Tag Archives: Consciousness

The Feeling of “Mind Expansion”

I take the train to and from work now. It’s a wonderful little bit of my day that I’m learning to really enjoy. Why you ask? Cause it gives me 35 minutes twice a day to meditate! If I can’t meditate at work, this is the next best thing. :)

Anyway, onto my post…
I was meditating on the way home from work tonight and a thought popped into my head regarding the feeling that I get I call “Mind Expansion”. It actually feels like your mind is really expanding. But I came to realize what that sensation really is, because I noticed it tonight at the same time this “other” thing occurred.

What occurred was a 90%+ reduction in my five physical senses. Well, I was ignoring them. But at that exact moment, I began to feel that “Mind Expansion” sensation happen. I never really consciously put two and two together about this.

The “Mind Expansion” sensation is also the beginning of removing yourself from this physical reality. Point Consciousness. From there, all of consciousness is your playground. :)

Conceptual Model of Consciousness by Contenteo!

Contenteo (Astral Pulse Profile), a member of the Astral Pulse created this excellent Conceptual Drawing of Consciousness and, with his permission, I wish to share it here.

Conceptual Drawing of Consciousness

As you can see, it goes from the bottom up and incorporates all of the different concepts into showing how they’re all connected and how they’re all just varying levels of awareness.

Great job by Contenteo! If you wish to contact him you can leave a comment here, or through his Astral Pulse profile (link is above) or at rcarbone@stetson.edu.

Morning Non-Physical Experience – September 8, 2011

This will be my first logged experience in a few months. I’ve had some lucid/astral awareness experiences over that time, but they were either not meaningful or they were very short (1 – 5 seconds).

Last night, however, I had some meaningful experiences, a couple breakthroughs, and some frustrations.

First, the breakthroughs! Well, I started off before going to bed repeating an affirmation that I was going to become consciously aware during my dreams that night. Along with that, I firmly placed the Intent that it would happen. As it happened, I did have a really nice, long and clear lucid/astral awareness experience which I perceived happened for 15 – 20 minutes.

The second breakthrough was that during this experience I decided to run a simple test revolving around keeping myself in the non-physical. A point came where I began to sense that I was beginning to wake up. I was starting to feel my physical body lying in bed, so what I did was I consciously ignored those signals and focused my attention COMPLETELY within the non-physical environment I was experiencing. It worked perfectly. I was able to further extend my experience doing this.

I eventually did wake up though. I laid in my bed wondering if I should just close my eyes and go back into the experience, but I felt that I should jot down what notes I could quickly so that I could remember this stuff later in the morning. I found a piece of paper and a pen, both of which I normally keep on my bedside stand and wrote down a few keywords. Well, I went back to sleep and woke up in the morning. When I went to look for my notes I had made, and here’s the frustrating part, I couldn’t find them! Apparently the act of me “waking up” and “writing down my notes” was a FALSE AWAKENING. GAH! LoL

I’ve forgotten a good chunk of my experience from last night. I think I retained the most important aspects of it though. Thankfully. hehe

The Muliple Consciousness Awareness Levels of Physical *AND* Non-Physical Realities

A realization hit me this week.  It’s the realization that “awareness” is a property of consciousness and not a result of the reality you’re experiencing!

There are a lot of people who see all the different experiences (dreams, lucid dreams and astral projection/obes) as being all separate and different experiences. Well, “awareness” is a property of consciousness… and we can directly view it in relation to our physical reality as well as when we’re non-physical.

Some people believe that dreams, lucid dreams and ap/obes are different. They give the reason that they’re different because they “feel” completely different. Let’s compare our varying levels of awareness in this physical reality? Why don’t you take a look at your “awareness” when you first wake up in the morning? It feels groggy, drowsey and unclear. Now compare that to how your awareness is after your first coffee? And then again a couple hours later? They’re all varying levels of awareness within our physical reality… and the key point is that they all FEEL very different. They all feel like UNIQUE experiences. However, nobody really pays much attention to it because they KNOW better, right? We KNOW when we wake up it’s the physical reality… and throughout the day, we KNOW what is going on.

