Ghost Mountain - Astral Projection and Altered States of Consciousness

Three Mountains

2009-06-12T16:05:00.001-07:00

Once, a very long time ago, three mountains came across the sea approaching the land where we now live. They came in slowly, but unstopping in their approach and the people ran for high ground to escape, and to watch them in amazement.

They eventually made land, and from the first mountain lack, famine and poverty came running down onto the shore. From the second and largest, hatred, murder and war came running. From the third avarice, disrespect, and callousness came.

The people tried to run away, but could not escape the darkness that the mountains brought with them and so it is to this day.

The moral of the story:

When mountains come, there's nothing you can do about it.

Ground to Dust

2009-06-11T18:40:00.000-07:00

Between the hot, dry desert air and the frequent moral ambiguity of my occupation grinding away at my soul, I feel as if any day now I may turn to dust and blow away. While the current clientele are considerably less reprehensible than the former, they still leave me with little doubt that they peddle death, despair and slavery, while charging you a premium for it.

The small part I play is in the business of making you think you actually like and need what they offer, and like them as corporate persons. While I'm just a nut in the destruction machine, I'm still a part of the machine and I can't figure out how to lie to myself into believing it's all good.

Mother nature must be feeling my agony, it's rained for several days now. A very unusual occurrence for this time of year here, I'm really grateful for some relief. Having worked myself into this uncomfortable corner, I enter the lower world (subconscious if you like) to see if there are any good and workable alternatives to my current situation that don't involve homelessness or criminality.

After the long journey down, I find myself in a long hallway with glass partitions on either side holding back what appears to be an ocean of water. This leaves me confused and trying desperately to understand. Unfortunately, I'm kind of thick and these subtle references from the subconscious land on the brick wall that is my mind like so many insects on a speeding car's windshield.

Before I reached the end of the hall something must have given way, because I was suddenly assaulted by a wall of water. Had I been a being of flesh the onslaught surely would have torn me limb from limb. I swam up and soon was floating on a vast, dark sea, apparently headed somewhere with the current.

Nothing was visible but water. It was as if I were out in the middle of the ocean. Every horizon fell off into oblivion with nothing, not even a scrap of debris altered the scenery.

The waves took me under into another deep hole and I came out again to find land. It was beautiful here, lush, thick with vegetation, and animal life. I was approached by a mountain lion, who stalked out of the forest in my direction. This is my companion, so it was not a surprise.

When I say companion I mean that when I was a very small child, maybe three years old, I was left alone in a vehicle while my mother and father went inside to buy something at a gas station. In the short time I was alone a mountain lion came up to the car to have a look at me through the window. He stayed for quite a while, terrifying my parents. I may have looked like a nice meal. Nonetheless, this creature has been my companion since I was small and remains to this day. Somehow I relate to it.

Generally, in more recent years, the creature will challenge me when we meet in the lower world. It's a test of wills I suppose. We fight, neither of us seem to understand why. On this occasion, however, we simply ran together. It was like the old days, empowering and felt wonderful.

This experience did nothing to help me with the issues that are grinding away at me. There answer is probably there, but I'm too mentally clumsy to catch it.

To add a bit of synchronicity to the repeated references to water, apparently you will in a few years have privatized water, barring unforeseen emergencies. This applies worldwide. It's the plan, beginning with a few pilot programs, which are already underway. Once they show great success with the pilot programs, they can move onto bigger projects.

Water is being sold too cheaply, according to the would-be privatizers. They want "fair" pricing for water and they want to be able to make a large profit on it.. If the program is sold properly you'll be begging them to privatize your water, rather than having it state-run. Perception trumps reality.

Crossing the Bridge

2009-05-15T14:38:00.000-07:00

Original photo from Scott Liddell

I recently managed to cross the rope bridge I wrote about a while back. It was a pretty interesting experience.

The bridge did break just after I crossed, so I had no way to go but forward. I was followed by a strange looking creature, though stalked may be a more appropriate term, as I walked the path that led through the trees on the other side. It seemed initially my follower was trying to intimidate me, then the sense I got was more of curiosity. Then he/she, I couldn't tell which it was, finally lost interest.

To my left I noticed a small clearing with tiny white flowers and what I thought were butterflies, or maybe birds flitting about. There was a beautiful sound coming from the clearing, as well, so I went to check it out. I was surprised to find they were not birds or butterflies, but rather souls ascending from this place and they laughed like little children at the foolishness of my presumption. The beautiful sound came from these souls coming into self-realization and leaving the garden, as it were.

It was truly beautiful, remarkable, and well worth crossing the bridge just to see it. Up close the souls looked much like the blobs you see in ghost photos, which I always thought were caused by the camera flash. Nonetheless, it was very cool.

A little farther down the path there was a large group of people who seemed to be loosely lined up, waiting for something. It reminded me very much of my near-death experience after giving birth to my son. These people, however, did not exude the joy that the people did in my NDE. They weren't unhappy, but quite neutral, and perhaps even bored. I never did figure out what they were waiting for.

Among them there was a small gathering sitting around what from a distance appeared to be a campfire. This looked like my kind of place, so I went right over to talk to them. When I got there I realized they were actually staring into a hole in the ground. I didn't look too deeply, but there was a warm, fire-like glow coming from the pit. Unfortunately, the people didn't have the normal mellow vibe that comes with a campfire, they were just obsessed with the fire in the hole.

Something called me back to the flesh world, so I didn't get a chance to see what they were really doing, and I'm not sure I want to go back to find out at this time. Maybe later I will.

Letting Go

2009-05-15T12:02:00.000-07:00

I was reading this terrific article over at EarthSpirit about chanting to raise energy and change consciousness, and bring about trance states and the writer said something that struck me funny. The statement wasn't really about chanting, but more regarding altered states in the modern versus the ancient world. It wasn't the purpose or basis of the article, just a little bit of commentary within it. It was an excellent article, and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone interested in these things.

In the ancient world those able to achieve profoundly altered states of consciousness were revered and looked to for answers. In the modern world these types of people are shunned at best, and often medicated into submission to the norm, hospitalized and/or imprisoned.

Sherry Gamble, the author, goes on to talk about pagan rituals with drumming, dancing, and chanting to raise energy for a purpose. The participants in these rituals, she suggests, never truly let go. They are too concerned with looking foolish, or watching the others, more concerned with appearances than with the real substance of their work.

It's a strange clinging to the identity that others give us that keeps the doors to Gnosis slammed shut. It's apparently a learned trait. Babies don't have this problem, they don't know they're supposed to be something other than as they are. Small children don't have as much of the identity clinging issue that adults do.

The really funny bit, in my opinion, is that you think you're controlling yourself via your "identity," but the opposite is true. You're grasping onto something that society has created for you, you don't own it. And the tighter you grip, the less control you have.

It's very hard to sort out what's you from what's social imprinting. Even when you've done years of work and think you know, you find an attic full of garbage you've collected without realizing it.

I feel this problem goes far beyond the group setting. The "appearances" policeman lives inside our head, patrolling around our psyche, protecting us from truly letting go and allowing ourselves to enter significantly altered states of consciousness even alone, in the privacy of our own minds.

Due to this policeman's considerable efforts many people require powerful drugs before they release their grip on their socially-manufactured identity and let their subconscious break through and talk to them. They seem to prefer the confining and claustrophobic illusion of order over the chaotic freedom of truth.

Granted, this policeman is also the guy who keeps your hand still when you'd like to slap the stupid out of someone, but you know you shouldn't. So he serves a good purpose. I just think he's been tasked with jobs that really shouldn't be his concern.

Putting this internal policeman back in his proper place is a prerequisite, I think, for being true to one's self. It's hard to get him under control, though, if you don't even realize he's there.

Sensing the Web

2009-05-01T23:03:00.000-07:00

All life is connected by a singular energy. In fact, everything in existence is made up of a singular energy at its root. The differentiates itself into people, animals, plants, stones, and even planets, everything that is a part of our present level of consciousness. Between living things this same energy makes connections. This is what some of us call 'the web'.

Sensing the web allows you to feel people and animals approaching. It's very much like feeling the rhythm of a place, and knowing when that rhythm changes. I believe animals may receive some information this way. While their sense of smell and hearing are usually superior to ours, there are times when no physical sense can explain their reactions. Right before natural disasters are obvious moments, but there are other, less glamorous occasions, like a dog minutes before someone they love comes home at an unusual time. They'll often sit right in front of the door, they know someone is coming.

Feeling the energy that comes across this web is like a form of empathy more than telepathy as we think of it. It allows you to know when something is wrong, or right, with those you come in contact with. It will also give you a better understanding of people, their motives and intentions. When you have this additional sense, you wonder how people manage without it.

To sense the web you must first be able to pick out your own energy from the energy emanating from others. It helps to take some time alone, meditating, and turning your awareness within, to your own frequency. I'm told you don't have to remove yourself from others to accomplish this, but I'm not certain that's true.

Once you're familiar with your own frequency then put yourself in the company of one or two people, relax and focus not quite to meditation level, but close, and open up to the energy outside of yourself. It's a process of allowing, rather than doing, and certainly not forcing.

This energy flows through your solar plexus. It's not at all like the 'god' energy that flows in through your crown chakra, and draws you into oneness in deep meditation. This energy will, and should, feel foreign, somewhat broken, and colored differently, for lack of a better phrase.

There are a couple of additional things which may help you in gaining this awareness. Firstly, don't attempt to rationally judge, or classify people and things in your environment. Oftentimes your other senses and intellect will give you incorrect information. We all see the world through the lens of our own imprinting, perception and reality are rarely a perfect match. Put your awareness first, and then let your rational mind come in. It's a waste of time and energy to pre-judge anyway.

Secondly, the frequency is very much like emotion, so it really is necessary to know yourself. You cannot sense others before you know yourself. You don't want to confuse your own feelings for those of someone else, or even more importantly a strange feeling you get from someone else as being your own.

Third, you need to be present in the moment you're living. Rehashing what you've done and planning what you will do dulls your senses to the passing moment. While some planning is needed if you don't want to have a life of chaos, most of us over-think. We missing living now, because we're thinking about then, be it the future or past.

By and large, I don't believe animals suffer this malady. Wild animals in particular are extremely aware of the moment they are living. Feral hyper-vigilance is not a good thing to suffer from as a human being, but to know what's really happening in your environment you have to actually be fully engaged with it.

You'll know you've fully developed this skill when you sense people coming before they arrive, and sense that you should take a different route, because there's been an accident that's got the traffic backed up. In the latter case, you probably won't listen to yourself, at least to begin with. With practice, sooner or later you'll learn to trust it, and to listen your instincts.

Cold Reading Versus ESP

2009-04-29T22:53:00.000-07:00

Second sight, ESP, anomalous cognition, the gift, the curse, intuition, these things are very real. The sixth sense is, in fact, a sense that everyone has to varying degrees. It's like hearing, how much you are affected by it really depends on how solid your earplugs are. In animals they call this sixth sense instinct.

It's an unreliable sense, it comes when it wants to and says what it wants to, often regarding things that you don't care about or want to know. It flashes something before your inner eye for a brief moment, and then goes on its merry way leaving you to figure out what happened.

On the flip-side of this you have cold readers. Sylvia Browne, John Edwards, and other shysters who make their living giving people who actually have the curse a bad name. No one who actually has future-memory can set up shop and offer their services for profit. It simply doesn't work that way. It's not a dog that comes on command and sits at your feet.

No one can talk to your dead relatives at will, even if they see or sense ghosts/leftover energies from time to time. It seems wrong to me to take advantage of someone in mourning in that way. Though, some people would say they're doing a service by giving people closure, real or imagined. It makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

If you couldn't tell, these people irritate me and I really should reject these feelings as being unnecessary and negative. That said, anyone can learn to do this as a fun party game, and teach others to spot con artists.

This video tells you how it's done. It's a long one, but very informative.

Trimming God's Beard

2009-04-29T22:30:00.000-07:00

An odd question has been bothering me lately, due to a past-life regression experience that falls outside the realm of belief.

The question is: What if when men first fell on their knees begging for mercy from an invisible god, it wasn't god they were begging for mercy from.

By way of full disclosure I should admit up front that I'm a deist, with heavy leanings toward Dionysus/Bacchus. I don't subscribe to the angry god who will punish you philosophy. Sometimes I feel like I was born into the wrong time period, for the lack of like-minded souls. I feel in my heart that organized religion today is used as a tool in the hands of the powerful to control weaker men. So I start with a point of view here.

Whether we like to admit it or not history tells us that both Christianity and Islam were brought to their original followers by the sword. In Western Europe the Gauls, Saxons, Celts, and Picts were forced by the Romans to put aside their old tribal gods or forsake their lives. Later came the crusades and inquisitions to seal the deal. Gratefully, Christianity seems to have taken a gentler turn since it's conquest of the Americas.

Islam, likewise, was taken through Persia and elsewhere by the sword. There are still some followers who would continue this conversion process, though they are certainly not the mainstream at this time. Neither religion likes to admit this, but the history is what it is.

It seems it was this way in the Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) from the very beginning. When Moses comes down from the mountain with his tablets, the Commandments, he gets angry because his followers have fallen back to the old ways. He then tells them that "god says" to go kill everyone in the village, because they are heathens.

27 And he said unto them: 'Thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel: Put ye every man his sword upon his thigh, and go to and fro from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour.'

28 And the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses; and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men.

So, apparently, yes, when men first fell to their knees begging for mercy it wasn't really god they were kneeling in submission to. It was men playing god.

Over 50 percent of the world now follows one of these faiths born of violence. If their leadership were to again tell them "god says kill the heathens" do you think they would?

A Guide For Awakening Kundalini

2009-04-21T08:18:00.000-07:00

I was going to write a couple of posts on how to allow your Kundalini to awaken in a safe and natural way, versus forcing it. In my search for links to outside resources, however, I found that someone has already done a fine job of this. So there's no point in reinventing the wheel.

This place is Kundalini Awakening Systems 1. There is a section called The Safeties. If you follow The Safeties, and meditate regularly, Kundalini will rise on its own, and most likely with no ill effect at all. It's important to "clear the way" first, when the door is open the light will burst forth.

Kundalini - Awakening

2009-04-18T18:39:00.000-07:00

Kundalini initially awakened for me spontaneously at about the age of 21. It was a remarkable and life changing experience.

It was early in the morning, before 6 am and I was in a deep meditative state, allowing myself out some stillness before going to work. Early morning is best for meditation for me, because it's like recharging the batteries. It stays with me. At the time I was going through a particularly difficult patch in my life and needed to maintain a great deal of inner peace to balance the outer turmoil.

I suddenly felt a powerful fire in the core of my physical being, not quite at the base of the space placement they give for the root chakra. It was in the general area, but deeper and a bit lower than that.

I could not observe the sensation and let it pass. It demanded attention. It was as if a force of nature had grabbed hold of me. The fire then shot up the path my spine, with a slight undulating motion. It felt as if it was in the very center of my being, and outside of my as well.

As this fire-force burst through the top of my head, my crown chakra it felt as if I too had broken through some invisible barrier. The sensation was truly indescribable. The only thing I can compare it to is something like a mental/spiritual orgasm, though the experience was completely non-sexual. It was very powerful, like a reunification with the god-force of the universe.

I was transported. I forgot the world entirely. I have no idea how long it lasted. It seemed like an eternity and it seemed like a split second. The notion of time had lost all meaning. I was showered in bright white light. I became the light. All manner of now erroneous, and now strange thought was wiped from my mind in an instant. Then I remembered the world again, but saw it in a completely different way than I had perceived before.

It was not only painless, it was beautiful, eye-opening, and life transforming. There was no Kundalini sickness, and certainly no madness. I went to work when I was done and life continued as usual, only I was different, very different.

Kudalini - The Fiery Serpent

2009-04-18T15:40:00.000-07:00

Kundalini is the life energy that lies semi-dormant in your root chakra, at the base of the spine. It is associated with Shakti, the life giving force of the universe, that which gives rise to action and movement. It rises and reaches up to Shiva. In this aspect Shiva is stillness, or energy in potential rather than the destructive force. The two, Shiva and Shakti, are in truth one.

When Kundalini rises it flows up the spine thorugh your various chakras to the crown chakra. If the energy hits a blockage it will stop there and you may experience some discomfort, sickness, or a general ill effect. This used to be my understanding.

More recently I have read that awakening Kundalini can be very dangerous, lead to madness, terrible sickness, an even death. Many so-called experts say you need to submit yourself to a professional guru to ensure against these catastrophic results.

I don't personally believe this. I have an inherent distrust of anyone who tells you to be afraid, particularly in spiritual matters. Still it may be important to pass on the warning, as my personal experience may not be true for others.

Attempting to force Kundalini to awaken is considered very unwise. It will happen on it own when you are ready. If you open your chakras correctly, and have proper energy flow Kundalini will rise along its designated path automatically.

This is what I was taught long ago, but these gurus do not say this. They seem to say they can make it happen for you with prolonged meditation and yoga sessions. They will have you do up to 16 hours a day of yoga and meditation. I think this may be the source of the troubles that have reported.

There is a style of yoga named for Kundalini, apparently dedicated to helping this vital life force awaken, and perhaps maintaining a healthy flow thereof. I honestly know very little about it at this time. I'm not convinced that one type of yoga is better than any other at regulating your energies.

My only long-term experience is with old-fashioned Hatha yoga, which I've practiced since I was eight years old or so. It's a kind of moving meditation made up of various poses that are held with a focus on the breath and a clear mind.

The practice harmonizes mind and body, and there is some purification of thoughts associated with it. You simply can't have a clear mind for 20-30 minutes a day and think ugly the rest of the time. In addition to relieving stress and stretching muscles, the asanas actually massage the internal organs. If I don't do my yoga regularly I actually feel kind of sick, stiff and strange.

I don't know that the physical practice of yoga is required for Kundalini rising. It's hard to be sure. I would more associate it with a meditation practice, chakra clearing, and the related release of those things which don't serve you. From my perspective, habits and attitudes tend to either lift you up or weigh you down. So you have to choose where you'd like to be, floating or fixed, whichever you choose that is your experience. Either experience is valid, most of us have a mix.

For Kundalini to rise, however, I think you have to choose the floating side. I don't think you can have your attention balanced toward the negative experience of life and have the positive life force rise within you simultaneously.

Machine Aided Telepathy

2009-04-17T19:26:00.000-07:00

Japanese scientists are working on a dream recorder. This technology recreates images onto a computer screen from the test subject's brainwaves. It's a potential mind-reading device. Putting aside the ethical questions this may bring up, the implications are really amazing.

I can't help but think that perhaps in our organic computer-like brain we have something comparable to receivers for the frequencies of other minds. Something of this nature would explain the strong telepathic connections that sometimes happen between twins, parents with their children, and so on. The unaware sender and receiver may be in the same frequency range.

The whole thing is certainly food for thought.

On the Falcon's Wings

2009-04-14T23:38:00.000-07:00

To enter the upper world you select a flying creature you've seen recently. Any creature will do, a bird, a bee, dragonfly or other insect. I would suggest not choosing a wasp or similarly stinging thing, unless of course you have an affinity for them.

You may also choose a whirlwind or tornado if you've seen one recently, but I would personally expect strange results from such a conduit. It might works well for others.

Consider the question or problem you want to resolve at length, don't judge just try to get as clear as you can on the matter. Lay down and relax as much as possible, and get a vision of the conduit you've chosen vivid in your mind. Feel the feathers, or the humming if you've chosen an insect, the swirl of sand and earth if you've chosen a whirlwind, then begin the drumming.

As the drumming starts allow yourself to be taken up into the sky with the conduit. You need to place your faith in mother earth to care for you, as the conduit could very well take you anywhere. Not to worry, though, the upper world is much more gentle than the lower one.

Just let it carry you and really let go, you will soon feel as if you've broken through some sort of barrier, and you should begin to see things clearly with eyes closed. Truly you should feel transported. If you do not see anything, you have not relaxed enough and need to work on that.

When you've reached your destination, you can step away from the conduit. If you've chosen a bird or an insect the creature will happily wait for you while you explore. If you've selected a whirlwind it will return to take you back down.

Look around and take mental notes of everything you see. Try to commit to memory even small details, if you can. In the Otherworlds communication tends to happen in symbols, so do keep that in mind. When you have finished go back the way you came in and from there you can fly/fall back down into the everyday world.

The upper world is a much gentler, and also less complex place than the lower world, in my opinion. As an example, recently on a trip to the upper world I was feeling out of place, off track somehow, and I couldn't see exactly where I was going wrong. So I took that problem as my question.

On my way up I passed a group of men with shields. They were painted brightly from head to toe, and their shields matched their body paint. They were apparently guarding an area I wasn't permitted to enter. So I continued on, appreciating how brightly colored and interesting the were.

I finally landed and almost immediately met myself, but it was not the me I see everyday. This me was quite radiant, and appeared to be very open and kind, not lost, or conflicted, or anything of the kind. I suppose this is the me I want to be.

Then I turned to see a step pyramid to my right, and it was pointed out to me that I could see the answer to my problem from the top of it. So off I went. Before I got to the base of the pyramid I met my grandmother, who left this world quite some time ago.

Suddenly I was overcome with guilt over things I'd said to her as a young teenager. As an adult I'm extremely careful about what I say and do, I have an evil conscience that will torture me for years if I don't obey its every command, but most teens have that moment of unbearableness, I think. I was no exception.

Anyway, it was nothing I would find unforgivable if it was said to me, but it tore me apart upon seeing her and I apologized. I didn't realize I carried this kind of guilt around. She couldn't figure out what I was apologizing for. She also seemed very radiant, and much younger. It was good to see her.

I went to ascend the steps of the pyramid and found that about halfway there I could not get a leg up, each step was getting progressively more difficult and higher as I went. With a great deal of effort I finally made it to the top and saw my destination.

So off I went. I arrived at my destination and found myself again, asking me "Do you have faith? In yourself? In anyone? In anything?" I've never seen myself as a person lacking in faith, so I have questions about this statement. However, at this point it was time to go back, so I returned to the falcon and he took me home again.

Entering The Rattlesnake's Den

2009-04-09T23:15:00.000-07:00

Photo by Mantasmagorical

According to a text called "A Study in Shamanism," which can be found at Sacred-magick.com, in order to enter the Lowerworld you are to first think of a hole in the ground you have seen in the natural world. This hole can be an animal burrow, a spring or swamp, even a hollow tree stump, just about any hole that leads into the ground will suffice.

Begin by being neither full nor hungry, be sure you haven't had any alcohol or other drugs recently, arrange yourself in a dark quiet room, relax and contemplate your mission for a time.

