I am a strong believer in trance states. Self-induced trance-states. Looking out the window. Drifting off into wool-gathering or taking a walk-a-bout to nowhere in particular. Not going anywhere and not being here, now at the same time. Aware only of what occurs to me/you, to what appears out of the mists, to catch our eye, produce reflection and perhaps, if we are lucky, realization.
We know more through reflection and realization than we know by thinking. Trance states are good for reflection and realization and not good for thinking.
Where do you go for trance states? How often do you go there? How long do you spend there? What do you know that trance states have produced for you? Have called forth from you? Have led you to realize, understand, comprehend, know?
Our trance states are vital to our life, and are life, are alive and bring us to life. Our trance states are our teachers, our gurus, our sources of knowledge, realization, truth. Doorways to knowing more than we know we know.
Sitting on the beach, or walking along the beach, being with the ocean, is an extended trance state. The ocean wakes us up by putting us into a trance. The trance makes possible a depth of realization that is kin to remembering something we have always known. And is a source of comfort and contentment reminding us that we are not alone.
Carl Jung said, “There is within each of us, another whom we do not know.” Trance states usher us into the presence of the other within–are thresholds between worlds. Inviting us to know more than we know we know, and become more than we think we are capable of being, calling us to open ourselves to what is open to us. And see where it goes.
Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy 