Into the Stone
Read slowly, aloud, leaving a breath between lines; twenty to twenty-five minutes. A guide may read it to you, or you may record it in your own voice.
Before you begin. This is a deep self-hypnosis practice for adults with some experience of meditation or hypnosis. Do not practise it unsupervised if you have, or have had, a psychotic illness, a dissociative disorder, episodes in which the world or your body seemed unreal, or trauma that still produces flashbacks; work with a clinician who knows your history. If you are low in mood or isolated, use only the first half, the cell, and do not stay there long. Never practise while driving, operating anything, standing, or in or near water. Sit rather than lie down. Set a gentle timer for twenty-five minutes.
How to return at any moment. Say aloud, "Back to my own seat." Press your feet into the floor, take one full breath, count up from one to five, and open your eyes on five. Nothing in the practice requires you to stay.
Sit down, and let the body settle.
Before you go anywhere, say quietly to yourself what has gone flat. The thing that pleased you once and does not now. The effort that no longer satisfies. Name it, without blame, the way the sage named it when he saw no one anywhere content with his lot. And let a wish form under it: I want to know what lies beneath this.
Breathe out.
Now let the mind go looking for a quiet place, and be honest about each one. The mountain: waterfalls, wind, animals. Not here. The sea: ships, the weight of water. Not here. The city: voices, engines, business. Not here.
Leave them below you. Rise past the clouds, past the places where the weather is made, until the air grows mild and there is nothing to see, not even in a dream.
Here, in this mild and empty air, make yourself a room.
Make it in imagination; that is how it was always made. Let it have no door, because no one needs to come in. Let it be smooth and closed like a lotus bud before it opens, and bright like the full moon. Let it smell of jasmine. It is yours. No one else can reach it.
Sit inside it. Let the legs fold as they can. Let the hands rest.
Let the eyes close, gently, against every outside sight.
Now let the senses go, one by one. The sounds of the room: let them be far away. The touch of the seat: let it soften until it is hardly there. The taste in the mouth, the scent of the air, the light behind the lids: let them all be released. What remains is only the feeling of being aware.
And now, if it comes easily, let even that soften. Not into sleep. Into something clear and still, like a mirror with nothing in front of it. Like a drop of water let into water.
Time can change here. An hour can pass like a moment. Let it.
(Pause: half a minute.)
Somewhere in this stillness there is a sound. Soft. Perhaps like bees, perhaps like a string, perhaps like a voice reciting something in a measure you almost know. You do not need to see where it comes from. Just listen.
Let the sound come nearer. And if a figure forms around it, let it. A guide. Perhaps bright, perhaps plain. The sage first walked past her; you do not need to. Greet whoever comes. Let them sit beside you.
Your guide says: come and see.
Go with them, out of the room, through the mild air, past the last mountain at the edge of the world, to where a great stone hangs in the sky.
Look at it.
Perhaps you see only stone, bright and hard, burning a little like crystal in the sun. That is all right. The greatest sage saw only that, the first time.
Your guide says: I see worlds in it, because I have practised seeing them. You can borrow my way of seeing.
So do as the sage did. Sit down again, here, in the cave of a rock. Let go of every thought of bodies and solid things. Think only of the mind that is looking. Of the looking itself.
Breathe out. And again.
Let the stone become clear. Not by force. The way a window clears when the breath on it fades. Let it become a globe of crystal in the clear sky of the mind.
And when you are ready, follow your guide inside.
(Pause: a few breaths.)
Inside, someone is sitting very still, as still as stone. Someone who has been in this place a long time.
Your guide calls them, gently, by name, and asks them to welcome a guest.
Watch them wake. Slowly. Consciousness rising in them like a whirlpool rising in the sea. The eyes opening the way flowers open in spring. The limbs warming as a plant warms when the sap returns.
Let them look at you. Let them offer you a seat.
And let them tell you, in a few words, what this world is. What it has been built from. And what in it is now ready to end.
Listen. You do not have to agree or do anything. Just let it be said, and heard.
(Silence: one to three minutes.)
Now the one inside the stone says to you: go to your place, in your own world, and have your peace in your own seat.
Thank them. Thank your guide. Leave the stone the way you came, and let it close behind you, clear and whole.
Come back now through the mild air, down past the clouds, toward the room where your body has been sitting all this time.
Feel the senses return, slowly, the way bare trees put out leaves in spring. Sound first: the room, its ordinary noises. Then touch: the seat beneath you, the weight of your hands. Then the breath, filling the chest and belly.
And notice: the sense of I comes back too. The plans, the cares. Let them come. Know them as you know a fire painted on a wall: you can see it clearly, and it does not burn.
I will count from one to five, and on five the eyes open, clear and rested.
One. The breath is full and ordinary.
Two. The feet are on the floor. Press them down a little.
Three. The hands and fingers move. Stretch them.
Four. Take one deep breath and let the shoulders roll.
Five. Eyes open. Here. Now. Fully alert.
Sit a moment before you stand. Say your name aloud, today's date, and where you are. Name three things you can see and one thing you can hear. If you feel at all distant or slow, count again from one to five, stand, walk a few steps, drink some water. Do not drive for ten minutes.
Later, write down one thing you could not see before and could see once you borrowed another way of seeing. Practise that seeing once a day. It is practice that makes the stone clear.