When you are ready, you will either need a partner to begin drumming for you, or use some sort of shamanic drumming recording. You need a strong, monotonous, steady beat, with a very quick tempo. Here is a Free Shamanic Drum Recording - if you need one.

Next visualize the hole you have chosen, enter the opening and dive through the tunnel. The tunnel will likely be quite dark. It may wind around, and make sharp turns, you may find obstacles that you have to go over, around, or through. Continue until you reach an obvious destination, normally someplace out of doors.

When you arrive, take in all the details of the place. The subconscious and superconscious tend to communicate in symbols and metaphors so keep this in mind. Commit as much of what you see as you can to memory. When you are finished, return by following your path backwards to where you entered. Personally I then write what I recall down so I can analyze it later.

"Don't bring anything back with you" - the text admonishes quite strongly.

This is just the first piece of a larger text. It also talks about journeying to the Upperworld, acquiring, keeping and consulting power animals, and so forth. It is far from an all-inclusive work, in my personal opinion, but worth reading and experimenting with the ideas.

I had a pretty interesting experience with it. I selected a rattlesnake den hole I had recently encoutered, perhaps not the best choice. As I entered I faced a snake, and then two, they both struck. It felt like a warning, as if to say, be respectful.

As I traveled down the tunnel I seemed to be gathering more and more snakes, following me, but not attacking. Finally the tunnel opened up into a large room with a bright column of white light in the center. As I approached the light it either turned to, or I realized it was actually a column of polished crystal.

There was a door to my left leading outside, and I was still surrounded by snakes. Dozens of these snakes began slithering up my legs, over my torso, down my arms, and over my head. They soon covered my entire body.

The form they took was reminiscent of a sarcophagus, with a Pharaoh's face, including the snake at the top of the head that's so commonly seen. They then turned me towards the door. It was very interesting.

I placed both hands on the crystal, trying to understand its purpose better and a lot of hard to parse information streamed into my mind, fast and furious, yet oddly vague. I decided to leave this thread aside for some other time.

I stepped out the door and was faced with a cliff. The cliff symbol is one of my normal methods for entering the otherworld. So, as per usual, I jumped off. I fell far down through blackness and landed in a river. This is the river where my mind goes when I have questions, it was all very normal.

I stood up to find a man throwing water onto me with a wooden bucket. He seemed to be trying to get something through my thick skull. I'm afraid he may have failed. I crossed the shore and was back in my chair, so I didn't have the opportunity to return the way I came in.

Shamanism - Other Worlds

2009-04-07T22:11:00.000-07:00

Ayahuasca is an ethnogen used by Shamans in Latin America to heal people. Sickness is often mental or spiritual, because people get cut off from the source. Ayahuasca finds he cause so the shaman can find the cure.

Interestingly, ayahuasca does not cause addiction, leaves no sign of toxic poisoning in the system, and causes serotonin levels to rise. Most drugs reduce the levels of serotonin in the brain. Of course, this medicine should only be taken if you are ill, it's not something you take for a mental vacation, to escape your everyday life.

Much of the documentary is in French and Spanish with subtitles. The experience of the Frenchman who takes the medicine seems typical for modern western culture. We fear death so badly that we forget to live. We make ourselves ill, calling death closer with our screams of fear.

Chakras Video

2009-04-04T22:54:00.000-07:00

Nice set of videos about chakras and such.

Clearing and Opening Your Chakras

2009-04-04T22:22:00.000-07:00

You want to keep your chakras clear and open, but not too open. Having chakras that are either blocked, or too open, can not only impede your psychic ability, it can make you physically and emotionally ill.

Clear and open chakras are a prerequisite for raising Kundalini, which I'll talk about at some other time. Kundalini is the vital energy of life which also enables clear perception.

I say open, but not too open, because I keep my chakras open, and do regular chakra clearing and balancing exercises, yet a while ago I was in agony in the location of my solar plexus and feeling quite sick both mentally and physically.

The chakra was way too open. The energy was flowing incorrectly. The edges of the chakra seemed to be torn. I had done this without even realizing it. Once this happens it's difficult to get things set to right again, in fact, I'm still working on it.

Prana, life energy, flows through and outward from the chakras. Kundalini, when released, flows upward from the root chakra, through the others, then showers back down upon you cleansing and awakening your body and soul.

The flow of energy from your chakras should always be outward, inward flow either denotes some kind of illness or will cause illness if left unchecked.

Now for opening the chakras. Simply lay on your back, stretch your arms above your head, and flex and spread your toes for a moment then relax. Breathe deeply and rhythmically, but comfortably, don't force too much breath in or out. Release any troubles in physical life you may have to the infinite spirit and know you are not alone.

Place your right hand, palm down, on your root chakra and your left, palm down, on your sacral chakra. If you feel particularly blocked you can place both hands on each chakra.

Relax and allow the area of your root chakra to open up, visualize the energy flowing in a circular motion and outward from your body. If you feel particularly blocked, you may also want to move your hand in a circular motion just above your physical body to get the energy flowing.

The vortexes can spin either way. A vortex that swirls to the right is more emotionally centered, to the left is more mentally or intellectually centered. Optimally, you will want the direction of flow to change periodically, to keep balance.

When you feel you've achieved some opening or clearing, move on to the next, place your right hand now on your solar plexus, leaving the left on your sacral chakra, and allow the area of your navel and just below to relax and open up, and visualize the vortex forming and flowing outward.

Next move your left hand to your heart, and repeat the relaxation/visualization process upon your solar plexus chakra. Right hand to your throat, and repeat the process with your heart chakra. Left hand to your third eye and repeat the process with your heart chakra.

Now place your left hand palm up just above your head, and repeat the process with your third eye chakra. When you feel your third eye is opened up and active, place the right hand palm up into the left, and relax and visualize the same for your crown chakra.

Generally the crown chakra opening will be accompanied by a stream of white/silver light. It is absolute pure energy, cool, healing and invigorating. In my experience, this is not something you have to visualize. Granted, I've been at this for a long time and can't really remember the early days very well.

If it doesn't happen immediately, if you don't feel awash in vital energy from the source of all creation for the first few times, there's no need for concern. It usually takes a while for blocked chakras to open up. If they opened up all at once it would likely be very shocking.

For too open chakras, rather than seeing them open up and relax, see them pull in a bit, and 'size themselves' to be more in line with the others. Generally a few sessions like this will straighten the problem out.

Healing chakra problems like I had takes more time and focus. Pass your hand over the area while meditating, and see the light that is the source of all life flow through and around the affected chakra, healing and renewing.

Massage the energy around it, without actually touching your body, and make sure the energy is flowing outwards. Don't try to force anything, just focus on accepting healing and allow it to happen.

Many people go to someone else to help them balance their chakras, heal tears and such. If you have a lot of trouble I suppose having an expert assist you would help, but generally speaking unless you have a major problem I doubt you need a professional. No one else can actually open and balance your chakras for you. With or without assistance you really have to do it yourself.

Primary Chakra Relationships

2009-04-04T22:07:00.000-07:00

Chakras are energy vortexes located at various points on your body. The primary ones are listed here with their mental and physical relationships.

Root Chakra: The source or root of life, our connection to the earth and the physical bodies we occupy. This is the seat of Kundalini. This chakra controls your survival mechanisms.

Physical: Life energy

Sacral Chakra: Desire, and the sensual aspects of life, creativity and vitality.

Physical: Sexual energy

Solar Plexus Chakra: Personal power, will, the self, self control, self love and ego, emotions.

Physical: Base nervous system, pancreas, liver, spleen, stomach, and gall bladder.

Heart Chakra: Compassion, healing, balance, harmony, inner peace.

Physical: Thymus gland, heart, blood, circulatory, immune, and endocrine systems.

Throat Chakra: Proper communication, the ability to speak and hear truth.

Physical: Thyroid gland, lungs, vocal cords, bronchia, and metabolism

Third Eye/Brow Chakra: Inner sight, mental activity, spiritual wisdom, understanding.

Physical: Pituitary gland, lower brain, high nervous system, ears, nose, left eye.

Crown Chakra: Connection to the universal mind, creation, pure consciousness, clarity, and divine protection.

Physical: Pineal gland, upper brain and right eye.

Scientific Verification of Vedic Knowledge

2009-04-02T09:47:00.000-07:00

The Vedas are one of the primary origins of the whole notion of astral projection. Now archeological and scientific findings prove that they are histories, books of knowledge rather than ancient myths. To my mind some of the literature is likely sensationalized, and made more fantastical than reality, but nonetheless it's good food for the mind.

Like the findings on the Christian Bible, it is not at all surprising that these are in large measure histories. While I don't personally believe either book is the "word of god" as so many would like to suggest, I do think studying these ancient writings can tell us a lot about ourselves. You can find various texts online at Sacred-texts.com.

Their mastery of mathematics and astronomy is impressive. The ancient world's knowledge of the cosmos never ceases to amaze me.

Overland Passage

2009-03-31T22:56:00.000-07:00

I had another past life regression where I was a Native American male, with a wife and two children. Initially we were traveling through the snow together, following the herds, which was quite difficult. It was a long, long journey, very cold, and with very little food.

One of my children was a small boy, who died of exposure and hunger. I could not save him, which nearly broke me. I was convinced he would come back, but I changed inside, pulled away from my wife, and the rest of the group in a profound emotional sense. No matter how my wife tried to reach me, I was shut off and didn't seem to be able to bring myself around.

I kept telling my wife that while he could not make this journey, he would return when we reached our destination, and could properly care for him again. He did, in fact, come back, or so I believed.

Once we had found a bit more forgiving area to settle for a while, and were all properly fed and healed from the harshness of our travel, my wife gave birth to another male child that looked exactly the same. He felt like he same child, precisely. We gave him the same name and all was well, and I returned to my old self.

I was then a very happy man, a wonderful wife, daughter and son, a good life and community, good hunting and arable land for many months of the year. There was really nothing more I could have thought to ask for.

Then the regression turn a sharp turn for the weird.

I was out in the woods, a normal daily routine, and came to a clearing with a large metal object in it, just sitting there. It looked like two steel cigars with a diamond shaped object in the center of them. The cigars were hollow, and the center was very hot. I probably should have run.

A strange, insect-looking thing with a thumb and single long, black thick finger came out of nowhere and cut me in half with his sword-like hand. I fell immediately dead, of course, and saw nothing more of the life.

I have questions about either the hypnotic patter that was used, or what crossed my mind while under that would have caused such a bizarre vision. Perhaps I was coming out of hypnosis before being instructed to, or falling into actual sleep and this was the beginning of a nightmare.

Nonetheless, it was the first in a series of similarly bizarre experiences with past life regression.

Impossible Pasts

2009-03-30T23:13:00.000-07:00

I have had a series of past life regressions, on a dare originally, and then others that followed I suppose were in searching out the cause for the strange state of mind I live in. They have, in the main, left me with many more questions than answers.

These were post-hypnotic regressions, not meditative state regressions, if that's even possible. I have heard of learning about past lives in meditation, but I would doubt the validity of the experience, and would probably ignore whatever passed through my thought-stream if this had ever happened to me.

As is, the hypnotic version causes me to question the contents of my own subconscious. I don't take most of the information as coming from a life lived by any real person. Most of them just seem too bizarre to be possible. Nonetheless, they bring up curious avenues for thinking, well off the beaten path, with unusual symbolism.

The clarity of the life, the scenery, and people while in the hypnotic state, and the retention thereof was truly remarkable. The subconscious is apparently very creative and highly detail oriented.

A couple were pretty normal. In the very first one I was a fellow named Zyto, who lived in the mountainous region between France and Spain. At the time I didn't know "Zyto" was a name, but apparently it is.

Zyto was married to Maria, set up by a matchmaker, and felt he was the luckiest man in the world. From my perspective now he was dirt poor, living in little more than a shack with a dirt floor, but he thought of himself as very wealthy and rarely wanted for anything. It's interesting how your point of view changes everything.

Zyto's father was a horse breeder, but he had an older brother and therefore had to find work outside the family business. Tradition wins in these matters. So he made violins, which his boss would travel a great distance to sell in Italy. Napoli, he called it. There was a nearly constant smell of lemon oil, which I found a bit odd.

The way he died is more horrible than what I'm prepared to state aloud, or commit to writing here. It was a very good life if you take out the ending.

This was perhaps the most normal regression experience I had. The others, which I'll write about later, are difficult for me to interpret with any sense of rationality at all.

Outrage Overload

2009-03-28T21:28:00.000-07:00

Original Photo from Liber

The world is an angry place. This is another barrier that tends to keep people from exploring the space between, allowing themselves to drift into the world of spirit, and projecting their consciousness. Anger itself is the enemy of understanding. It muddies the mind with no purpose.

Right now we're angry at greedy bankers and investment hustlers. Last year in the U.S. it was the illegal immigrants. The focus changes, but the drumbeat of trouble and blame never stops.

On the TV and radio, on every station you have opinion makers of every stripe telling you who you should be angry at and why. All this anger changes nothing. It can't because anger is not an action. It's a reaction and a distraction.

Outrage sells commercial airtime, it releases chemicals in the system that we've not only grown used to, some of us are actually addicted to them. We need anger, fear, and violence to maintain the distorted chemical stasis our brain has gotten locked into.

Those chemicals, just like a drug, prevent people from thinking clearly, and prevent people from taking a longer view. Even when you're no longer thinking about the latest outrage, your body is still experiencing the impact of those chemicals. They are destabilizing and crippling.

I'm not trying to say it's an intentional control mechanism for the masses, but it perpetuates inertia. This cycle has been going on for most of recorded history. The only thing that changes is the face of the enemy, be he a large or small one.

Correct action is required for change to take place. If we were to take all the investment shysters and their banker bosses and put them in prison today, a whole new crop would spring up overnight. The problem is not a handful of criminal, or criminally incompetent money men causing glitches in the system.

The problem is the system.

The investment professionals, in their subconscious, were doing the right thing. We highly reward people for collecting money, regardless of the human cost. At best we offer a pat on the back to people for doing the right thing. More often we just call them fools.

For most of these finance experts if they had refused to go along with the policy of making risky bets they would have found themselves on the street, unable to find work in their field, unable to pay their mortgages and feed their families. In our culture this may be the penultimate punishment, second only to death.

Whether what they did was wrong or right is not the right question. We already have the answer. The question we should ask ourselves is how do we fix the culture, so that this doesn't happen as an unavoidable part of a malformed system. That, however, is a subject for someone else to take on.

If you wish to explore the inner world, and the world of spirit, you would do well to extricate yourself form this cycle of blame and outrage. Your body can't relax and your mind can't focus properly after being bombarded with anger, fear, and blame.

If you want to actually change anything in this world you will also have to extricate yourself from this limiting mind set. Outrage is disabling. It accomplishes nothing, but requires a lot of energy to maintain.

As much as being informed is a good thing, being overloaded is bad for you and those around you. Being driven to unreasonable emotional responses by the information you receive can be quite dangerous.

The calm mind can see solutions where the angry mind only sees red. The still mind can see all aspects, where the turbulent mind only sees the single wave of thought that's drowning it. You cannot find spirit by flailing angrily in the dark.

Yogi Levitating

2009-03-28T08:16:00.000-07:00

In ancient times 'scientists and engineers,' if you will, created objects which would do miracles, cry blood, light up, even speak in some cases. They were oftentimes very complex creative deceptions, worthy of praise in their own right, except for the designed to deceive the masses part.

These miracles attracted followers to their temples. There was a lot of competition between the various cults, so they needed increasingly spectacular displays to keep the people in awe. Early Christian churches mostly used relics of Jesus and later bones and clothing of saints to draw people to their congregations.

This sort of madness still goes on today, though no one likes to admit it, it just takes on different forms. For example, this Yogi levitating.

Hard Rain

2009-03-26T22:44:00.000-07:00

Years ago, when I was first starting out in the working life I did a job that really stuck with me. It was a contract we had related to the national Christmas display in Washington, D.C. There is a group that meets every year, long before the season actually begins, to decide on all the particulars of decorations and festivities associated with the official celebration of the holiday.

Basically, at the time, it was a gaggle of ~~snooty little old~~ fine Christian ladies and a single, apparently mute man who was in charge of the mess. My job was to report the minutes of this all-important meeting, so that it cold be preserved for posterity. You can probably still find the work product from it on Lexus Nexus filed under, "Who Really Cares."

That same year there was a man in the news named Mitch Snyder, also a fine gentleman, if a bit radical and perhaps slightly mad. Mitch Snyder, and the Community for Creative Non-Violence, took it upon themselves to advocate for the homeless. They wanted more shelter, an abandoned building, some space that was going unused, whatever they could get to keep people from dying on the street.

The homeless, a large and growing segment of the population at the time, were people that no one else seemed to care for, unless they made the streets dirty, or otherwise offended decent people.

A main concern among the moneyed was that people might wander through their neighborhoods on their way to the shelter, and that was highly unacceptable. Mitch was on a hunger strike, in the hospital, 85 pounds, and we were quite concerned that he would actually die before the powers that be took notice.

So these fine Christian ladies sorted out their color schemes, caterers, decorators, and the like, tweeting like a little flock of birds over their seed. Then the conversation randomly turned to Mitch. Poor Mitch, starving himself, in the hospital, on a deathwatch, trying to force us to do what's right.

When I heard them bring up his name I was certain they'd have great empathy for his cause, after all they were well-bred, exceedingly Christian ladies. If their religion didn't soften their hearts to the misery of others, certainly some kind of noblesse oblige would kick in and make them act properly. I was naive then.

'What about that Mitch Snyder? Do you think he'll come out and ruin everything again?"

"They won't put up with it this year. They'll arrest all of them before they get to the park."

"The park" in this case was Lafayette Park, or Needle Park to the locals, where the addicts would hang out and fix right across the street from the White House.

The ladies began to chuckle and cackle at the thought of a mass arrest of the handful of individuals who care enough about the least among us to stand out in the cold and should, futily, at the White House.

"I hope he just dies," another chimed in. "It would serve him right. He's only doing it to get attention."

At this point I had tears forming in my eyes. Overly sensitive, they have a name for this condition in the DSM.

There was sound agreement around the room, except for their man-boss He looked at me as if to say, 'they don't mean it. They just don't want anything to mess up their little party.'

"He probably will. Have you seen him? They're trying to get to the president, and I'm sure he won't give in on this one. I mean, if he does he knows they'll just do it again next year."

The ladies laughed together at the starving man, and continued their conversation as they left the room. The meeting was over. Their boss gave me a sideways, shamed, wordless look as I packed up my equipment.

Mutated duality, the pretense of a loving faith that covers heart of steel. We've taken spirituality as a fashionable bit of clothing, or a tasteful accessory for our mental wardrobe.

I couldn't help but think of the Bob Dylan song Hard Rain - 'Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughing.' I still wonder when that rain is going to come and wash away this malaise.

Mitch Snyder committed suicide in 1990. Frustration got the better of him. He expected more from the world than he could squeeze out of it.

There's a surge in homelessness going on now. People are losing their jobs, because people can't afford to buy things, which will cause more people to lose their jobs - it's a downward spiral.

I wonder if this collective pain will force people's hearts to soften a bit, or if it's just a another swing in the cycle that we'll learn absolutely nothing from.

The Vortex

2009-03-26T22:40:00.000-07:00

Interesting bit of video here. Stan Grof, one of the founders of transpersonal psychology, talks about altered states, journeys in consciousness.

He begins this segment talking about the vortex. This is very true for the decent into an altered state, in my experience.

Once you reach a certain level of relaxation and focus you are drawn in, pulled down into darkness until you reach a kind of threshold and the images begin. There are often several additional experiences of falling into various layers of the inner world.

Much like waking life, I don't seem to have the choice to just return to normal if it's not all enjoyable. It's as if the task must be completed before it will let me go. Only when the journey is finished can I try to analyze, and figure out what was supposed to be learned from it all. I don't know if this is true for everyone.

Do You Suffer From Noise-Related Stress?

2009-03-25T22:14:00.001-07:00

A lot of people go through all of the meditation techniques and breathing exercises and still find they can't relax deeply enough to achieve an altered state, much less project their consciousness. If this is true for you, I suspect you may be suffering from chronic noise stress.

Traffic, noisy offices, children, neighbors, television, any number of environmental noises combine to cause stress. Your body releases chemicals to cope with this stress and can continue to release them long after the noise has dissipated. Some of us spend our entire lives with some level of ambient noise, even leaving the television on when we sleep.

Noise stress can make you irritable and, of course, make it harder to relax fully, but it also reduces immune function. Noise can literally make you sick. It reduces your memory capacity, impairs your ability to concentrate, reduces productivity in an office setting, and can even lead to sexual dysfunction.

If you're having trouble relaxing, turn the sound down in your everyday life. Take control where you can for your own well-being, as well as the health of those around you.

Read more about your body's reaction to stress and noise-related stress at the Franklin Institute

Circle of the Nines

2009-03-24T23:08:00.000-07:00

I just love a riddle, some enigmatic statement that causes me to dig through all manner of unrelated information, and fit together pieces that probably don't fit. It's like creating abstract art, or a mosaic, usually with history. The nine brothers have not let me down in this vein.

It's kind of logical, being that three is seen as a perfect, and somewhat magical number. It is representative of completeness. You have maiden, mother and crone; birth, life death; father, mother, child, and so on. There are many triune/trinity structures within our belief systems, and it's easy to see why. It's remarkable how many groups of nine there are from the ancient world. I suppose if three is perfect, three threes are beyond perfection.

The Greeks had nine muses.

In pre-Buddhist Tibet there were nine creator-gods, mountain gods worshiped by the people then which are now Buddhist guardians.

There have been nine avatars of Vishnu. It has been predicted that the tenth will come at the end of the Kali Yuga, which is our current phase. The length of this Kali Yuga is in dispute.

In Egypt there were the nine plagues we've read about in the Bible, which can be categorized into three groups of three. There were also nine greater gods of the Egyptians.

The Olmec, and the Maya following them had nine gods for the nine layers of the underworld. The Hero Twins defeated these nine, returning First Father's remains to the world to be buried in the ballcourt, and then rose into the sky to become the sun and the moon.

There's an intriguing proposition that perhaps First Father is to be born again through the dark rift, at the coming turn of the wheel, if you will. At the last turn he died and was taken into the underworld, so as day follows night this seems to make some sense. You have to stretch your imagination a bit, but it's an interesting thought.

These nine layers of the underworld make me think of Dante's nine circles of hell, each progressively more miserable than the last, to coincide with each increasingly more egregious grouping of sinners cast down to that level.

