How to Create Pliable Mental States: The Real Mechanics of mental metaprogramming

Pliable states are mental-emotional conditions where your subconscious mind is more suggestible, more fluid, and more capable of transformation.

There are known methods for entering these states with various depths:

Method	Mechanism	Modern Parallel
Imagery	setting context, creating form	images, symbols, ritual, names, words w/ concepts
Trance or Ecstatic States	flow state, presence	repeating chants/mantra and music patterns, sex, mild entheogens, breathwork
Caloric or Sensory Deprivation (e.g. fasting; silence, darkness, weightlessness)	alter blood chemistry, desire, energy	forced prioritization shift, stripping away external reinforcement
Meditation (e.g., breath work, mantra, chant, body scan, gratitude, lovingkindness, oneness)	Quieting the prefrontal cortex, increasing alpha/theta waves	Mindfulness, trance
Entheogens (e.g., psilocybin, LSD, DMT, Bufo, MDMA, ayahuasca)	Disrupting rigid brain networks (default mode network)	Neuroplasticity, openness
Near-death experiences (accidental)	Shock-induced neurological resets	Dissociation, radical recontextualization
Deep emotional crisis (surrender)	Breaking old mental structures	Ego dissolution, reprogramming
Ordeal States (e.g. sweat lodge, extreme exertion, pain rituals, heat)	Triggering neurochemical release (endorphins, adrenaline) from pain or systemic stress. disrupting default-mode via physiological overload	Overriding normal cognition via neurochemical flood and threshold-crossing, releasing tension through endorphins and stress hormones. Ultra-endurance training, military bootcamp, CrossFit extremes, intense cold/heat exposure (e.g. sauna/ice plunge), body modification culture

In all of these, the mind becomes more "liquid", more able to accept new programs — new identities, new emotional truths, new possibilities.

That's why ancient rites often involved:

• Substances (fumigation (smoke for breathing), sacraments (for ingestion), salves (for absorbtion))
• Fasting or Asphyxiation (altering blood chemistry, and thus mental operation)
• Droning, Drumming (inducing trance through drones or repeating rhythms)
• Isolation (stripping away external reinforcement)
• Symbols and rituals (giving form to guide)
• Sex (calm & focus the mind, focused ecstasy)
• Frenzy (ecstatic state)
• Imagery and Poetry (placing context into the mind, to direct)

In each case, the goal was to soften the mind's rigidity, make it pliable, and then imprint new images, new names, new realities.

Imagery: Setting Context, Creating Form

Imagery is not a passive daydream. It is an act of internal world-building, creating symbolic and emotional frameworks that shape behavior and perception at deep levels.

From ancient initiation rites to modern cognitive therapy, the images we hold internally define what’s possible.Symbols, visualizations, and names act as containers of meaning — and by deliberately crafting them, we create new psychic landscapes.

Techniques within Imagery:

• Visualizations of archetypes, guides, or desired selves
• Using names (magical names, roles, divine epithets) to shift identity
• Drawing sigils, icons, or maps of personal meaning
• Rehearsing emotional states through scene-based imagination

Use this when:

You need to reframe your identity, summon inner resources, or prepare yourself psychologically for deeper work.

Trance or Ecstatic States: Flow and Presence

Trance is the suspension of discursive thought. It’s when the narrative voice of the ego quiets, and a different form of awareness emerges — bodily, intuitive, even ecstatic.

These states are reached through rhythm, repetition, and surrender. Think dance, mantra, chanting, music, sex, or breathwork. They all induce entrainment and open a gateway to fluid consciousness.

Techniques within Trance:

• Drumming, music, repetitive sound patterns
• Chanted mantra or breath-counting
• Sexual union with ritual intent
• Psychedelic breathwork (e.g., holotropic, Wim Hof)
• Sufi whirling, ecstatic movement, kundalini practices

Use this when:

You need to bypass rational control, enter a state of pure presence, or unlock creative/emotional insight.

Caloric or Sensory Deprivation: Stripping Reinforcement

This is about starving the normal inputs — food, sound, light, stimulation — and letting the deeper psyche emerge. Fasting, silence, darkness, isolation tanks: they all change body chemistry, unhook habitual patterns, and throw the mind into unknown territory.

Deprivation builds tension, hunger, and clarity. The absence of input sharpens awareness and invites the subconscious forward.

Techniques within Deprivation:

• Water-only fasts (24h+, supervised)
• Darkness retreats or isolation tanks
• Silence (vipassana, solitary retreat)
• Abstaining from speech, sex, screens
• Physical stillness (motion fast)

Use this when:

You need to unhook addictive thought patterns, sharpen perception, or seek clarity through emptiness.

Meditation: The Quiet Rewiring

Meditation works by silencing the prefrontal cortex (the judgmental, planning part of the brain) and increasing alpha and theta brainwave activity. In this altered frequency, the mind can unspool, heal, and rewire itself.

Meditation is less about “emptying the mind” and more about training attention — learning to watch, not react.

