Tag Archives: Meditation

Meditation – A Requirement To Exploring the Non-Physical

Tom Campbell (http://www.my-big-toe.com/forums/index.php) talks a bit in his books and lectures about “Belief Traps” and how they can trap us into a certain way of thinking or trap us into ignoring something fundamental to our journey here.

I was thinking about that yesterday and trying to figure out what kind of belief traps I’ve been trapped in over the past little while.  In a post I made back at the end of December (How I Came To My Beliefs), I made the distinction that there was a point where I didn’t know that I was allowed to believe something that ended up being very important towards what I needed to know in order to progress.

I’ve noticed that this is a Belief Trap… and it’s one that I’ve still been trapped in for a while as well.  I have to thank Tom for opening my eyes to such information and to realize that I am allowed know certain things in order to progress.  I notice it a lot in others now too, it’s those times when people post questions on the Astral Pulse asking if it’s okay if they do so-and-so.

As I’ve been progressing along my non-physical path as of late, I’ve slowly been coming to the conclusion that a base knowledge in meditation is a prerequisite for learning how to explore the wider reality.  This isn’t something I learned from Tom, it’s something that I’ve been slowly coming to terms with myself over the last few months.  However, Tom’s “Belief Trap” ideas were the catalyst for me to understand this.  I needed someone to tell me that I was allowed to know this, as strange as that might sound.  I can apply and confirm it by looking at my own past experience as I’ve spent the last 15 years of my life learning how to meditate.  Through that time, I never once considered how that has helped me along my current path of experiencing the non-physical.

Well, the truth is that it has greatly helped me.  This is why and how I found Frank Kepples Phasing exercises so much easier to do and learn from when compared to the classic separation OBEs (aka Monroe-style), because, in essence, they ARE meditation exercises.  I just took it for granted that certain things that I did when using the Noticing or Rundown exercises were normal and that everyone just automatically did them too.  Well, they’re not.  They’re something I’ve learned to do over the last decade and a half.  Stuff like learning how to quiet your mind (surface thoughts), fully relaxing the body upon command and being alone with your consciousness.  These are skills/tools that one *needs* to learn if “conscious exit” projections is on their list of things “to do”.

To do a conscious exit by Phasing, you have to meditate to get into the proper state first.  Sure, we have a couple of “exercises” which you can do to assist you to get there, but they’re not really “exercises”, they are “meditations”.  They’re designed to assist you to discover the act of quieting your thoughts and focusing your mind towards a single intent.  A byproduct of that is, when you get deep enough and good enough, the “point of consciousness” experience that Tom talks about.  This is, in essence, phasing to Focus 21 (the void), which is the Phasing/Projection experience.  That’s exactly what we’re doing when we practice Noticing or Mental Rundowns.  We’re quieting our mind and focusing it upon a single intent.  That intent takes the form of “noticing the blackness” or “visualizing a scene”.  <– They become TOOLS to move our consciousness away from this physical awareness and our physical senses… taking us to the “Point of Consciousness”.

So, if you want to experience the non-physical in all its larger glory… put down all your preconceived notions about methods this and techniques that, and just learn to be alone with your consciousness.  Master yourself before you try to master the larger reality, for that is the real journey.  The non-physical is only a small part of your being… and the fact you’re here in this physical reality in the first place is proof enough of that.

Lunchtime Meditation – November 18, 2010

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve meditated during my lunch hour… but today I figured I’d give it a shot to see if I could find that elusive “fall asleep” point.

It’s been a tough point to find… but I think I FINALLY nailed it, but only once.  So I’m sitting here with my eyes closed, feet flat on the floor and my arms folded in front of me and I’m doing a mostly “noticing”-type exercise, just watching the forms appear and wave around in front of my eyes, to which I now realize *IS* Robert Monroes Focus 12.  A post from Frank mentions this perfectly.

“It used to happen to me all the time where I’d just be settling into the Focus 12 state; where it is natural to perceive all manner of outline shapes and shadows, or whirls of colour, and so forth”

Those forms started to come about after a period of relaxing… and obviously weren’t there to begin with.

