Markdown lines 352–406 · Part 7 of 10
and once you're there not to let yourself you know go off into Dreamland totally yeah and and what what I would say too is that you slowly come to this realization that as all those different senses shut down something else is slowly waking up like this mind sense is waking up your imaginal capacities are waking up and exactly to your point there's like this line between being awake and asleep that you want to be on it's like and I think um I think Joe MCM
monal talked about this too is that there's this like Razor's Edge that you kind of want to be on in these in these states where trying to remote view or you're trying to go out of body that is like if you go one way or the other you're either too awake or you go you click out completely but you learn how to balance on this Edge as you go and that's where all the interesting stuff happens and we've and Mystics have known
this since time immemorial like the neoplatonist damus for instance he specifically talks about like the hypnogogic state is where a lot of things start to make themselves known but it's you have to develop this skill of staying there it's it's like again it's like a muscle or a technique that you need to develop and work on I suppose that's why everybody like uh has these things happen to them and they say it's it's at the witching hour at 3: in
the morning 3:30 in the morning it's not actually it doesn't actually have anything to do with the time it's just that's the state where you're the most relaxed where you're like waking up let's say but your body's still asleep that's exactly totally the right State yeah yeah and it changed my idea about sleep to some degree too because we really think of it dualistically most of the time I'm awake I'm asleep but when
you get even a little bit of skill at seeing that it's this Continuum it's like the this Continuum of Consciousness that really yeah at a certain point it does click over as you know so this this phenomenon of clicking out let's explain this when I first got there I'm like it's just going to sleep what are you talking about it's the same thing but then as time went on I kind of changed my mind and and began wondering too if they've captured
this in in brain waves like if you can see a difference between someone who has just gone through the natural progression into sleep versus someone who's in these states and they click out if there's any measurable difference I'm curious about that but so what clicking out is is like you're meditating you're in whatever Focus level and you just completely lose awareness for a little bit and it's like lost time and then you
suddenly are just like back in the meditation and you're like oh I missed some stuff what but I think what it is it's like you it's very sudden so so that's one of the reasons I think it's different than sleep it's not just like you everyone knows what it's like to go to sleep but this is like a weird these are like these weird sudden shifts in Awareness where it's like you're aware then you're not aware you're aware then you're not
aware time just like yep yep exactly just collapses you're like oh and I and a few times I came out of a clicking out State knowing that something else was just going on but then you immediately lose it like if you if you do that click out you're you're not going to remember whatever it was that's right um and then I don't know if I want to get into this yet but the peak experience that I had in the retreat involved kind of a very
fast progression between deep meditation clicking out coming back into something else that I was completely unaware of and then a very culator thing happening um but one of the things I want to say before we go there is it changed my idea a little bit about what imagination is like first of all I think it's just very sad that we as adults lose touch with our imagination and we diminish our imagination and we don't work on it we
don't almost none of us really use it or spend a lot of time in it because it is just such a magical singularly human capacity that has Endless Possibilities you know and it some work to to for me at least to get into states of very vivid imagination but it feels so good man it feels so good to just sink deep into your own kind of visionary Waters and be back in that place that you were really when you were a child you know like
somebody somebody tearfully shared this experience in one of our debriefs about how they were very close with like imaginal friends when they were little like they had imaginary friends but everybody basically scolded them for doing it you know and kids made fun of them for doing it and it really ends up orphaning these imaginal capacities when adults encourage you not you don't don't you're weird you don't don't have imaginary
friends you know like it so it kind of everything Downstream of an imaginary friend you're also shunning like anything that you don't know where it's coming from anything that you think is weird anything that you're not um able to reduce back down into a worldly origin is kind of just like shut off and that's that's so sad um but I also think of it as like you become very aware or at least you can become very aware in
these states of what is imaginal like what's origin point is imaginal and what's origin point is like that's not me like whatever that was that came from the outside there was no kind of origin for my own imagination um did you experience that too could could you delineate between like this is my imagination this is something else yeah um I think there's a well I mean there's active imagination true also and then there's like you know this sort of