Techniques within Meditation:

• Breath-counting or mantra-based focus
• Loving-kindness (metta) and gratitude practices
• Body scans, progressive relaxation
• Oneness/nonduality meditation
• Open awareness (“choiceless noticing”)

Use this when:

You need to dissolve mental clutter, reduce anxiety, or reprogram emotional responses with deep calm.

Entheogens: Disrupting Rigid Brain Networks

Entheogens (psychedelics) act as catalysts for inner transformation by disabling the brain’s “default mode network” — the part responsible for ego, rumination, and habitual thought loops.

By disrupting this network, they increase neural cross-talk and psychological flexibility, allowing repressed emotions, forgotten memories, and novel insights to surface.

Techniques within Entheogens:

• Psilocybin, LSD, DMT, Ayahuasca (under safe, guided conditions)
• MDMA for trauma processing and emotional breakthroughs
• Microdosing to slowly alter perception and thought patterns

Use this when:

You need a radical perspective shift, emotional catharsis, or access to deep subconscious material.

⚠️ Entheogens require set, setting, safety, and integration. They are not shortcuts. They are magnifiers.

Near-Death Experiences (Accidental): The Shock Reset

While actual death is not to be sought deliberately (you've been warned, not a good idea),
It's important to understand this part about our brain physiology — NDEs force a complete recontextualization of the self. The shock of confronting death often breaks ego attachments and induces deep clarity, life review, and transformation.

The psychological principles can be studied or symbolically replicated in ego-shocking experiences.

Safer Analogues to NDEs:

• Simulated death meditations (e.g., lying in a coffin)
• Guided journeys into underworld realms
• Survival experiences or extreme existential threat
• Psychedelic “ego death” (carefully guided)

Use these safer analogues when:

You’ve hit a psychological wall and need to reboot your life’s frame of reference.

⚠️ And of course both accidental near death (NDE), or actual death, cause a trip: that white light and floating above yourself and talking to ancestors.
Not recommended, but be aware of these, since it'll be at the end of your journey in your life here.

Insightful quotes of modern folks, on the topic of NDE:

The ancients knew this about the mind...

...and those ancient priesthoods designed many rites around "symbolic death" as an initiation into this "mystery". One well-known one is Eleusis, a >1500 year old religion, that we know very little about, but involved poems to Persephone and Demeter, taking the initiates through a symbolized death. Pilgrims walked from Athens to Elefina for 9 days to attend once in their life. Was said to be the most important thing for humanity, said by one Ancient greek philosopher. Ancient priesthoods were performing symbolic death rites often with drugs and imagery, in order to trigger this effect in the mind of the initiate. Some of those drugs, like Venoms, got the initiate awfully close to death, and required a well timed antidote, and admixture of several other drugs. While other drugs (Amanita, Magic Mushrooms) were much safer.

Heaven, Hell, Resurrection - mean a lot more with this knowledge. It shifts from meaning things you experience after death, to things you experience during your life. Heaven is that divine state of mind, free. Hell is unresolved guilt or trauma that you can't get past. Resurrection is your life after you experience the effects, killing your fears, clearing your mind, creating heaven on earth (in your mind, and in your relationships with others).

Deep Emotional Crisis: Surrender and Rebirth

Emotional crisis — loss, heartbreak, breakdown — often breaks the structure of the false self. In surrendering control, new forms of being can emerge.

This is the alchemical "nigredo" — darkness before integration. When approached consciously, crisis becomes a rite of passage.

Techniques to Work With Crisis:

• Allowing full grief or rage expression without repression
• Conscious journaling and symbolic burning
• Guided internal family systems (IFS) or parts work
• Trauma release practices (TRE, somatic experiencing)

Use this when:

You’re in the middle of pain and need to turn breakdown into transformation rather than escape.

Ordeal States: The Neurochemical Threshold

Ordeal states involve pushing the body-mind to a stress threshold, where neurochemicals like endorphins, adrenaline, and dopamine are released. This floods the system, overriding ordinary thought and placing the mind into a liminal, altered state.

Ancient cultures knew this: sweat lodges, scarification, long fasts, or ordeals of pain and heat were rites to open the psyche.

Techniques within Ordeals:

• Sweat lodges, sauna + cold plunge cycles
• Extreme endurance events (marathon, CrossFit)
• Intense cold exposure (Wim Hof, ice baths)
• Ritual tattooing, piercing, or scarification
• Pushing through exhaustion or challenge until “breakthrough”

Use this when:

You need a physical route to breakthrough, especially when mental or emotional methods stall. Ordeals ground transformation in the body.

Final Thoughts: Combining and Sequencing Methods

These methods are not mutually exclusive. In fact, layering them multiplies their effect. A fast followed by meditation, a sweat lodge with chanting, or a crisis catalyzed by imagery and entheogens — all can act synergistically.

What matters most is intention, integration, and honesty with yourself. These techniques aren’t toys. They are tools — sacred, neurochemical, ancient — for the remaking of consciousness.

See Also

• Alien Information Theory - what's going on in the mind, with the above techniques? Describes a mental model that we keep inside of us, which we can index and explore, like a needle on a record or flashlight in a dark room. Where the techniques above give us the tools to explore that model - to move that needle around our model, see different dimensions of our model