I don't think any of the nines I've found are the nine brothers Whispering Crow was talking about, but it's been a nice trip around the block for my mind, so it's time well spent on the puzzle in my opinion.

The nines are a wonderfully interesting labyrinth to be lost in. They seem to show how ideas are echoed through human consciousness, with each groups perception reflecting a slightly different view of the mutable thought form. People who have never met often have the same idea. Inventions are frequently thought of by more than one person simultaneously, or close thereto.

The Universe repeats herself, not only in nature, but in the minds of men also.

Akashta - Almost

2009-03-23T22:31:00.000-07:00

Beyond the field of flowers I talked about last time there is a huge, magnificent library. I'd liken this place to the notion of the Hall of Akashtic Records.

I should say that what I've read from others, Edgar Cayce for example, does not entirely jibe with what I've experienced. I'm not certain they are precisely the same thing. The idea is similar however.

The library is populated with caretakers, or assistants. They are all very, very pleasant to talk to and have a kind of strange radiance to them, like you might imagine guardian angels only without the wings and such.

If you need anything at all, they will gladly help you.

The visual representation of these caretakers brings to mind the idea of the Great White Brotherhood, or Great Brotherhood of Light. This "Brotherhood" is an occult myth created by the Theosophists and later embraced by Aleister Crowley.

Myths are an important tool for increasing your following, and adding a bit of mystery flavor to your creed. Perhaps it's not quite so cynical, but I can see where it would be helpful to have a council with every so-called prophet in the history of organized religion as your source of authority.

I don't accept the suggestion of ascended masters, generally. It reinforces the idea that you should look outside of yourself for truth.

I firmly subscribe to the belief that the truth does not wait for you in the words or thoughts of some other man, living or dead, but in your own heart. Anyone who tells you otherwise, in my strong opinion, either has an agenda or has impaired judgment due to many hundreds of years of brainwashing.

Don't get me wrong, the ideas proposed by philosophers of the past and present may have great value, if what they had to say expands your mental horizon, holds some fresh perspective, or not yet thought of truth for you personally.

Beyond that, historically speaking, the purpose of prophets has been to make profits for the group that holds up their thoughts as gospel, and slaves out of those who blindly follow.

Off the soapbox, and back to the library.

There are all manner of documents here, tablets, books, scrolls, and even documents in a medium that I cannot find an earthly analogue for yet. The undefined ones seem to have some sort of crystalline structure, and light up when you touch them, it's quite bizarre.

The documents themselves contain all of the events in the various lives of individual souls. Unlike the flowers, from which you would get an overall view, these records are very specific. They detail not only the action taken, but what the individual was thinking while acting, and what the follow-on reaction, or outcome was and so on.

I can't say how much arbitrary access might be given to these documents, as I haven't spent very much time here. I don't know that you can just go and learn about random individuals, like the field of flowers. Generally, as I understand it, you come with a specific question and are led to the records that contain information pertinent to your inquiry.

The information comes through in a stream of thought, like a short mental film where you can see not only the actor acting, but exactly what they were thinking at the time. It's very quick, though not quite instantaneous.

I have read people making references to "reading" the Akashtic records, and having difficulty seeing the writing, which gives me more reason to think this is not the same place.

The caretakers here know me by name, though I've rarely been here. It's very interesting, like going to meet old friends who you don't remember, but they know you very well. I imagine this is true for everyone who comes here.

I cannot tell you what lies beyond this library, I've never been able to go there. In trying I always find myself in the Plane of Forms.

Elysium

2009-03-21T12:51:00.000-07:00

One particularly beautiful place in the Astral Plane is an area I can only compare to the Elysian Fields. I was given this comparison after describing the place to someone else. While far from a perfect match, the general idea seems to fit well.

There is a field of flowers, as far as the eye can see. Tiny wildflowers grow here, with different colors and shapes, different scents and textures. It is so truly beautiful it's enough to make you forget to the physical world exists. However, the place is inextricably attached life on Earth.

Each flower, in this immeasurable multitude of blossoms, has a story. If you focus on it, bring it close to your face as if you were trying to smell it, you will hear its tale at once. It is an instant knowing.

It will tell you the story of a single human life, how they lived, how they died, and what was important to them in their living. What they kept, if you will, when passing on to the next phase of existence.

Some of the stories would be very sad if you heard them in the earthly plane, but here they don't seem to be so. There is beauty and light even in the deepest darkness. Other stories, if you heard them told in the earthly plane would sound like stories of great victories and lives well lived, but in the end what's kept doesn't seem any better, more meaningful, or richer than that of an ordinary man.

This is not to say that what's kept are always family ties, spiritual experiences, or qualities and experiences seen as pure in the eyes of the predominant religions of our time. Generally, though, it seems that what people hold onto for the coming phase are the memories of what brought them to most true joy in the one passing.

To genuinely understand what I'm attempting to describe here you will have to experience it for yourself.

I spent a great deal of time in this field of flowers as a teenager. I could have easily lost myself completely, and not known or cared how it happened, or perhaps even that it happened. So you may need to be a little careful, and mindful of your existence in the physical if you visit this region.

If you have an interest in the human condition the stories are very intriguing, and incredibly enlightening if you have the ability to learn from the experience of others, not all of us do. The stories may teach you how to live so that you have a lot worth keeping when you pass through. They may also soften your heart to the nature of men, even men that you would normally view as wicked.

How To Enter The Astral Plane

2009-03-20T17:48:00.000-07:00

When you've gotten used the experience of to astral projection, and have validated your experiences, you're probably ready to try traveling to the other planes.

You may or may not have encountered a veil, window, or door that does not exist in the physical world, but is very often there when you project. If you have, this may be a visual representation your consciousness has created to assist you. If not, don't worry, you don't really need this type of assistance.

What you need to do is raise your vibrations. The astral plane has a lighter and faster vibratory rate than the material plane. When projected into the physical world, with practice, you can sense something beyond the space where your body resides.

It's a lighter, faster energy, and somewhat hard to explain. Let's just say if it were a sound it would be higher pitched, the same note, but one octave higher than its physical counterpart.

Allow yourself to sense the vibrations around you that are not attached to any persons, animals, or things on this plane. The planet, or perhaps this universe itself, has a vibration. When you sense these vibrations you should notice more than one. They resonate at different frequencies, if you'll permit the analogy.

Now, notice the vibrations of your own being, which of the frequencies are you in tune with? You want to elevate your vibrations until they are in tune with the highest level you can feel. Again, it should be the same note, but a higher octave.

The upper planes are generally not directly available from the material plane. In my experience you have to go through the astral to get there.

You need to take control of your own vibratory rate with your consciousness and push it up, make it faster, lighter, and higher. This can be done, and is done readily.

Once you've done this you will feel that you have crossed through a veil of sorts. You may actually get some visual experience that accompanies this feeling. In my personal experience, the astral plane is misty to begin with, and then clears up.

Places, people and things on the astral plane are either transient or semi-permanent, much like the earth itself. I will go through at some other time describing various semi-permanent structures I've seen there. There is a great deal to see.

Don't fear anything, just head right out to wherever your heart takes you. You don't really need angels, or guardians, or anything, the omnipresence infinite conciousness is within you, and all around you at all times.

There is nothing in all of creation that can harm your spirit, consciousness, or however you prefer to think of it. Anyone that tells you otherwise has an agenda of some kind, or has been taught incorrectly and lacks sufficient experience to realize the truth on their own.

So have a good time, and above all with anything, or anyone you come across be kind or just leave it alone.

Astral Warriors, Alter Ego, and a Tin Headed Man

2009-03-20T13:42:00.000-07:00

Recently I've had a couple of strange experiences, things I'm not accustomed to seeing when projecting, though they do occur now and again. These 'beings' come along just as I'm heading out.

Once I'm kind of established on the way to wherever I'm going, they no longer appear, so I think it may actually be subconscious noise, hypnagogic imagery, that happens before, and not after projection. They're quite unusual, though, and some are a little unnerving.

For example I came in contact with someone I'll call Tin Head more than once. This is a man with a hammered iron looking bucket with eye slots placed on his head, and no other "armor" or weaponry.

He was a wordless soul who was trying to project some sort of strong, powerful, gladiator-type image. I don't know why he approached me. If he wasn't going to actually interact, but just stand there and try to look strong, what was the point?

Tin Head was accompanied on one occasion by a person who looked like me, but a sociopath sort of me with a nasty sneer and fading in and out etheric form. This entity would morph back and forth between a rather small, skinny individual who I didn't recognize and then Psycho-me that I didn't really recognize either.

I don't know what to do now, my alter ego is living on the astral plane and I'm sure it's causing trouble.

I'm not sure what's going on with all that. I think at least part of the trouble may be that I have had a personal ongoing inquiry into these people who call themselves "Astral Warriors."

This notion of Astral Warriors is so very foreign to me that I really feel the need to know all about them. There is no "war" outside of this physical plane that I'm aware of. The spiritual warfare thing is a crisis dreamed up by religionists to keep their followers focused on duality.

The religionists seem to want to encourage actual physical violence, but that's a subject for another time.

Nonetheless, I've been searching and reading. I recently read Techniques of Astral Combat and I learned a few things. First and foremost, I learned that this book is absolute tripe and I wasted a few hours of my life that I'll never get back.

I must admit, however, that I laughed out loud repeatedly and for quite some time over certain things said in this book, so it wasn't a total waste of time. If you are an experienced traveler, and have a dark sense of humor like my own, I'd actually recommend it for the giggles. Don't buy it, though, just read it through Google books. It's missing pages, but you really won't be missing anything important.

According to G Travels, we live in a world where dark entities from the astral plane are constantly trying to cross over and sap our energy. The Astral Warriors have existed throughout time, protecting the mostly unaware from these evil beings.

Shamans and other mystical types, who seem to believe the astral realms are their private domain, should be grateful, because they don't know who is really protecting them. They are apparently protected by this silent, and largely invisible, group of astral warriors.

Beings you meet who offer guidance and knowledge are actually these same demons trying to lure you in and eventually will drain you of life energy. Most beings I've met in the astral were quite remarkably disinterested in giving you any information, knowledge, or guidance. Hell they often won't acknowledge you to give you directions. Some interact, but I wouldn't call what they have to say guidance.

I don't think this person and I go to the same place when we project. He is constantly being attacked by negative beings trying to destroy him, and consume his energy. I've seen some strange things, upon further inspection without fail they are the most harmless things imaginable.

He claims that no one has been able to demonstrate an ability to project into the material world and come back with information they couldn't have known otherwise. This statement is patently false, and I think it is intended to illustrate that he knows more than anyone else.

He heavily downplays the vast array of eastern mystics who have talked about, and traveled through the other planes. He also refers to "enlightenment" as an easy path, which is another clue to this intention, in my opinion.

All the mystics are dead wrong in G. Travels' experience, and if it weren't for the Astral Warriors they'd be just plain dead. They would have crossed over and been immediately devoured by dark entities that lurk in the shadows. These experiences with entities can and do injure the physical body and can even kill you.

On a side note, seeking enlightenment is for the lazy, and men killed in battle are more likely to survive the 'Death Fragmentation Trauma' than other, weaker souls, like people who die of disease or old age.

So if you want life after death you should go join the Army and kill, kill, kill. Then die in battle when you're at your prime. This Is Sparta!!

He does pay undue respect to the world's major religions, though, which is, in my opinion, probably why he's meeting demons when he tries to project, if he's actually trying to project and not just pulling this stuff out of his -- back pocket.

He discusses very powerful beings called liches, which is like vampire+10. These liches were most likely powerful businessmen and the like in life, according to Travels. So they are super-powerful beings in the astral. Even accomplished warriors should not face them alone, and running is your only chance of survival.

I've always thought of death as the great equalizer, in Travels' world, not so much. You just keep on with the same troubles you had here, what a shame.

It quickly starts to sound like a videogame, or good basis for a D&D campaign. There is, in fact, a chat-based RPG game called Astral Warriors. I wonder which came first.

Some people do take this stuff super seriously. There's even a lodge, or a coven, or what have you, dedicated to warriorship. If you are haunted by dark entities they can help you, so they say. It's a place called the Abode of the Lion, dedicated to Hyperborean Tradition Warriorship.

I can't seem to find where they're making money, but I assume it's there, either money or power. When people tell you to be afraid of some unknown force I have found that they always, always either want money or they want you to give up your power to them.

People give up their power, and accept outside authority, when they're threatened, otherwise they tend to ignore the would-be authority and act according to their own conscience and commonsense.

Perhaps I should just be thankful that we have such brave souls out there protecting us and maybe grateful that they haven't attacked me yet. Meanwhile, I'll soon be having surgery to adjust my right eyebrow, which seems to be permanently stuck in the up position.

Validate Your Out of Body Experiences

2009-03-19T12:44:00.000-07:00

Once you've had a few OOBEs, the next step is to validate what you're experiencing. The idea here is to prove to yourself that your consciousness is actually traveling to other places.

Why validate? You could just be having nice fantasies, or WILDs. If you don't validate you can't be sure.

WILDS and other lucid dreams are wonderful ways to explore your consciousness, and I'll talk about them at some other time, but they are not OOBEs.

Validating your OOBEs will reinforce your ability, and give you something few human beings living today have: Proof that human consciousness is an infinite, non-physical energy. For many this equates to proof of the human soul, and continuation of existence after physical death.

You absolutely want to validate your OOBEs before you try to travel to higher realms. There are a few ways you can do this.

First and most popular, have a friend leave a random object in a place you both define beforehand. Take a paper and pen and set it on a table next to you when you project. Leave your body and immediately go to this place, look at see what they put there. Go back to your physical body immediately and write down what you saw. You can then go back to your astral projection experience.

Make sure the object your friend chooses is not a playing card, matchbook, paper with writing on it, or similar. It needs to be something with substance, a sneaker, a vase of flowers, a large dinner plate. Tell them to select something larger than your fist and with a fairly well defined shape.

Most people suffer from relative astral blindness when projecting into the physical world. Using small things like playing cards, easily mutable items like pieces of clothing, or objects with writing and patterns you're expected to discern will likely lead to failure.

A second option, and I've mentioned this before, visit a friend. Find out what they're doing and then ask them what they were doing. Of course, this has the drawback of having to wait for them to do something worth mentioning.

There is also the hazard of having had some sort of 'telepathic' connection. Positive validations using this method may seem more like coincidental events, rather than actual proofs, unless you have a large number of them. If your friends lead exciting and highly varied lives, this method may work well for you.

A third method, and one I recommend if you don't have a reliable friend to try the first, is to go somewhere you've never been before. A public place, like a restaurant, a store, a hotel lobby, some place that will have a defined interior.

Again, go back immediately and write down what you saw. I say go immediately, because with time out of body you'll begin to forget, and alter your initial experience.

Some people say go to a neighbor's house that you've never visited, and then go knock on their door with cookies or something, but I'm not recommending this as a first choice. You could be picking up vibes from them, so we have the telepathic issue.

There is also the chance that you may have seen the interior of the home through the window. You may not realize you have, but the subliminal impact of this can't be ignored.

I also don't really recommend natural settings like parks, because they have a general look alike, you'll see trees, possibly a river or a lake, dirt, maybe a building where they have a display of what the park is about. You could easily assume what you're going to see.

If you do happen to visit a natural place while OOB, then definitely look around for unusual, remarkable things that you could later go and check on. As always, go back and write them down and give yourself some idea of where to look for them when you visit again in the flesh.

So once you're comfortable with projecting, validate your experience. You don't have to share your proofs with others if you don't want to, that's not the point. Prove it to yourself, you'll be glad you did.

Tree Of Life

2009-03-17T21:26:00.000-07:00

As I entered state I could feel unseen hands on my shoulders, pushing me down into my chair. I opened my eyes, and I was standing at the edge of a black circular pit. There was no way of knowing how deep it went.

For a moment I saw myself, but it was not myself, as I was present here at the precipice hovering over the black hole in the ground. I looked to the left and right and again saw myself, doubled.

On either side of myself I stood, clutching at my shoulders, pulling me back, attempting rescue myself from falling into oblivion. The pit drew me forward like a vacuum, and I, the external and doubled me, silently battled against this force.

Then without warning I let go of myself. I fell through the blackness, oddly comfortable. It was the comfort of nothingness, no fear, pain, want, pleasure, love, joy, the bliss of impending nonexistence.

I fell into deep water, with a soft landing and quickly swam to find the surface. I was in a cave once again, not one I'd seen before, but they all look the same in certain respects. I look around for an exit and saw a bright white light streaming in from around the corner.

As I approached it the light became more and more blinding until I could see nothing at all. "One more step," my mind echoed, "one more step, take one more step in faith," and I walked forward into the unknown.

I found myself falling again, with storm clouds all around, lightning, thunder, menacing and angry. Yet the storm was beautiful and intriguing. I wondered what it was saying, but the language was too garbled for me to understand.

Finally I landed in a river below. There were high cliffs all around and the clouds passed overhead quickly, propelled by a strong wind.

There was a path between the mountains that I could see from where I landed and I waded through the river, chest-deep, to the shore. As I approached the path I could see trees in the distance, a pine forest growing amid the rocky peaks. I found myself running with joy toward the pines. This was what I had been looking for. This was why I came here.

Placing both hands on the trunk of one of the pines I could feel strong vibrations, the essence of growth energy emanating through the thick, coarse bark. I wrapped my arms around the tree to try and absorb some of this life energy, and the tree was transformed.

It was now the tree at the center of the universe, swaying in the breeze of time. I tried to look up, to observe its movements, and realized I could not, because I was a part of it.

I was a drop of the golden sap flowing through the Tree of Life.

I flowed up through the branches, touching the leaves, and back down again to the roots. I brushed against the soil in which the roots held fast and found I was now laying on the ground beneath it.

Laying in its shade I could see only a small portion of it, it reached high beyond the cliffs, and the clouds, and out into the unformed spaces in the universe.

A moth fluttered nearby and soon approached me. Its body was luminous white with tinges of changing color and its wings were a dusty grayish-brown. Don't touch the wings, I reminded myself, you'll wipe off the dust and it won't be able to fly.

The moth alighted on me and began eating what appeared to be tiny crystals that had formed below my shoulders, where the hands of my second selves had held me before I fell. The moths nibbling felt like scratching an itch. It had its fill of the crystals and fluttered away, leaving a few behind.

I turned to see what else was going on here and found myself back in my chair...

3,000 Years of Silence

2009-03-16T16:08:00.001-07:00

"It has been 3,000 years since my brothers last came here, 3,000 years since we've seen this." So what happened 3,000 years ago and how did we get here, where we stand mouths agape waiting for the feast of fire to fall upon us and cleanse our tongues of deceit?

History tells us that David, follower of El/Yahweh, entered Jerusalem and set up the first Kingdom of Israel in 1009 BCE. At the same time the High Priests of Amun, a politically ambitious cult, rose once again to primacy in Egypt following the death of Akhenaten.

El the Canaanite god of gods, and Yahweh a desert war god from Edom, were conflated to make one, god the father caring for his children/his chosen, and simultaneously an angry, jealous god of wrath and war. Yahweh appears to suffer from alter ego.

Similarly, Amun has a second nature. He is merged with Ra the sun god, to increase his power and influence. Amun is also known as Amun-Ra, "the hidden aspect of the sun."

The seeds of duality appear to sprout here. Western society as we know it, over 25+ centuries, grew from these roots.

Julian Jaynes posits a theory that modern consciousness developed in the human mind quite recently. You can see it truly taking over around this time, and going forward from here. In the period prior he states that humans possessed something he calls the bicameral mind.

The term bicameral refers to a state where the mind was split into two segments, one side giving orders and the other side following them, with no introspection or self-reference. The voice giving orders was assumed to be the voice of god, and man followed the commands of this voice without questioning.

The falling away of this bicameral mind gave rise to oracles, high priests, and prophets. Men turned to them as a coping mechanism. No longer able to hear the voice of god they relied on those who still could for direction.

This is a highly simplified version of a complex and controversial hypothesis. I don't personally subscribe to it for a variety of reasons, but I do believe Jaynes stumbled upon something.

What if rather than the fall of the bicameral mind giving rise to men looking outside of themselves for the voice of god, looking outward for god was enforced upon them by men in positions of power?

I put this in the context of David and the High Priests of Amun, because they both embrace duality, religious violence, and in the case of the cult of Amun excessive duplicity for political expedience. This must filter down through society and leave a stain.

Eastern forms of religion, in the main, still understand that god is found within. God is in everything, and everything is in god. God is energy. Their society grew from different roots than our own.

Muslims claim to be an "Eastern" religion, but their beliefs also grew from the seeds of Abraham, and their faith follows the same pattern.

Consider the power one has when they demand a society look outward, rather an inward, for the presence of god, when they look outward to see not only who they are, but who they should be.

What does this have to do with an old indigenous spirit guide? Absolutely nothing, but it has everything to do with us, our duplicity, and the blindness in our third eye.

For 3,000 years now we have been relying upon other men to tell us about the nature of god, while those same men have murdered, raped and pillaged over the earth.

Why do we believe we can trust them more than we trust ourselves?

Two Doors

2009-03-15T22:37:00.000-07:00

Deep in the seat of consciousness, in a complete state of bliss, I was at once the light of creation flowing in, and the darkness at the moment of illumination.

I heard a voice, at first a whisper, like a fine mist in my ear. The voice became louder, but still distant. It was the sound of cloudless blue skies, fresh strawberries still warm from the sun, jasmine flowers in bloom.

"Come with me, I want to show you something."

I opened my eyes and suddenly I was falling. Boundless ignorance invaded every cell of my being, punctuated by flashes of infinite, imperceptible possibilities.

Just when I thought I would succumb to oblivion I made impact on a cold stone slab, my soul shattered like glass.

I had been here before. I remember vaguely, hours spent desperately trying to lift myself after falling, with my mind poured out like water, rivulets of belief running down the tiles, until finally daylight came and I was found and put away.

I gathered myself up quickly, confidently. I am stronger now. I release doubts and fears to embrace the eternal energy of creation. I am whole.

"Come follow me. I want to show you the truth." I followed the voice, closer now. The sound had become a cool babbling stream flowing into my parched soul.

"You must choose a path." I was shown two doors side by side. Beyond one I could see a faint glimmer of fire, beyond the other only darkness.

"Which one is correct, which will you choose?" The voice pressed me, impatient.

"Neither," I said, "neither one is correct, and they both lead to the same place." I spoke and was drawn through a third door that appeared between the two.

As I crossed the threshold I was reunited with the stream of energy, joined by a multitude other souls and we laughed together, sharing a secret, and overcome with joy. We laughed, because we knew, and it was so very beautiful.

Then they were gone and I cried, because I couldn't remember.

