Relaxation / Trance Techniques (to Go)

        You hear the gentle noises of the animals around you.  You hear the breeze blowing through the treetops.  You hear the insects carousing in the darkness.  You feel the soft, warm earth beneath your body.  And you breathe in the warm moist vapors of the air.

          There is a faint glow in the distance ahead of you.  It is still a great distance away, but its light begins to make your surroundings known.  Here you sit in a place you know very well, a place you have often come to for refuge and comfort from the ravages of our world.  Here is a place you have often called "home".

          The glow is gently becoming more distinct.  You can now tell that it is the reddish glow of the morning sky, just beginning to appear on the distant horizon.  Before long, you can make out more of your surroundings.

          The trees seem to shudder for an instant.  You watch as their dry leaves begin to litter the ground around you.  And a brisk wind suddenly moves through the waxing morning.  The trees are bare now, standing skeletal in a sea of brownish leaves.

          The sun peaks over the horizon and you see that you are traveling a road lined with bare trees, moving gently toward the brightening sky.  The cold wind stirs every so often, but the trees stand firm as silent guardians along the road.

          The brittle leaves that litter your path rustle with your footsteps and scare the small scurrying animals away.  The leaves almost seem to be sinking in the brown earth, becoming fewer and fewer as you walk along.  Before long, only the empty trees and the brown earth remain along your path.

          Was that a small white flake that just flew past your gaze?

          You watch as a gentle powdering of whiteness begins.  The ground seems reluctant to accept the snow at first.  But it finally relents, and before long a white blanket covers the ground -- and your path.

          Now, your footsteps are crunching in the gentle snow.  And the footprints behind you betray your direction.  Soon the drifts of snow become thicker and a bit harder to walk through.  Yet you continue forward.

          The snow blows harder and colder.  And it gets harder to see the road ahead.

          And just as suddenly, the sun returns, the snow stops, and the drifts begin to turn into waters, muddy puddles.  The water collects in places on the road, and it flows into ditches along the side.  And soon, the bare trees, the road, and the brown earth are all that you can see ahead of you again.

          The sunlight has passed overhead now, and is behind you.   And there is suddenly a slight movement in the branches around you.  Soon their brown color seems a bit greener.  Then there is an explosion of colors as they bud.  Everything becomes painted as though a mighty paintbrush were sweeping through the land.  The colors get brighter before they begin to fade into brilliant shades of green.

          And the greens become deeper.  The leaves get thicker.  And soon your path is again shaded from the bright afternoon soonlight.  You walk along further under the dark green canopy, and the sun begins to sink toward the horizon behind you.  The shadows grow longer now as the light begins to grow dimmer into shades of red.  The light makes the leaves appear to be turning red and orange as well.

          And just as the light is fading you discover that you are approaching your sacred place once again.  The light gets darker just as you arrive, and the leaves seem to have become dry once again.  This is the last thing you can make out as your place once again grows dark with the last moments of twilight.