Well, all of those varying levels of conscious awareness take place in the SAME reality. I experience these same varying levels of consciousness awareness in the non-physical as well. Everything from the “Groggy, drowsy” (dream awareness) feeling, to the “just had a coffee” (lucid awareness) feeling to the “wide awake” (astral awareness) feeling. This tells me that “Awareness” is a Property of Consciousness and NOT a result of the reality you find yourself in.

Another Meditation Gem from the mind of Tom Campbell

I found a response that Tom had made to someone who was having problems with meditating. I think it’s a complete gem. Please do read. :)

You need to learn to meditate consistently first before trying more complex things, no wonder you are frustrated. Some how we have to calm that mind down or figure out a way to keep it occupied with non-operational non analytical fluff.

sound: Breathe normally but slowly, you can’t meditate holding your breath. Listen for the mantra while you inhale (breath in)(like listening for the thunder), Then hear the sound of the mantra in your mind while you exhale (breathe out), immediately listen for it again during the next incoming breath, then hear it again while exhaling, etc. As soon as any thoughts intrude, Gently (casually) put them side and begin listening and hearing again with the next breath — always breathing smoothly and slowly. keep this up. for just 5 minutes — set a timer or an alarm. when that gets easy lengthen it to 10 minutes, when that gets easy lengthen it to 20 minutes and then to a half hour. Do this at least several times a day (more when the times are short). EVEN IF THE IF THE LISTENING AND HEARING ONLY LAST A MICROSECOND BEFORE BEING INTERRUPTED, KEEP IT UP, JUST GENTLY AND CALMLY BUT FIRMLY PUT THE THOUGHTS ASIDE AS SOON AS YOU NOTICE AN INTERRUPTION AND THEN GO BACK TO LISTNING AND HEARING. Just do it with no expectations – we are not trying to meditate yet, first we must minimize those interruptions — that’s all, forget meditation for now — we are only trying to minimize the interruptions.
If you keep at it, the time between interruptions will grow – even if it grows from one microsecond to two microseconds, stick with it and it will continue to grow. After three months of multiple times a day, you should notice some progress. At that time, if the interruptions have slowed enough, report in and we will go to step 2

Sight: Same as above except instead of listening and hearing imagine a soccer ball levitating in front of you in one spot. As you breathe in let the ball spin slowly forward (top moving toward you, point closest to you moving down, and point on the bottom surface of the ball moving away from you), As your breath stops, let the ball stop, then as you breathe out let the ball spin slowly backward. Just intently watch the ball. Breathe slowly and rhythmically. All the rest is the same.

You do not need to wait 3 months to let us know what is happening, but do wait three months before analyzing anything or making any judgments. Just do and observe.

It’s a great suggestion really. Don’t jump headlong into meditation… learn to stop those mental interruptions, and before you know it you’ll be meditating!

My missteps over the last ten years

It took me over 10 years to make any real progress towards my goal of experiencing astral projection.  I was thinking about this last night and I felt it might be helpful for others to know the points during those 10 years that I feel were the prime motivators for my unsuccessful attempts.

I feel that the #1 reason for my unsuccessful attempts over such a long period of time was due to the term that Robert Monroe coined: “Mind Awake / Body Asleep“.  The problem with it, and a concept that I couldn’t grasp at the time was that the “Body Asleep” part is completely WRONG.  Unless your goal is to actually fall asleep, go into a dream and become conscious within that dream (this is called a lucid awareness experience), then there is actually no point where you ever need your body to be put “asleep”.

Your body isn’t put to sleep as much as you make it so that the input you’re receiving from your five physical senses is greatly reduced.  This begins the process for you to disassociate from this physical reality.  While that’s happening focus your attention ‘within’, which is away from this physical reality.

The second biggest problem I’ve encountered is that when I was younger, I was quite impatient.  I’d read through a book that had a dozen great exercises in it and then I’d go to bed and TRY THEM ALL!!  *facepalms*  Yeah, don’t ever do that… it’ll cause more frustration than anything.  Pick a single exercise and try it out for at least a solid week.