What did we know?

The Fingerprints of God

2009-03-14T16:22:00.000-07:00

DMT, one of the most powerful hallucinogens known to man, is present in many plants and also within our own bodies. DMT is released during REM sleep, along with several other chemicals. Dreams are induced by DMT. It's possible that DMT is released in large quantities upon dying.

It has been surmised that DMT is produced by the pineal gland, which is responsible for melatonin, another sleep chemical. All of the constituents for its production are available to the pineal, so it's a logical deduction.

Children usually have healthy, properly functioning pineal glands, but as we age, beginning with puberty, the pineal begins to accumulate particles called brain sand and its functioning is reduced. Children remember their dreams, and often have very vivid ones, adults generally do not.

So why is the pineal so interesting? The pineal gland is also called the Third Eye. While DMT is most commonly released during REM sleep, it can also be released in deep states of meditation, particularly meditation focused on the third eye.

DMT has been called the Spirit Molecule. It has been ingested and given as medicine by many a shaman throughout history, because of the effect it has on he human mind.

It enables men to see god.

Taken as a drug it will teach you deep, profound truths. It will help you see the world and yourself without negative imprinting, if for only a fleeting few minutes. Then it wipes your memory nearly completely of the experience, leaving little more than an aftertaste behind.

In meditation, with the third eye open men can also see god, know truths not revealed to them through their physical senses, and experience freedom from negative imprinting. The meditative method however, stays with you much longer.

Why is DMT, this spirit molecule, present in so many plants, and even in our own bodies? Are these the fingerprints of god reminding us that there is more to existence than what we see?

Why must we sleep and release this chemical regularly? What are we recharging? It's not our bodies, unconsciousness and DMT release wouldn't be required for that.

If this third eye can be opened with practice, why was it ever closed?

With the third eye closed we wander around like blind men, chasing spirit at the direction of other men who claim to see and know where it hides. In truth the priests and clerics are just as blind as anyone else, if not more so. Spirit does not hide, it is ever-present. Maybe it's the sand in our third eye that prevents us from seeing this.

Many of us are more than willing to kill and die to perpetuate a tyranny of words, the grammar of duality, the very words that separate us from spirit, ironically, in the name of god. We spill blood to hold fast the chains of this partisan faith. Blind faith they call it.

Who made these chains?

If we're not chasing spirit, we're caught in the muddle of materialism, reaching for the next big thing just outside our grasp, as if it will fill the space where spirit should be. The rat race is a blood sport in which we compete for things freely given to all of us by the creative force in the first place.

Who made this race?

I can't answer these questions with absolute certainty. My far memory is clouded with visions of people and places I've found more important to keep than the knowledge of life before the fall, but I have suspicions.

It's a story that began about 3,000 years ago.

Planetary Movement and Demise

2009-03-13T22:33:00.000-07:00

Magnetic Moon day 25
Year of the Red Cosmic Moon

I Dissolve in order to Explore
Releasing Wakefullness
I seal the Output of Space
With the Spectral tone of Liberation
I am guided by my own power doubled

So I went back to the borderlands cave to find Whispering Crow, hoping he'd tell me again what he was trying to say yesterday. He was happy to oblige, and took no offense at my disappearance, but his explanation was still rather opaque to my apparently thick mind.

He explained that our brother planet will be visible once again through this aperture in the cave. The brother planet is a vitally important thing to understand. There are nine intertwined planets held together by some unseen cosmic force.

If one goes wrong, falls out of it's proper orbit, his closest brother will suffer the same fate, and in turn the others will also degrade and die. Their orbits within our galaxy are aligned and dependent upon each other.

As I've tried to illustrate here, the similarly colored planets would be the brothers. At first glance they don't look to be related at all.

The red orb that stands alone is the root, and in the center of the cluster lies what I can only surmise is a black hole, or similar. He orbits close to the black hole, but is held steady by the two purple planets. The purple are held on course by the green planets, one of which is earth. The green are held by the yellow, and the yellow by the blue.

The blue are quite far out on the rim of the cluster and I didn't get the impression of loving kindness when he spoke of them. Not enmity, but he seemed to express a kind of cold indifference.

There is some fact to the notion that planetary changes can cause changes in the speed of its rotation, but no evidence that distant planets could be interdependent in this way.

There is also quite a bit of ancient astronaut lore out there, many artifacts could be taken to represent space flight. I'd bring my saltshaker just to maintain reasonable skepticism when viewing these things.

I've never been particularly interested in outer space, or aliens, other than as a passing curiosity and source of amusement. I've always been more fascinated with the spaces between, with what lies beyond the corner of my eyes. What am I supposed to learn from this?

The odd nature of our conversations is starting to make me feel a bit off my game. Additionally, I had a past life regression a while back that keeps me far from any kind of space and alien exploration. It's not a pleasant memory.

"It has been 3000 years since my brothers last came here, 3000 years since we've seen this event. I'm very excited."

He said something to this effect. So I looked up the period around 1000 BC. The only thing I can find that might match his statement are references to the Olmec Civilization.

I will continue to look, both elsewhere and digging a bit deeper into the Olmec, and in a related way the Maya.

Interestingly, the Olmec people had a fascination with jaguars and were-jaguars. December 21st, 2012, depending on who you talk to, marks the end of the Age of the Jaguar and the beginning of the third age of water, second age of water, or first Piscean age. Everyone seems to have their own take on this stuff.

A lot of people also expect some rarified cosmic event to occur on that day. We are certainly approaching alignment with the dark rift, even the scientists agree there is potential for interesting times.

Like many other people, I wonder what will happen when we align with the dark rift. I don't expect anything bad. Personally, I reject the notion of any kind of doomsday, or doomsday prophesy under any circumstances. That said, I don't think his statements, and the end of the long count are truly related.

I am curious, however, about the potential of planetary inter-dependencies. You see it everywhere else in nature, if one thing goes awry, everything around it does also, even things you don't expect.

Photo from the National Museum
of Anthropology and History
New Mexico
If these things are true it follows the macrocosm/microcosm structure that seems ever-present in this world.

Maybe his statements are meant in more of a figurative nature, but he did sound quite literal.

Following his rather bizarre explanation of the brothers, Whispering Crow warned me of a couple of things to look out for in the fairly near future, which I found even more strange, given the shadow beast event.

In 100 days I would understand. In 100 days, precisely, June 21, which begins summer solstice, interestingly enough. He seemed quite worried over this, but didn't offer much in the way of detail.

The following warnings were not things he specifically said would happen on or before that day, just things to watch for in general:

He described debris falling from the sky. Like the moon has taken on the guise of a snake, shed her skin and cast it down to the earth.

He talked to me about three waves. A wave of water, one of fire, and one of power, which sounded like a description for magnetism or electricity, perhaps some sort of naturally occurring EMP. I'm unclear if they will happen all at once, or one following the other with time for recovery in-between.

He said there will be many "precursors," for which I assume I'll get details at some other time. Precursors to precisely what he didn't mention, though I think I'm supposed to know by inference.

Personally, I'd prefer it if he'd teach me to be more fluent in the language of trees and animals, and tell me stories from his own life than give me warnings about an uncertain future and mysterious statements about planetary movement and demise, but that's not my choice to make.

An Observatory In the Borderlands

2009-03-12T21:52:00.000-07:00

I finally found Whispering Crow a fair distance away, in another part of the valley, I'm uncertain of its exact placement, but it was on the flesh world side of the borderlands. I feel compelled to find it, another "place of power" to go visit, and absorb its high energy.

He wanted me to follow him, but was oddly silent. We entered a cave on the mountainside, which first went down into the mountain, through a long black, almost hidden tunnel, then turned upwards again. I felt as if I was traveling an ancient path, I could see the energy left behind by others, much weaker than the energy of Whispering Crow himself, but strong enough that I could not ignore it.

I will return, if for no other reason than to see what they were doing. It seemed like a sacred procession had taken place there many times before. I got the impression he wanted me to just ignore the other energies, and follow him, though he said nothing at all.

He was moving fast through the narrow passages, as if we needed to act quickly before the thing we were after would be gone. As we continued on our way it became more and more difficult to determine whether we were on the flesh side of the borderlands, or on the astral side. I'm still not quite sure which it was, perhaps it's both.

We finally arrived at our destination, he stopped and directed me to look up. There was a hole in the top of the cave where we stood, a very odd thing to find. It looked like a natural observatory, designed for watching planetary movement, either an amazing feat of nature, or a truly remarkable work of man.

There are several places in the world, where the sun, or a planet falls precisely upon a designated spot once per year, or other cycle of time. Chaco Canyon is one you should check out, it's amazingly cool stuff. I imagine this might be one of those sorts of things.

Whispering Crow began to talk about the purpose of this place, and I imagine would have explained how it related to the Nine Brothers, at least that's what I was hoping for, but at that precise moment I was disturbed, repeatedly and roughly shaken back to the flesh world, by a family member with an urgent matter.

I can't seem to remember what little he did say, though I recall trying to commit it to memory. I guess I'll have to apologize for my sudden departure and ask him to tell me again.

Gatorboy

2009-03-12T10:23:00.000-07:00

Hoping to get more clarity on the meaning of the Nine Brothers tale, I traveled to the Way Point to look for Whispering Crow. I stopped for a moment there, beside a large boulder, and tried to sense which direction he might be in. A sharp-clawed hand, with nails like long gray knives grazed my arm and broke through my focus.

I turned to see what this was, half-nervous, half-excited, I thought maybe I was finally going to encounter one of these negative entities I've heard so much about. Expecting the worst, I looked and saw a greenish scaly creature. He looked like a raptor, or maybe the child of a raptor who had mated with Edward Scissorhands

He stroked me with his claws again, and I wasn't sure if this was a threat or just curiosity. So I tuned into the creature more closely, to try and discover what it might be thinking.

The creature's emotions were like water, very human, even timid. They felt like the perspective of a small boy, still forming, as young as four and no more than six years of age, to my mind. It was not at all what I was expecting.

Thinking it might put him at ease, I inspected his skin in much the same way he appeared to be inspecting me. While it looked very coarse, even jagged and sharp in spots, it was almost supple in texture, yet strong, tough and thick like an alligator.

He showed off his impressively sharp and pointed teeth as I commented on the quality his skin. The expression could have been mistaken for a smile, if it weren't for the threatening look of those fangs.

Giving me a final poke with his knife-claws he went on his way, and I continued my search for Whispering Crow.

Getting to the Threshold

2009-03-11T12:42:00.000-07:00

This is a process of initiating a projection, with a fair amount of detail but without getting into the dogmatic, occultist mess that swirls around the astral projection phenomenon.

Before you begin, stating affirmations of what you intend to do helps some people. Remind yourself that you are an eternal being, consciousness exists with or without the physical body and you are about to allow your consciousness to travel away and experience things it cannot while attached to the physical.

Lie down, and relax, of course, then practice your pranayama. You have to allow your physical body to "go to sleep," while keeping your consciousness aware. Don't allow yourself to get caught up in random thoughts.

Allow your focus to shift to the notion of eternal consciousness, the energy that makes up your being apart from the physical self. Draw your attention up and away from the body, and let the body get heavier, and heavier, until you feel it may slip away from you, or like you might drop it..

Then focus outward, releasing control and awareness of the physical self. This is actually the most difficult part. You can kind of practice this letting go process with a small, light object. Many people recommend using a pen for this.

Sit at a table and hold the object tightly, then let go and let it fall on the table. As you do this visualize consciousness holding onto the body, and letting go. Letting go of the physical body is very, very much like letting go of an object with your hand.

As your body falls asleep you will begin to experience hypnagogic imagery. Nearly everyone reports this sort of thing, it's like your mind/brain is sweeping away the clutter of information it gathered and didn't need during the day.

You may see things behind your eyes, bursts of light, streets, people, forests, stars, planets and such, just let them pass and hold your focus on eternal consciousness, lifting it up and away from the mundane.

You may hear voices, like snippets of people's conversations, this is very common. They will usually make no sense whatsoever in your own context, and if you pay attention to them you are likely to fall asleep rather than project. So again, keep your focus on consciousness.

You will likely feel a buzz or a hum that begins shortly after the hypnagogic imagery. As the buzz begins your mind, if you haven't maintained your awareness, will start to drift away into the dream state. When it feels as if there is a subtle electricity permeating your being and the universe, you are ready to project.

Apparently not everyone feels this buzz. For those who do not, when you can no longer feel your body, and sense an expansion of consciousness, as if your mind has been stretched out and made aware of things beyond your physical sphere of existence (outside your room/house), you are ready to project.

Astral Projection: Floating Method

2009-03-11T12:36:00.000-07:00

This is my method, and I think it's the easiest. Of course, I use it so I'm highly biased.

As you approach release state, fully relaxed, mind awake body asleep, focus on your eternal consciousness. Let it float, feel as if your consciousness is a cloud, or a balloon floating in the air, and slowly release the body which is heavy with sleep.

Consciousness is independent. It already exists apart from, and far beyond the physical constraints of the brain. You only need to allow it to lift up and expand outwards. Releasing your grip is the vital aspect, allow and encourage the mundane mind to let go of the physical.

The mundane mind perceives, incorrectly, that the body is required for survival, so it can be hesitant to let go if you're in good health. It will let go spontaneously, if you have a serious health issue. People with fevers, or with heart troubles, like myself as a child, have been known to float out of themselves.

You can encourage it with relaxation techniques, and the object release method described in Getting to the Threshold.

Repeatedly release and allow yourself to float up. You let go once and feel somewhat less attached, then let go again and the attachment decreases further, and continue doing this until you've fully detached from the physical.

To my mind this is a nice gentle method of projection that is less likely to cause any shock to your system.

Astral Projection: Releasing Breath Method

2009-03-11T12:32:00.000-07:00

This one works a little differently than the other methods, because you need to maintain at least some awareness of your physical body when doing it. For this reason it may be harder for some people to do, and easier for others.

On the other hand, people who have a hard time just letting their body fall fully asleep while maintaining their mind in wakefulness should try this method.

As you are approaching the release state, breathe deeply and slowly. Pull your attention and focus, or consciousness, into your lungs as you inhale. As you exhale slowly release your consciousness to the ceiling.

Let go of your grip on the physical body gradually, getting more and more loose with each breath you take.

You can go through the various areas of the body, starting with the feet and working your way up the legs, hips, torso, hands, arms, and so on until you reach the crown of your head. Once you've released from the crown you should be floating on the ceiling.

Again, the important thing is to take your time, so as not to shock yourself and cause your mundane conscious mind to cling tightly to its precious body.

Astral Projection: Roll Over or Sit Up Method

2009-03-11T12:29:00.000-07:00

Once you've prepared yourself for the projection allow yourself, your consciousness, not your physical body, sitting up, just as you would when you first wake up in the morning. Stay up for a second, then lay back down, to let yourself get used to the feeling.

When you can do this easily and repeatedly, use your consciousness to sense the room around you. You should still only see blackness, with occasional lights associated with hypnagogic imagery.

You want to "sense" your surroundings before looking at them. When you're comfortable with this, focus the eyes of consciousness as best you can, and look around the room. It will probably look different than it does to your physical eyes.

Once you can do this with ease, you can then stand up with confidence and move away from your physical body.

The roll over method is exactly the same, except that instead of sitting up you roll over onto your side.

Rolling over is probably better for most people, because it completely separates you from your physical self.

Conversely, the sit up method might be better for those who are more comfortable just dipping a toe in the water, rather than their whole foot.

Astral Projection: Visualization Method

2009-03-11T12:26:00.000-07:00

Once you've relaxed into the mind awake body asleep state begin to visualize yourself, your consciousness, standing across the room from you, looking back. Make this visualization as real as you possibly can, feel the floor or carpet underneath your feet, run your hand along the wall, furniture, and the doorknob.

Let this continue until you are more there than you are here, more on the other side of the room than where you are physically located. The trick to success with this method is to be that piece of your consciousness.

Release from the physical body, and allow your consciousness to flow over to the area you are visualizing. Continue to release, like you would release a pen from your hand, until you are looking back at yourself.

Another visualization method is to "jump into" an image that you've been focusing on as you approach release state. You develop a rich environment in your mind, in fine detail and then release into it.

To me this sounds more like 'dream control,' which is a completely different subject of study. It's a worthwhile exercise, but has little to do with astral projection.

Astral Projection: The Rope Method

2009-03-11T12:23:00.000-07:00

Once you've achieved the release state you can simply imagine a rope hanging over you. Grab this rope with imaginary hands, feel the rope, the coarseness of strands, the shape of the braid or twist. Make the existence of the rope as real as you possibly can.

Then slowly pull up, lift out your consciousness, like lifting up your body when climbing a rope in the physical world. I'd recommend pulling up and then slowing letting yourself back down a few times, so you get accustomed to it.

Oftentimes, if you suddenly project/disconnect from the physical the physical will pull you right back in. More accurately, your mundane mind will reassert and strengthen its hold on the physical self.

When you feel really comfortable with this pull up completely, and release your hold on the body. You should then find yourself hovering over, or standing in front of your physical self.

I May Be the Ghost That Haunts Your House

2009-03-10T23:05:00.000-07:00

A funny thing happens when I get depressed and project, I find myself almost instantly transported to this hill in the flesh world. It's a paved road, but not well paved. It has a fairly steep drop-off on one side, and no streetlights.

I climb this hill to the house that sits atop it, as far as I know there are no other homes close by. If I don't project, almost without fail, I dream I'm climbing this hill to this house. So it's not as if I really have that much of a choice. It just happens, like sneezing.

I have no idea where this place is. I've never seen it in the flesh.

There is a woman that lives in this house, and she must be the person I come to see, or rather replenish my energy from. I have no idea who she is, or what she really looks like, beyond a murky general impression. My eyesight in when projecting into the flesh world is horrible.

I don't think I would know her if I met her on the street, but I'm certain it's her that I come here to see, because she's not always there. When she's not it does no good for me to go there. I can walk around the house for hours and feel just as drained and empty as I did when I arrived.

The whole idea brings to mind thoughts of energy vampires, but it's really not like that. At least I hope it's not like that. I don't intentionally sap energy, and I certainly don't intend to do harm, but I wonder am I a ghost there?

Do the residents sense some potentially malignant spirit when I come around? Do I make inexplicable cold spots?

I've had the experience of bi-location before, projecting and going to see someone, then having them actually see you and interact with you as if you were there in flesh. The opposite also happened occasionally when I was a teenager, I'd try to hold conversations with my family only to realize I was actually laying in my bedroom and if I wanted to talk I had to get up.

No one there seems to see me, or sense my presence, which I'm grateful for, but I still have the questions. Am I a ghost in that house? Does this person feel drained when I leave?

A Strange Ceremony

2009-03-09T14:05:00.001-07:00

I came to the usual meeting place. Whispering Crow looked much younger than usual, which was actually pleasing to me for some reason. He seemed in particularly good spirits.

On this occasion there was a woman accompanying Whispering Crow. She seemed incredibly familiar, though I've never seen her before. She gave me a warm hug and then said, "it's good to see you again," and that was all. Apparently the feeling of familiarity was mutual.

"I want to tell you about the Nine Brothers" Whispering Crow said mysteriously, and escorted me to the ledge where we look out over the city. "There will be a half sun," he stated, pointing up to the sky. His description was like that of a half moon rather than an eclipse.

The earth will tremble, and men's hearts will quake in fear. The trembling will crack the earth in many places and the water will rush out.

Then the Nine Brothers will come to meet on the mountain, as before.

Some will watch in fear, others in hope, neither will be right.

The brothers will stand shoulder to shoulder before the world as a singular force, then retreat into the mountain, and gather underground in darkness. There they will try to determine how to quell the fiery winds."

I still don't quite understand whether these statements were literal or figurative, and was given no further explanation.

I was told to put my hands upon a large stone, watch and listen. I did so, and saw fire, darkness, fear, violence and a mortifying lack of faith, hope and trust in humankind. These were all matters of memory, not something of the future or even the present, but over a long passage of time.

The memories came to me like watching a time-lapsed film. I was confused and disturbed by this, but was not given any time to ask questions.

As I lifted up my head Whispering Crow immediately put a small turtle into the palm of my hand and said, "Don't drop it." I asked if it was a tortoise or turtle and got no response. So I checked to see if it had flippers or feet. It was a lovely little baby tortoise, and I inquired if I could place it down and let it return to it's mother. "Not yet," the reply was accompanied by a laugh.

Then several people came in a progression and sprinkled cool water and dust over my head, as I held the turtle. I was then escorted to meet a group of men, the Nine Brothers, Whispering Crow said.

Each brother looked remarkably different. Some frighteningly different, almost otherworldly, but it's unwise to judge by looks alone so I remained open. None spoke in a language I knew, but intuitively I understood them. There was a sense of peacemaking and purpose, that each individual's survival depended on the survival of all.

I held the turtle cupped in one hand, with the other covering it for protection, as I was introduced to each of them. I was being extra careful, assuming the "don't drop it" meant something would happen that might cause me to injure the little creature.

While the turtle did try to crawl away, his tiny feet tickling my palm, nothing untoward took place at all. I simply met an unusual group of individuals. It was much like going to a assembly of diplomats.

Afterwards Whispering Crow promised me he would tell me more about the Nine Brothers at some other time. Apparently here was some sort of a celebration happening, which I didn't stay for.

I don't understand the meaning of this bizarre event, but I'm hoping it will become more clear soon.

Raising Your Consciousness

2009-03-08T13:25:00.000-07:00

So what's the point of all this astral travel stuff? Raising your consciousness, of course.

What's the point in traveling the world? Having new and different experiences, getting perspective, and seeing the interconnectedness of things.

To experience is the whole point in existing in the first place. You are here to experience as much as possible, without doing harm.

I dare say a lot of people would disagree with that statement and probably call me a godless, hedonist heathen or worse. Apparently they're enjoying the experience of self-denial, like starving in the midst of a feast. I fast once in a while, so I kind of understand.

I wonder if they threw a party with great food, an open bar, and a kicking band, would they want their guests to not eat, not drink, not dance, not talk and enjoy each others' company?

I made it all for you, and it's ALL EVIL, stay away!

Would they want their guests to come over just to deny themselves enjoyment, and be miserable, wishing they could try this and that. I hope not.

I'm convinced that the point of creation is to enjoy creation, but I digress.

In order to project you must first raise your consciousness on this plane. Some will try to tell you this can be done with meditation, and to a degree that's true. You can become more aware, more compassionate, and realize you are more connected -- while meditating.

When you're done meditating do you go back to the old way of thinking and seeing?

Do you periodically realize you are one with infinite energy and want to flow with it?

Do you see people and situations differently, more compassionately and act accordingly?

