Psychic Journeying

Keeping with the recent interest in travel, thought I'd share another option.  I first came across this concept reading about exercises that were used to practice far-seeing, a subset of clairvoyance.  Far-seeing is really a broad term, it can cover not only seeing things that are far away in space but things far away in time.  This exercise is a fun way to not only work on your ability to see, but to travel vicariously if you are not able to do so physically.

The basic idea is to know enough about a place that you have the basis of a picture in your mind about it.  If you are working on visiting a place you have just heard about, do a bit of reading, just enough to have a mental snapshot.  You don't really want to have too many details at this point (I'll explain why later).

If you have experience with meditation that is very helpful.  If not, don't stress it, just start a bit smaller.  Sit or lay in a comfortable position.  Personally, I find a half-lotus (sit cross-legged, but instead of both feet on the bottom, one is on the bottom the other is on top of the opposite knee) very comfortable, but if is not comfortable, don't use it.  You can sit in a straight backed chair, with your feet on the ground and hands on your knees.  I find that if I am sitting, I want to be fairly straight up, our couch works really well because the back gives enough support to keep me from slouching, but doesn't encourage me to really lean back because that makes me too tilty.  You can also lie down, but if laying down makes you sleepy and you find yourself dozing off, try a different position.  I like to lay flat on my back on the floor with hands palms up by my side.  I find a small pillow under my head is helpful.  When I meditate, my body temperature drops, so I always have a blanket that I cover up with.  You want to be comfortable, being too cold or too hot will be a hindrance. 

Once you are in position, take a few deep breaths and start to clear your mind.  Again, don't stress too much if you have stray thoughts, once you start your visualizations those will mostly fade (and the more you practice, the better you will become!).  Start to picture the place you picked.  Imagine you are looking at a picture, from far away.  For example, lets say you wanted to visit Stonehenge.  Picture the henge as if you were looking at it from a birds eye view, not directly overhead, but at an angle.  The hills around it are not important at this time, just the henge.  Let your eyes be drawn to it, see the stones.  Slowly, draw your focus closer, as if you were flying towards it.  Let the details start to sharpen.  Now you can see the stones, make out where one ends and the next begins.  Let your focus drop to where it would be if you were standing there in front of one of the stones.  See it's texture (reach out to touch it if you wish).  Walk amongst the stones, and explore the henge.

After you have explored as long as you wish at this time, start pulling back.  It can be helpful to reverse your initial approach, walking out to the edge of the henge, then starting to draw back, like a camera panning out from a tight focus to a widescreen shot.  Let yourself start to feel your body, focus on your breath and wiggle your fingers.  When you are ready, open your eyes.  You might want to have a notebook handy to jot down impressions.  Write down what you saw and felt.  Sketch little pictures of things you want to remember.

As I mentioned earlier, this was an exercise given for practicing far-seeing.  If you wish to, you can do research to validate what you saw.  Look up the place you visited, and see how closely your notes match other descriptions (this is one reason not to do a lot of research before hand, you want to visit and see for yourself not just visualize what you have read).  And don't get frustrated because you didn't get everything right, or even if you get huge things wrong.  It is a skill you are working on.  Imagine your far seeing skill like making a rubbing of an intricate picture.  You place the paper down and rub over it and you have an impression.  There will be places where your rubbing doesn't pick up the actual lines.  When you look at the rubbing, your mind fills in the blanks, drawing new lines to connect places that don't add up.  These created lines might not actually line up.  You also might get smudges in places there weren't lines, and your mind will work these into the picture.  The more you practice rubbing (far-seeing) the better you will get at accurately capturing the lines of the original and recognizing where there are spaces and smudges (and realizing these are not part of the original).

Another thing to consider when far-seeing physical places is that far-seeing can see across time.  If you can, check for references of the place at different points in time and see if your vision matches one of those better.  You might not have been seeing a place in the now, but rather in the past or future.

Once you are comfortable with far-seeing, there is no end of things you can see.  Look into the past and see what places that are now ruins looked like in their glory days.  Look in on exotic places on the other side of the globe.  Check out those wild places that are so far from populated areas they might not have been seen before.  Don't limit yourself.  Dive the depths of the ocean, beneath where we have the capability to explore.  Soar into the heavens and explore other planets.