Another issue was that I didn’t make the connection between Conscious Exits and Meditation. If you want to learn to Astral Project at any time during the day from a completely conscious state of awareness (this is called doing a Conscious Exit), then it’s just about a mandatory requirement that you learn to meditate. This was something I didn’t understand back then. The state that you should learn to get into is called the Point of Consciousness (PoC) state. It’s from there you can do most of the classic OBE techniques from. I remember one whereby you were instructed to create your own astral body using your thought power… but it never really indicated what “state of mind” you initially needed to be in to do it. I haven’t gone back to that technique, but the PoC state would be perfect for that.

So yeah, hopefully reading these will help you to move forward in the future… I’ll try to add some more of my missteps as I think of them. :)

Tom Campbell on Frank Kepple

I also wanted to bring up the post that Tom made regarding the Astral Pulse’s own Frank Kepple. I have to give Frank a lot of credit as his information was what initially propelled my own experiences in the non-physical. Until I began reading and understanding what he was saying, I was in quite the non-physical stalemate.

It would seem that Tom was made aware of the Frank Kepple Phasing Resource on the Astral Pulse thanks to one of the members of his own forum and he had this to say about Frank:  http://www.my-big-toe.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2589

JoshM: Granted, your books goes into greater detail but it appears to me that the maps that are given by both of you might be overlapping.

Tom: I did read over Frank’s posts — interesting that he cut up consciousness-space into four areas after declaring that there was no separation within consciousness. Everything he said was driven by genuine experience — Frank is a good explorer. Of course there is overlap — we (and everyone else) are exploring the same larger reality — there should be major overlap. The difference is the extent of our experience, the context or structure we place that experience within, and how we communicate that structure to others. Each of these reflect the uniqueness of the explorer — his beliefs and interpretations.

JoshM: I am wondering if his description of what he calls “Focus 4″ related to what you are talking about when you talk of the need to go beyond OBEs and go “out of your mind”.

Tom: Yes, it is — that is one description of it. I find his Focus 3 and 4 to be defined rather narrowly. The superset of the larger reality is bigger yet.

JoshM: A description I once read of this place he labeled “Focus 4″ was that it felt like you were losing your mind.

Tom: That feeling is only temporary — until one gets oriented and accustomed to that mode of awareness and existence — then it becomes much like any other reality frame — only different.

JoshM: Am I way off base and making a connection where none exists?

Tom: No, you are on target. One reality, many views and perspectives, each necessarily limited and structured by the mind of the beholder.

Tom C

So it would seem that Tom is very respectful of Franks experiences and even goes as far as to call him a “good explorer”. The rest of the thread is equally interesting.

Enjoy!

Regarding Binaural Beats – Tom Campbell

Someone brought my attention to a post on Tom Campbells “My Big TOE” forums that he wrote up regarding the use of Binaural Beats.  As most people already know, Tom was instrumental in the initial creation of the Monroe Laboratories regarding their original Explorer Team’s efforts of exploring Consciousness.

They essentially took the book that was already written regarding Binaural Beats and began to add to it and refine it.

This post that I’m going to link to you here is a great place for people wanting to start out with Binaurals to assist them in their meditations or Non-physical exploration: http://www.my-big-toe.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=5056&p=22957&hilit=binaural+beat#p22957

One can use binaural beats to encourage OOBE, remote viewing, or healing ability.

You can purchase Hemi-synch, a professional mix of binaural beats and other sounds (Google “The Monroe Institute”) or you can make your own binaural beat audio file for free. Which is better? Only you can answer that with experimentation — everyone is different. Both have the ability to help you learn to be a good meditator. Many individuals find binaural beats helpful, some don’t. Google “binaural beat” and find a site that lets you make your own customized audio file for free.