Do you view negative events through the eyes of both the victim and the victor?

Are you ever struck by the shocking beauty of living this particular moment, all of the nuance, texture, color, shape, scent, just the experience of breathing?

Meditation is great at raising consciousness, IF you take it with you all the time.

Otherwise, you're just sitting on your butt for 20 minutes, or an hour, or whatever. If you don't take it with you that 20 minutes would be better spent jogging, or reading a book, or something.

Focusing on the fact that you ARE infinite consciousness will raise you faster, and higher.

You are one with the infinite consciousness, when you smite another you smite yourself, when you judge another you judge yourself, when you lift another up you also lift yourself up.

That is not to say that there's isn't some degree of individuality and separateness, at least on this plane, but like a web if you pull on one thread and all threads are pulled.

Your consciousness is not your brain, or your mundane mind. It is manifold, conscious, subconscious and super-conscious from the humanist viewpoint, and limitless. If you allow yourself to see, and contemplate this fact periodically, your perspective will change. You will more easily separate.

We can know consciousness doesn't depend on the brain, because people have had near death experiences in which they described what was going on in another room. There's the famous story of Maria, and her social worker Kimberly Clark (link to PDF).

Maria died in a hospital in Seattle, floated out the window and saw a shoe on the windowsill. It was later verified that there was, in fact, a shoe there and she could not have known about it. There are many others, some of which you can find at The Survival Top 40.

Consciousness does not depend on the brain or body. The body, including the brain, is a tool you are using to communicate and interact on this plane. You use it like you use the telephone to make a call, or a piece of paper and pen to leave a note.

Realize this and begin to try to expand your consciousness regularly, reach beyond your physical space even when you're washing dishes and doing other chores in the mundane world. Enjoy the wonders of everyday life.

Be aware of what energy you're putting out there into the universal energy field and make it good energy, because you want to have good energy. You can't throw mud in the pool if you want to drink clear water. It just doesn't work that way.

In this way you can achieve better results in less time, and not just in projecting, but in most if not all areas of your life. You raise your energy to a higher, more positive state, and your focus will be clearer, your actions will be more attuned to that positive vibe (you won't be self-sabotaging), so your results will be better.

It's the ultimate 80/20 rule.

Jagged Stones in the River of Life

2009-03-07T19:03:00.000-08:00

I crossed over into the mist, the river lapping at my feet. I didn't know where I was going. I had no plan. So I stopped to listen for a moment, to send out psychic feelers. What might be interesting today.

I felt drawn toward something. I could see it in my minds eye, but I didn't know exactly where it was. It was a kind of intuitive, abstract thing, stones and cliffs. Off I went, pulled by some invisible force.

I found myself in a familiar blue-gray cave, with a smooth interior, as if the water flowing through it had polished the stone to a shine. Bits of quartz glimmered in the walls here and there. It's hard to distinguish them from the thin streams of water that still flow in and pool on the floor.

This was not the place I had pictured in my mind's eye. I felt I must have come here on auto-pilot, like you might drive to work in the morning, taking a route so familiar you could navigate it with your eyes closed.

Beyond this cave there is a huge field of fragrant wildflowers. I spent a great deal of my adolescence exploring this area. It would take several pages to properly describe, so I'll attend to that at some other time. I quickly cut through the field, keeping my eyes diverted as best I could so as not to be drawn in, and soon arrived a the base of a mountain, or at least a very large hill with a steep incline.

The whole place looked incredibly unforgiving, jagged edges, rough-cut reddish brown stone, and parched cracked earth combined to let all comers know that only the most rugged and determined spirits would be granted passage.

I'd like to come back and explore to see what lives here. Maybe I could gain some additional strength by osmosis just being in the presence of such beings. First I'll have to find the place again.

I climbed halfway up the rock face to another cave mouth that leered menacingly down on me with jagged teeth of stone. As I climbed I could hear Whispering Crow requesting my attention, jovial, wise and calm as always.

The interior of the cave was every bit as forbidding as the exterior. It was so very dark, and the walls were covered in sharp edges. I sensed a fire somewhere, but I didn't sense Whispering Crow in the vicinity of the fire. It felt as if there were other explorers here, but I didn't have time to investigate.

I continued feeling my way through the cave. Up and up, I went, around and through dark passages, into anterooms with singular shafts of light piercing through the blackness until I found him.

Whispering Crow was sitting at a pool of clear water as if it were a campfire. White light spilled into the chamber through a crack in the cave wall. It looked like an open window. He invited me to sit down and asked, "How did you find me?" I explained I had just sensed him and followed that sense. He told me this is how I would find him again in the physical world when I returned to the way point on Saturday. I didn't now I was going there on Saturday, but apparently I was.

"Have you done what I told you to do?" His question caught me off guard. Then I realized what he was talking about, the sensing of things, placing hands on and knowing the vibration. I told him I hadn't done enough and would do more.

Whispering Crow then directed me to the far wall of the cave beyond the light. There was an opening in the dark and I could hear the rush of water. I stepped in.

All around me the water rushed in from above my head, down into a multilevel hollow in the center of the room. From far below the mist rose up, obscuring my vision. There was no way to tell how deep it went. Given the mist, I suspect it may exist in the borderlands. In the flesh-bound world, looking in from the other side, some shamans call these areas "places of power." The veil is thin in these places you can almost see through with your naked eyes.

"Even here, in this dry harsh place, the water of life flows freely, yet men thirst and shed their blood for water while there is plenty, even more, in the physical world." Whispering Crow spoke behind me, as I looked around in amazement.

"Maybe man has to struggle so hard to reap the benefit of living because he has allowed his heart to become miserly. Not always the individual men, but mankind as a whole. Water that does not flow becomes stagnant quickly. The life-giving substance turns to poison.

This is true of many things in nature. If the wolves and mountain lions don't hunt, entire herds starve after they've eaten away the prairie grasses. With no prairie grass the rich soil that feeds all the other vegetation blows away in the chill winter wind. Then nothing grows.

Without flow there is no life."

So this was the day's lesson, delivered in a very elaborate and beautiful way. You must cultivate flow in all things, material, emotional and spiritual. This is not to say that one should give until they deplete themselves, far from it. Many of us do this everyday, and receive less and less in return for our efforts.

In nature all things are held in balance. When they are not death comes to return equilibrium. You must give and also take for the circle to be complete.

Weird Vibes

2009-03-06T22:39:00.000-08:00

Last spring, while planting a garden and watching horses for a friend, I was told by Whispering Crow to take note of the vibrations of things. This included all things, living and nonliving, stones, plastic, store-bought items, clothing, everything. See what emanates from it. Apparently this will help me in my quest for understanding.

Now I've always done this with living things, because it's the easiest way to know how they're doing mentally and physically. I have found there's usually something off in the emanations, if you will, before it's manifested into the physical body, or state of mind.

I've also done this with the immediate environment around me, but I think of that more like an animal's instinct. I sniff the air with the intuitive nose. I didn't get civilized enough to have it trained out.

Rocks, cars, fences, and that sort of thing on the other hand I've never considered as having any kind of energetic force about them. Apparently, I was wrong.

Now, I have to say I haven't been very good about testing the vibes of inanimate objects, and I feel a bit like I haven't done an important homework assignment. I have done a bit, and it's interesting, and by interesting I mean really weird.

Stones are beautiful in general. Some have much more energy than others, of course, but all seem to hold memory, memories of footprints, hard rains, and the stuff that life on earth is made of.

Soil itself is different depending on where you are. Farm soil feels metallic in spots, crystalline in
others. Some feels full of life, some feels dry and thin as if it's been drained of its spirit.

My house is on former farmland, and the soil in spots is trying to turn to stone. It's been plowed once too many with soulless blades. In other places it's beautifully rich, like someone lovingly turned it season after season - with a little compost help, of course.

The store-bought goods are where the weird comes in.

Plastics are the worst. Clear plastic feels like thick liquid, seeping under your skin like some strange, other-worldly substance that's part of an insidious plot to kill all of mankind.

I can imagine patient aliens waiting for our ultimate demise, so they can take our water, that's been pre-contaminated with the chemicals native to their planet.

Opaque plastics feel granular, with small grains of metal thrown in for their slicing/penetrating effect. It's not liquid, but the grains creep under your skin and work their way into your system. They migrate through muscle and capillary to embed themselves in your heart.

Cardboard, nearly always, feels like a giant shredding machine is running. I am standing before the thresher. It's nearly my turn. I wonder if this is what the recycling plant is like.

Most clothing would be fine, except for the dyes. Granted I haven't tested polyester.

Jeans, for instance, feel quite natural, almost like a living thing. Cotton is a natural substance so that makes sense, but the blue die is starchy, powdery, dark and sinister, suffocating the life out of both the cotton and me somehow. Dyes in general are horrible this way.

So I can't manage to do much of this "get the feeling of things" task. It bugs me out too much. If I do it too often I'll have to join a nudist colony in the middle of the forest to escape the weird-vibes of the world.

I kind of wonder if that was the point. The toxicity in our environment is so overwhelming, I kind of wonder how we manage to survive. Ironically, we actually live longer than we used to.

Maybe we will all eventually mutate and become that race of aliens drinking water contaminated with the chemicals we assume always existed on our planet.

Astral Projection: What To Expect For Beginners

2009-03-06T17:35:00.000-08:00

Okay, you've projected. You're floating above your body. Now what?

The first time it happens you will probably say "holy smoke," or something less PC and dive right back into the physical.

I imagine this must be similar to what an infant feels like when they've just been born. Only they don't have the option of returning from whence they came. It may take a few tries to get used to it.

Once you can stay out long enough to look around, you realize you're half blind, the light is horrible here, and the colors have very low saturation.

"I'm in a ghost world, this can't be right." It IS right. You ARE a ghost.

Your physical eyes perceive colors differently. Your consciousness only gets the vibrations of color so it's all much more subdued.

You actually don't have the tools available to you that you're used to using: Eyes, ears, nose, nerves for a sense of touch. You only have consciousness, so you might expect a bit of a learning curve. Think of it as trying to drive a stick shift when you're used to an automatic. Stick is actually a lot more fun once you're used to it.

I've read somewhere that stating "Clarity Now" or some-such will fix your vision. The trick may work for some, but I doubt it will work for everyone. Your finer mental senses will improve over time and you'll be able to see a little better with or without the Clarity Now! command.

That said, I still can't "see" worth a hill of beans when projecting into the flesh world. I could tell you there was a piece of paper on the table, but not what was written on it, even if it was written in huge letters with a fat black Sharpie.

I also can't really hear, per se, and this is after 20-plus years of intentional projection. In the astral, on the other hand, I can see perfectly, once I get through the fog.

Where the colors used to be you should now notice the vibes. Intuitive vibrations are everywhere. You will feel the presence of other people.

If you turn your focus to it you will feel the presence of A LOT of people. It can be daunting.

You may not hear their conversations, but you can easily know what they're saying. You will likely also feel various emotional/intuitive/mental sensations, most of which are not your own. It would be wise to make sure you know yourself, or at least who you want to be, before projecting.

If you know a person well enough to be able to pick out their "vibe" from the others, you can hone in on them, wherever they may be, and find them. You do so by following their energetic trail, if you will. The vibe will come from a given direction, and as you get closer the vibe gets stronger. It's like a telepathic game of hot and cold.

You can validate your experiences this way if you like, by asking them what they were doing at the time you visited them. It's better to ask this when you've seen something that they wouldn't do every day. Of course, you would ask first and then tell them you came for a visit, if you feel so inclined.

I would suggest that when you first get out you stay fairly close to home. Get used to what you're experiencing, and avoid any other travelers you may find. I don't believe the other travelers will harm you, but they may shock you and make it more difficult to project again than it should be.

After a couple of trips to get your feet wet you should be ready for some adventure.

Breathwork for Astral Projection

2009-03-05T17:58:00.000-08:00

Meditation is a vitally important aspect of learning to astral project. Proper breathing techniques, likewise, are vitally important to meditation. So here's a brief, 10-minute, guided meditation mp3 for your breath-work. If you're unfamiliar with meditating it should help you get the pace of proper breathing.

This sort of breath-work is called Pranayama, which just means lengthening the breath. You inhale deeply and slowly, hold, then exhale slowly and completely. You can also hold on the exhale before inhaling again. In this mp3 you are guided to do each one at different times, but the only guidance given is for the rhythm of the breath.

While meditating you simply let your focus shift away from your physical body and surroundings, and allow your thoughts to pass, barely observing them. Focus on your breath and let yourself relax as completely and as deeply as you can.

Astral Travel - Contradictions to the Dogma

2009-03-05T13:53:00.000-08:00

Vampire graphic from neostate.net

I must say after reading stuff like this I feel incredibly pedestrian in my experiences.

I wonder if I made the right choices, going after all that "enlightenment" claptrap when I could have had a sword and light armor and done battle with vampires as an Astral Warrior.

I feel like a missed a great ride at the carnival, and alas the gates have closed for the season. I must say it does sound like a good basis for a comic book.

There are many contradictions to the common experiences of others in my personal experience. There's a lot of dogma surrounding astral projection, how it's done, what happens, the pseudo-religious aspects of it, and so on.

I didn't know about this stuff when I began my journey, so I have an excuse for not experiencing it.

First and foremost, I see no "silver cord" when I leave. This is probably the height of heresy, but it's the truth. I am not tethered to my physicality by anything, and don't feel I need to be.

I don't always snap back if someone comes and bothers me while I'm out. Sometimes I do, but it's 50/50. I should, because it's frightening for others.

They have been known to find me cold, heartbeat slow, and breathing so shallowly that it's barely observable, and nearly impossible to revive. It's taken as long as 45 minutes to shake me out. I simply can't focus on both states at once.

The "Astral Body," is not a reality for me. Neither is the "Energy Body," "Mental Body," or any other so-called "subtle body". I see this various bodies thing as dogmatic hoo-ha.

The astral body is more of a projection that I'm aware of creating. It's not a requirement for travel, or reception, like XM radio isn't required for radio reception. It's simply a replica of the earthy form that seems to normalize and facilitate interaction with others.

Otherwise, I'm more of a blob of consciousness floating about, like a wave of light, formless and kind of flowing. There are other blobs out there, run into them and you get a torrent of information downloaded in a fraction of a second.

I see my physical body more like a vehicle for traveling in the material realm, like a car, if you will.

The brain is like the cup-holders for consciousness. The structures and forms of physical reality are the cups, and in them the delicious hot coffee that gets me going in the morning... consciousness, my actual being, the eternal part.

The coffee stands alone, not requiring cups, cup-holders, or a car to have a purpose. The cups would have no purpose without the coffee in them. The cup-holders would be an odd and useless device without the cups, and of course the whole point of the car is to be a rolling container for those cup-holders.

If you're not going to enjoy a tasty and invigorating beverage on your way to work you might as well take the bus.

I've never seen a demon, succubus, incubus, vampire, or anything else that would truly give a reasonable person cause for alarm. This may be due to my perspective. I don't have a lot of demon haunted world imprinting on my psyche. For this I'm very grateful.

I think that we are all fluctuations of the manifest dreams of the universal consciousness, i.e. god. If one accepts that we all are thoughts in the mind of god, then true evil cannot exist.

Granted, sometimes god has nightmares. Thankfully, they usually take form in flesh. Flesh is fragile. Spirit is indestructible.

Aggressive spirits stalking my physical form - nada. In fact, I was surprised to find that people actually had a problem with this, not to mention how very many people have this issue.

I have run into the Observer at the Threshold and been shocked. It has been a long time since that happened, though.

I have stepped out to see somebody, or bodies, in the room. They didn't appear to be aggressive to me. They were just there. I've conversed with them and they generally are en route to some other place. They are also travelers, maybe they became curious seeing someone rise up out of the physical into their space.

They may take on odd shapes, not usually, but it happens. I see these shapes as a representative structure for some mental/emotional state, for instance, a black spiky blob, or a bone thin, white and withered looking creature, or even an angel with wings covered in soft yellow light.

I don't know what shape others might perceive me as if I don't project a specific astral body. I may be the monster you see on the astral plane, or the angel you meet when you break down on the astral highway. I cannot say for sure. I can't project from my projection and look back at myself. If anyone can, they need to teach me.

I do no ritualistic protection of myself or my space, no white light, no prayers, no invocations of angels, no armor of god, nothing. I just kind of go for a little walk and have never had an issue.

On this note, I don't worry about "walk-ins," the super-politically-correct, new age term for possession.

I can leave my car parked wherever I like, no one else has the keys, no one else can drive my car, and they wouldn't want to. There is no such thing as carjacking or car theft on the astral plane. Everyone who wants a car has their own already.

By some accounts I've read, however, I must just live in a really good neighborhood with 24-hour security. I am boggled and shocked by their experiences.

What I see does not mutate according to what I'm thinking or feeling. This does happen in certain dreams, generally non-lucid dreams.

Lucid dreams can generally be controlled. You realize, ahh, I'm dreaming... cool. I want to fly, go down to the ocean and feel the surf, BE the surf, be a butterfly, be a fly on the wall in one of Socrates' conversations.

On the other hand they can get out of control when emotions run high. Strong emotions are like black ice on the lucid dreaming road. Strong emotions, conversely, are the common currency of the astral plane, in my experience.

I'm sure others have experiences that contradict the prevailing dogma. I'm pretty curious to know what they are.

Dangers and Denizens of the Astral Plane

2009-03-04T16:48:00.001-08:00

If you project frequently, or for any period of time, without a doubt you'll soon pass through the veil of the material and into the astral plane.

Just like life in the flesh world, if you go there you will find other beings. Most are very much like yourself, leaving aside differences in culture and such.

However, there are a few that seem to frighten most inexperienced astral travelers, and even some old hands who give strong warnings about the dangers and so on.

Personally, I think those old hands must be misguided.

There are certainly beings that may take you by surprise. Here is a fairly short list, so you will know what to expect.

Low Vibration Entities

Scary? Not really, though they try to be. Confusing and confused? Absolutely. They feel new to me, too new - not quite finished.

They seem to lack the experience required to deal with others. Many seem to feel really hurt, and like an injured animal they want to lash out.

Powerless, limited, trapped, lacking resources and needing to move forward are all words I would use to describe these LVEs.

You can avoid them if you wish. You can try to understand, and possibly help them, if you wish. Don't be surprised if you have no luck with the latter.

Generally, they don't seem to understand my point of view any better than I understand theirs. I can't give them my resources. These are things you have to acquire on your own.

They may try to absorb your power, your understanding of existence through osmosis, but they can't. They have to gain these insights on their own, also. Most of all, they seem to have little memory.

Even if you feel like they drain your emotional energy, they don't actually receive anything.

Sometimes, I will confess, they do look "evil". Dark, menacing, they may have fangs associated with their visual presence, and other affectations of wickedness. They seem to feel these things bring them more power, an outward show of strength to cover a deep inner weakness. This is a perfect reflection of certain individuals in the flesh world.

They are afraid, afraid of you, and don't have the strength of being yet to accept that even if you could hurt them, it would only be a temporary condition.

I would recommend just avoiding them. You'll know them when you see them and can easily steer clear.

Know, however, that no one can steal your soul, or even a part of it. That's like suggesting someone could steal your thoughts. Even when you give them away you still have them.

Curiously Different-Looking Beings

There are entities that do not look human, and do not feel entirely human either. CD-LBs are probably the most interesting entities I've come across.

These are intellects completely alien to my own. Running into them is like taking a totally uneducated Kansas farm boy, who can't even read and write, and dropping him into the Library of Alexandria in ancient Egypt. I, of course, feel like the farm boy.

Their understandings and descriptions of life, the flesh-bound kind, are completely foreign.

The only means of communication I've experienced with them has come in the form of gestalts, and flashes of disjointed pseudo-visual stimuli and reaction-response information.

Their emotional wavelength seems to be discordant with my own. For instance, with some their emotions flow like electricity, while regular human emotion invariably flows like water.

They don't speak the lingua franca of the place with any fluency, if you will. Most communication on the astral plane involves intuitive emotional knowing, so there's a communication barrier.

Nonetheless, it's very cool to come across them, and I would recommend setting aside any fear of the unknown you may be struck with and try to interact.

The Lost

There are a lot of these, they always seem very sad, despondent, teary eyed, lost in every sense of the word, and usually have a particular problem they need help with.

See: A Boy and His Boat.

To me they appear more ghostly than other inhabitants, having a kind of gray-blue aura. They are very often children, which kind of tears at your heart. You can choose to ignore them, or you can try to help them.

I would strongly recommend giving them a quick hand with whatever their trouble is. You'll feel better, and they usually just go away when you do. They can get on with their stuff, and you can get on with yours.

It's like helping a stranded driver on the side of the road. It's just the right thing to do.

Upon approaching them, if my experience holds true for others, you will be bombarded with a torrent of thoughts, usually questions, worries, fears, and should and/or shouldn't haves. If you can tease the rush of information apart you can usually get to what it is they need to sort out.

Otherwise, you can always just be straightforward and ask. Personally, I try to block out (read ignore) the torrent and just inquire in the most compassionate way I can. There's a lot of emotional debris in the thought-stream that will just fall away once the problem is fixed.

Infinite Loops

There are infinite loops of emotionally charged group experiences happening in certain spots, and while they're not technically people, they're still well worth mentioning.

See: Cape Town and/or Full Eclipse At the Temple Of the Moon.

It's especially bizarre to run into these if you stay long enough to see it start over again. It's also pretty cool to see what people were feeling and thinking at the time. For me, these are without fail wonderful experiences and I can see why they happen again and again.

Maybe these loops are a bit of flow-over from the Plane of Form, and are here to teach us something. I haven't figured out what that might be in any of them, yet. Maybe I'm reaching too far with this concept.

I have not found infinite loops of really negatively charged human experience. Wars, for instance don't seem to be repeating themselves here. Then again, I haven't gone looking for them.

Full Eclipse At the Temple Of the Moon

2009-03-03T21:07:00.000-08:00

I returned immediately, hoping to find a way across the chasm this time. Part of me hoped the rope bridge was part of a loop I had found, and it would be back to rights when I returned.

Much to my chagrin, when I arrived the bridge was no more, and there were some people around looking across the gulch. They took no interest in me, so I took none in them and went about the business of following the gash in the earth to find its end.

As I traveled, following the endless chasm on my right, the mist grew thicker. It was as if I was down by the river again. I peered through the fog and noticed some lights to my left, so I went to see what was going on there.

I crested a small hill and found there were people here, gathering, and the fog, rather than coming from the river as it normally does, was coming up out of the ground. There were periodic tremors, and more gas would release as the earth beneath our feet shook.