Then for a second, I felt the shift and I was engulfed in the blackness… which if I had to describe it, had depth to it, and it was VERY black.  I have lights on in my office right now and I can see a bit of the light bleed through my eye lids, but after I felt that shift, everything just went straight to black.  The Blackness seems to be Focus 21, which means I’m shooting through a few other focus levels without even realizing it… that’s probably what the sensation of movement or that shift is.  One day I’ll have to try to slow it down and see.  For now, I’ll just stick with this practice.

Now, I didn’t notice it right away… but I did notice and felt the shift, which was my goal.  Now I need to try and pin point the exact moment it starts.  So I was in the blackness, then my physical eyes decided to kick in to get a look at it… and bam!  I find myself back in my office.

Another quote from Frank:

“As you begin to perceive those impressions try and remain as mentally still and as neutral as possible. Simply be a passive observer and just let events unfold.”

I found that prior to the shift happening, I was remaining fully relaxed and was just “watching” the shapes rolling around in front of me.  What is surprising to me right now is how easy it was to hit that Focus 12 state.  And now that I think about it, I’ve had this experience before with the rolling and floating shapes, but I never made the connection to this before.  So I now know what to look for when I get there.

Definitely progress.  :)

Yesterdays Meditation – Sept 14, 2010

I sat down yesterday right after work to meditate a bit… I had no particular goal in mind.  It wasn’t like I was sitting down to do any phasing practice or anything.  Keep in mind that I’m still working towards my first “conscious projection exit”… meaning from a fully awake state, instead of my usual “wake up in a dream” thing that I currently do.

I put my iPod earbuds in and turned on some Carlos Nakai flute music… really relaxing stuff to me.  :)
Anyways, about 10 minutes go by and I’m really relaxed listening to the flute music and I start to feel disoriented… like I physically know which way I’m facing, but I’m sensing that I’m just all over the place, plus I had a sensation of slowly spinning around.  I think this was kind of along the lines of the “noticing” exercise used for Phasing. I was just passively observing these changes in motion.

As I was doing that observing, I felt as if I immediately shot up and backwards, but it startled me, because I came right back as soon as it happened.  I’ve felt that particular thing before, but this time it REALLY caught me off guard… it was as if I was standing in an elevator and it just DROPPED.

So yeah, I just felt like sharing that.  I hope you can take something away from this experience that might be of help to you. :)

How to Deal with Itches and Other Physical Distractions

We all get those dreaded itches and other things that attempt to distract us from our meditations or projection practice.  How you deal with them can ensure you have a good session or a waste of time.

People always ask what do they can do about things like itches, dry mouth, likewise or even intruding sounds.

I generally start by asking people how do they fall asleep at night?  Because the process between that and getting comfortable to meditate or practice projection are really the same.

So ask yourself that:  How do you deal with these obstacles so you can fall asleep at night.

Personally, if I’m just sitting down to meditate or practice my phasing, I’ll attempt to take care of whatever current distractions that there might be.  If I’m already in the middle of practice and an itch occurs, then I’ll calmly and slowly move towards the area and scratch it.  You should be able to move slightly without losing too much of your relaxation and focus… if you can’t, then I suggest practicing something to that effect because it truly is a good skill to utilize.

By treating your practice sessions as a mini-sleep, you can effectively learn how to handle any distraction that your body might come up with.
You can try pure will power and not pay attention to the itch or other problem, but in the end, it’s just easier to deal with it calmly than it is to not pay attention to it.

Now, say the distraction is sound related, say it’s something external from yourself.  Then you have only so many options.  You can try to stop whatever is making the sounds by, once again, calmly and slowly moving towards whatever is making the noise and quell it.  My personal favourite is to listen to some kind of music or something that’ll apply a bit of white noise to the room you’re in.  For me, I use my iPod with various sounds and music files on it… however, I need new earbuds, cause the ones that came with the iPod don’t fit me well and cause too much pressure.

Another technique for dealing with “sounds” is to visualize the sound washing over and past you.  This works very well and if you’re like me and want to learn how to deal with sounds without them becoming an obstacle in the first place, then this is the one to practice.  Visualize the sound as a wave of water washing over your entire body, going around you and then leaving you forever.  It works great.

