You need to assemble a few simple items for this exercise – specifically, a picture of something that you feel strongly about, positively or negatively; a small amount of flavoursome food or drink; something scented; and something with a texture that you can feel easily. Before you begin, put your items in front of you and make sure you won’t be disturbed for five minutes. Close your eyes and breathe slowly and deeply for a few moments, breathing in for the count of four, holding a beat, and then breathing out again for the count of four. After several slow breaths, open your eyes.

Pick up the picture and look at it. Consider the subject. Think about how it makes you feel. Remember a few facts associated with the subject, and previous occasions in the past when you have been particularly aware of the subject. Try to be aware of all your mental activity associated with looking at the picture. Now close your eyes, and tell yourself: “None of this is Malkuth.” (If you’re just trying to ground yourself, you can use the word ‘real’ in place of ‘Malkuth’ throughout this.) Open them again and look back at the picture. This time, make a special effort to ignore what it is about. Just look at the play of light and shadow, line and definition, colour and form, and do your best to ignore its overall meaning. Tell yourself: “This is Malkuth.”

Now repeat the process for your other four senses. You have objects ready for taste, smell and touch; for sound, use your hands to clap a musical rhythm or knock a familiar door-knock pattern on a table. In each instance, first make the most of the experience as a conscious event, linked to your thoughts, feelings and memories. Then remind yourself that such things are not of Malkuth/real, and repeat the experience. The second time, focus entirely on your sensory input, and switch as much of your mind off as you can.

You only need to perform this exercise a few times to really strengthen your understanding of and connection to Malkuth; just once is enough to get back down to Earth usually. It is the sphere we live in the most, and so it is the easiest for us to get a handle on. You can repeat the exercise any time you’re feeling disconnected from reality, or you feel that mental or emotional concerns are weighing you down and you want to get back to the solid world.

Pick twenty-four people at random from the phone book or, if your phone book doesn’t have addresses in, pick twenty-four addresses randomly from your town. Select a superpower, fighting skill, or other competitive talent for each person, and divide them up into four groups of six.

Then prepare a simple letter to each person explaining that their alter-ego has been selected for entry into ‘The Game’, and post the letters. Compare the abilities of each of the six in each group, and either decide the top two winners straight out, or play them off against each other. At the end of the week, inform the winners that they have gone through to the next round, and commiserate the losers. Remember to thank them for playing. To make it more interesting, tell each person about some of the contests they fought, and why they won or lost.

Raven Lost The Game, by Scragz

If you have the patience –- and the money for stamps –- you could just do one match-up a week at the group stage, letting people know how they are doing in the table.

After the group qualifiers, you’ll have eight quarter-­finalists left. Again, wait a week, and then pair them up, choose victors, and let the contestants know. Wait another week for the semis, and then one last week for the final. If you are feeling generous, you might like to send the winner a small prize, like a book token or a certificate.

What ever you do, under no circumstances explain anything to the contestants or provide any details about yourself. The fun of the game lies in the complete mystery of the situation.

If you live in the USA or somewhere else where suing people is a religion, then you’ll need to take extra precautions. Make it very clear on every letter that this is just a game, that all activity is entirely fictitious, and it has no implications or inferences for real life. You can also use a laser printer to print the letters and envelopes. If you’re feeling really paranoid, use a different mail box each week to post your letters, wear rubber gloves to handle them, and wet the backs of the stamps with a sponge rather than licking them.

The most golden rule of the game though is never, ever write anything threatening to the recipients –- that really can get you arrested. So when you describe contests, make sure that it is perfectly clear that you are talking about their alter ego, not themselves. When someone gets knocked out, do not even describe their character as being killed or injured, just as having lost.

Although you’ll probably never get to see your victims’ utter confusion first hand -– unless you select friends and acquaintances to play –- you’ll have the deep satisfaction of knowing that you’ve left twenty-four perfectly ordinary people scratching their heads and talking about your actions for years to come.

The subconscious mind is powerful, stubborn and conservative. Its job is to keep you alive, and it attempts to do so on the basis that if you made it through yesterday, chances are you’ll make it through today. It will go out of its way to ensure that its core beliefs are upheld, because it views them as the programming that has kept you alive so far. There is no filter of critical thought or analysis; that’s the conscious mind’s job. If it worked before, then it becomes part of the unconscious programming; the more it worked, the stronger that circuit becomes.