I was led, half-blind, up the stairs of a temple slowly crumbling back into the earth. The temple was beautiful, brilliant yellowish white with columns on the outside, and arches giving entrance to what appeared to be anterooms on the inside. There was a large statue in the center, I assumed in homage to a god I was unfamiliar with.

The mist inside the temple had a blueish hue to it, and floated about in thick plumes. The far interior of the temple appeared undisturbed by either fog or tremor, and people laid about on pillows and such, enjoying themselves, eating, drinking and conversing.

A harem of women danced around, wearing nearly sheer dresses, that seemed to simply flow away from their bodies as they moved, resembling the plumes of mist outside.

So I made myself comfortable on a pillow, and ate, drank and enjoyed myself along with everyone else. When in Rome they say. As the night progressed the shaking of the earth became more and more violent, and the bacchanal in the temple became more frenzied.

I won't go into further detail except to say that here, naked and drenched in wine, the people were draining the last bit of pleasure they could have in earthly form before they went onto the next plane. It appears in the next plane they are continuing to do so in a semi-endless loop. I still wonder if the rope bridge is part of this loop.

In retrospect, I believe these people completely conquered death. They knew it was coming, and by the time it could reach them they'd taken everything life had to offer. They'd taken all the juice, and left only the dry husk behind for the reaper. It was as if they were saying, fine, I'm done with it anyway.

Whatever religion that was, I would definitely be a supporter.

The Rope Bridge

2009-03-02T22:22:00.000-08:00

I crossed through the veil and kind of went wandering, with nothing in particular in mind, maybe a bit of adventure in seeing something new, but that was all.

I was walking around the edge of a great chasm, you could see a hint of shadowy land on the other side, but I felt oddly unable to just float across. I passed the rope bridge,
looking for the end of the fissure, and finding none decided to go back to it.

Something seemed to call me from the other side, like a dare. A silent voice was saying, you must see and experience this. It will intrigue, fascinate and strengthen you... if you can make your way across.

So I stepped onto the bridge, somewhat hesitant. Normally I would have no compunction, but the implication was that it was supposed to be dangerous.

About halfway across I began to feel much more confident, and picked up the pace. Soon I was running, forcing myself to overcome the remainder of apprehension that lingered. I had to see what mystery waited in the shadows ahead. Fear would not be my master.

At that moment the bridge began to sway, hovering over the abyss below I
held on and held still, hoping it would pass. Then one of the main ropes on the other side
snapped, whipping by my head with a whir as the tension released. The whole bridge, and in that moment it felt like the whole world, went tumbling down plank by plank into the chasm.

Like a stone, I fell through the blackness of the gulch and right back into my body, and sat
up in bed with a start. This was certainly a new experience for me. In over 20 years of
projecting into the astral I'd never seen anything quite like this.

What was on the other side? Why was I being prevented from seeing it? I had to go back immediately.

The Observer at the Threshold

2009-03-02T20:51:00.000-08:00

I hear this all the time, people say "I projected and there was someone there, watching me. It was creepy. I couldn't project after that. Who was this guy standing over me?"

If this happens I would suspect that this creepy person watching you is most likely the Observer at the Threshold, rather than some vagrant spirit lost in the flesh world, or a demon trying to take possession of your body when you leave.

Who is the Observer? It's you, of course. Whether you realize it or not you are always watching you. The Observer watches and judges you by the same measure that you judge others. He has no eyes but your own, and no voice but your conscience.

If you fail to see what the Observer sees, and fail to hear what the Observer says, your perspective will begin to shift. You'll fall into the trap of not knowing yourself and the Observer, which is you, will begin to look like a stranger and possibly dangerous.

Therefore, it's vitally important that you know yourself well before you project. Be true to yourself, and be mindful of your own thoughts and actions. Be the Observer in daily life and you'll feel no threat if and when you meet the Observer in your soul travels.

Cape Town

2009-03-01T13:40:00.000-08:00

Up-river from where I normally enter the astral there is a town. It's a small sort of port town stuck in a strange loop.

When I go there I usually meet up with a Spanish lady who seems very out of place. I can't seem to remember the pronunciation for her name, but as I recall it's a word that means petal.

She has a son and they stay together in a one-room apartment on the ground floor of one of the houses. All of the dwellings are like this, one room - one family regardless of how many family members you have. She feels fortunate to only have the one child.

She calls this place "Cape Town," but it looks nothing like Cape Town, South Africa, from the flesh world. Nearly all of the inhabitants do appear to have African ancestry, but it looks more like a seaside place in the Caribbean.

She's beautiful and very kind, I can't imagine why anyone there would want to do her harm, but still she is afraid. She's afraid the people in town will harm her child. She says I can't see it, but there is something dramatic and violent about to take place.

I try to reassure her and help her find her way down the riverbank, away from town and to safety. When we look back the entire village is ablaze, and you can hear the cheers of the citizens there from a long distance.

Walking through town the people initially seem to be in a great deal of pain, trapped by an unseen force. It's as if their collective spirits are being held under in dark water. They are drowning, and one can't help but feel great empathy for them.

There is a moment in the loop where a kind of crackle runs through the air. A breaking of the tension, it's audible and palpable. This is the moment right before the fires break out.

Once the fire starts there is an overwhelming sense of liberation. It becomes a celebratory event, a reaffirming of life, freedom, and an appreciation for what it means to be human amid the rising smoke and flame.

Souls are born anew here, again and again, as the symbols and structures of their otherwise invisible oppression are destroyed, crumbling in a glorious blaze.

A Boy and His Boat

2009-02-28T07:54:00.000-08:00

I almost always cross over onto the waterside, no matter where I start in the flesh world. I kind of like it. It's comforting, peaceful and at least I know where I am.

There are frequently other people here by the river, the bodiless taking up temporary residence, and travelers like myself who are just visiting. Up the river there is an entire township that seems to exist here permanently living out some memory of life on earth over and over again.

On this one particular occasion there was a young boy on the water's edge with a small boat that had been overturned. It was a leaky looking wooden vessel, more of a canoe really, and barely substantial enough to hold him.

He was pacing back and forth, occasionally attempting to turn it over. He couldn't have been more than eight years old, and lacked the physical strength to break the vacuum the boat had created as it began to sink.

He was fretting as I approached him. He had a faint blue-gray tint to his flesh, both clothes and skin were torn in places, and he was sobbing and shaking from both cold and fear.

I asked what happened, but of course I already knew what had happened.

My father, my mother... he's under the boat, I have to get him out -- I have to get him out. Panic had set in long ago.

Apparently his mother was safe at home, but his father was under the boat and if he didn't retrieve him from the water his mother would never forgive him and his father might die.

I offered him a hand, and told him everything would be all right, there was really nothing to be afraid of. He seemed to calm a bit as we put our shoulders to the task together, and lift the boat up.

It released its grip on the water with a loud sucking sound and tears of joy streamed down the boys face as we managed to flip it up right-ways.

Then in a flash he disappeared, as if he had never been here. Only the boat remained.

Meditation for Control of Astral Travel

2009-02-27T16:46:00.000-08:00

There are dozens of meditations you could do, and I would recommend many, but to elaborate on them all would require a blog of its own. I may create that blog some day, for the moment I think it's best to explain why you should pick this practice up if you want to astral project.

On background, I picked up meditation at 13-14 years old after being given a variety of religious texts to read and learn enough to be able to hold an intelligent dinner table conversation on a variety of related topics.

The stack was nearly as high as my waist, and encompassed everything from primary texts of the mainstream faiths Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism to Be Here Now (a wonderfully enlightening and quirky pseudo-Hindu sort of book) and both the Tibetan and Egyptian Books of the Dead.

This was the way in our household, if you had a question about anything you were given a selection of literature to read on the subject and were expected to come back with an answer on your own.

If you asked why the sky was blue you'd be given books on light refraction, reflection, the environmental impact of industrial pollutants, at least one on space, and probably one on design so you could better understand the use of the color blue.

Nevertheless, somewhere along the way wading through that mountain of knowledge I ran across a meditation practice that called for inverting oneself.

You bring the hard shell in, and bring the innermost pure part of yourself to the surface, eradicating all the negative imprinting from the world we live in and dropping all of your unnecessary defenses.

The hard shell, if kept inside for a while, will soften and return to its pure origin. The negative imprinting from the world will go away, and you become like a child in spirit.

The soft part, if you will, the part that understands the universe and is filled with compassion, will grow hard and brittle over time when exposed to the world. It forgets the truth, and what matters the most. So throughout your life you have to periodically repeat the process.

The first time, of course, is the most difficult.

It was an arduous and emotionally wrenching year-long ordeal for an angst-ridden 14-year-old, but it changed me for the better I thought. I became quite compassionate, understanding, much more caring, concerned with the well-being of others, and lost the angst.

I then commenced to have an impressively massive mental/emotional breakdown. I think I may have started too young.

Once I regained control of my now reinforced inner being I found I had MUCH more control. I didn't just slip away without intending to do so anymore. I could leave, and come back at will. I could see more and interact more. I had "proof" of my projecting, as I saw things in the real world that I couldn't have known otherwise.

Strange and powerful things can happen with a regular mediation practice. I would strongly recommend meditation for anyone, it allows your mind to quiet down, it helps you let go of your physical life concerns. It will make you much more aware of your consciousness and put you in the mode of observer.

For the astral traveler, it will allow you to detach more readily. It is my opinion that you'll also have fewer negative experiences when traveling. I've now read many stories of people who run into what they deem "negs," negative entities when projecting.

I can honestly say I have never seen even one. I've seen people/entities in pain, confused, angry, low/unenlightened/inexperienced with the existence they're trying to cope with, but never have I come in contact with a "neg," or had anything try to injure me.

I'm always shocked by tales of them. I suspect these "negs" are just regular beings undergoing difficult situations and the traveler that sees them is viewing them through the lens of their own imprinting.

On the other hand, maybe I'm just lucky and the demons flee at the site of me.

Third Eye Meditation

2009-02-25T16:58:00.001-08:00

This is a simple meditation for opening the Third Eye, or developing the psychic sight This meditation will help you overcome the astral blindness that most people experience when projecting.

Sit comfortably, relax and breath slowly and steadily, count to five on inhale and five on exhale until you develop a nice rhythm. Leave behind your physical life and concerns for a while, you don't need them now. Let any thoughts that may come just pass, give them no attention.

Contemplate the fact that behind the operation of body and mind there lies the eternal energy which created you and all else. See this eternal energy shining through you, all around you, and throughout the world.

Begin to draw the energy from your body up, up from your feet and hands, arms, legs and torso, from every organ, bring all the life energy up from your body into your head, and fix it upon the spot between your eyebrows known as the Third Eye.

Continue with this focus until you feel that you no longer have a body. Forget the physical body and feel yourself connected to the eternal presence, the energy that underpins creation. Let that energy now flow in through your Third Eye, and allow it to open.

Remember the feeling of this state when you were opening your Third Eye and you can return to it at will when you need it.

Here is a free binaural beat file designed to help facilitate opening of the Third Eye:

Third_Eye.mp3

The Five Suggestions Meditation

2009-02-24T20:05:00.000-08:00

This is a variation on a traditional Yogic meditation, the Five Great Vedic Suggestions. It will elevate you, raise your vibrations, lead you to better understanding of the state, movement, subtleties, power and substance of consciousness. This meditation has the added benefit of granting you great peace of spirit, and a feeling of connectedness.

This is not necessarily a meditation to be done all at once, but rather a progression through five steps of knowing. You may need to stop and meditate upon each one so you gain a deep understanding of each.

In short form, the idea is that all matter is made up of the thoughts of god. All consciousness made up of the thoughts of god. You exist, and all other things exist, within this ocean of infinite, omnipresent, omniscient consciousness. God is the infinite consciousness, of which you are a part.

In Christian terms, you might say that "God is everywhere," but this three-word phrase sounds trite and infantile compared to the concept I'm trying to explain.

In the traditional yogic fashion this consciousness is called Brahman, the unchanging, infinite reality that is the source of all being. This source is beyond seeing and beyond words. There is only knowing and not knowing.

You are within the mind/spirit of God, and God resides also within you. Your consciousness, the way in which God makes himself/herself known to you, and which resides within you, in tune with Universal truth - this is Brahman. You are Brahman.

For Christendom I would liken this concept to that of the Holy Spirit. The spirit of God that in-dwells you, guides you on the right path and develops within you a higher knowing, deeper understanding and sense of peace with all things.

The Holy Spirit is the energetic force by which God makes himself known to you, and this energy resides within you. It is beyond seeing and beyond words. We may try to describe it, but there is only knowing and not knowing.

Conceptually this might work for the other Abrahamic faiths, as well.

For the Humanist I would compare it to the concept of super-conscious, universal mind, or higher self.

The Conscious is the regular thinking mind, analytical and responsible for non-automatic movement, mostly involved in the basic or lower levels of material existence.

The Subconscious is the reflexive mind, dealing with long-term memory storage, intuitive problem solving, dreams, unconscious social imprinting, and presides over the automatic bodily functions, heartbeat and so on.

The Super-Conscious is the collective conscious or universal mind, where the potential for eternal existence resides. Things come into being through the super-conscious, which is to say that the potential for them always existed. The Super-Conscious informs the Higher Self of pure truths, has peace with all things, and understands all things.

The Super-Conscious is the space where the unknown resides, until it becomes known. This space resides within you and within the mind of all persons. We cannot explain how to tap into it, there is only knowing, and not knowing, but we are all tapped into it on some level.

If you accept that there are these three states of consciousness then the analogy holds true and we can proceed.

Consider and commit to memory a version of the five suggestions according to your personal faith. You don't need to commit the exact words to memory, remembering the intent of the words and using your own phrasing will do just fine.

Traditional Yogic:

Thou art that - Recognize and give your attention to the consciousness which is not individual, but universal.
I am Brahman - The I in this case is universal, rather than personal. I could be replaced with the words "all things," but the self needs to be included in the idea of "all things." I am one with the infinite consciousness. I am infinite consciousness.
This Self is Brahman - This is a state of realizing that you are a part of the infinite consciousness, this statement is a personal one. It is feeling and knowing that you are a creation of god and therefore a part of god. You are a thought in the infinite mind of god. All of creation is a thought in the infinite mind of god.
Consciousness is Brahman. With peace, bliss and intuitive knowing god reveals himself/herself to you through consciousness.
Eternal existence, eternal consciousness, eternal peace is Brahman - I am Brahman

Christian:

Recognize the presence of the Holy Spirit, which is universal, available to all humans, and dwells within all humans.
The Holy Spirit in-dwells me, and all human beings.
I am personally guided in all things by The Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit resides within my consciousness and permeates my being, revealing God to me.
I find eternal life and eternal peace in The Holy Spirit - The Holy Spirit in-dwells me.

Humanist:

Give your attention to the concept of Super-conscious, or universal mind.
I am at one with the Universal Intelligence. Again, the I is trans-personal. It is the self and also all of existence.
I allow myself personally to be guided to the greatest good for all by Universal Intelligence
Universal Intelligence reveals itself to me through consciousness, with peace, bliss and intuitive knowing
Eternal existence, eternal consciousness, eternal peace is the Universal Intelligence - I am one with Universal Intelligence.

Meditate upon the Five Suggestions:

Assume an easy posture, in lotus pose, cross-legged, or sitting in a chair with your feel on the floor. Place your hands palms-up on your thighs and relax completely. Breathe in deeply and hold for a moment then exhale slowly. Repeat a few times then breathe with the regular five-in five-out method.

Repeat the five suggestions to yourself. If you come to one that you do not understand in a visceral sense, repeat only up to that one. When you come to understand it fully, move onto the next one.

Allow yourself to feel the energetic connection of your body and mind to that of the universe, you are connected and as one with all matter by virtue of universal consciousness. The energy that underlies all creation.

Allow yourself to feel the energetic connection of your consciousness to the consciousness of the universe, to the eternal consciousness of god. You are a thought in the mind of god.

Feel that you also, by virtue of this interconnected consciousness, exist everywhere. Feel that a universe of suns, moons, planets and stars are within you. They come and go, are born and die, but your consciousness remains as one with the eternal creative life force.

Feel that eternal consciousness, existence, peace, happiness and bliss are manifested everywhere. Wish for well-being and joy to befall everyone.

Identify yourself with eternal existence, the creative life force, eternal consciousness, and eternal peace.

When you have finished your practice remember this sensation and keep it in your mind and heart.

Here is a free binaural beat mp3 designed to work well with the Five Suggestions meditation.

Five Suggestions MP3

Heart Chakra Meditation

2009-02-23T23:35:00.001-08:00

This is a simple, but good meditation for raising your vibrations for astral projection, and in all other areas of your life, particularly if you feel fearful, as fear and love can't exist in the same space.

Sit comfortably either in the lotus position, crossed legged, or in a chair with feet on the floor. Close your eyes, and breathe slowly and steadily. Let any thoughts or distractions just pass by, and relax yourself completely.

When you are fully relaxed, place your hand palm over your heart, and place your left hand over your right. Visualize a sparkling green light pouring forth from your heart chakra.

Let the warm radiant energy of your heart fill your being and pushing any stress you may have outwards into the void. Stay with this for a few minutes until you feel thoroughly warm and saturated in the heart chakra's energy.

Now unfold your arms to place your hands, palms up, on your knees and as you do visualize that green light of pure love flowing out from you toward your family, loved ones, sentient beings, and finally all of creation. Stay with this for 10 minutes or so.

When you are finished with your meditation remember this sensation and keep it with you as you go through your day.

Here is a binaural beat file designed for the heart chakra meditation free to download:

Heart Chakra Binaural

A Feast of Fire

2009-02-21T12:35:00.000-08:00

I've been attempting to put these experiential events in chronological order, as they seem like a progression of understanding to me. It's been like turning up a light with a dimmer, I still can't quite see the room, but I"m getting outlines, and suggestions of its forms .

However, two nights ago I had an experience that was an absolute clear follow on to the Sing With Me event, and keeping them apart for any length, as they had been for me, doesn't make much sense. So while there's over a year between them, I'm putting them together.

I went for my regular visit. I can't say I wasn't expecting anything unusual, because it's always kind of unusual. Nonetheless, when I sat down I was offered a pipe. This is the second time this has happened, the first time he just said "smoke with me, " and had nothing else to say that day. On this occasion he seemed to have friends hustling about. There was something going on.

So I sat and we smoked for a bit, then he pointed off into the distance at a particularly dark spot on the edge of the city. Look over there, he said, I did and quickly got the unspoken message that he meant "go" over there and look. So I went.

I found there a spot where two children, one 16 and one 17 had buried their newborn. They had kept the child a secret from everyone somehow, and after the girl gave birth they just didn't want it so they got rid of it. It was horrifying.

I find I'm much more sensitive to the pain of others when I project. There's a change that seems to take place upon leaving the flesh, understanding for human frailty and compassion for others grows manifold. I don't know if this is true for everyone.

Obviously, I felt horrible for the infant, and though this may sound strange, I felt horrible for the teenagers who had done this. They will surely suffer all their days, and needlessly. The technology and the social systems we have could have offered many options other than this.

I'm a little afraid to watch the news, I half expect to hear about it in the flesh world. It wouldn't be the first time.

I returned and a warrior looking fellow was marching around with a piece of wood. He seemed very angry, distrustful of me, and intensely focused on what he was doing. His hair was wrapped around his forehead, and painted with a chalky substance, like he was wearing a bandanna made of hair.

He proceeded to aggressively strip the bark off the piece of wood he was holding and I asked, "what is he doing?"

Whispering Crow replied:

We will have a Feast of Fire
We will eat fire and we will be grateful for it.
Our words will turn to cinders in our mouths, be burned up and swallowed.
The fabric that binds our tongues will be unraveled.
Then we can sing again.

I got the impression that "fire" was all we would have available to eat, from what he was saying, like some divine lesson from mother nature herself.

The warrior struck two stones together and after quite a few tries got a spark, and then a smolder, and soon thereafter fire. It burned for a bit, and the ends of the strips of bark became bright red. The warrior then removed the bark from the coals and offered the still burning embers to us.

We ate the fire, literally, burned our tongues and swallowed the cinders. Then the drums and dance began. It was a rather liberating experience, though I still don't feel I can sing.

I looked up "Feast of Fire" online and found it can refer to the Pentecost, but I can't imagine Whispering Crow making allusions to Christianity. It also is the name of a Caribbean festival, but this wasn't festive in that sense. At this point the reference escapes me.

The two things, however, the infant and the feast, seem to fit together in my mind, at least. It struck me really hard when I got back to the flesh world, We Need a Feast of Fire.

We need to burn up our tongues so we can speak truth again. Our society is profoundly sick. Anything as diseased as our society is at this time will surely die if it is not cured.

I don't say this because teenagers are having sex and getting pregnant. If you look at history and/or biology you would see that it's the most normal thing they could do. The more unnatural thing is to expect them not to do it.

It's the fact that they buried their own child. I take this as an illustration, but the actuality happens more often than we'd like to think.

They buried him because they believed it was wrong or bad to have him. Having him would "ruin" them. So burying him was, in their psychosis, the lesser of two evils.

The fact that it would occur to anyone to do this, especially given all the options available today, speaks volumes about how far this disease has progressed. It's a good simile for a myriad of horrifying things we do, because we think they're the lesser of two evils, when they're in truth the evil choice, just not the socially approved one.

I'm beginning to believe the root of disease is over-expressed duality. Everything is expected to be up and down, black and white, win or lose, there's little room for nuance.

True duality is a rare thing in nature. Nature is a world of permutations, there are many steps to get from black to white. Furthermore, nothing is truly white, and nothing is completely black.

Our duality is not only overly expressed, it's become mutated. We are given explicit instructions and then given the opposite instructions implicitly.

Don't have sex while young! -- But, BE sexy... or you're a loser.

Don't kill people! - heroes and men who deserve your respect kill people, Army Strong, The Few The Proud...

God is infinitely loving, and forgiving - and he will burn you in hell for all eternity if you stray from the narrow path, and happen to die before you repent.

We speak of the appearance of things, rather than the reality. I have a feeling we may have forgotten what the reality is.

This duality empowers a handful of cunning, deceitful men and dis-empowers everyone else. It empowers those who stand above and can see through the illusion of duality. They say they can lead you through the maze, and help you avoid the traps. What they don't tell you is that there are no traps and their predecessors built the maze.

We've been imprinted for centuries with the idea that the normal and natural instincts and desires of human beings are the devil's temptations that we must battle all the days of our life. As a extension of this, we prosecute the victimless crime with nearly equal enthusiasm as we do acts of violence. We don't want murderers in our society, so we murder them.

