Welcome back. I’m Adeline Atlas, 11-times published author, and this is the Mirror Mirror series—where we explore how mirrors are not just surfaces, but interfaces: tools that change how consciousness interacts with reality. Today’s video is called “Mirror Gazing and Trance States,” and it’s essential that we drop the idea that trance is something mystical or abstract. Trance is measurable. It’s structural. It’s repeatable. And every serious mirror practitioner needs to overstand that the mirror doesn’t do the work—you do.

What you see in the mirror isn’t determined by the glass. It’s determined by the state of your brain, your breath, your nervous system, and your gaze. Just like a radio must be tuned to the correct frequency to pick up a station, your perceptual system must be retuned—lowered from its ordinary reactive speed—into the symbolic, nonlinear bandwidth that mirror visions live in.

Let’s begin with what happens in the brain. Most people in waking life operate in beta brainwave states—fast, sharp, attention-focused, goal-driven. This is the mind you use at work, in conversation, on the street. Beta is useful, but it’s useless in mirror work. You cannot receive subtle or symbolic information while your brain is locked in task-mode cognition.

To enter a receptive state, you must pass through alpha—a slower, calmer rhythm associated with daydreaming, meditation, and flow. But mirror work truly opens when you descend even further, into theta. This is the zone of trance. It’s the same state the brain enters during REM sleep, hypnosis, and deep visualization. It’s where the brain is no longer filtering out symbolic or non-local data. In theta, the mirror becomes responsive. The veil thins. Visual and energetic input from the subconscious and collective fields begins to stabilize on the surface of perception.

But this shift does not happen automatically. It must be trained—through breath, body positioning, and gaze mechanics. Your brainwave state responds to ritual rhythm. That means slow, even breath. Repetition. Silence. Diminished lighting. It also means removing distraction from the optic nerve, which is constantly scanning, identifying, and calculating when we’re in beta state. That’s why mirror work is not done in full light or visual clutter. The brain must stop categorizing and begin sensing.

And that brings us to the eyes. Your eyes are not just visual sensors—they’re part of your brain. In fact, the retina is made of neural tissue. This means your eyes are part of your consciousness system, not just passive cameras. And how you use them in mirror work will determine whether you access trance or remain locked in egoic control.

Once you overstand that your eyes are neural processors, not just passive lenses, the real power of mirror gazing begins to emerge. Let’s talk about focus mechanics—a misunderstood and often sabotaged part of modern spiritual practice. Most people are conditioned to use focal vision: a high-resolution, target-based scanning mechanism designed for reading, driving, problem-solving, and facial recognition. Focal vision is directed, sharp, and incredibly efficient. But in mirror work, it blocks access. It keeps you anchored in beta—the active, analytical brainwave state that filters out symbolic or subtle input.

In contrast, mirror divination depends on peripheral activation and soft focus—a gentle gaze that doesn’t try to see something but instead opens to let something emerge. You’re not looking for details. You’re allowing the field to speak. This means your eyes may naturally begin to blur, water, or shift focal depth. You may feel as though your own face is melting, distorting, or vanishing. That is a signal—not of danger, but of entrance. You are moving out of top-down visual dominance and into field-based perception—a perceptual state where the unconscious and symbolic have room to arise.

What you’re doing, neurologically, is dropping out of the prefrontal cortex (which governs logical sequencing) and activating the limbic and occipital systems—the emotion-and-image centers of the brain. This allows not just visual symbols but felt patterns to emerge: sensations, memories, flashes of recognition, or sudden clarity that seems to arrive from nowhere. This is altered state intelligence—not hallucination, but heightened pattern recognition made possible by a changed relationship to time and stimulus.

One of the most potent shifts that occurs in mirror trance is visual dilation. Not just the dilation of the pupils—though that happens—but the dilation of perceptual space. As your nervous system drops into alpha and theta states, your sense of distance and boundary collapses. The mirror may feel closer. Your body may feel farther away. Time may feel thick or slow. These are reliable physiological indicators that your trance state is active.

At this point, many practitioners will begin to experience mirror fluctuation phenomena: faint overlays, soft flashes, light bending, field shimmer, or face morphing. The surface of the mirror may begin to “move” or look like liquid. Some see brief glyphs or shadows, while others feel heat in the spine or tingling in the skin. These are not always visual messages. They are field responses—confirming that the gateway is receptive.

But here’s the key: you must remain still. The temptation to “chase” the image—to lean forward, focus harder, squint, or make something happen—breaks the trance. The goal is not to see more clearly but to see more receptively. This is not vision as domination. It is vision as invitation.

Now that we’ve established how soft focus and peripheral activation shift your brain into a trance-capable state, let’s examine what happens next: the perceptual breakdown of linear identity and the rise of symbolic vision. This is where mirror gazing becomes a true altered state—not because you’re imagining something, but because your sensory system begins to operate beyond consensus reality logic.