You stick your hand towards fire, and it gets uncomfortably hot, maybe even burnt. This causes pain, which is bad, and you pull your hand back, which is better. The subconscious notes that grabbing fire = bad, and not grabbing fire = good, so it sets up circuitry intended to stop you grabbing fire. If, consciously, you choose to do so, the subconscious will try to stop you with fear, common sense, memories of old pain, and so on; and it will do this whether or not your reasons for wanting to pick up something burning are good or bad.

Every aspect of your life gets sifted in like this. Most of the unconscious programming is set up by the age of seven or eight, but the subconscious keeps on running those circuits all of your life. If you fight it consciously, it fights back, and as it controls body and brain chemistry, it generally wins. Spend your first years hungry, and you’ll grow up with weight issues that no diet or exercise regime can shift, because the subconscious is fighting tooth and nail to keep you alive as best it knows how.

Hypnotic affirmation is the tool that allows you to tinker with the programming in the unconscious. Good affirmations speak in language that the unconscious understands. It doesn’t know whether the things you experience are real or imagined, if there’s no physical feedback. It doesn’t understand timescales, or good intentions, or lies, or what you meant to say. It understands how things make you feel. It knows that pleasant experiences are to be repeated, even if your conscious knows they’re fattening, or immoral. It will cheat, cajole and bully your mind into making sure that its vision of the ‘correct’ world is the one that you live in.

Subconscious by Burcindrummer

To speak to the subconscious, you need to speak in the present tense, and you need to do so clearly, positively and emotionally. Wherever possible, you need to back it up with imagined pictures, and pertinent details. The hypnosis makes it receptive, so that it will pay attention to what you want to tell it. You need to make sure that what you want to say makes sense.

So to start with, remember that the unconscious doesn’t really understand past and future. That’s too analytical. Affirmations should always be in the present tense, and should present your desired outcome as current truth. If you say “I want to lose weight”, the subconscious does a quick audit, finds that yes, you do indeed want to lose weight, adds a bit of extra emphasis to that circuit, and congratulates itself on a job well done. All you’ve done is make yourself more desperate to lose weight. If, instead, you say “I am slim”, although you know you may be lying, the subconscious doesn’t. Instead, it checks around, discovers that for “I am slim” to be true the body has to lose some weight, and sets about making you lose weight.

For similar reasons, you can’t use negation in an affirmation. If you say “I am not hungry”, the subconscious doesn’t really understand the ‘not’, and just fixates on the ‘hungry’. Mmm, hungry. Hungry, coming right up. Positive phraseology can help you round this — “I am pleasantly full” — but in some areas, you’ll need to think outside the box.

Don’t be scared to throw some duration in for emphasis. The subconscious might not understand time, but it can deal with absolutes. “I am always pleasantly full” can’t be made true with an instantaneous flicker of sensation.

Finally, do what you can to engage the subconscious with nice, shiny things like detail and emotion. It doesn’t play well with abstracts. “I am a size six” is much more specific than “I am slim”, and gives the subconscious something to really get behind. Add some feeling, and it’ll really take notice. “I love being a gorgeous size six” is a statement that comes with a bundle of good feelings attached. That means its worth running as a program. Add in a mental image where you waltz into a room looking fabulous in your brand new size six dress, because the subconscious can’t tell if it’s real or not, only that you’re experiencing it, and it makes you feel great. That makes it a high priority. Then, when the subconscious checks current reality and discovers you’re not a six at all, it assumes you’ve just slipped a couple of sizes in the last instant, and will start working hard to reverse whatever calamity just befell you.

The subconscious is your tireless champion, forever fighting to keep you alive. It’s just that sometimes, you have to gently pick it up and point it in the right direction.

Disclaimer: I don’t understand US female clothing sizes all that well, so my apologies if size six is anything other than healthy.

I’ve done quite a lot of work with self-hypnosis in the past. In all seriousness, I have found it to be both useful and powerful. Getting good results depends on three simple factors: well-worded affirmations, repetition, and patience. It can work with just about any mental or emotional issue, and has also been known to help gain influence over utterly unconscious physical processes, from stuttering to fighting disease.

What would you like to change about yourself?

Forget the rumours; anyone can be hypnotised. The idea of people being immune comes from stage-hypnotists, and what they do is not really hypnosis. Anyone can resist being hypnotised if they don’t want to be, and anyone can be hypnotised if they are prepared to let it happen.