We lie to ourselves, and then impose this artifice upon our children, who become increasingly confused with each passing generation. I believe our hearts long for nuance, because duality is an impossible paradigm for human life. In duality everyone falls short.

We need to sit and speak truth first with ourselves and then with others. Before we can speak truth, we need to find the truth, and I'm not sure how far back down the path we lost it.

In the dark ages women used to drown children they had and didn't want. They had a particularly bad case overly-expressed duality then, too. We need a new Renaissance, and then a new Enlightenment, before we succumb completely to this illness.

Sing With Me

2009-02-20T22:21:00.000-08:00

I was on my way elsewhere, traveling in spirit, and decided to visit the spot where Whispering Crow usually sits. Not that I had any particular expectation, I just wanted to pass by. The last experience had been rather odd, and I wanted to put a kind of normalizing end cap on it.

I arrived and he was sitting there, quiet, watching, as usual. After a few moments he looked up and said, "Sing with me."

I opened my mouth, and found I had no voice, nothing would come forth. He also was not singing, but rather watching me with a fairly serious expression. I shut my mouth, and shook my head, somewhat confused.

We cannot sing, because our lips have been sewn shut with the threads of fear, and our tongues tied up in the fabric of deceit.

With that, he was silent, and I went on my way.

Original Photo AIZAR RALDES/AFP/Getty Images

Binaural Beats for Astral Projection

2009-02-20T08:51:00.000-08:00

Binaural beats can be helpful in facilitating various states of consciousness, because they help our brainwaves slow down like they would in deep meditation, or speed up to clear thinking focused states, and so on.

Your brainwaves slow down or speed up because of a "frequency following" response phenomenon, i.e, your brain follows the rhythm of the beat. Once a controversial and questionable finding, this is now a scientifically proven effect on the neural system.

The slowing makes it easier for people who lack experience in meditation to achieve better results when trying to astral project. However, the binaural beats won't do it for you, they can't force you out of your body, and that's probably a good thing.

Here are a couple of free Binaural Beat mp3 audio files. One is 30 minutes and the other is 80 minutes in length.

The regular ones have some ambient noise, and the NOFX simply have pink noise. Use the NOFX if you find the ambient noise distracting.

You will need to use headphones for the audio to be effective.

Download 30 minutes

Download 30 minutes with NOFX

Download 80 minutes

Download 80 minutes with NOFX

Astral Projection In Three Easy Steps

2009-02-19T16:43:00.000-08:00

A quick guide to the basics of astral projection.

1. Hold Still

Lie comfortably, or sit with your head resting on something. A bed, couch, or recliner would all be good choices.

Take care of any physical requirements you may have before you begin, scratch that itch, get a drink of water, etc., and make sure you won't be bothered by people, animals, or loud noises.

I usually bring a blanket, my body temperature drops pretty badly.

2. Meditate

Close your eyes, relax completely, let go of your physicality, and the thoughts that go with it. Give all of your worldly cares over to Shakti, or to your god of choice if you're committed to a particular dogma. The divine creative spirit will keep them in good stead with or without you.

Let go of the body completely, consciousness exists without it and does not need it. You are your consciousness. Your physical life is just one manifestation thereof.

Breathe. If your mind is noisy focus on just breathing and slowly count one to five as you inhale, and one to five as you exhale, this will help you calm down.

You will have thoughts. The entire purpose of consciousness is to have thoughts, without them you would not exist. Some forms of meditation have nonexistence as their objective, but not this one.

Just let your thoughts pass, do not purposefully observe, do not question or judge them. Soon your mind will begin to quiet down nicely, and slow down and your brainwave frequencies decrease.

Let go further and allow yourself to feel you are sinking deeper into your solar plexus, or floating up, separating from physical form.

You should start to feel a hum, or a vibration, as if you are made of energy. Sometimes this sensation is very strong like you are plugged in, sometimes faint and barely observable.

When you begin to feel this hum...

3. Walk Away
There are many methods people use for this. So do what works for you.

You can:
Blow your consciousness out.

Select a point on the ceiling, or somewhere in the room. As you inhale pull your consciousness together from every corner of your person, then exhale it out. When you've moved your mind/spirit to your selected point, turn around and see yourself for a moment. Then just drift away.

Sit up and open your eyes.

Simply allow your consciousness to sit up from your reclining body. This involves the projection of an astral body, which is to say that you allow your mind/spirit to shape itself into a replica of your physical form. I think a lot of people will have trouble fully extracting with this method, because your torso will be out, but your legs still in.

Roll Over.

Just like the sit up method, but instead involves rolling over like you would turn from lying on your back to lying on your side when falling asleep. It's probably easier to fully extract with this method than with the sit up format.

Pull yourself up by a rope.

This also requires the projection of an astral body. Imagine a rope dangling in front of you and with the hands of consciousness (your astral body) pull your mind/spirit up out of your body by that rope. Then turn, look at yourself, and go about your walk.

Fall out. (Not Recommended)

Feel your consciousness to fall through the couch, bed or chair.

It strikes me that you don't want your consciousness to fall out onto the floor under the bed, or under the chair, or wherever. Additionally I think the temporary imprinting from "falling" out of your body might not be particularly enjoyable considering the mythos and socio-psychological structures surrounding falling, and downwards motion in general.

Float away.

This is the method I use. Your body does not need you, and you do not need it, so you just kind of float away, sideways, upwards, backwards, it doesn't matter.

It's easy, and doesn't require any kind of artificial paradigm borrowed from the physical world, i.e. "astral body formation". You can just let it happen, you release, like releasing your grip on something, but release with your consciousness rather than your hand. Then of course, turn your head to see that your body is fine without you, and move on.

I have heard of other ways, some that involve projecting from within lucid dreams, staring into the void, or imagining you are surrounded in blackness. I haven't tried them, but wouldn't recommend them anyway as they either sound ludicrous or dangerous for your psyche.

A Ghost Face Warrior

2009-02-18T21:10:00.000-08:00

I got called out with a bit of a prod, a gentle nudge, come talk to me I want to show
you something. So I stepped out, it was a lazy afternoon with nothing pressing after all.

Then I saw him, a painted warrior, white faced with black eye sockets and bright red lips. He looked as if he had blood in his teeth, as well. He was darting from here to there, sending out animal calls like he was throwing his voice.

Then he was in my face, as if he was ready to end my life with a short spear at my throat. Had I been flesh, I would have been dead.

It didn't scare me. It's nearly impossible to be afraid when you have no physicality, your
consciousness can't be injured by such things, but he was very good. I was extremely impressed with his speed, technique, and fierceness.

Whispering Crow said they wanted me to come along to the usual spot, and so I did. I assumed the warrior's technique would have more effect "in the wild" if you will than it did in my living room, though even there it was more than respectable.

When we arrived we sat down together, looking out over the town, as usual. Then for no apparent reason they began scooping up handfuls of dirt and pouring them over my head, while saying:

A woman made of earth, cradling the newborn at her breast.

When the child grows, it leaves and forgets she was ever there, but she does not forget.

When it is time for death the man returns wishing to be held, needing comfort, as if he had never left. Though he had forgotten for so long, she accepts and remembers him.

She draws him back in to herself so he can rest, recover and, as he dies, become whole and small again.

Over the Fence

2009-02-17T22:22:00.000-08:00

A shadow had been gazing at me through the privacy fence in my backyard for months. I caught it out of the corner of my eye, where the other world lives, if you will. I catch things in my peripheral vision often. I feel it's my subconscious trying to pass me a note.

I tend to "hunt" them, keep an eye out for them and when they appear sneak up on them with relative zeal and try to capture whatever it is they're telling me. On this occasion I let it go for a while, I was busy and figured I'd let it go away on its own.

It didn't.

This was a dark menacing shadow beast, showing only fragments of himself, daring me to face him. At times he looked like Cerberus himself, larger than life and twice as ugly. At other times he looked like a skinny black wolf, hungry and dangerous. Obviously, something was wrong with me that I wasn't seeing, and it needed to be dealt with.

Now, with other people I'm pretty non-confrontational, but with myself I like to get things sorted out in the most direct fashion possible. I find it doesn't serve to let things linger about, you get into a psychological funk that way, and it can wreck your whole day. It's best to get it over with quickly, even if it is harsh for a moment or two.

I sat back and got into a good meditative state, so I could adjust my perception and let the subconscious thought stream flow, and then I could observe what was going on with it.

I focused on the beast and jumped the fence to have a good look at him, size him up, and stare him down. He took off, expecting chase I assumed. He wasn't going to be an easy catch.

I followed the shadow as he ran, trying to lose me by going in circles, tracing back over his own path, dashing through brambles and low places at great speed.

I don't know how long this went on for, but I had to catch him now. He was making himself seem even more important in his attempts to get away.

Suddenly, the old man broke through my focus and said, "Why do you do this?" He was right up in my face. "Why do you worry about the future, it does no good." When I looked again the beast was gone.

This was the lesson.

For all of us, just beyond our private domain in the here and now there lie the shadows of uncertainty looming. They can be full of threat and terror, but they are only what we make of them.

We can control their shape, because we ourselves create them. They are imaginary demons distracting us from the realities of now. They take our focus away from what's really important.

When we worry over something, our subconscious will cause us to behave in such a way that our worries become our reality. The sound of our fear reverberates out and calls to us the very thing that we were terrified of. It brings it to us in the flesh, because we expected it in the spirit.

This has always been a weakness of mine, and I knew that. When you tend to know what will happen, in the sense of future-memory, you tend to look ahead just a bit to see what you should expect. The problem is the future is mutable. It changes as we change. The shadow beast showed that to me for a moment in a glaring light.

A pretty good lesson, if I can learn it...

Stories from a Spirit Guide

2009-02-16T22:35:00.000-08:00

Some examination of the process by which I get these stories and bits of philosophy is probably necessary. Without it the other pieces likely won't make sense.

Firstly, I would have to identify "A Whispering Crow" as a spirit guide, not an "ascended master," post-human, divine-spirit type of thing. I don't really believe in them. He's a guide like a guy who watches you fishing, sees you're not catching many and gives you some pro-tips and you chat a while.

It's an enjoyable experience and you feel liked you grew from it somehow, plus your fishing luck improves. You kind of hope the old man is around the next time you go fishing.

I also want to state that it could just as easily be my subconscious bubbling up thoughts, information, stories and such to make my life more interesting. The process in that sense doesn't really matter to me.

This is not, however, an exercise in channeling. I want to emphasize that he talks to and not through me. I don't think I believe in "channeling" as it's commonly understood. Why would a spirit want to take over your body and tell you things when they could more easily talk to you in a normal way?

A Whispering Crow is the only name he's used to refer to himself. I'd probably be more comfortable calling him Jim or Joe, or something ordinary. The crow part could have some additional subtle meaning. The crow totem is the keeper of Sacred Law, harbinger of change, the shadow self, sees through to other dimensions and other similarly cool and unusual stuff.

Crow has never approached me as a power animal, so that's not the cause behind the name. I've always had Mountain Lion and Mourning Dove, but that's a story for another time.

Our interactions, by and large, take the shape of conversations like you might have with a friend. In this case it's more like a parent, or mentor. They occur for me, by and large, in out of body experiences, though sometimes I'll have a quick phrase burst forth like he's standing right in my face. The Universe Repeats Herself, First You Must Learn Her Secret was one such quick burst. There have been others.

Generally, but not always, we talk when I'm traveling about in what Robert Bruce has coined the real-time zone. Personally I think of it as the regular world, but "real-time zone" has a nice ring, and separates it somewhat from the world of physical interactions.

I assume they must occur in this real-time zone, because the manner in which I receive them is very much the same as the way I receive information in conversations in the physical world. The differences between the physical and astral planes for me are fairly stark. See What is the Astral Plane for descriptions.

Though I have techniques for projecting now, it didn't start out that way. Initially it happened by accident. I was born early, and I suppose kind of unfinished. I had a weak heart, some sort of hereditary valve issue, and consequently would periodically just walk away from my physicality.

This fact terrified the adults in my life. I would often return from my walks to find them shaking me, on a couple of occasions slapping me in the face, demanding that I come back, and so on.

The body was always ice-cold when I came back to it, both to my perception and that of whoever found me. I guess I was in the first stages of dying, and soon learned that this dying business was NOT something that was permitted in our household. But, I digress...

When he wants to talk to me I usually see him sitting around the house, or leaning up against the wall. Then, when I have time, I project and go find him.

Sometimes he's in the room where I project. Oddly, this actually makes me rather uncomfortable. More often I kind of get a call, if you will. It's kind of like sonar for a bat. I don't hear it, I feel it and head in the direction from which it comes.

Most of the time when I find him the old man is sitting on a hill that I suppose is close by, I haven't located it in physical space just yet. To be honest, I haven't gone looking for it and I should.

Nevertheless, we sit, look down on our little city, and he talks to me. For the most part I just listen. It's a very pleasant, calming experience, like talking to your grandfather - not the stuck in the past cranky old man kind, but the very wise and loving, experienced with life sort.

On the subject of astral projection, scientists and skeptics would probably say that I was born not only with a heart defect, but also with a brain abnormality that causes autoscopic phenomena, kind of like an inverse doppelganger. Given the body temperature drop I'd hazard a guess that they'd say some form of epilepsy.

Maybe they're right, or perhaps we don't yet have proper instrumentation to measure things as refined as spirit and thought energy. As with the ghosts, it doesn't matter to me if it's real by some scientific standard. There are plenty of methods of verifying the astral projection experience, which I'll get into later. More importantly, the value of such experiences can't be measured or verified by anyone but yourself.

What is the Astral Plane

2009-02-16T01:28:00.000-08:00

The Astral Plane is one of the planes of existence available to the astral traveler. There are seven planes I can perceive, in total, and each has its own state of existence and particular peculiar properties. These are my personal experiences, and don't always fit with textbook descriptions found elsewhere. I didn't read them before I went there and so didn't know what to see, I suppose.

I like to think of the planes in layers, like a sandwich, though there are other seven-fold structures one could liken them to. I like the sandwich, because of the top bread and bottom bread. The bottom seems to be the darkness, the things that wreck us as human beings making us wish we didn't exist, and the top bread that incomprehensible substance that causes us to continue existing, and draws us out into the infinite, like two sides of the same coin.

For lack of a better paradigm I'll speak about these various planes as up and down, but they are not truly up and down, nor are they side-to-side. They are layered, with veils between them. I would say my perception of them is very much like one of those holographic pictures, where the picture changes depending on which way you hold it.

**Potential Astral Plane Structures**
Sandwich	Elements	Chakras	Colors
Bottom Bread	Water	Root	Red
Meat	Earth	Navel	Orange
Cheese	Fire	Solar Plexus	Yellow
Condiments	Air	Heart	Green
Lettuce and Tomato	Shape	Throat	Blue
Top Bread	Spirit	Third Eye	Indigo
Frilly Toothpick Garnish (The Inedible)	The Void (The Unknowable)	Crown (Over your Head)	Violet

Lower Planes

There are two levels below the physical that I can perceive. I have not personally consciously investigated either one at length, so I cannot speak with any conviction as to what they hold.

They're not frightening for me, just different, and not particularly interesting. I don't feel that I can relate, if you will, or gain any new insight by visiting them at this time. I may change my mind some day.

Water

The first one I'm going to call the Bottom Bread. I am told this is the plane of is water, not fish just water. Think both growth and erosion, flow and stagnation, life giving in calm ripples and life denying in violent rushes, i.e. drowning, all things that water can be. Force in a kind of primordial sense. This is not from any book I've read, but from an individual I spoke to in the astral a very long time ago.

This plane is incredibly dark, and in my current state of being seems nearly impenetrable. To my mind this would be where the unanswered questions go. I don't know if I would call what I sense here negative energy if negative means evil. After all, I believe in a omniscient creator god whose creations all have equal value or they wouldn't have been created in the first place.

The best way to describe it would be regrets, base emotional responses, misconceptions, and the results of unfortunate decisions.

I think I may have entered this place accidentally as a youth. Then I called it the cacophonous noise, so many voices with so many questions, and so much pain. I had apparently imbibed too much alcohol and floated right up and out. I turned and was drawn against my will into the darkness.

I returned due to my mother's screaming at me to come back immediately, punctuated with several sound slaps to the face. Apparently her terror, and the demanding tone of voice it produced penetrated the darkness and noise therein. Needless to say, I don't really drink.

Earth

Next would be the Meat, this one just below us seems much darker than the physical plane. I've seen what I can only describe as animals when gazing upon it. The energy seems much slower, and thick like traversing through mud.

The feeling I get is that of being earth-bound. Of course, this may be due to what I've been told. There is a no sense of change or growth in the quasi-religious context. Quite the opposite of water, this seems to be more like inertia.

Middle Planes

Fire

Next is ours, the Cheese of the planes sandwich. We all know what this is about, the physical plane. The primary sense you get here is that of time, in my opinion, the rushing of time.

Only here is time a limited quantity, or a factor of any importance. Time, as a concept, does not seem to exist on most of the others. The exception is the astral plane.

Air

Above ours is the astral plane, the Condiments, it adds flavor. It appears to be a selective mixture of other planes, a kind of reflection of the collective consciousness. To my mind it is kind of a replica of physicality with some important additions.

Visually it is much dimmer, and oddly misty. I always feel as if I've come up in Scotland when I enter. It makes me think of the Arthurian legend, where the priestesses bring him through the fog to the Isle of Avalon (Isle of the Dead) that normal, mortal men can't see to enter. They take him there to heal him, but he dies, or was he already dead and that's why he was allowed to pass?

The mist seems to clear after being there a while, or maybe I just land in the misty spots and go to places where it's not so misty. I also seem to always enter at nearly the same spot, like a waypoint, a Taxi Stand if you will.

Time does seem to exist on the astral, and by that I mean things happen in a sort of loosely linear fashion. It is not uncommon for them to happen again and again in a strange nearly infinite loop. For instance, the Romans liked to party in the earthly life, and still do in the astral plane. Time itself seems to have no impact on existence.

Some people say we go to the astral plane when we dream, others say it's where we go when we die. I don't know about either of those things. This is where I go to visit and learn new things.

Emotion and intuition seem to be the primary factors here. Communication is largely wordless, and higher emotions such as compassion seem to permeate one's being.

I think I may try to map out the Astral Plane as I know it. It sounds like a wonderfully interesting exercise and may help to shed more light on its relationship to the physical life.

The Higher Planes

Form

Next is the Lettuce and Tomato, it seems like a nice but unnecessary step, but for health purposes it's probably the best part of the sandwich for your health.

This is a plane of Form in a rather abstract sense. Think both geometry and archetypal forms. All that exists here is pure thought, from my experience. There appears to be no emotional sense, and no replication of physicality like on the astral, just clear thought, logic and the universal connection of things.

These forms, geometric and archetypal, seem to offer an odd kind of enlightenment simplifying the complex. You can juxtapose information or supposed bits of enlightenment you have imprinted on you from the physical life against these forms to see them with much more clarity. The forms are often enjoyable in and of themselves.

The existence of these geometries and broad thought forms, overarching truths in many ways, leads me to wonder why the recurrence of certain geometries exists in physical nature. Is there some deeper meaning, something regarding the flow of energy in physical structures that causes these forms to propagate?

The recurrence of archetypal forms also brings about the notion that there is some deeper truth that sits at the edge of the mind waiting to be uncovered. I honestly feel that I've missed something in my understanding of physicality. There is a sense of concreteness, and structure within the surface of chaos that seems important, but I haven't quite untangled my mind well enough about it to see where it fits.

Spirit

Now, the Top Bread, this seems to be pure spirit, no need for logic, form, or emotion in the undulating/unregulated earthly sense. These things don't seem to exist.

I can only attempt to describe pure spirit as notions of light, high energy, overflowing unconditional love, spiritual unity, deep knowing, understanding in the broadest sense, and peace in the broadest sense. These words really don't do justice to the experience, but they're all I have.

Beyond The Planes

Nothingness/The Unknowable

This is the frilly toothpick, inedible garnish bit. Nothingness would more accurately described as something that is incomprehensible to my current being. I would suspect this is where souls actually go when they die, but what do I know.

The Song of Water

2009-02-14T19:49:00.000-08:00

At the end of the first age of fire, man and his offspring had spent 3000 long winters now separated from the heavens from which they came. Having control over their own lives and domain over the new creation at first had been exciting, but now was tiring, a hardship, and man's heart ached terribly for home.

The god of fire scoffed at man's misery. "He is not a child any longer, he should appreciate the gifts he's been given and take his responsibility seriously."

The goddess of water, on the other hand, took great pity on him. "I will call him home," she said. "He no longer has eyes to see the way back, but his ears may still hear me."

With that she began to sing and water poured out over the Earth carrying with it great stones, pulling trees from their roots, and razing everything in its path.

The older souls of men hearing the sound of her voice wept with joy and ran toward the outpouring of love for them, letting the torrent carry them home.

The younger souls, not understanding what was happening, ran for the mountains, for high ground, and they also wept, but in mourning as they watched their brothers being helplessly swept away in the flood.

For the first time then men cursed the gods and began to tell their sons tales of wrath when speaking of them.

No longer were the gods seen as jovial and benevolent. They were now vengeful, capricious, callous and demanding, with little care for their creation. They constantly put obstacles and wicked temptations in the way of man, that they might then strike him down for his weakness.

They were to be feared, revered, and obeyed rather than loved, remembered, and longed for.

So began the first age of Earth, with terror, tears and confusion.

This is the fifth story I was told.

The Fox and the Hare

2009-02-13T19:40:00.001-08:00

One afternoon a fox and hare met in an open field. They made fast friends and began to ply and chase like small children, though neither was particularly young. They ran and pranced until they were both parched and famished.

The hare said to the fox, "there is a field of clover I saw on the way here, I think I'll go there and fill my belly." The fox replied, "there are planted crops and chickens just on the other side of the bridge, if we go together we can both have a feast."

The hare thought for a moment, the clover was plenty and he needed to get back to his den and family soon, but a feast of planted crops was awfully tempting. "I don't know," he said finally, "I really should be getting back."

"Come on," the fox cajoled the hare, "you need a little adventure and clover doesn't compare as a meal to the crops I've seen. Come with me, we'll have a wonderful time.

"All right then, but I have to get back before the sun falls. My family will worry over where I've gone," the hare gave in.

So the fox and hare made their way down the hill toward the river, lazily playing a bit as they went. When they approached the river the hare could see row crops planted on the other side, and his belly growled with hunger.

"Hurry up," the fox called to him from a few feet ahead, running now towards the bridge. The fox let out a gleeful whoop shouting, "suppertime," and the hare ran after him with joyful abandon.

