Telltale signs of things going right

I officially started nightly sessions with The Gateway Voyage CD's again. I started with Disc 2, Advanced Focus 10. After going through the whole exercise I think I'll start from the beginning again as a refresher. I will probably not spend a lot of time with the disc one tracks 1 & 2, but I need to revisit them, just to get back up to speed. I will report on them subsequently.

In the mean time, I have discovered a handy microphone function on my Creative: Zen, MP3 player. I will be able to record my thoughts and experiences after every session in my own voice for later research. I think I will be able to save the files to my PC and if I can find a free host, I will post them here. Or I might find a way to provide them as downloads. I imagine I will be typing most of my posts here, but if anything exciting happens I'd like to let you hear it first hand. Otherwise, I'll be using my recordings for my own personal logs, and for transcribing for this blog.

Now to last night's session:

I discovered, last night, a few things about my methods and my expectations. You see, all my previous OBE and related experiences have been spontaneous and usually unprovoked. I would be asleep, nearly falling asleep, or just waking up from sleep, when my OBE's would occur. Each one was almost always preceded with wracking solid vibrations and paralysis or pressure or both; then the OBE would (maybe) occur.

In reading Monroe's books, listening to his CD's, and reading literature about the institute, I had decided that this state of vibrations and paralysis was the mind awake/body asleep state (MABA). Once I decided this (years ago) it became the point of reference that I worked from. Every time I lay down to induce an OOBE, or attempted any kind of consciousness exercise, I thought that I was not achieving anything unless I reached the vibrating, paralyzed, MABA. Talk about years of frustration! The only times I could consciously attempt to have an OOBE with promising results was when I was either waking up or falling asleep (more during the latter.)

All that said, once I decided what MABA was, I never once questioned that I could be wrong. So before I began this new round of the Gateway Voyage, I re-read the little booklet that came with the Gateway Voyages Wave I, the Q & A section. I came across a question that said something like, how do I know when I am in focus 10? The answer was; have no preconceptions about what Focus 10 was. (Focus 10 is what The Monroe Institute labels the mind awake/body asleep state.) Since I had always expected the same results from two different techniques, I was always disappointed when the same result never occurred after two different methods of consciousness exercises. I knew what happened when I accidentally reached a state of consciousness conducive to what I perceived to be an OOBE, so I assumed that was MABA, and that it and Focus 10 would be the same.

It was a revelation! I listened to Advanced Focus 10 last night, and during it, every time I had a moment where I was looking for vibrations, or any other thing to expect, I calmly went to my energy conversion box, put the thought/anxiety/expectation inside it and shut it away. It really DID help me to quickly remove the intrusive mental behaviors, thus enhancing my experience.

Though I had no strange experiences or OBE related events, I did become aware of a few things during last night’s session. One of those things is distractions. I was able to identify distractions that I was unaware of previously that I will have to eliminate. I also identified a few things about myself and my own preconceived 'methods' of inducing an OBE.

1. A noise free environment - I thought I had this one taken care of. Jen went to bed with the dogs and I shut off all the sound making electronics in the house and laid down on the couch for the exercise. I forgot about the Tick-Tocking clock on top of the TV. I forgot about the heating unit in the utility room just off the kitchen kicking on and off with a loud enough noise to distract. I forgot about the dogs next door out in their back yard barking away at random.

Solution, move my OBE's into my hobby room. Eventually the CHEC bunk will be in there so why not remove the clock and heating unit from my nightly exercises now? Also this will put a few more walls between me and the dogs next door. The CHEC bunk will have fabric and batting lined walls and ceiling with a heavy sound dampening curtain/shutter to cover the opening, so that will be nice too. (See this post about the CHEC bunk: http://arightmind-journey.blogspot.com/2007/12/new-beginnings-on-old-adventure-life.html )

2. A big distraction is my own mind. I need to be rested, empty bladdered, unstressed, and mentally relaxed. If these things crop up during the exercise, I can put most of them away in the energy conversion box. The others I will have to remember to address each and every time I lay down for these exercises.

3. My preconceptions. I MUST NOT expect anything to happen. I must not have any other goals than what I really want. So what do I want; to have a controlled OOBE? Yes, but not so during these first exercises. I must not expect it to happen. I must listen to the directions on the CD's, follow them, and calmly observe the results. I had to re-evaluate my desires for this. I re-visited the Gateway Voyage affirmation. There is nothing in there about OOBE. It's about perception and consciousness, and perceiving new things. That's what I really want; personal confirmation of my own abilities to be more than my physical body. Whether they are OOBE's or something else entirely. This was a freeing realization, let me tell you.

4. I must not be in a hurry. Patience is more than required; it is a necessary state for even being able to actively participate in the Gateway Voyage CD's.

The things I noticed that lead me to a deeper understanding of what was really going on:

By actually putting all my preconceptions aside, I was able to focus mindfully and with a calm detachment to the way I felt rather than watching for the things I expected to occur. When directed to enter Focus 10 I didn't try to shut out the sounds around me filtering in despite the head phones. I didn't try to ignore the sensations of my body. I didn't let intrusive thoughts halt the 'flow' of my consciousness to Focus 10. I instead noticed that if I just let myself listen to the CD, I 'drifted off' a little easier than trying it myself, all while still being totally awake, which is very hard for me on my own. There was no sensation of falling asleep as I normally know it. (Normally I am falling asleep and am jolted awake by vibrations, which in turn, shocks my mind into the paralysis and vibrations.) There was instead a gradual relaxing of my awareness of the world around me and a heightening awareness of the level of relaxation of my muscles and body, and subsequent detachment I was noticing between my need to be aware of the world around me and instead focusing on... what?

That is the question I can't wait to explore! Where did my mind go? It didn't 'go' anywhere it just shifted it's focus from the wakeful world to... another form of awareness? Wakeful sleep? I was still aware of my body if I wanted to be, but it was a conscious choice to be aware of it or not. I preferred not. I found that I could still be aware of the room and its sounds around me too but that was so distracting it almost pulled me out of my relaxed awareness.

Any ways, this Focus 10 I was directed into was an in and out thing for me, really. It was amazing when I could drift into it, and it was frustrating when I drifted out of it because of the barking dogs next door, or the heater turning on. But every time it happened I could put those distractions in my energy conversion box and get back to focus 10 fairly easily.

I know all this talk about Focus 10, and Energy Conversion Boxes might be confusing to you as a new reader to this blog, and I apologize for it. I wanted to convey my deep emotional response and growth to just one initial Gateway Voyage session. Like I said, I will be returning to the first CD tonight and moving forward from there.

Though I will not reveal the exact exercises from the CD's I will paraphrase as much as I can and explain them and their terms in my future blog entries.