The technique for getting yourself into a useful level of trance is really pretty simple. Basically, you methodically tense and relax your body, and after that, relax your mind. Once you’re there, you repeat prepared affirmations to yourself, and then bring your mind back up to normal consciousness. You can do all of this just by thinking to yourself, but personally I like to plan and record a script that I can listen to, because then I can let go completely, and don’t have to worry about staying conscious enough to remember my affirmations.

Hypnosis by Mastrobiggo

Whether you do it ad-hoc or record a script, self-hypnosis requires daily practice. If you’re new to it, it will take about a month for your subconscious to get with the program, and start seeing effects. You probably won’t know whether you’re hypnotised or not either, because being in a hypnotic trance really doesn’t feel much different to just being a bit relaxed. Keep at it though, and it can revolutionise your life. There’s no danger, by the way; the absolute worst that can happen — say you go ‘too deep’, or forget to tell yourself to come out of it — is that you doze off and have a little nap, then wake up feeling perky.

I’ll go over how to craft a good affirmation in the next day or two, but the cliff-notes version is to phrase it in the present tense, using positive phrasing with emotionally engaging content, as if the result you wish were already true: “I love being a non-smoker”, rather than “I want to stop smoking”.

The technique for actually getting intro trance is straight-forward. Sit down or lie down, and get comfortable. Make sure you won’t be distracted or disturbed for the duration — if you are, you’ll need to put yourself back into trance again.

Close your eyes, and take three slow, deep breaths, as slow as you comfortably can, one after another. Then slowly tense the muscles in your left foot and hold for a moment. Then gently allow them to relax again, and say to yourself “My left foot is relaxed.” In your mind’s eye, picture your left foot bathed in a soft white light.

Au Revoir Aura by Boca Blaise

Now repeat this up your body as follows: right foot, lower left leg (include ankle), lower right leg, left knee, right knee, left thigh, right thigh, hips and groin, stomach, chest, left shoulder, right shoulder, left upper arm, right upper arm, left elbow, right elbow, left forearm, right forearm, left hand, right hand, lower back, upper back, neck and finally head.

It can be helpful to add a couple of extra reminder stops part-way through. After your hips, don’t tense anything, but say to yourself “My whole lower body is totally relaxed and at peace”, and visualise it all bathed in the soft glow. Do the same after your upper back, making it “my whole body”, and again finally at the end, simply as “I am”.

Then you move on to your mind. Say to yourself, “I am going to count from 20 down to 1. With each number that I count, I will sink deeper and deeper into a lovely, warm, safe, relaxing hypnotic trance. Once I’m there, I will change myself and my world for the better.”

Then just count, slowly, from 20 to 1. You may find it helpful to add little boosters every five numbers: after 16, say “I am already sinking into a beautiful hypnotic trance”; after 11, say “I am now half-way to entering a deep, powerful trance”; after six, say “I am warm and safe, almost into a really deep trance”; and after 2, say “I am now slipping into a lovely deep trance, so that I can change myself for the better.”

After 1, give yourself a moment, and the repeat your affirmations. Generally you should repeat an affirmation at least three times — far more, if you’re only using one affirmation — and while you’re doing so, picture yourself as vividly as possible with the affirmation being true. If you can, try to really feel this truth: physically feel that you are this slightly different person.

When you’ve done your affirmations, and allowed yourself a bit of time to just enjoy feeling peaceful, bring yourself back out. Say to yourself, “I am going to count from 1 to 3. When I reach three, I will awaken feeling really refreshed, positive, cheerful and energetic, ready to get on with my day. 1. 2. 3!” Then open your eyes, stretch to get your circulation back up to its usual levels, and you’re done.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, you can also use this technique on other people in order to hypnotise them, if they are prepared to be hypnotised by you. All you need to do is speak softly and calmly to your subject, rather than to yourself. You can’t get someone to do something they wouldn’t normally wish to do, no matter how deeply hypnotised they are.

At the risk of sounding even loonier than I usually do, a couple of days ago I was thinking about asking higher forces for some advice on getting rid of a few extra pounds. To head off any questions: I didn’t get round to it; I’ve never pondered doing so before; and the forces in question were strictly non-religious. I spent a few minutes wondering what would be the best way to try to transmit the question, what sort of potential reply I might possibly hope to receive, and whether I was at any risk of accidentally giving myself a nasty wasting disease — necrotizing fascitis, for example. I then fired up Neverwinter Nights 2, and forgot the whole thing entirely.

