Want to control your battle trance?

I’m not sure. It is such a boon to survival, you know. Want to be controlled by it?

Nope. If you don’t want to control it, you do indeed want to be controlled by it. You have always gotten exactly what you really wanted. Your fear and your love are linked in your brain on a very visceral level. This is why soldiers come to see the members of their immediate fire team as brothers even if they despised their character. Yes, they may think the man disgusting, but for a reason they can’t really control or understand, they love him. We originally loved our small troupes of humans, and during the trance we don’t even question the behaviour of our group members.

Yes, I understand that and long for such acceptance.

Relationships formed in times of stress and upheaval. All relationships are. We bond with our partners out of deep seated unconscious need. If we are lucky, we can just throw some wisdom and awareness in on top of that. They have even tested this scientifically. The behaviour of oxytocin makes us love our in-group passionately.

Really? Oxytocin? It’s one of the factors yes, but makes us fear those not in our in-group. Thoughts? For me the effects of oxytocin are very weak. Humans seem rather vicious. I have regular nightmares about it. They were a part of my whole developmental phase so are quite pedestrian for me.

So control of your fear… Everyone hear of self-directed neuro-plasticity?

It’s been proven in the lab. You can deliberately rewire your brain, but researchers are dismissing its practical use. They believe it takes too much time and energy and effort to be practical in peoples everyday life. In a sense, they are actually right.

Is that like “neuro-linguistic programming”? Kind of like NLP, yes.

Now those survival experiences? Those things we had to learn to do so long ago? Like work with the group and keep the outside confused, take turns being the loudest, things like that?

Well, the trigger that insured we would still have those behaviours still works for us, and it was fear. We can use our fear to change our fear. Science just wants to de-condition you of fear. They are quite excited that they have found drugs and regions of the brain that can dull and even in a sense erase fear. They think it will be a great social good, but by confronting, triggering your fear and sitting with it, just experiencing it, you can quite viscerally come to understand your mind in perhaps the most fundamental way possible.

I find I lose weight the fastest when I am fearful for my health. You fear failure which means you love approval and are angry that you don’t experience it. We can see and fully immerse ourselves in that darkest view of the world.

Go into the things you fear… Yes, like my cat going onto my computer desk, he fears he will miss his meal. But while you are experiencing the fear, you are at your most suggestible, most plastic. If you experience even a light measure of your fear, deliberately, consciously, you can program your mind to be more sensitive to your desires, better prepared to pursue them, even give your awareness of your own desire more connection to a broader range of your personal experience. The battle trance has the potential to be that creative. Your ability to recognize opportunities will expand.

“Face it.” And therefore able to welcome more “guests” into your house… Exactly, and you will begin to succeed more frequently, and insights will come much more quickly than if you just accept the fear as a rule, a wall, and try to stay away from it. With continued practice, you will find even that the fear evolves, becomes more sophisticated, less frightening, instead becomes more of a general state of heightened awareness, and you will be able to live more fully and enjoy more deeply everything about your life.

The reason the shaman acted like such a weirdo, engaged in such strange and scary things, was to do this both for himself and his tribe. He was often the furthest along in this process, the best at fully confronting his or her fear. This is why, perhaps, they seemed to have magickal powers. The range of their possible choices, their behaviour options, the things they could imagine, was well… unimaginably vast by comparison to the rest of the tribe.

But did that change the “battle trance” in even a little way? It did. It’s why they trusted their shaman, even going so far as insisting on a replacement if they lost theirs. Even initiating a shaman by force, as they often did learn some of the shamans rituals and had some sense of what the shamans herbs did.

The shaman helped the tribe dream. The figures on their tents, on their head dresses and medicine shields, even their so called mundane tools, reflected that and served as reminders of their dreaming insights. In a sense, they really did give those they belonged to power more than they would have had.

Maybe some time in the future you could explore “fears – and how we know them, and face them, and overcome them…” as in nightmares, etc. Excellent suggestion. I am quite happy when you feel motivated to make comments like that as a class is ending. It means it really worked. You really felt the meaning of it, really understood.

Namaste everyone. Love deeply, fear knowingly.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~