I like to think I've been around when it comes to hypnosis. My interest began when I was still a child. I read books about the topic in secret, first hypnotized someone in secret, and practiced self-hypnosis with a pure belief in what was possible that only a child (and then a teenager) could have, even when the results never quite lived up to my expectations.

I like to think I've been around when it comes to erotic hypnosis. I made the connection later in life, but then made up for lost time. Those were the days before MP3s, when buying a session meant waiting for a padded mailer with a cassette tape to arrive in your actual, physical mailbox. Over the years, I bought at least one session from most of the hypnotists who came to my attention, whether the "Old Guard" of original hypnodomes, or the ones who came later and then disappeared, or the ones who came later and then stayed. Each one showed me something new, whether something mind-blowing or just something interesting, some take on a subject I'd never thought of on my own. Some I went back to and bought other sessions, and someof those sessions I still listen to from time to time even today. And a few I threw myself into, buying many sessions over many months or a year, trying to experience all that they had to offer like some serial monogamist.

This made for more great experiences than I had a right to expect, but there was never a perfect fit, and never a perfect idea in my own mind of what I was really looking for or what I actually needed. Sometimes, I would try to create it on my own, with my own scripts read through one voice-synthesizer or hypnosis computer program or another. But still, the perfect fit was never there. Or it was the right idea or session at the wrong time in my life.

I can't even begin to wrap my mind around all the many things that needed to align so that I could encounter the right hypnotist, and the right session, at the right time in my life. Looking back over the last few weeks, I can see how easily any one piece of that puzzle could have been off.

I could have listened to a Kasha Shakti recording at some other point during all the time I knew about her but never purchased one of her MP3s.

I could have listened a Kasha Shakti MP3 other than "Virtual Goddess" as my first session.

I could have done all this months or a year or even more from now, when everything else in my life had reached a different place, and my mind might have been less opened.

Sometimes your "perfect fit" has a small window of opportunity. Looking back, I know that mine certainly did. And that alone makes me wonder and reconsider things that I haven't wondered about or reconsidered for years.

My perfect fit isn't a case of "I love her voice," though I do. Or "I love her sessions," though I do. Or even "Her sessions just do it for me3," though they do.

My perfect fit is an experience that completely redefines my sense of what is possible, and what is real. Something that's already exceeded even those expectations I had as a child. Something I honestly thought I would never experience, at least not in this life.

Looking back over the last few weeks, I can see that listening to "Virtual Goddess" was one of those events or decisions that nudges your life onto a different, completely unexpected route. One of those events that changes how you look at yourself and the world, and opens you up to something much wider, and more wonderful, and even more downright bizarre than anything you were ever open to before.

Looking back, I've also come to realize I'm not the only person who has had experiences as intense as my own these last few weeks. Realizing that has helped convince me that I'm still relatively sane. Hopefully, writing about my own experiences over the next few weeks might help someone else realize that as well.

Awakened