Yesterday I was at a crowded bus stop, not one of the ones I regularly use. A fairly full bus pulled up, but the electronic display claimed that there was another one just a minute behind, so I decided to wait. So did an Indian guy. Everyone else heaved forward and jammed onto the bus, grunting and moaning at each other. I shared a smiled ‘people, huh’ look with the Indian guy.

He then smiled, pointed at my stomach, and said “So, what are you going to do about that, then?”

He wasn’t being unpleasant in the least — he sounded curious and sympathetic — so I told him that I was doing some low-carb stuff, and trying to get as much exercise as my arthritic bits permit.

“You should do the breathing exercise,” he told me. “It’s amazing. Works like magic. My brother in law lost twenty pounds.”

The Chakra Wheel by Artwerk

The next bus rolled up, and we got on. The chap then proceeded to give me instructions on how to perform this exercise, and said that it worked through a combination of strengthening stomach muscles, stimulating blood flow in the area, and — to paraphrase — activating the stomach chakra. Then he wished me luck, and got off the bus at the next stop.

If you’re interested by the way, the trick apparently is to stand up straight and force out your belly, without allowing your back or chest to move. Hold it for a moment, and then pull it back in again, still keeping your back and chest still. Allow the motion to pull breath down into your lungs, and expel it as you contract again. Do this twice a day, doing as many repetitions as you can without pausing, until you’re out of strength. It sounds a bit like it might derive from Hindu techniques of pranic breathing — I’ll look into that and report back if I discover anything interesting.

I’ve never seen this guy before. I’ve never had strangers start totally spontaneous conversations with me about my weight before. I’m not impressively obese or anything. He didn’t have any sort of product to push, axe to grind, or even website to pimp. And it was less than 24 hours after I’d imagined — just imagined — how I might set about asking for help with my weight.

I’ve had a few suspicious coincidences in my time, but that really is just taking the piss.

Working on visualization requires no preparation. Make sure you’re not going to be disturbed for five minutes and make yourself comfortable physically, sitting or lying down as you prefer. Close your eyes and take several slow, deep breaths. Concentrate on your mind’s eye, and imagine the number “0″. Picture it in your mind’s eye, in white, as if it was written in chalk on a blackboard, but only concern yourself with the number.

Just concentrate on it, and keep it in mind.

When you feel that you have a fairly firm mental hold on it, add another digit next to it. You can pick one at random, or select digits from a number that has meaning to you, like your telephone number. Remembering to keep the “0″ vivid, hold the second number next to it. When it is stabilized, add another number, and then another, and keep going until you can no longer hold the whole number simultaneously in your mind’s eye. At that point, start back from the first “0″, and try building back up.

Blackboard by Pareé Erica

During your first attempts, you may find that even the initial “0″ is wavering and difficult to retain. That’s perfectly normal; visualization is not something that many of us practise. Keep at it, and you’ll find that you quickly improve. When you can hold an entire ten-digit phone number steady for minutes at a time, expand your horizons a little. Imagine the surface of your mind’s eye really is a blackboard, complete with chalk dust and a wooden frame. Hold all of that in your mind’s eye. Then rub a number out with a blackboard eraser, and write in something else, using a different colour chalk. Fill in the rest of the classroom that the blackboard is in. You can even populate it with attentive, polite, quiet little children.

If you can hold the image of an entire class – with individual children in specific places – and still retain the numbers you started with, then you’ve truly mastered visualization. Most people won’t ever need to take it that far (although it is very rewarding), but if you’re going to be using your visual imagination ever, do try to keep at it until you can at least envision the blackboard and the wall it is mounted on. This is likely to take several weeks.

You’ll find that visualization is easier some days than others. Factors such as fatigue, when you last ate and even the moon’s phase may play a role. Look back over your notes and see what correspondences you can identify.

If you liked this post, you should check out Greg Stolze’s novel SwitchFlipped. It’s all about the magic hiding behind the modern world, and it’s a lot of fun too. I think you’ll like it. 

There are techniques that you can use however that will make it far, far easier to recall a block of text verbatim.