passive imagination uh you know when we're in a dream I don't necessarily know what's going to happen right you know what I mean and does does that mean it's coming from an outside Source or is that coming from a deeper Source within me uh I I think it's all one and the same uh to to this is kind of how I see it is like you know if I'm in a dream here's here's the first of all is like I don't see a distinction between reality uh
when it comes to dream and being awake I think they're both real I think us saying something isn't real because we're asleep I think is a weird uh statement right especially because we spend a lot of time in that realm um you know we're also the only uh the only mammals who don't wake up during sleep if somebody walks in the room which is not a great uh thing for survival by the way right um you know and uh and and we
don't you know we don't need sleep if it's all energy based I could just eat and stay awake forever but that's you know there's more to it so you know for me um sleeping imagination Lucidity all these things I think are just another way to attain something that I I I don't have access to while I'm awake and I think that can come in many different forms so sometimes even if I imagine something I often wonder what compelled me to want
to imagine that yeah and that might be the same thing as some external piece of information coming into my meditation yeah you know so I I I I have a hard time uh distinguishing I guess between all of that I just consider it all part of the same realm yeah yeah there there's definitely some kind of at a minimum like compatibility right because whatever if it is outside it's able to get into the inside it's similar enough
that it can be in the same space and co-mingle um but I I came I was really resisting using my imagination too much because I didn't want to invent things that they were asking me to invent like I really was trying to make contact with outer like so so a lot of people there wanted to have an OB like they've been reading Bob and Rose books for years they wanted to experience an OB I thought that would be cool but that was
not my primary hope like I really you know I'm super into platonism and Western esoterism and all this stuff and one of the primary goals especially in the western esoteric tradition is to make contact with what's essentially like your Soul's guide or your Soul's keeper or your higher self yeah yeah yeah so they call that like the personal Dion or personal genius or the hga holy guardan yeah whatever and I I really wanted to have a
unmistakable encounter with that thing like something that I would be sure like okay this is real I'm in dialogue with it that was my sort of really out there goal I feel like I may have had subtle communication with that but it was not an an indisputable contact made I did it you know um so I was reluct to use my imagination but what I what I came to find out as the week went is imagination is like the appendage that you reach out
with in these non-physical States It's like because that's all you have is you need to start a sequence of thoughts or you need to start doing something imagin and that will start knocking over dominoes that you're like wait where does this go where does this go and then suddenly you'll find yourself in weird territory and I think it isn't I'm glad you said Act of imagination because from a yian perspective right like he would
do these active imagination exercises and for most people that do that they're comfortable saying this is all in my psyche but if you're viewing it as like I'm sort of leaving the firmament of what I know to be normal in my own mind and I'm reaching out with the sort of scaffolding of imagination to see what else comes and communes with that it really feels like that too like I think that's a valid way of considering what's
going on and framing the kind of stuff that's going on yeah kind of an open invite yeah um so obviously your whole series was kind of you you kind of framed most of it as a journey toward trying to achieve an OB but I'm wondering if there were more subtle things or more kind of visionary things that really stuck with you from that experience too yeah definitely prior to my out-of- body experiences so during Monroe I didn't have uh an outof body
experience I had many personal uh experiences that were very inward facing um you know at one point I had an emotional release and I don't know why I don't know all I felt was I think it was Focus 21 it might have been Focus 15 but I felt the smile on my face growing like I I literally felt it growing on my face I didn't I wasn't actively trying to smile but I felt my lips doing this and I was like and I was thinking to myself why are my lips doing
this and all of a sudden I came over I just this wave of intense gratitude yeah um brought me to tears in the middle of a meditation I just I just started I started being teary eyed and I started smiling and I had no you know sometimes if you're nostalgic or you're thinking on a fond memory or something that can bring tears to your eyes and bring emotions I had none of that it was spontaneous out of nowhere I felt in
insane yeah and uh then I realized there I I was just connecting with something deeper within me and I I it was just like you know letting go of like the pressure valve a little bit and kind of like wow like this eternal this this gratitude is filling me right now this gratitude that I can only speak about normally is now manifesting itself and I feel it without saying it without saying I'm grateful my body is showing me is is
telling me how grateful I I am right now and and that was just such a profound experience I did not expect right you know and aside from that I did have a few moments where I thought like you that I was in communication with something but didn't let myself really believe it because it was a little too nebulous for me to uh really say oh my God I Heard a Voice it was I heard something say you are and repeat this and it was like this booming voice but