Has anybody here struggled with anhedonia?

[OpalE]

as (loosely) promised, here are some examples of the technique i mentioned from L/L resources (mostly Q'uo).  I didn't know which parts would be useful to you, and which wouldn't, so i've probably dumped too much here =/   ah well.

another possibility that came to mind after my first post in the thread:

the state you're describing is one i've sometimes referred to as a 'fugue state' or 'life-trance' in my personal life (personally descriptive terms).

i've noticed on many occasions that this is something i sometimes enter into WILLINGLY, to create situations that allow actions, feats, and experiences that would not be possible were i in possession of my 'full faculties.'

usually, the reasons for this are immediately made clear to me as the 'fog' lifts ... but in most cases, the technique i've mentioned was still instrumental in my 'waking back up.'

At any time that you should wish to have your meditation strengthened or lessen distraction in your contemplations, you are always welcome to request our presence mentally, in which case we shall enter into your vibratory nexus with a carrier wave that is a stabilizing vibration, not adding to or subtracting from your own vibrations but simply acting as a battery to stabilize varying surges of energy. It is our pleasure to offer this service to those who would wish it.

Also, my brother, always remember that the voices of your guidance need only be asked in order to converse with you. And if you should wish to form a conversation at the intellectual, conscious level with your guidance it is entirely possible for you to sit at the computer or take pencil and paper in hand, write down your questions, and immediately write down the next thought that enters into your mind. In this way also you may deepen your understanding of yourself, who you are, and why you are here.

When you wish to inaugurate an actual conversation with your guidance, we have two suggestions for your consideration. They may be taken literally. They also may be taken figuratively and the essence of the suggestions used, rather than the form.

The first suggestion is that you sit down with a pad of paper or a computer keyboard handy, and, after clearing your mind, inaugurate a conversation with your guidance. It helps in terms of feeling natural in doing this for you to identify for yourself the name that you wish to call your guidance system. This instrument, for instance, as a mystical Christian, identifies her guidance system as the Holy Spirit, whom she long ago nicknamed “Holly,” feeling that it is more respectful and more personal to have a human kind of name rather than simply calling the guidance system, “The Holy Spirit,” which is a generic term.

Each person’s guidance system is unique and so consequently, when you simply call upon guidance, you are calling upon the generic version of guidance, which is helpful but not as helpful as calling forth or evoking your personal guidance.

The invocation of guidance having been done, we would then suggest that you write or type your basic concern. You come to the moment of asking for guidance because of a certain concern. Identify that concern to guidance and ask for any information, resources or comments that guidance may offer you at this time.

Keep your fingers on your pen or poised over the keyboard and no matter what your next impression is, write it down.

Upon reading what you have now written, you will form a further comment to guidance. Type that or write that down. And again, await the next thought that pops into your mind.

When you begin getting that thought, again, without comment, criticism or questioning, write down what you are impressed with.

Again, read what you have received, form your next question or comment and write that down.

In this way you are staying safely within your guidance system, which is protected and is completely within your etheric or electrical body. It is a protected and safe procedure as long as you are focusing completely within these parameters.

This is the first way of becoming able to feel more concretely anchored within your guidance system and more specific in your ability to receive information from guidance.

The second way we would suggest to you is somewhat more complicated but we feel that in your case, my sister, it may be well to take the time to go through the basic procedure for creating for yourself a place for inner work. This instrument has done so and has found it helpful. It is a procedure that she learned from an entity who was teaching principles which he had learned from the so-called Silva Mind Control Technique. It is not a faithful reproduction of such techniques but is in fact an alteration of those techniques that this instrument has found helpful. We will use this instrument’s technique in explaining to you the basic process of creating what this instrument would call a place of working.

Step one is to ask yourself where upon this Earth, in terms of location and geography, your favorite place resides. Where do you feel most at home, most protected, most safe and secure? When you have that location firmly in mind, then we would proceed to step two.