The Declaration of Independence by sallycinnaminn

The simplest is to cascade the memory through your mind. This gets more unweildy as the piece of text gets longer, but it can provide impressive results even on pages and pages, if necessary. First of all, copy the piece of text out longhand, paying attention to the words you’re writing, and their meanings, as you write. Start each new sentence on a new line. It’ll look a bit strange, but you’ll get into the swing of it. To demonstrate, here’s this paragraph line by line…

The simplest is to cascade the memory through your mind.
This gets more unweildy as the piece of text gets longer, but it can provide impressive results even on pages and pages, if necessary.
First of all, copy the piece of text out longhand.
Start each new sentence on a new line.
It’ll look a bit strange, but you’ll get into the swing of it.
To demonstrate, here’s this paragraph line by line…

Once it’s all copied out, read the first line aloud, close your eyes, and repeat it. Then read the first two lines, close your eyes, and repeat them both. Then the first three, and so on, and so on. You’ll find that because you’re hanging extra info off the previous bit of memorization each time, the brain will go to special effort to make sure the previous stuff is burned in.

If you do choke on one line, no problem, just go back and read up to and including that line again, then proceed from there.

Once you’ve got the whole thing — it shouldn’t take many back-tracking repeats, if any — then you need to sleep on the new memories. Ideally, go and have a nap right away. Even forty-five minutes is a start. Anyway, the next day, go through the entire process of reading and repeating again. You don’t need to copy everything out again, though. That will fix it in place.

If it’s a while before you’ll need the memory, or you want it in place for good, be sure to repeat the memorised block of text (just once through) every day or two for a couple of weeks, and then every week or two thereafter.

Kensington 2009 Installation (freemasonry) by melvisflickr

The other technique seems slightly odd at first, but is every bit as powerful.

As before, copy the text out longhand. This lets your mind know you mean business. Then go through it again, only this time, only write the first letter of each word. Keep the same sentence, paragraph structure and punctuation as the original text. The end result looks slightly odd, but don’t fear. Here’s an example:

T o t s s o a f, b i e b a p.
A b, c t t o l. T l y m k y m b. T g t i a, o t t, o w t f l o e w. K t s s, p s a p a t o t. T e r l s o, b d’t f. H’s a e:

Now cover the original text, and read the truncated version out, replacing the initials with their original words. If you falter, go back and read the entire original piece aloud, and then start the abbreviated version again. It won’t take long before you can remember the whole thing from the initials — and then, shortly afterwards, without even them. The challenge of recalling what each letter stands for fixes the text in your mind. As for the previous method, sleep on the new memories, and repeat the next day.

Neither of these methods is completely effort-free. But they are much, much faster than trying to learn a block of text by simple repetition, whether it’s an intricate speech or the tracing board.

To get the best results, you really need a dictaphone or some other sort of voice recorder. If you can’t get hold of anything like that, even on your mobile, then you can make do without it, but your sessions won’t be anywhere near as effective. Get yourself into a location where you’re happy to talk out loud without fear of being overhead (if that bothers you).

Now, start the recorder, close your eyes, and imagine yourself in a room. Any room at all. Whatever comes to mind. Start describing the room you are imagining, out loud, in as much detail as you can muster. Don’t let yourself stop talking for any more than an instant, or the amount of time it takes to draw a quick breath. Speak quickly, faster than you usually would. If you find yourself hesitating or pausing, just say the first thing that comes into your mind, even if it’s total nonsense. Especially if, actually.

When there’s nothing more in the room for you to describe, turn your attention outside the room. Head out of the door, look out of the window, if there are no openings, blow a hole in the wall with dynamite or laser-beams or ninjas. Keep describing everything you imagine. Don’t try to guide the images, and don’t think about what you are saying. Do your best to just connect your mouth to your imagination, and let it run wild.

Move through your imaginary landscape however you see fit. Leap out of windows and fly, if you want to. It’s all in your mind. Just don’t try to censor or predict what you are going to encounter, and keep talking about it. If any other thought occurs to you in the meantime, blurt it out. If the landscape shifts suddenly, roll with it. Your only job is to keep your mouth fed with words.

Cascade by Extranoise

For the first week, just keep the cascade going for five minutes. You’ll find that your mind resists you at first; and you’ll spend a lot of time saying “ummmm uhhhh ummmm” or cursing repeatedly as you try to find words. This to be expected. You will improve. Make a point of listening to the tape you make a couple of hours later.