Just before he reached the bridge three of the fox's pups sprang from their den on the river bank and pounced on the hare. They soon devoured him with considerable help from their father.

"Well done," the fox said to his pups once he had finished eating. "You are learning quickly. Soon you'll be hunting on your own."

Was the fox wrong or wicked here?

This was the fourth story I was given, with a question this time.

Brother Wolf

2009-02-13T18:14:00.001-08:00

In Brother Wolf we see the essence of a true man. He is fiercely loyal to his own, ruthless in the face of the enemy and faithful to his conscience.

He is intelligent enough to hold council with neighboring packs to secure good hunting territories rather than wasting his blood and energy fighting his own kind.

He is also wise enough to understand that the least, the weakest of the pack, must also have enough to eat. Brother Wolf must be strong enough, in both physique and character, to make certain that he does, or let another take his place.

He knows that when the weakest goes hungry the whole pack will soon be starving. The least is the meter, the measuring stick by which we can judge our abundance, and our success in the hunt.

As the leaders of wolf packs you will find great men reborn into their true form.

Not a story, but a bit of advice and a viewpoint I was given to consider.

When Man Stole Fire From the Gods

2009-02-12T17:21:00.000-08:00

When man first came into being he lived at the feet of the gods, much like a child, bathed in their light. Under their watchful eye he wanted for nothing, never knew hunger, cold, loneliness, or any other thing that now pains man.

This was very near the end of the first age of water, as the ages go in the memory of man. The land he belonged to then was covered in ice and beautiful white snow, and the gods often gathered around a great fire, in council, discussing the new age that would soon begin. Man gazed upon this and wanted some of this fire for himself, that he too might gather around crackling flames with his brethren and discuss the matters of the day.

So, in secret, he fashioned himself a bowl, digging through the ice where it was melting to pull up bits of clay, and working it with his hands into the hollow half-round shape. At all times he kept his back turned to the gods so they would not see what he was doing and inquire about it.

When his labor was done he approached the gods and pointed off into the sky, towards the mountains. "What is that flying this way," he asked. The gods turned their heads for a moment, indulging man in his little game, and man dipped his newly made bowl into the fire, coming away with a small amount.

Realizing what he had just done, and fearing the repercussions, he ran and ran as far as he could. Meanwhile, the gods laughed amongst themselves, "How cunning and clever man thinks he is. He believes he can take something we don't wish him to have."

The bowl which he had fashioned to carry the fire, being newly made, was soft and began to give way under his fingers. As he crossed the bridge between the world of light and the newly created world of darkness the fire began to seep through, burning his fingers. You can see even today man's palms are more pink than the rest of his hands. These are scars left behind from that event.

Just before he crossed over into the darkness, he dropped the now molten clay bowl with a howl. The fire contained therein melted the bridge behind him, as it was made entirely of ice.

When he felt safe the on other side he looked back and found nothing but darkness. There was no way to return and ask forgiveness. Man felt strange, cold, and there was a gnawing pain in his stomach.

As he had been running his feet had been kicking up the dust of the gods' new creation, and that dust had become one with him. Man, once a spirit being, was now encased in the dust and mud of the physical. He cried out in pain. The gods, hearing this, stopped laughing and with great concern turned to help him.

Man hungered, and a voice just below his heart said, "put out your hand." There man found a fruit to eat. Man was thirsty and the same voice below his heart said, "come this way," and led him to a stream to drink. Man was cold, and in that same way the gods taught man to make fire for himself.

After much consideration the gods decided that rather than keep man as a child at their feet, he would be happier if he were more like them, with children and charges of his own to care for. So they left him there to watch over their new creation, and to care for it when he was needed.

Now when we sit around the fire and discuss amongst ourselves we give thanks to the gods for being so generous, and for trusting us to care for their new creation.

This is the third story I was given

When Night Falls

2009-02-11T19:17:00.000-08:00

The world as we know it has both light and darkness, day and night. In the light of day there is the darkness of shadows. In the dark of night there is the light of the stars and the moon. So it is at all times a mixture, but it was not always this way.

When man first came here there was no light. Darkness permeated everything.

Unlike the animals that were already here, and a part of this realm, man could not see in the dark. He was not accustomed to it, and as you can see his eyes do not glow in the night as theirs do. So he had to crawl around scrounging for food, feeling his way with his hands for all things.

In his scavenging his hands came upon a long branch that had fallen to the ground from a tall tree. Man, being the clever creature that he is, imagined he could use this branch to his advantage. He picked it up and began probing around with it.

With a good thrust he pierced through the thin veil that was the darkness surrounding him, and a tiny beam of light came through. This was the first star.

Seeing the light that was familiar to his soul, he thrust his stick out again and again, letting more beams of light through. He flailed all around himself in this manner, like a madman, until he tore the great hole we now know as the sun.

Suffering such a grave injury the darkness withdrew to a distance where man could no longer reach to rip at the veil that separates him from the light.

When night falls it is the darkness trying to reclaim what is hers. Morning comes again when she retreats, as her scars and torn places are too numerous to overcome.

This is also why every living thing here will die. It is fulfilling its innate desire to cross over into the world of light, having seen a glimpse of it.

This is the second story I was given...

The Little Horse

2009-02-10T19:13:00.000-08:00

There was once a little white horse who used to run and play alone in the meadows near a village here. Sometimes he would watch the other, bigger horses who lived in the village as they would come and go. He was lonely and wanted company.

The bigger horses in the village carried heavy men on their backs. The little horse knew he could not do this, because he was small and not as strong as the others. So he stayed alone, an orphan, and afraid.

One afternoon the little horse was playing in the meadow, as usual, and he came upon a boy sitting by himself under a tree. The little horse wondered if the boy was an orphan also. The young man offered the little horse an apple to entice him, and befriend him, but the little horse was afraid the young man would capture him, or send an arrow through his heart as he had seen the men do to the antelope living in the meadow alongside him.

So the little horse ran as fast and as far as he could.

The young man, undeterred, followed him silently at a distance, until the little white horse finally stopped to graze. The young man felt this unusual white horse was a magical creature and wanted very badly to have him. So he climbed into a tree and waited patiently for the little horse, now visibly exhausted, to relax and fall asleep.

Finally, the little horse dozed off, and the boy carefully and quietly climbed down from the tree, and crept up on him. Suddenly the boy placed both hands on the horse's rear end, awakening him with a loud smack. The little horse was so shocked and terrified he could not move.

You see many horses like this even today, with this young man's fingerprints on their backside.

The young man jumped and pushed himself up onto the horse's back before the animal had regained his senses well enough to run away.

Amazed, the little horse found the young man was light as a feather. He was like carrying nothing at all, and the boy wrapped his arms around the little horse's neck, comforting and befriending him.

Feeling the lightness of his burden the little horse ran off with the boy on his back, not wanting to shake him off, but to take him to play in the places he used to run alone.

After a long while of running and playing they went down to the river to get a drink together. There the little horse saw reflected in the water the face of a young girl watching them. Then he looked around and realized he was standing right next to the village he had watched from afar for so long.

The young man placed a reassuring hand on his back and led him into the village, and to the other horses who invited him to join them. He was no longer afraid, and no longer alone.

So the young man got a magical horse, and the little horse got a magical life.

This was the first story I was given to contemplate, and try to gather meaning from.

Images from bizuk and Wolfgang Staudt at Flickr

Becoming, Dark Matter and Dark Energy

2009-02-09T21:00:00.000-08:00

Her "secret," what is her secret? I bounced the riddle around in my head like a child with a paddle ball. Trying to position it against or within various mental and philosophical constructs I'd inherited from my forebearers, hoping one might shine a bit more light into the enigma.

Perhaps it's that she's always in the process of becoming, with no thought for the past and none for the future, just the current passing moment which is eternity, as long as time exists.

Both future and past are creations that have life only in the mind. One has fallen into oblivion, and cannot be lived, the other has yet to emerge and cannot be lived. Only the present moment actually exists to be lived - repeating, the ever constant Now.

Plants must be this way, with no reference to consider, no murky memory to hinder their push toward the sun, no questionable future staring back at them as if to say: You can never be here, and if you could you may not want to.

They stick to their knitting, arranging the nutrients they draw from the earth and sun into complex fibers, liquids and lipids, eventually growing into vegetables, flowers, weeds and trees. Constantly becoming, even in death they are becoming the soil from which the next generation grows.

Conscious living, existing fully in the Now... It can't be that. That's far too trite, and not much of a secret.

It is, however, a really wonderful exercise to undertake, especially with good music playing. In the ever-present passing moment things are much more enjoyable, the future and past only seem to obscure the pleasure of experiencing the now.

Perhaps it has to do with the circle - always in the process of becoming. In the natural world the living are moving toward death, and the dead are in turn becoming life. Living things eat life, and in turn feed life. Such is the cyclical nature of life on Earth, repeating. It appears to be growing from a distance, but is actually just returning to its beginning to start again.

Far too obvious, this is no kind of secret.

The term was specifically "the Universe," not the Earth. The expanding Universe, what feeds the expansion in deep space? What's the energy source? Is it repeating like some far echo of the Big Bang, in a frequency we can't hear?

Yes, kind of.

Apparently, the original energy of the Big Bang is pushing, while dark matter and dark energy are pulling, and this pushing/pulling action of the two combined causes the universe to stretch apart like a gigantic balloon, or maybe a condom.

The rate of expansion may have increased, or decreased, there are two sets of arguments, but that the rate has changed over time is the consensus. There is no talk of repeating.

The Expanding Universe
The Universe, Expanding Beyond All Understanding

The Universe Is Not Expanding Uniformly
Yes Virginia, the Stars do pull on all of us

So what is dark matter? We're not sure, yet. What is dark energy? We don't know, yet. We do know they're out there, and they're ripping the place apart.

What if anything does this have to do with black holes? Do the black holes recycle the stuff they suck in when they implode, composting it to create a kind of Cosmic topsoil, dark matter and dark energy? If energy is neither created nor destroyed, but merely changes form, what happens to our thought energy when we die? What form does it take?

I don't think this Universe expanding business is getting me any closer to the secret of the universe repeating. In fact, in terms of finding it I feel Ice Cold.

I must have gotten somewhere with the Tomatillo Revelation, though, because the old man came back to me shortly after it happened and said "sit down, I want to tell you a story."

He introduced himself, if you will, as "A Whispering Crow" and I have since been told several tales, mostly children's stories. It seems I need things explained to me in fairytale and fable format.

The Universe of Tomatillos and Tomas

2009-02-08T17:38:00.000-08:00

"The Universe Repeats Herself," it was a zen koan. Maybe it's like "history repeats itself," a subject that will stir loud, unwanted debates in my household.

If he meant "history" repeats itself, why not just use the word history, and whatever might her secret be? Is it some mind-blowing Gaia principle that will leave me awestruck, sitting slack-jawed with the keys to enlightenment dangling idly from my fingers? Will it be revealed to me once I disentangle the riddle of the repeating?

I contemplated this quizzical statement for six months. It was like giving birth, only my understanding didn't grow over time and there was no quickening, kicking or strange food cravings.

We stayed with extended family for a short time while searching for more appropriate lodging. This was an horribly uncomfortable interlude for me, I must confess. You don't realize how important it is to sleep under your own roof and prepare your own food, in your own kitchen until these minor luxuries are taken from you. It was living there, cringing and taut like an overly stretched rubber band, that I met Tomas.

Tomas was the latest in a long line of individuals that only I could see. Since my grandmother's passing there's been no one to share these things with, at least not without getting the look. A dark figure passing in and out of the shadows, Tomas was swarthy and sharp featured. He smelled of earth and things growing. One minute it would feel as if he was pleading, the next minute sinister and dangerous.

He seemed to be a man desperately trying to wrest control of his life from the unseen, unconscionably cruel hands of ill-fate. The story I got was that his wife had been poisoned, not at once, but slowly perhaps by minute amounts of some toxin in the water system, or in their food.

When he was pleading his wife was still alive, and he didn't now how to save her. When he was angry, on edge of violence, it was because she had succumbed to the poison and he had failed in the worst way a man could. He let her die.

A lot of people who claim to be clairvoyant, or psychic gurus and whatnot say that these "ghosts" need comforting, or confronting. They need to be made to realize they're dead, and they don't have to go through this loop anymore. Personally, I'm only an observer. The clearing, cleansing, and ghost whispering those people do is a charade designed to make them money, in my opinion. The dead don't need your help any more than you need theirs.

Tomas, was a lesson in powerlessness. While the man may have never existed, the fate does for many men. We often cling desperately to things we have no control over. At one level we plead, and actually give more of our power to another, thinking we may get some back. When that's ineffective we will often turn to violence, taking the ultimate power over others, but losing control of ourselves. It's important to realize that which we cannot control and focus on that which we can.

There is more to learn from Tomas, I'm certain of it. He followed me to my new abode, but no longer makes himself forcefully known. I still see his face peering around corners, and occasionally I will still get the sense of an insidious presence, a man with a knife in his hand hiding and waiting patiently for the right moment.

Leaving aside Tomas for the time being, let's get onto the tomatillos. I have a habit of putting seeds from various vegetables I buy into pots of earth, to see if they'll grow. Even living in a high-rise apartment I did this. I can't help it. I don't really expect the seeds from store-bought vegetables and such to grow naturally. I strongly suspect they've all been irradiated, or genetically altered. So when they do grow it's always a pleasant surprise.

Chicken with tomatillos and green chiles is a family favorite, and in preparing this dish one night I decided to save some tomatillo seeds. They're a relatively expensive fruit to buy back East and, on the off chance that the seed was good, a bush of them would certainly be nice to have. I even had a yard to plant it in. It was then, while extracting the tiny seed from its seat with the meat of the fruit that it struck me.

Look at all those seeds. For every fruit that grows there are hundreds of seeds inside it, which would grow hundreds of bushes that create hundreds more fruit. The Universe repeats herself.

For every one thing that's created there's the potential for hundreds or thousands more of that thing, it's exponential. In a world where there is constant talk of lack, if you look back a the natural world there's infinite potential.

Photo From niznoz's photostream

Everything that dies feeds the new things that grow, becoming a part of that thing. It's natural recycling and reincarnation.

Visions of atoms, with particles swirling around a nucleus fill my mind's eye, molecules, cells, all manner of organisms concentric-circles of life, planets circling around the sun, the galaxy spinning its center, even the universe herself expanding into infinite space.

Then the flip-side, like an onion, each layer confined and loosely connected to the layer outside of it, concentric dimensions wrapped one around another, held together and held apart by a thin, perhaps permeable film. Maybe we are but one universe in a universe of universes, and they are all repeating themselves.

It was quite deep at the time, and I'm not sure I can adequately explain, but I felt I was onto something. Now there was still the problem of "her secret".

The seed did take, and grew a tremendous bush that tried to kill off every other plant in the vicinity. In fact, the second year, even after a hard winter's frost, I had to pull new tomatillo volunteer plants out of the garden all summer long. Maybe that's part of "her secret" also.

Battledrums At The Way Point

2009-02-07T22:15:00.001-08:00

Upon arriving here one of the first things we did was visit Celebration Park, a birds of prey sanctuary on the Snake River. The landscape was incredible, covered in the boulders left behind by an ancient massive flood, harsh and unforgiving looking in the early November chill. It struck me as a way point, a place that sits between here and the next dimension.

Though we were alone there, I could see people everywhere, walking slowly, occasionally looking back before crossing over into hidden lands beyond my perception. Their belongings, if they had any, were slung over their shoulders or strapped to their backs and seemed to have no weight at all.

The wind was whipping at the hood of my coat as we walked around looking for prehistoric etchings in the rocks, and soon it began to take on a rhythm. The rhythm was slow and sparse at first and I kind of let myself fall into it.

Most sounds in the natural world have a subtle cadence, like one's own heartbeat, steady, rhythmic, with a kind of up and down, almost breathing motion. When the rhythm changes suddenly, or stops, that's when you need to worry.

Over time the rhythm grew in intensity and depth. Drums, it was clearly drums, not just the natural pulse of life, but a beating sound with purpose, passion and urgency. Tribal drums, there must have been hundreds of them.

I couldn't see anyone playing, neither real nor invisible persons. I knew there was no festival going on, and could think of no other logical cause for the sound. I inquired if anyone else heard them and got the expected negative. Nonetheless, I found myself being taken in, as happens with music, bobbing my head, and allowing my physical movements and emotional/spiritual level to follow the pace and intention that they set.

We walked down to the river to have a look out for any birds of prey we might be able to see. There were none, but it really didn't matter. I could have remained in this place forever, listening to the now frenzied drumming and feeling very excited, while still somehow at peace. My only concern was that I felt I, too, might step through the veil into the hidden lands if I stayed too long or wandered too far.

Then suddenly the drumming stopped. Cold, silent, as if it had never been there. As I looked out at the water an old man looked back at me and said:

"The Universe repeats herself. First you must learn her secret."

Nebraska

2009-02-06T17:06:00.001-08:00

We drove three days to get here from Virginia, at roughly 1,000 miles per day with only brief periods of rest. We started the day before Halloween in 2005.

Driving through Nebraska in the now barren fields of wheat there were invisible children running with dirty faces and ragged shirts, and old farmers that lay dead, dehydrated by the blazing sun. They had fallen in the middle of their work, with tools in hand, thin and wiry, brown as toast with drawn tight faces, unable to continue their labor. Death came as a pleasant surprise.

Drought my mind kept saying, horrible drought and all the plagues that come with it. I put it down to the sheer emptiness of the place, mile after mile of harvested wheat with the rare but notable tiny white house planted in the middle of it all. I was going stir crazy.

I tried to force my focus more sharply on the reality at hand, but success in that only brought to mind unwanted moving pictures of Atlanta, the people there covered in red bleeding blisters, misery, an accident, a disease, massive death, sour newscasters, and frightened looking politicians wringing their hands helplessly on the television.

There was no good to be found in Nebraska. Had I been the one driving it likely would have been much more enjoyable.

Gratefully, neither of these horrific images has come to pass, which I find shocking. This is a first for me. I must say I'm extremely relieved about it. What I saw no one wants to experience in real life.

Yet at the same time I'm a little wary. In 40+ years of living, having had many hundreds of these visions, large and small, never have I had one "not" come to pass. There have been very minor variations from the thing I saw, but never a blank.

The outside world, in the main, has always reflected the inside screen, just on a delay. The longest lead time on an event I've had was four years, the shortest 10 minutes or so.

The short 10-minute one was knowing there was a man in the backseat of the car when leaving the office. A violent, desperate man, I could see him as clear as day. I knew he was there before I got on the elevator, but went into the parking lot anyway.

I should have waited. That was the last time I didn't heed my inner voice and was relieved of some worldly possessions for my trouble.

Since the disturbing trip through Nebraska it's almost been the same, day-to-day living with this kind of fragmented fuzzy future-memory, but I feel different. The visions are far fewer and I find I really don't want to look, like I'm hiding something from myself.

The worst part is I don't trust it anymore.

The "ghosts" are different here in the west. They're not angry or lost, and they don't have the same kind of pain I'm used to. They feel much older, while the history for us is much younger, an odd dichotomy.

Instead of being strange and scary shadows and footsteps, they tap me on the shoulder with thoughts that are helpful and inspiring. Rather than getting questioned why, I'm getting stories that try to tell me what and how.

A Brief Explanation

2009-02-05T14:15:00.000-08:00

I feel the planned content of blog may need some explaining, so here we go.

Clairvoyance it's called in some cultures, others call it madness. The more earth-centric spiritual paths would call them shamanic visions, the sky-god followers would likely deem them demonic temptations. In my family the word we use is "touched". Touched by what, an angel, a devil, bruised by some invisible finger? I was never clear on the specifics, the term is simply "touched".

The fact is I see and sometimes hear things that aren't there and have since I was a small child. Often I see things that will happen, these feel like warnings and I've been grateful for them more times than I can count. Sometimes they are things that have happened in the past, with ghosts associated. On rare occasions they are more like waking dreams of things that have never been and may never be, and those feel like lessons. These lessons and warnings may well come from my subconscious, I'm not really sure. They just are.

It runs in the family. My grandmother also saw things from a very young age, a particular ghost followed her around throughout her childhood, and there were others that would come and go, often conversing with her as she fell asleep. She also knew things that she shouldn't have about the future, and had the terrible gift of being able to speak some of my most private thoughts to me.

There are tablets one can take for this condition. However, what the tablets do is effectively remove all creativity, joy, and drive from your mind, without actually doing anything to prevent the visitations. In my limited experience the visits come more often while under the influence of these drugs. I understand that your mileage may vary when it comes to the chemical cure, but honestly I can't imagine existing only in the material world. The idea of it sounds horribly empty, and limiting.

Knowing that what you're seeing is not really there is the key. It's what separates the hunter from the madman - keeping your mental landscape tidy and orderly regarding the everyday world, while unbounded and somewhat chaotic when dealing with the world of ether. The reality of it is not important. It's what you gain philosophically from your experiences that matters.

Oddly enough, I don't personally believe in "ghosts" as the term is generally used. I think there may be bits of left over energy in the atmosphere that we call ghosts. I don't think any human spirit actually remains on this plane without occupying a physical body, but that does not mean that their thought energy has also dissipated or passed through to some other dimension.

My first experience was standing in the window of my apartment watching children play ring-around-the-rosy across the street on the school lawn. I hadn't yet reached school-age, being perhaps four years old, and I had strangely mixed feelings. I wanted to go play, but they scared me somewhat. My family insisted there was nothing there, all the neighborhood children were in school and I needed to get out of the window before I slipped and fell to my death.

Growing up in the Civil War south I was visited by many different individuals that no one else could see. It was a regular thing, often frightening, but never boring. There was always a lot of pain, a lot of feelings of futility - the futility of wasting your life for something you didn't even believe in when your life was over.

I have spent hours watching soldiers in tan uniforms walk, halfheartedly down the road going who knows where, crippled by such deep sadness not just in death, but in having ever existed. This made no sense, as the area had not been a battlefield. Years later I found out that there had been a Union prison where Confederate soldiers were held, apparently they were walking down the road to the prison.

Nothing, not even grass seemed to be able to take on that path. Homes built would quickly fall into disarray, repairs on them were soon undone for no apparent reason, new paint would begin to crack and peel in a matter of months. I don't believe that "ghosts" necessarily had anything to do with the misfortune of the homeowners there - it was just a strange phenomenon.

Since I left the south for the northwest the tone and content of my experiences has changed dramatically. The ghosts are fewer here, and quite different. The stories I'm being told, and the experiences, visions and voices are something I feel compelled to share.