Anyways, that’s all I have for now about taking care of distractions.  I hope this helped a bit.  :)

Isochronic Tones

Someone posted this link on the Astral Pulse and I wanted to share it with everyone here as well.

They’re Isochronic Tones, I apologize for the harsh colour scheme they use… LoL

I don’t fully understand the differences between these and Binaural Beats, but wikipedia has this to say about them:

Isochronic tones are regular beats of a single tone used for brainwave entrainment. Similar to monaural beats, the interference pattern that produces the beat is outside the brain so headphones are not required, but since isochronic tones are more pronounced, the stimuli is even stronger. They differ from monaural beats which are a sine wave pulse rather than entirely separate pulses of a single tone.

That sounds pretty self explanatory.

I plan on downloading some of these and trying them out soon. I’ll keep everyone updated on how well they work.
Just remember that, as with everything else, these will also be an individual thing. They’ll work for some people and not for others.

Focus 10: Mind Awake / Body Alseep, Written by Ashes/Fred

I wanted to share this article with you that I read a short while back, written by Fred, the administrator of Explorations in Consciousness.

I was always unsure about the state of mind known as Focus 10, and it helped me IMMENSELY in recognizing that I was, indeed, getting to that state… and getting there rather easily.

Focus 10: Mind Awake / Body Asleep

I’ll put the first bit here just to wet your appetite.

Copyright Notice
Copyright 2006, explorations-in-consciousness.com. All rights reserved. Permission for non-commercial use is hereby granted, provided that this file is distributed intact. Quotations must be properly cited.

The concept of phasing
For those unfamiliar with the focus levels a little background is in order. The story goes back to Robert A. Monroe, who began to experience involuntary Out of Body Experiences (OBE) in 1957. These early experiences have been documented in his first book “Journeys out of the body” (Monroe, 1971). It was also during this time that Monroe discovered that sound patterns could induce certain states of consciousness, which eventually led to the creation of the Monroe Institute and patented sound technology called Hemi-Sync.

While the early experiences of Monroe were often characterized by a sensation of leaving the body his development took a different turn in later years. Monroe discovered the “quick-switch”, which allowed him to move from one “location” to another in an instant by stretching or reaching out with his consciousness. Eventually, this led Monroe to consider the “second body” to be no more than “local traffic”–mere habit due to the physical experience (Atwater, 2001). Thus, the implicit philosophical background behind ‘phasing’ is that there is no such thing as “leaving the body”, since consciousness is never really ‘in the body’ to begin with. Rather, all experiences which constitute things such as “trance”, “hypnosis”, “altered states”, “meditation”, “OBEs”, and “astral projections” are simply variations on the same theme where consciousness is focused in different ways and in different degrees away from the physical.

The term phasing is a metaphor derived from physics, which conceptualizes consciousness as a waveform that can either be aligned or non-aligned with physical reality. For example, when we are 100% phased into the physical were are considered perfectly aligned with normal physical input and waking reality. In Monroe speak, this is called C-1 consciousness or primary phasing. As consciousness moves further away from the physical (and the senses) consciousness is said to phase into other “focus levels”. The first of these is focus 10 – the state of mind awake/body asleep.

Achieving the focus 10 state is facilitated by tapes or CD’s, which utilize binaural beats to influence brain wave patterns in the person listening to them. These tapes are sold as part of a set of tapes/CDs called The Gateway Experience by the Monroe Institute. In particular, the set of tapes (Wave I) of the Gateway Experience is geared towards establishing the focus 10 state, while subsequent series (Wave II to VI) gradually increase the phase shift away from the physical. These focus levels have been described as follows (Monroe, 1994, p. 248):

Focus 10: Mind Awake/Body Asleep
Focus 12: A state of expanded awareness
Focus 15: State of no time
Focus 21: The edge of time/space where it is possible to contact other energy systems.

It is important to realize these focus levels are merely arbitrary numbers and signposts to identify the state of consciousness one is in. In case you’re wondering, there is no focus 14 or focus 16. However, beyond focus 21, several other focus levels have been identified further removed from the physical, and which involve among other systems the perception of belief system territories (” astral planes”). Thus, The Gateway Experience is meant as a platform from which to explore further on your own. For more information, I suggest you visit the website at the Monroe Institute at www.monroeinstitute.org.

