So, I tried this last night as I laid in bed for sleep around 3:00 a.m.  I wasn't fully tired and wanted to get in some time for meditation practice.  I put on my headphones and started my tiny hemi-sync playlist. 

I've only tried meditating once before, in December right before Christmas.  I got very relaxed but I didn't feel I reached any special place. 

Maybe doing it at 3:00 a.m. made it easier this time?  I breathed from my diaphragm and tried my best to just focus on the darkness that I saw and nothing else.  I feel like I might have been straining my eyes a bit too much to focus on these sights - does anyone else do this? 

Eventually it started to work as my mind got clearer of thoughts (even though they'd come back here and there) and my body went completely numb.  It was really weird.  I felt my eyes straining to stay shut.  Eventually I started to snore.  I felt completely awake but I was snoring.  This made me think of Bruce's experience at his training in Virginia.  The funny thing about the snoring was that it would erupt with a very heavy, deep breath that seemed to come out of nowhere.  It would go away due to a lack of focus - but then it would come again, a huge rise from my diaphragm sending me back into snore-mode.  Very interesting.

After a while I started to see some faint spiral-like images and assumed those might be chakras - I focused on the image and thought of my legs ... and then I got this strange tingly sensation around my legs.  Since I don't know a whole lot about chakras I did my best to visualize "closing" them after I visualized opening them because I didn't want to do anything bad to myself. 

Eventually I opened my eyes and moved around, my whole body felt really hot and tactile sensations seemed a lot more pleasurable.  I'm going to keep at it - I have some hemi-sync CDs shipping here pretty soon.

One problem that I noticed was my eyes struggling to stay shut - like they wanted to open.  At one point, they did - yet my body remained numb.  My heart also kept beating really fast throughout a lot of it.  What are your methods for meditation?

Hi Madsketcher-
That sounds like a fully competent approach to meditation.

The essential characteristic of trance states, meditation, psychedelic drugs, hypnosis and other similar states is primarily that your mind stops making noise, your focus clarifies naturally and you can point your mind at whatever you desire.

The stages of mreditation that "go somewhere" are actually nothing but deeper awarenesses and insights. They are always available to us, but we generally either are too busy to get that settled, or we're looking for blinking lights and exotic imagery and ignore the everyday kinds of things.  If you wish to "go somewhere", the trick is to meditate a lot. If you get a really decent book about meditative experiences, such as Kundalini Yoga by Swami Sivananda, or the classics like Patanjali's Yoga Sutras or Hatha Yoga Pradipika, or even a comprehensive copy of the Upanishads (lessons for those sitting near "upa nisha" the guru) you will find that as you abandon your ego-self, you acquire your spiritual self. There's nothng wrong with the ego-self except that it is built to deal with the everyday world, while your spiritual self is better equipped to deal with trance

The usual sequence of "going to other places" actually consists of three general steps. The first is to understand something about what is happening, how the world is built, and that you can do it yourself.  This is often a cognitive understanding.

The second step takes a while, depending on how much you meditte, and consists of the inner mind-noises and self-talk coming permanently to a stop so it is quite inside your head (unless you want to turn the brain on to think about something). This level involves emotional stabiolity and equanimity. (The Tibetans have written numerous texts in this area. I'd suggest readings in Dzogchen such as the Golden Letters of Garab Dorje. Check Snow Lion publishing if you're interested.)

The third step is that you stay in trance perpetually, and everything deepens as you continue to meditate. You will start having kundalini experiences and a few things of that nature that seem to stand out to most people. Finally this will carry you into an experience of samadhi, a direct, subjective, participatory awareness of the ultimate spiritual nature of the world. Samadhi has two levels, cessation of differentiiations, and central projection of the universe. These are hard to describe, but unmistakable when you get there.

Sivananda used to tell people that it only took 6 months for a sincere student to go from nescience to enlightenment.  Personal experiences actually vary from a lot less to a lot longer, but 6 months is reasonable.

There is good reason to view enlightenment as the normal level of attainment for spiritually competent adults, a sort of spiritual maturity. What you do afterwards will be the same as before, but profoundly changed in subtle ways. In the process you'll discover your nature as a healler or helper or whatever your specific calling might be.

Good luck on your journey - you have an excellent start!

dave