Step two involves creating for yourself, in that place, a place of working. If the place that you have chosen is a building or contains a building, then we would suggest that you create for yourself within that actual building a mentally constructed room. It can be a copy of an actual room in that dwelling or it can be a room that you have created completely out of imagination. It is, however, attached in your mind to that safe place, created very consciously as a sacred place.

Create it as you would wish it. If you feel it needs a kitchen, make yourself a little kitchenette. If you feel it needs a bathroom, make yourself a bathroom. If you feel you need an office, make yourself an office, and, most importantly, if you would like to have an inner sanctum where you go after you enter this basic sacred space, create for yourself the sanctum sanctorum, which is where you shall do your actual working.

Before you go any further, create for yourself every comfort, every convenience, and every amenity. For instance, this instrument, feeling that she wanted the comfort of all of her information at hand, created for herself a room in which there were office files, a desk, a computer, and so forth, so that she would know that all the information that she needed to do her work would be on hand and if at any time she wished to consult any of that information, she could mentally go to the filing cabinet and ask for the appropriate documents to be given to her.

In fact, this instrument has never opened that filing cabinet, for in spirit there is no literal need for such. However, because it helps to create a sense of safety and security for this instrument so that she can do her work better, she has this office which she has furnished with her favorite kind of rug and her favorite kind of office furniture, her favorite kind of lighting, and so forth.

The goal here is not to create a specific kind of work space but to create your ideal work space. So let this ideation and visualization process be as long as it needs to be and as careful and detailed as it needs to be in order for you to create a very recognizable, safe and sacred working space.

When you have all other details attended to, we would ask that you create in your working space, whether it be one room or whether you have created an inner sanctum, two doors, one on either side of a central screen. The screen is a way of objectifying within your mental processes the visualization process of doing your spiritual work. The doors on either side of this central screen represent the openings to the Holy Spirit, as this instrument would call this energy, or your guidance system.

In order to balance your request for guidance, the door on the left of the screen represents the masculine energies of guidance. The door to the right of the central screen represents your access to the feminine portion of the energy of your guidance system.

Create for yourself your most comfortable sitting, resting or standing position for doing work. This is entirely up to your discretion. Many are those who visualize doing their work in the seated, cross-legged position that is often used by those who are working with oriental meditation systems. This instrument uses a recliner as her visualized, most comfortable seating.

Visualize two places, one on either side of you, for the guidance that you call forth.

When you are ready to do your work, stand in front of the seating that you have created for yourself. Mentally turn on the screen so that it is alive and lit and ready to receive impressions and to give forth images. Then call forth your guidance saying, “I call forth guidance,” or, “Come Holy Spirit,” or whatever phrase most satisfies you as expressing your desire for your guidance system to manifest itself to you.

It is well when beginning this practice to call one aspect of guidance at a time. When you first call your masculine guidance, you may extend your hand to the door and ask that guidance to come forth. You will receive the impression of an entity who is walking toward you. Observe that entity insofar as you receive impressions. This entity may have a name. It may have a face that is familiar to you. Or it may not be familiar to you.

Become familiarized with this entity. You may ask its name or you may simply greet it and thank it.

Then turn to the other door and, by gesture or word, invoke the other portion of spirit. Again, take the time, initially, to look at, familiarize yourself with and become conversant with this entity. It may have a name. It may have a recognizable or an unfamiliar face. Welcome it and thank it.

When you have greeted these two aspects of your guidance system, invite them to sit with you. It may be helpful for you to ask them to take your hands, as this instrument does, so that you are physically, in terms of your visualization, linked with and connected to your guidance system.

This is the procedure for becoming ready in this visualization to do work in consciousness in your place of working.

Before we move forward with a discussion of how to proceed from this point, we would move back into comments concerning your own inner work as you come to the moment of entry into the place of working.

It is very helpful for you to determine for yourself a method of tuning your being to do this work in consciousness. The normal and everyday state of consciousness of what this instrument would call even the best of us is less than the optimal tuning position or rate of vibration for doing work in consciousness. Depending upon what you have on your mind or on your schedule, you may well be in somewhat of a scattered frame of mind, which you would describe to yourself as not being your best or highest self.