The binaural beat frequency is the difference between two base frequencies. A pure tone generated at the base frequency goes in one ear and the base frequency plus the desired beat frequency goes in the other ear (using stereo headphones). The two tones combine in the brain producing a “beat” frequency that is the difference between the two pure tones. This beat frequency (which you can “hear”) drives your brain wave pattern toward the beat frequency, thus inducing an altered state of consciousness similar to a very effective and practiced meditation state.

If you already know how to meditate you won’t need to ramp in and out. Make several binaural beat stereo audio files using different base frequencies and use each for a month to pick the one you like best.

Some suggestions: 100 Hz and 104 Hz; 500Hz and 504Hz; 2000Hz and 2004; 5000Hz and 5004Hz These different base frequencies will all produce a 4 Hz binaural beat. Males tend to like the lower frequencies and females the higher.

You can try a slightly slower beat (difference between frequencies) of 3.75 or 3.8 instead of 4 later on if you get to that level of refinement.

Experiment. Continue to experiment always, but don’t jump between things too quickly. Take the long view …take your time .. don’t rush the process.

Many people, especially in the beginning, want to ease themselves into and out of the 4Hz theta brainwave state. This softening and slowing the transition to and from the desired theta state of 4 Hz (to make it easier to follow) is called ramping. The ramp going in from beta to theta should be slow and gradual enough for you to follow. The ramp coming out from theta back to beta can be much quicker and steeper. On and off ramps are individual.

A typical relaxed, focused in the physical, awake state is in the beta region (20 to 15 Hz) A typical meditation state is in the alpha-theta region (somewhere between 14 to 7 Hz). To encourage OOBE or remote viewing, or healing ability, you want to be in the theta region at about 4 Hz or slightly less (3.75 Hz to 3.8Hz).

If you are a good meditator you don’t need ramps at all.

If you are fair, start in the alpha region and step down in 1 Hz steps from 10Hz to 4Hz to theta. Each step should last anywhere from 30 sec to 3 minutes depending on how quickly you can follow (better meditators follow more quickly).

If you are poor at meditation, start in the mid beta region and step down in 1 Hz steps from beta at 20Hz to theta at 4Hz. Each step should last anywhere from 30 sec to 3 minutes depending on how quickly you can follow. Lower your starting beat frequency as you get better at it.

Once you are in the 4 Hz theta state that is your goal, stay there for a half hour to two hours — that’s enough. You are in this physical reality for a reason. Do not use this as an escape. It is a tool, as is meditation itself, for teaching you to eliminate the noise in your mind thus allowing you to more powerfully, clearly and steadily focus your conscious intent. You want to learn the process of coming and going to and from this 4 Hz state so that eventually you can do it on your own. Sometimes try it on your own without the binaural beats.

So you see, you have to do some experimenting to optimize your sound to your ability and then modify the sound as your ability changes. One size does not fit all.

Trying to sort all this out in a week or two won’t work so well. Pick 3 to 5 different configurations that span your personal unknowns. If you are a good meditator, use each one for a few days cycling through all configurations three or four times each. If a fair mediator, use each configuration for a week or two, cycling through all configurations at least three or four times each. If you’re a poor meditator, use each configuration for at least three weeks, cycling through all configurations four or five times each. Dispense with a given configuration when it is clearly inferior to the others (but not too quickly). Every three to six months add new more refined configurations that are converging to your optimum. In several weeks to a year, depending on where you start and how quickly you progress, you should find an optimum sound. Use it for six months to a year or two, by then it will be time to change it because you will have changed. Commit to a life of constant experimentation because, as you progress, what is optimum changes.

Binaural beats are like training wheels on a five year old’s bicycle — eventually you must wean yourself from the training wheels and take them off or they will retard your development by locking you into specific altered states when you should be free to shift states as easily as you shift your attention. Eventually, you will even let go of formal meditation because you no longer will have a need for the process. You will be able to accomplish the same thing (actually better, being unencumbered) instantaneously. Do not become habituated or addicted to this tool or any tool — or the tool that was once so helpful may turn into a self-limiting crutch.

Tom C

I bolded last paragraph because I feel it’s the MOST IMPORTANT part of it all. Please read it… understand it… then read it again just incase. :)