.

Vocabulary may differ from what they would ordinarily select.

Cadence or phrasing may change.

The pace of speech may be unfamiliar.

At times, expression may seem to form almost simultaneously with speaking.

These experiences can be significant within the context of trance.

Yet difference alone should not be exaggerated.

A change in speech does not automatically authenticate the source.

The quality, coherence and context of what develops remain important.

The practitioner should not feel required to produce unusual vocal characteristics in order for trance to appear genuine.

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The Body May Participate Differently

Changes in bodily participation can also occur.

Posture may shift.

Facial expression may alter.

Movement may feel less deliberately initiated.

The body may seem heavier, lighter or positioned differently from what is familiar.

Again, these features can vary considerably.

Some trance work may involve visible physical change.

Other sessions may involve very little.

There is no need to create a checklist of expected signs.

Once students believe that trance should look a certain way, they can begin unconsciously reproducing learned expectations rather than allowing the work to develop according to its own character.

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Memory Is Variable

Memory after trance is another area where assumptions easily arise.

Some practitioners may remember much of what occurred.

Others may recall only portions.

In more pronounced conditions, recall may be limited.

But reduced memory should not become the standard against which trance is judged.

A person who remembers the session has not necessarily remained too close to ordinary consciousness.

A person who remembers little has not automatically reached a more authentic level.

Memory describes one aspect of the experience.

It should not become a spiritual grade.

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Trance and Unconsciousness Should Remain Separate

The word trance is sometimes associated with complete unconsciousness.

That creates an unnecessarily narrow model.

A practitioner may retain varying degrees of conscious experience while ordinary self-direction has changed substantially.

They may hear some of what is being said.

They may retain partial knowledge of the room.

They may know that speech is occurring while experiencing relatively little deliberate involvement in forming it.

The condition can therefore include consciousness without ordinary participation occurring in its usual form.

This distinction gives us a much richer understanding than simply asking whether the practitioner was conscious or unconscious.

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Meditation Can Prepare Without Becoming Trance

Meditative experience may help someone become familiar with certain changes that also occur during trance.

They may already know what it feels like when internal commentary recedes.

They may be comfortable allowing attention to remain steady.

They may have experience with reduced self-evaluation or changes in bodily prominence.

This familiarity can be useful.

But meditation does not automatically become trance because these conditions are present.

The distinguishing question remains functional:

What is the person doing?

What relationship is involved?

What kind of influence is being explored?

The similarity of internal conditions should not erase the difference in purpose.

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Trance Is Relational Within the Academy Model

This is where trance moves beyond altered consciousness alone.

Within Spirit Wisdom Academy teaching, trance mediumship involves Spirit relationship.

The practitioner is not merely entering an unusual condition for its own sake.

Changes in consciousness provide circumstances in which ordinary self-directed participation may recede sufficiently for Spirit influence to become more involved in expression.

That relationship gives the activity its mediumistic character.

The state supports the relationship.

It does not replace it.

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Greater Alteration Does Not Automatically Produce Better Trance

Once this is understood, an important pressure can be released.

The practitioner does not need to become progressively less conscious in order to improve.

They do not need to chase reduced memory.

They do not need increasing physical change.

They do not need a more pronounced sense of being absent.

The relevant question is whether the condition supports the intended form of trance work.

A comparatively modest shift may be entirely sufficient.

Another kind of trance work may involve more substantial alteration.

Neither needs to become the universal standard.

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Responsibility Remains

Changes in the person's sense of initiating or directing what occurs do not remove human responsibility.

The practitioner remains responsible for how trance is approached, the setting in which it occurs, the boundaries established around the work, and the claims later made about what happened.

Reduced self-direction during the experience should not become an excuse for avoiding responsibility afterward.

This is particularly important whenever trance communication affects another person.

Spiritual influence does not cancel accountability.

The human participant remains part of the relationship even where their ordinary manner of participation has changed.

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Trance Should Be Understood by What It Enables

The most useful way to think about trance is therefore not to ask how far the person departed from their familiar waking condition.

Instead ask:

What changed in the person's ordinary self-directed participation?

What became possible within that condition?

How did Spirit involvement relate to what developed?

Did the work possess coherence?

Did the state support the purpose for which trance was being undertaken?

These questions place trance where it belongs.

Not at the far end of a scale of altered consciousness.

But within a particular spiritual relationship in which changes in conscious condition support a different form of participation.

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Core Principle

Trance is distinguished not simply by the degree of alteration, but by changes in ordinary self-directed participation within a spiritual context where Spirit influence may become increasingly involved in expression.