You may find interesting elements or surprising bits of imagery when you listen back. You’ll have no real clue what you were saying for most of it, so don’t expect to remember them. Make a note of anything that leaps out at you from the ramble for any reason. You may find that these have a bearing on your current life situation, or that draw parallels with problems you are having. By listening back over the stream, you also help reinforce to yourself that what you’re doing is important, and as a bonus, it will help you prevent having big gaps in your speech and lots of umming and ahhing. Jot down anything that seems out of place or grabs your interest, but don’t feel you have to transcribe the entire stream. After the first week, increase to ten minutes, and then again to 15 minutes or more.

Cascading is a wonderful practical tool as well as a great exercise to the creativity. If you have a problem, a difficult situation, a puzzling question or a creative challenge that is giving you some trouble, cascading can solve it for you. Before you start the session, think of a physical object that represents the problem (the link can be as tenuous as you want, so long as you know the object represents the problem!). Just before you close your eyes, say “I am going to come up with great solutions to my problem of <…describe the problem…>.”

Then, when you start cascading, begin by describing the object, followed by a room that you might typically find it in. Pay particular attention to other objects in the room, or the territory outside the door. Recording will prove particularly important here because you won’t remember everything you say – maybe not even half of it – and you may miss vital clues to solving the trouble.

Go back over the tape slowly afterward, and consider how the symbolism of things you mention in the cascade can help answer the question. Your unconscious mind is very creative and eager to help when you pay it attention, and I have never known cascading to fail to come up with innovative options. This is particularly true the further into the cascade you go, so if you can keep it going for 20 or 30 minutes to work on a problem, so much the better.

The technique is very simple. Close your eyes, and take a slow, deep breath to help fade out distractions. Then, say to yourself: “I am a Sorcerer. Everything I see, I create. I have created, am creating and will continue to create my own world.” Open your eyes again and look around with as little judgement or analysis as possible, and think about the implications for a moment – that your own choices and actions have brought you to where you are right now, that they keep you where you are, and that your future depends entirely upon you and your choices to come. Accept the simple, literal truth of your statement, without trying to second-guess what might have been if your choices had been different.

And that’s it. Repeat the exercise as often as you like, particularly in situations that you are dissatisfied with, or where you are feeling powerless, but for best effects, aim for at least three times a day.

"The Sorcerer's Car" by Ess G.

Ze Zen requires no preparation, and the Empty Mind is extremely simple in principle. Make sure you won’t be disturbed for a few minutes, sit down comfortably, half-close your eyes, and take several slow, deep breaths. Many meditation techniques ask you to observe your breath, but that is not necessary for this one.

Now, continuing to breathe slowly and easily, silence your mind and hold it silent.

"Zen", by Karolina Michalowska

It’s easy to say, but much harder to actually put into practice. We all vocalise thoughts to ourselves almost all the time; make a conscious effort to stop. Clear all mental images from your mind’s eye. If you are imagining any sounds, get rid of those too. It will require an act of concentration to cease any one of the three; initially, you may have to actively invoke silence by picturing blankness, speaking spaces to yourself (”     “), and so on. Thoughts and images will intrude, almost immediately, because the mind rebels against unusual restrictions. Accept that they have done so, and banish them again. Do not allow yourself to react mentally or emotionally to them, just keep at it calmly, for the time you have allotted yourself

Don’t expect too much from yourself. For the first week or two, even managing to get a second’s mental silence over the course of a daily five minute session is a major victory. You will get better however – and keeping a record of how you’re doing is a vital aid in keeping your morale up. Vocalised thoughts such as “Wow! Four seconds! I’m doing great!” are particularly irritating! When you can still your mind for ten seconds at a time, you can continue to build longer periods, which come quickly. Alternatively, you can try to advance to doing the practice with your eyes fully open or, if you want a real challenge, out in public in a busy setting. If you have the time in your schedule, keep practicing daily until you can keep your mind quiet indefinitely. It sounds nearly impossible, I know, but once you can do a ten-second stretch, complete silence follows fairly easily.

As well as giving your mind a much-needed break and refreshing you on several different levels, the Empty Mind meditation is a great weapon if you want to overcome fear, anger or other negative moods. It can also make sure that your conscious or subconscious minds are not cluttering up your meditations and other exercises with static, and helps build willpower, calms and relaxes you. When you get good at the exercise, it becomes possible to act in the world from this point of stillness, freeing you from all distration and tension — a position of ultimate skill and proficiency.

"on the beach II" by entelpentele