It’s a long read… but a very worthwhile one, in my opinion.
I hope this article helps you as much as it helped me.

My First BWGen Binaural Beat Sound File

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=FYM6FM77

So, basically, I used the BWGen program (http://www.bwgen.com) it starts you off at 8hz (so as not to hurt your ears) and then over 10 minutes takes you down slowly to 4hz… then keeps you there for 40 minutes.  Afterwards it takes you back up to 8hz over another 10 minutes.  :)

I had one that started at 15hz, but it was much too ear piercing. LoL
I use this one quite often with good results.  I find that the sensation of my consciousness goes down, down, down as the tone lowers.

Lemme know if it downloads and works okay.

Clearing Your Mind

I just posted this over on the Astral Viewers forums, and I figured I’d put it here as well.  It’s a question that a lot of people ask… how exactly does someone clear their mind?  :)

The Astral Viewers

The point isn’t to “clear” your mind.
Doing that is a very hard thing to do… and I consider it to be overboard for projection.

What you want to do is quiet the “surface thoughts”.
These are the thoughts that you randomly have throughout the day as you’re going about your business… “Hmmm what should I make for dinner tonight?”
“Oh that girl has a hawt butt.”
“I hope <so and so> doesn’t happen later!”

Those are “surface thoughts”.  When you’re meditating, they can account for thoughts like, “am I doing it right?”… or “I don’t think I’m asleep yet”.

Those are the thoughts you want to “clear”.

You do by catching the thought before it has a chance to completely form.  You do this as a process.
Let’s take “am I doing it right?” for example.

You might miss catching it first and the whole thought gets out.
Next time it’ll be “am I doing it….”
Then “am I do….”
so forth and so on until you just get down to “….”
Then eliminate that as well.

It takes a bit of practice, but it’ll help your projection practice a lot.

What is Grounding and Centering Yourself?

What is Centering?

Centering, refers to your mental and physical state. Centering means to calm your emotions and slow your mind and your breathing to a point where you can ‘feel’ a lot more going on around AND inside you. It’s like a state of alertness, but really relaxed at the same time.  It’s described as “Mindfulness”.

For things like Astral Projection, it’s VERY important to always remain centered.  This means keeping your thoughts and most importantly your emotions in check at all times.  Staying “calm” is centered.  You can practice this throughout your physical life… for example, say someone cuts you off in traffic?  What’s the usual response you might give?  You sit there in your car mouthing insults into the air, you might even flip the person the finger.  At this moment, you’re the exact OPPOSITE of centered.

Realize that anything you do, however you react isn’t going to change what happened.  Take a deep breath if you have to, count to 5 and then just accept what happened and allow yourself to release it.  This is the act of centering yourself.

For meditation purposes, to center yourself breath in for a count of 5 (or however long it takes to slowly fill your lungs), then out for a count of 10 (rule of thumb is twice as long as the inhale)  You’ll know when you’re centered when you feel calm and at peace.

It’s a pretty self explanatory experience really.  If you’re not sure what it feels like, then you haven’t reached it. It’s really not hard though. Just don’t “TRY” too hard and it will come. Now you can Ground yourself.

What is Grounding?

Grounding is a term used mostly in conjunction with energy. Grounding means to get rid of the excess energy in your body and provide a path for new, clean energy to come through. It’s important to always have a good flow of energy coming in and going out when meditating and doing any energy work.

Most people Center themselves before they Ground themselves. It’s just a logical way to do it. First you calm the energy, then you move the energy.

How do you Ground your Energy?

This is a very simple exercise to ground yourself that can do almost anytime you want if you’re feeling unbalanced or anxious or just beaming with extra energy that you have no current use for.

Sit down, close your eyes take a DEEEEEEP breath. Exhale slowly. While exhaling visualize a root system growing downwards from yourself. Visualize it growing down towards the earth farther and farther until it reaches the earth below you.  If you’re in a high rise or a higher floor of a house, you’ll need to visualize this until you feel you’ve reached the “earth” below you.  When you feel the connection, visualize your old energy moving down that root system and then new energy coming in through the top of your head. This will provide a nice even flow coming through your body to aid you in any energy work you intend to do.