Your goal, then, is to tune this very powerful entity that you are up from its present, everyday and ordinary state of mind to the state of mind that would be the highest and best tuning that you can carry in a stable and conscious manner. You do not want to go beyond that which you can carry, being quite awake and quite alert. But you do wish to do the work necessary to sharpen and hone your true self so that you are expressing the highest and best version of who you are when you come to the moment of contact with the spiritual guidance that is yours.

When you have achieved this, you then may approach the door to your dwelling. If you do not actually have a dwelling in your favorite place, then you simply need to construct the outer walls of the sacred space, as a boat on the water, a cabaña on the sand or whatever fits in the environment you have chosen for your magical work.

When you are satisfied that your tuning is complete, you may then ask for the keeper of your sacred space to come forward. This is a convention which this instrument has learned from the practices of the Spiritualist Church.

We are not suggesting that you are creating a séance atmosphere or that you will be speaking with inner spirits of any kind. However, the convention of having a gatekeeper is a powerful and a helpful one to our point of view. It is to this gatekeeper that the responsibility for guarding your back is given. Therefore, when you are tuned, ask for your gatekeeper to appear. You will not know what this gatekeeper is like until you ask.

Depending on your personality and your training, this gatekeeper may be virtually anybody or anything. If it is an animal, however, it will have the capacity for communication with you. If it is a color, it will have the ability to share information. For most entities who do this kind of work, the gatekeeper turns out to be a human, whether of this world or of the inner planes. It is not necessary that this entity have a name. The one known as Carla calls her gatekeeper, “Mrs. Gatekeeper,” because when she created her place of working, she created it in a place which already had a woman who lived there. She was the wife of the head of a school and this instrument’s favorite place happened to be one of the buildings on a large campus. Therefore, she simply calls her gatekeeper, Mrs. Gatekeeper, but she sees the pleasant and careworn face of a middle-aged woman who acted as housekeeper and mother to the students of this particular school.

When you address your gatekeeper, simply ask if you are in a good position to do work in consciousness. If you receive a “yes,” then you may proceed inward, after thanking the gatekeeper and asking this gatekeeper to remain on duty and to alert you if there is any problem whatsoever. If the gatekeeper has concerns, that entity will express them to you. Listen to the gatekeeper, and insofar as you are able, address the concern. Once you have been okayed for work, then you may step into your dwelling or your sacred space, close the door behind you, and begin the protocol we described previously.

When you have concluded your work in consciousness, remember to thank and dismiss the spirit in its two manifestations, to turn off the screen and physically to leave the sacred space. While the screen is on and you are working with spirit, the procedure can be precisely that which we described above, with the pad of paper and pen or the computer and the keyboard being your method of communicating and recording that communication.

It can also be completely mental.

The asset of having your words written down and the suggestions from spirit also written down is that it is objectified and can be referred to in your future. This becomes more important to you when you wish to follow the suggestions of your guidance. And we would suggest to you that, once you have received suggestions from guidance, it is extremely helpful to the process of following guidance to refer back to suggestions made during this process and to follow them insofar as it is possible for you to do.

Guidance has interactive qualities and those qualities are sharpened and articulated or made more detailed by the process of listening to guidance and following instructions. This does not mean that you must follow orders of any kind. What it means is that you are as active after a session of communication with guidance as you had been beforehand in asking for guidance.

We would comment further before we leave this subject on the general nature of guidance. You come into incarnation with a guidance system that is composed of three parts. That tripartite nature of guidance is, in a way, a convention but it is very helpful to realize that the energies of guidance are not simplistic or unitary in terms of the kind of information you are getting. There is what this instrument would call a yin or feminine side to guidance having to do with nurturing and the immediacy of unconditional love.

There is the yang portion of guidance which could be called masculine which has to do with power and the right use of power and can also contain the energies of wisdom and discrimination.

