To add to the above, you can say that Trance might lead to Meditation but Meditation will not, ideally, lead to trance.
Look up some information on hypnosis, like 'hypnosis faq' or some such, as the trance state is identical to the hypnosis state. In the course of a day you go in and out of trance states constantly. You spend the majority of the day in a trance state. Mystical Trance states are simply states of self hypnosis during which your aim is to focus on some mystical end. Any time that you are visualizing chakras and doing inner energy work, focusing on breathing in elements, etc., this is proactive use of the trance/hypnotic state of mind.
Meditation is rather about obtaining a state of focused clarity, the object of which is ultimately to reveal the true nature of self.
This is a fairly recent distinction for me, but I have found that hypnotic states can lead to meditation as the mind can be given suggestions during a hypnotic state that lead the conscious mind to relax and become calm so that the subconscious mind can be bared a bit at a time, allowing for the 'mud' in the water to gradually clear. In fact, one can go so far as to say that psychologically, the process of meditation is one of clearing the subconscious mind of the things which ultimately obscure the true self. And there are various ways to go about this but they all ultimately rely on allowing the conscious mind to relax rather than remain active and distracting the attention from the innermost being.
The best encouraging advice I have received regarding meditation is that if you sit still and focus your attention inwards, towards the 'source' of who/what you are, and your thoughts begin to distract you, when you remind yourself not to be distracted and return your attention to the source of awareness within, you are successfully meditating. It is when you lose sight and forget to direct your attention there that you have failed; having stray thoughts arise does not mean that you are failing, only that the mind/ego is trying to distract you.
Here's a great way to start - nostril breathing, etc., are preparations to meditation, not meditation itself, so this does not include those things; do them if you want.
Get a timer, like an egg timer for instance, or set one on your phone, whatever. Start with 30 seconds. Aim to meditate twice a day, and each time add 10 seconds. When you get to one minute, maintain that one minute for several days, then add 10 seconds again each time until you reach two minutes, maintain for several days, increment up again, etc. It is very helpful this way as your mind becomes very gradually trained.
In terms of sigils and trance, first of all remember that the trance state is incredibly natural and easy to get into. People usually have the wrong idea about what being in a trance state feels like, and expect something excessively mystical. This isn't the case. There are shallow and deep levels of trance, but even the deepest trance simply feels like profound relaxation, not fixation, per say, although fixation can lead to trance. It's important to know this going in, so that you understand not to expect something 'occult' and miss the state itself or not realize you got there.
If you've ever been reading a book and then stopped to check the time and realized that you've been reading for hours when it seemed like only minutes, this was a trance state and a fairly deep one. If you've ever been startled when someone 'woke you up' from a trance and said they'd been talking to you/calling your name for a while, that was a deep state of trance. If you've ever been driving and gotten to your destination - or driven on autopilot to somewhere else! - and realized you couldn't recall the intervening time, that was a trance state. It happens to us all the time, like when we listen to music. Two people having an intense conversation that goes on and on for hours is a state of trance for both of them and we often have these experiences and feel like 'time flies when you are having fun'. It does, because those kinds of experiences lull us into the focused state of trance in which our critical mind isn't counting seconds for us.
Trance states relax the 'critical mind' - the part of you that sorts, filters, and rejects information. Sigil work is about implanting the sigil - a suggestion - into the subconscious mind. The point of orgasm is to make the mind hypersuggestible for the few moments during and immediately after orgasm so that fixating on the sigil implants the suggestion into the subconscious mind. Another method would be to make yourself a self-hypnosis tape to do the same thing; in fact, I am currently developing audio tracks for this very purpose but for the purpose of self-hypnosis it is not difficult to make your own tracks - leading yourself into a hypnotic state is very easy and there are thousands of methods you can research online.
Making the mind suggestible/reaching a trance state is different for everyone; not everyone will go down the same way. So find what works for you.
peace
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The world is complicated - that which makes it up is elegantly simplistic, but infinitely versatile.
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