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Specialized Trance States: Trance Listening

Date: 15 Feb 2010
Member: Skyelar Pollack


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Listening requires awareness to assign meaning to the sounds we hear. Without awareness hearing is just an indiscriminate recording.
Listening requires awareness to assign meaning to the sounds we hear. Without awareness hearing is just an indiscriminate recording.

When you listen you are referencing audio against memory processes that decipher what you are hearing into thought experiences.

The awareness of sound and vicariously, language can occur to the exclusion of any or all other awareness points and can also directly cue any other awareness points to change focus. Listening to the radio, having a conversation and engaging in a guided-trance or hypnosis experience are very similar.

Audio associations are memories created from every sound you have ever heard. The mechanical processes controlling your ability to recognize audio sensations work automatically. As sound waves enter your ears, the sound energy is automatically filtered and converted into electrical impulses that are channelled into the auditory cortex of your brain; where the information is processed into audio associations. Only those frequencies ranging from 20 to 20,000 hertz are perceivable. Within this limited audio spectrum are infinite possible variations. An entirely different and infinite range of sounds coexists beyond our 20 to 20,000 hertz perceptions, as with all other variations of awareness, reality surpasses our ability to perceive it.

Memory Association will connect any two points. Audio associations connect when you hear someone say action, duck or look-out, your mind automatically projects a myriad of associations while processing information. When you hear a crash, bang or the sound of sirens, you may be able to discern the origin and orientation of the sound to yourself. You may also be able to determine if the sound is a glass, plate or window, a construction site, gun or backfiring car, an ambulance, police car or fire engine, etc. When you listen to a person speaking, you can use your natural audio sensitization abilities to consciously create and hear with your imagination what is being described.

By referencing word associations, all points of awareness can be adjusted, combined and balanced like dials on a sound mixer, either by the listener directly or through an external operator like a hypnotist, meditation guide or storyteller. The advantage of having a guide is that a guide can make sure you get where you intend to go. The trance state naturally regulates itself, so someone who knows how points of awareness combine can incorporate those natural tendencies into a guided experience.

Audio separation is an awareness phenomena best explained in relation to music. When we listen to a song it is possible, with focus, to isolate specific sounds within the sound. You can focus on the beat, any accompanying instrument, the singer, the words, the thoughts that the words evoke, and audience or background noises. Furthermore, you can isolate any single piece of a drum pattern, any single note or combination of notes from any accompanying instruments, any note, sound or word uttered by a singer, contexts within the thoughts evoked by the words, any one of the audience members applause, laughs, coughs or comments and any combination of the contributors to background noise, like cars, planes, nature, weather and people.

A similar process of sense filtering occurs with audio awareness. You can listen to a song while consciously narrowing your range of focus to isolate the drums, vocals or lead instrument. You can further limit your range of focus by isolating a specific note, harmony or variation in the melody or lyrics or you can widen your range of audio focus by listening while doing other things, like talking, working and thinking, etc.

Last Updated on 15 Feb 2010

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