In many systems of magic, philosophy and religion, these two energies are switched and what we have described as feminine energies are assigned to the masculine or negative or yang energy and vice versa.

It does not, to our mind, much matter how you define the qualities of masculine and feminine, yang and yin, negative and positive. It is more important by far that you see the dynamic between love and wisdom, and so forth.

The third aspect of guidance with which you are naturally endowed could be described as androgynous or sexless in that it is that common ground which unifies guidance. It is also that energy which is most closely aligned with the process of moving within that shuttle which is your spiritual nature to bring to you, from the resources of your deep mind and the inner planes in general, those energies which are most helpful to you at a particular time.

It is not necessary to give this third entity a habitation, a place, a seat with you, and so forth. It is far more necessary that you come into contact with the dynamic of masculine and feminine, yang and yin, positive and negative. In your very body, mind and spirit you unify this dynamic. But it is well to invoke spirit, if so you do, in a way which specifically honors and respects the dynamic of love and wisdom in your guidance system.

You have other aspects of your guidance as well which you have accreted to your essence within incarnation because of the work that you are doing, the service that you are providing, the purity of your intentions and the sheer beauty of your soul. It is unknown at the beginning of an incarnation what your guidance shall blossom into by its end. This instrument, for instance, has well over a dozen entities and many, many essences which have attached themselves to her because of appreciation either for her nature, her dedication, or the work that she has done within incarnation as a service to others.

You, my sister, also have a multi-faceted guidance system. It is not necessary for you to identify or know all of these different layers of guidance. It is only necessary for you to know that they are, by their very nature, incapable of harming you or giving you poor information.

They also will work once you have asked for help. When you are outside of this sacred space that you have created, they will work for you in your car, during conversations in stores and shops and at the roadside. Therefore, all that you see once you have invoked guidance for the day has the potential for being full of messages from guidance.

Therefore, we encourage you to pay attention as you pass the street signs, the names of businesses, the advertising billboards, and other sources of information that are completely random. Note those street names, business names, and so forth, that resonate to you or that jump out at you.

(Side one of tape ends.)

(Carla channeling)

Consider them and the implications of the phrases or the words involved. Note birds and animals that cross your path and ask yourself how they make you feel and what, if anything, they may have to suggest to you in terms of the way that you feel.

This instrument informs us that we need to move along as this session otherwise will grow unmanageably long and we will run out of energy before we reach the end of your queries. Consequently, we will ask if there is a second query at this time? We are those of Q’uo.

Laurie:
Can I ask something real quick? I’m sorry to interject, but what’s the best way for us to gain information about the higher self or with other realms? Would it be simply to ask? Would it be to tune yourself and simply ask?

Carla:
Well, I think that’s probably the very best way. If you’re comfortable on the computer, do it that way; if you’re more comfortable with a pad of paper and a writing instrument then do it that way, but find a time and a place that you’re not going to be disturbed, move into your own open heart, spend some time getting yourself tuned so you’re present with yourself, so that the things of this world for that moment are not with you, and when you’ve centered yourself then consider what it is that your chief concern is and ask about it.

Just write it out on the computer, “What about such and such?” And then the next thought that comes into your mind, type it without editing, without judging, and just start this conversation. It feels a little dyslexic because you’re asking yourself and then
things are coming through you to answer you and it’s all happening through your fingers. You just have to trust the process.

Sometimes it takes a little while to get going because you have doubts and you sabotage yourself, thinking, “Is that me or is that
them?” But you do have a guidance system—you have a very good guidance system and it’s absolutely present with you at all times.

So that’s probably the very best way to do it.  Another way to do, it if you don’t have the time [to do the journaling] is to ask yourself, “What does my highest and best self have to say about this?” Get to a little role-playing place in your head and say, “What
does my highest and best self suggest?” And then you’re going to get the same kind of guidance.

