Mental time travel

Use

Once the worlds have been created, they can be developed ad infinitum. Depending on the time and the desire, one specifies the rules of behaviour, the institutions, the relationship to property, to housing. One wonders how the educational system works, the political system, etc. This exercise is a guided meditation that allows us to answer some of these questions through mental projection. Inspired by hypnosis and daydreaming, it also allows the listeners to visualise worlds and to walk through them.

Protocol

Gather the group and invite them to lie down. Read or play a recording of your voice, focused and calm. In the text you invite the group to travel into the future. You give advice on how to relax, and how to open the mind's eye in order to visualise as best as possible.

You guide the journey with a series of questions. You ask for example: "We arrived in such and such a world or in such and such a year, who are you in this world? You are in the city. What does it look like? Where are you going? How are you dressed and how do you feel in this world?"

Don't forget some safety instructions because you don't want the listeners to get stuck in the future, and make sure they return safely to their own body and to the present.

We advise you to use our matrix as it was composed with the precious help of a hypnotist. Simply replace the references to 'The Guild' in the example below (they are between brackets) with references specific to your imagined world. A few evocative images will suffice. The 'beacons' make the journey safe and avoid bad trips. They act like the safety instructions of air hosts. 'Anchors' help to anchor and immerse you in the world.

A trip to The Guild

Make yourself comfortable. Start by lying down comfortably, and then close your eyes. Close your eyelids quietly, and slowly... because you will be able to see much better with your inner eye.

Breathe in and out once deeply. Find a position that allows your body to be at rest while you travel into a possible future, through your imagination, through your mind's eye. Take your time to relax. You don't have to go fast to do this. Let your whole body become heavy, and feel how your whole body is in contact with the ground.

To travel to another dimension, you will put on your traveller's suit. It is a suit that closes with a long zipper from the navel to the top of the chest. It's a protective suit. A protection that ensures your safety. We will go out together and open doors to unknown worlds. It will be a painless experience. So don't worry and be gentle with yourself during these visions. Conjure up pleasant and harmless images. We are not going to share the visions so feel free to invent and choose. It's okay if it's incoherent, nonsensical or even embarrassing.

Okay, you're going now... to put on your suit. Do it for real. First one leg, then the other one. Can you feel the material? Is it soft, thin or warm? How does your suit feel? Fancy? Is it discreet or flashy?

Take your time. Indulge yourself with the materials, the shape, the style.

Now put your arm through the sleeve and as you do so, lift your torso and inhale deeply. Then the second arm. Let your thoughts flow, pass like a current of air between us. Your thoughts don't reflect your personality so just watch them come and go as we speak.

That's it. When it's done, when you're ready, when your outfit is ready, let your limbs get heavier again, and imagine that your suit is your second skin, taking the shape of your limbs, one by one.

You hold the end of the zipper between your fingers, really do it, you breathe in and as you breathe in you gently pull the zipper up from your navel to the very top of your chest. When the is done, when you have closed the protective suit, you say out loud: "It is done, I am protected."

We are going to travel in time now, guided by a series of suggested images. We are leaving this room. We are leaving 2022 for a very different place.

Take a deep breath again, a deep breath of air. With each breath our world moves away. Our way of life moves away. The children you know are growing up, they're becoming adults, getting older... They are giving a new shape to our way of life, and growing old to make place for new generations. Breathe in, breathe out further and further into the future, you don't have to do anything to travel in time, just keep your eyes closed and your body relaxed and discover behind your closed eyelids the path that leads elsewhere. Behind your eyelids, between your two eyes, your third eye, your mental eye, is wide open.

You are on a dirt road, and at the end of this dirt road is a door. A wooden door.

You turn the handle. And the door opens. And you enter. Behind you the door has closed by itself, you didn't have to worry about it. (Now you are treading a pleasant, brightly coloured moss in the green village of Gobblestone, part of a country called The Guild). Your suit has melted, or rather transformed, and you are dressed like the locals (in finely crafted manufactured materials).

No one is concerned about your presence. You simply arrive at home, in another possible world. (It is a peaceful and lively village that you are happy to return to because here all ties are sacred and tightly knit. Men, women and children live in osmosis with nature and perform functions from generation to generation without disturbing the sovereign order, personified by Günther screaming rock, the highest and most dangerous volcano in the Guild. You are in a seaside community maybe. The curtains of the white village houses have been dyed with salt from the tides. The furniture is made of driftwood and inlaid with amber and oyster interiors. Perhaps you are in a marsh community, where wicker, rushes and wild bird feathers are used for all sorts of useful or ritual objects.)

Imagine your life in this world. What kind of person are you? What are you wearing? What is your physical appearance? Where do you live in this world? What does your home look like? What does it smell like? What is your job? What does a day at work look like?

I invite you to observe what pops up in your thoughts in response to these questions. How are you doing (in this society of refinement and minimalism where everything seems to respond to each other in a discreet harmony that seems to imitate nature)? (...) Songs and shouts are heard and you are ready for the party. You wear a festive outfit. (...) When there is a party, everyone has a role: from preparation to celebration. You too have your role. What is your role?

Now, you are sitting at a big table. A large table has been set up and you are looking around it. Um, this food. Living things are there, humans, animals, half-animals, half-humans, other-than-humans... Someone at this assembly attracts your attention.

Who is this person?
They hand you something. It is a gift. A gift that you might really want. Something that pleases you and that you could take with you from this world back to ours. Or to another world? But what could it be? What is this gift that you are receiving? Take the time to choose, this object is for you. Choose it well.

(Now we will leave The Guild and its inhabitants to their parties and to do this we will breathe in and out gently.) > You step back onto the coloured moss, you have taken your gift and the door to (Gobblestone) appears before you. You take a good look at it because if you want to go back, you can find it again, invite it into your thoughts. You grasp the handle of the door and close it gently.

You are back on the dirt road, and this dirt is dark as the darkness behind your closed eyelids.

With each breath, (the Guild) will move away. You are on your back, in your protective suit with the object that you brought. Try to feel where your back is touching the floor, where your limbs are in contact with the ground. You can put your object next to you, or you can keep it in your hand. Even if it is too big, you can hold it in your hand.

When you are ready to come back to the here and now, you take a last breath and without opening your eyes, you take the zipper between your finger again, and from the top of your chest, near your heart, you pull the zipper down all the way to your navel. You say goodbye mentally to the garment that has protected you, and you take it off slowly: first the arms, then the legs.

When you have finished, take a little more time to stretch and make sure that every part of your body has returned to the here and now.

Welcome Back to (the 3rd of April 2022).

Testimonies

Bains Publics in Saint-Nazaire invites me to work on the following theme: "Who takes care of the sea"? I am working with the association Bretagne Vivante and a gang of plankton observers and a company that does research and development on the same theme. We are creating a Mental Time Travel on plankton with Clément Thiry who adds singing parts and music performed live on a synthesizer. As always the audience enjoys the experience and it is very pleasant. We really wrote a number of them, in various situations. This training has led us to certain dosages: sometimes it's very nice to propose to go through one or several worlds that have been set up with a lot of detail, to go towards a kind of daydream. At other times, we prefer to give less detail to leave more room for questions, because it is with the questions that each person builds their own universe. Many minds, many worlds.

Mathilde M.

Credits

Transmitted by Maja Kuzmanovic during her initiating workshop in PAF, Saint-Erme (F) in February 2019. Hypnotist Marie Lisel gave us tips to improve the experience and to make it safer by adding tags and inductors.

These instructions – and the example – were written by Anna Cz.