**8. Deep listening/presence/mystical states**

Similar to the psychoanalytic method of free association, where attention is brought to the unfolding productions of the psyche, in psychedelic psychotherapy the primary instruction provided is to simply focus awareness on any sensation, thought, feeling or experience that arises. Since psychedelic medicines permit expressions from deeper aspects of the self, alongside a plethora of sensory expressions, the patient needs to learn to navigate the experience, familiarize herself with and discover the modes of listening as information is accessed through the senses.

Correspondingly, listening from all sensory levels by the therapist is optimal, to provide a wide-spectrum registering and "deep listening" that flows in tandem with the patient's as the session progresses and resolves. Psychoanalytic training provides a system of learning the psychoanalytic method through direct experience while inducing within the training analyst an ever deeper knowledge of themselves to enhance their capacity as an instrument of exquisite sensitivity and self-awareness. Similarly, a cultivated knowledge of the psychotherapist's own self-states, character structure, components of identity and mystical experience states allow for the augmented use of the analyst's own self as a psychedelic psychotherapeutic instrument where the deeper foundational layers of the self and the underlying emotional anxieties may be registered, addressed and developed through the substance of the therapeutic encounter.

The cultivation of a platform of experience liberated from the distractions of the noisy mind, emotions and in somatic sensation is a principal goal of meditation. Such an experience is one of awareness and stillness, notably free from routine sensory and