Wynn:
We did an exercise in a workshop at one time where I had each person say, “I am Ra,” and then whatever they said next,
not to censor it. It was very interesting because it was as if they imagined that a high force was going to speak through them
and examine their life and then give them guidance.  So they would ask a question and then write it down. And just by having a high intention like that, there’s a good chance that you could tap into it because it’s part of you. It’s not thinking that there’s
an external part that’s going to starting telling you to do this or do that. It’s accessing the part of you that can look at yourself and give you a take on your own life. I think that’s something that’s accessible to a lot of people.

Another thing [you can do] is to start writing your dreams down. Because in a dream state or in a sleep state you are automatically in higher dimensions but you can’t remember it when you come back because of the veil. So it takes some discipline to catch
yourself in that moment between sleep and wakefulness and write down what’s in your mind.

I’ve been doing this for years now and I get verbal messages that are [helpful]. It is obvious, given the wisdom that is coming th
rough them, that it is a higher aspect of myself that is communicating. So that’s something I’ve done.

When choices are made carelessly, it is often the case that an entity thinks he is choosing positively but has been seduced by the negative polarity into rationalizing a selfish act by pretty words. So a great deal of care is called for when the seeker perceives that there is this fork in the road. It is well to sit and meditate on this choice, to feel into it: “Well, if I did that what would it feel like? If I did the other thing how would that feel?” For analysis can take the seeker [only] so far. To achieve a more well-rounded ability to judge at a crossroads in life, it is well to invoke one’s own insight and one’s feeling of direct apprehension for sensing into the true situation.

In order to avoid becoming a pawn in someone else’s game, it is well to think for oneself. In order to avoid moving down a sweet-sounding street which ends in a dead end in service to self, it is well to envision and sense into the choice before you. In this way, as you ask for deeper senses to come forward in you, your ability to perceive a situation is enhanced.

It is always helpful to ask your guidance for insight. The practice of journaling is an excellent way to consult your own guidance, where you simply write out your question and then write down the next thought that comes into your mind. In this way, fairly easily, you can begin a conversation concerning those things that concern you, that are on your mind, and for which you need guidance.

So, my brother, looked at from the standpoint of the self as that one that has taken his power and chosen to be responsible for himself, the negative-polarity entity that might wish to distract you or turn you to the path of service to self really never has a chance. It is at first a seemingly risky thing to stand on your own two feet and think things through for the self without letting other people’s opinions or the run of opinion throughout the culture affect your thoughts.

Now, the Creator does not speak in words. It is the Creator. It is that “still, small voice” as the Holy Bible says. His silence is thunder. And in that silence is all the information that is infinite. You receive it whole and undisturbed as you enter the silence and tabernacle with the one infinite Creator. For some that is all that is needed, resting in silence, feeling that communion with the divine. There nothing else that seems to be needed.

For others, there is the gift of visualization. Such entities will find visualization very effective. It will feel right to hold each entity in thought, to visualize the entity as being well and see that entity in the light.

For others, as this instrument said [earlier], a certain entity with a certain difficulty brings to mind a hymn or a song or a chant. And the expression of the chant or song is directed at that crystallized place of pain that the prayer hopes to dissolve.

For others, there is a need for communication. There is a need for talking. Such entities will find it very comforting to journal, as that entity did who wrote Conversations with God, writing down one’s question and then writing down the answer when it
comes, writing down the next question, then writing down the next thought that appears in the mind, the answer. For some, this is a very comforting, reassuring way to have that conversation with the Creator. Certainly something is lost as impressions are turned into words. Yet for one who needs the words, those words are very helpful, more helpful than all of the silence in the world.

There are as many ways to pray as there are people who seek to join in union with the one infinite Creator that is their beginning, their end, and their deepest truth. We would assure you that there are no mistakes. If there is an intention to pray, [however you choose to pray] will be an effective way for you to pray.

Remember always that thanksgiving, praise and devotion are also ways to pray—to enter the silence
and to feel the union with the one that opens to you that gateway to intelligent infinity.

We would at this time rest and acknowledge that we have only brushed the surface of this very interesting
subject, for which we thank those in this circle.

Good luck, and i hope somthing here helps!!!