Backroads and Time Travel …
At times, my car is a time machine. When I am alone on back country roads or on straight section of highway with little traffic my car takes me to different times and places … sometimes it is even able to stop time.
According to Wikipedia, psychologists call this “highway hypnosis” – when one stream of consciousness is driving the car while the other stream of consciousness is dealing with other matters. I prefer to think of it as a time machine. It sounds dangerous, but according to the experts, part of our mind is on automatic and is still fully capable of dealing with the drive. Some experts even say that if we are not capable of hypnotizing ourselves when we drive, most of us would not drive and would instead, leap out of our cars in panic (driving is one of the most dangerous things we do). (one of the experts – hypnotherapist Carl Allen Schoner) What do you think? Is highway hypnosis safe?
I’ve broken down the driving “time machine” sensations into three categories …
First, the speeding up of time. If you are a seasoned driver, I know that you have experienced this. You are driving down a “boring” stretch of road thinking about other things and suddenly you wake up at your destination and it feels like no time has passed at all and you may have even solved a problem or made plans along the way.
Secondly, and even more miraculous, is the time standing still phenomenon … as you are driving, your mind is occupied with things … when you shake yourself free of those thoughts, you discover that you have only traveled a mile or two even though it feels like hours of daydreaming and you may have even figured out a solution to a big problem.
Lastly, the one I love the most is when my car takes me back to another place and/or time. Like last week, when I was doing a lot of night time driving down highways with little traffic. Headlights on high beam showing only the road in front of me, Christmas music playing on the radio … and boom … I was back in my childhood memories of Christmas .. not just the memories, it really felt like I was there … all the feelings I had when I was young about Christmas had suddenly reappeared deep inside for a little while.
Self-hypnosis is a powerful state of mind … Just think what we could accomplish if we could control this phenomenon within other aspects of our daily lives …. this gives a whole new meaning to multi-tasking … who knew our brains could do it automatically?
Bear in Mind 