One of the most common early trance responses is something we call self-image morphing. Your own face appears to shift in the mirror. It may age, become expressionless, fade entirely, or even be replaced by a foreign-looking figure. For new practitioners, this can feel destabilizing or eerie. But it is one of the most reliable physiological markers of mirror trance: the egoic image dissolving. Your identity is no longer being reinforced by facial pattern recognition. What’s happening is your brain is temporarily interrupting the feedback loop that tells you, “I am this fixed body in this fixed timeline.”

This temporary softening of ego-based perception creates space for other layers of vision to emerge. These may be subtle visual overlays, but often they are multi-sensory imprints: smells from places you’ve never been, sounds without external source, or sudden bodily sensations that feel like memory—without context. Some describe this as “entering a memory that isn’t mine.” Others report a sense of “watching” themselves from outside their body. This is not delusion. It is a trance effect known as bilocation awareness—when the self splits temporarily between observer and observed.

In indigenous and mystery school contexts, this state has many names: spirit-travel, field walking, astral sight, or second attention. From a neurocognitive perspective, it is simply the default mode network going quiet, allowing access to alternate models of self and reality. In theta state, your subconscious no longer blocks symbolic or non-linear input. Instead, it allows convergence—overlaying ancestral memory, collective field data, archetypal symbolism, and emotional echoes into your current visual field.

This is why mirror work is not just about “seeing something” in the surface. It’s about entering an informational overlap, where multiple timelines, fields, and identities can coexist. The mirror becomes not just a reflection—but a cross-dimensional lens. That is why so many practitioners report feeling like they’ve left time—or that they were “gone” far longer than the actual session lasted. Time perception collapses in trance, because you’re no longer bound to one timeline at a time.

But this brings us to the cautionary principle: projection vs. reception. Just because something appears in trance doesn’t mean it’s true. The subconscious is not pure signal. It carries unprocessed trauma, fantasy, ego desire, and internalized cultural imagery. If your nervous system is dysregulated, the mirror may reflect emotional residue, not intuitive data. This is why trance must be grounded by discernment. Just because something is “vivid” does not make it accurate. Accuracy in mirror work is determined after the session, through pattern tracking, synchronicity, and impact—not in the moment of vision alone.

Once the trance state has been entered, navigated, and stabilized long enough to generate authentic signal—symbolic, sensory, or otherwise—the final phase is one that often gets rushed or skipped: conscious exit and field recontainment. In advanced mirror work, how you leave trance is as important as how you enter it. Without proper exit sequencing, you risk walking through your life with your sensory filters still open—disoriented, energetically leaky, or absorbing information you were never meant to carry.

When the session is complete—either because the vision has ceased, you feel internally full, or your focus begins to degrade—the first action is closing your gaze. Slowly draw your eyes away from the mirror, blinking gently. Resist the urge to snap back to full beta-state attention. You’re transitioning between bandwidths. That means the visual field may still shimmer or pulse for a few minutes. That’s normal. It means your brain is recalibrating.

Do not immediately stand. Stay seated. Place your hands on your body—on your heart, your thighs, your solar plexus. Anchor your physical self. Breathe rhythmically. Speak to your system, even if silently: “I am here. I am back. I am whole. The mirror is closed.” These statements are more than affirmations. They are neurological prompts—reminders to the body that trance is complete and attention must return to ordinary sensory flow.

Next, physically cover the mirror. The surface is no longer just a surface—it’s been activated as a field interface. Even if nothing “happened” in the session, you opened a perceptual gate. It needs to be sealed. Cover it with a black or opaque cloth. If using a mirror plate, place it face-down in a closed container. You are signaling to the mirror and to your own nervous system: the feedback loop is finished.

Now—ground your field. Eat something warm. Touch water. Lay on the ground. You may feel spacey, heavy, or overly sensitive after mirror trance. That is because your sensory system has been operating across multiple frequencies. You need to return to a single channel. If you’ve received intense imagery or spiritual contact, a salt bath or smoke clearing may be helpful. Not for superstition, but to dissipate residual charge still clinging to the sensory field.

Finally, document—but do not decode—your experience. Write what you saw, felt, heard, or sensed. What changed in the mirror? What emotions arose? What questions were answered—or didn’t need answering anymore? Then stop. Do not interpret everything immediately. Let the experience unfold across time. Mirror messages often reveal themselves through external echoes—repeating symbols, uncanny synchronicities, or dreams that appear in the days that follow. Let them come to you.

And if you feel destabilized or mentally foggy for more than 24 hours, the issue is not the mirror—it’s how your field was left open. That’s not failure. It’s a signal that you need to tighten your exit protocols. Remember, trance is not a toy. It’s a trained skill, rooted in the ancient technologies of the nervous system. And like any true technology, its effects extend beyond the moment of use.

In closing, mirror gazing is not about fantasy or theatrical magic. It is about structured neurological reprogramming. It is about learning to see differently by shifting the very mechanism that produces sight. And when used with precision, mirror trance becomes not an escape—but a return: to memory, to pattern, to non-linear truth. Not because the mirror shows you something new—but because it shows you what’s always been there—if only you learn how to look.

In the next video, we’ll explore how mirrors interact with dream states—how lucid dreaming, mirror appearances, and sleep-based visions form an extended field of symbolic continuity that links waking and altered consciousness.