Adrift in the Ether

I could no longer feel my body, the tingling sensation that had started in the tips of my fingers, which had been gently pressing against each other, moved its way up my arms to permeate my whole body. I felt myself floating upward and could see the roofline of my house, situated on its lot close to the Caribean sea. Like a helium balloon accidentally set free in a moment of distraction, I continued skyward without a known destination. Weightless and steeped in the darkness of space, I looked down at the milky way galaxy from an elevated position. I could see what seemed like infinite points of light, shining from the one billion stars that make up earth’s cosmic neighbourhood. For the first time on my journey into mysticism, I truly felt I understood Dr. Joe Dispenza's theory of connecting to the quantum field and achieved a state in which I was no body, no one, no thing, nowhere, and no time. Although I didn't quite get there through the exact method he prescribes, I experienced this awe-inspiring state of consciousness nonetheless. Ultimately this reinforced my belief that a specific step-by-step process isn't essential to a fruitful spiritual practice. All that you need is determination, belief, and consistent meditative practice.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I have been cultivating a practice of meditation for a handful of years now. Mindfulness is the foundation for this practice, but I also incorporate a variety of methodologies I have come into contact with over time. The mindfulness portion allows me to observe my thoughts and emotions from a place of impartiality and nonjudgment. You may be wondering, “what's the difference between thinking thoughts, and observing thoughts?” Isn't observing a conscious act and therefore, a form of thought? Well, there is definitely a blurred line between the two in theory, but in practice, the difference is significant. As I understand it, the difference is in the act of watching your thoughts or emotions arise, compared to simply thinking or being consumed by thoughts or emotions. Observation of thought is marked by an awareness of the thought itself. It is separate from the baggage that often comes along with thoughts, namely negative feelings, and emotions. Mindfulness allows me to parse out a portion of my consciousness and watch how it behaves. Interesting things tend to happen when I do this and I tend to notice that I'm not really in control of what pops into my mind. I often feel as if I am not really the thinker of my thoughts, but instead, a conduit for them. Thoughts flow in and out of consciousness like waves rolling onto a beach.

After some time in practice, I feel it's natural to begin to notice that the things conjured in the mind are not always of one’s own essence. I routinely hear sentences or phrases, almost like snippets of conversations overheard in a noisy restaurant, that are not things I would normally say or think. These thoughts will also appear as fleeting emotions that have no context to my daily life, or as fuzzy images- and not necessarily visual images, but more like impressions of images in my mind's eye. I have come to see consciousness as kind of like a revolving door in a department store, with thoughts pushing their way in, going about their business, and then exiting, often as quickly as they came.

Now that I understand these conscious occurrences as not mine, it helps me to manage them better. I am no longer beholden to them. I don't feel the need to be attached to any negative emotions that may arise because these feelings aren't actually mine. They have simply found a brief refuge in my mind and body, and I can choose to be a bystander and simply observe them as they pass through. I liken this to sitting on the city stoop of my consciousness, watching the thoughts busily rush by on the streets of my mind.

When I reflect on a past experience with a ‘hero dose’ of psilocybe cubensis (aka magic mushrooms), this ‘open’ state of my conscious awareness begins to make perfect sense. I plan to write an in-depth post about that high-dose experience but the long-of-the-short is, it left me with an unshakeable belief in a universal consciousness that connects us all. Just like the face in the darkness from my previous post, the random thoughts that appear to be not my own, actually aren’t. I see these as evidence of this greater field of consciousness, which I have tapped into through mediation and psychedelic experiences, and they are transmitted from outside me, to my singular node of consciousness. I also plan to write more about my thoughts on consciousness in an upcoming post. Anyhow, I digress.

If I find that my mind wanders or I lose track of my focus due to an errant thought, the mindfulness aspect prevents me from falling down a rabbit hole and allows me to restart, without feeling too sorry for myself. Mindfulness is also the basis for the heart-brain coherence breathing that I do. Heart-brain coherence is the practice of connecting your heart and brain to produce greater connectivity to one's higher self and the universe at large. Typically with heart-brain coherence, you focus your attention on your heart as you breathe, almost like you're imagining the air being drawn in through your heart with each breath. Research in the 1990s discovered that the human heart contains some forty thousand neurons, akin to those in the brain. These neurons, however, act independently of those in the brain and have led researchers to describe the heart as a ‘little brain.’ Research has also shown that heart-focused breathing increases the electrical connectivity between these two points in the human body, with profound outcomes for practitioners.

I first encountered the concept of heart-brain coherence through the research and writings of Dr. Joe Dispenza, but have since come across it when reading Dr. Bruce Lipton, Gregg Braden, and others. Some primary benefits of heart-brain coherence include feelings of personal wholeness, deep inner peace, and oneness with oneself and the universe. Heart-brain coherence can also reduce stress, increase energy and improve one's vitality and overall quality of life. There is a lot of solid scientific evidence for the benefits of such a breathing practice released by the Heart Math Institute. I encourage you to look into this and practice it for yourself.

In typical me-form, I have adopted a slight alteration to the standard heart-brain coherence. I still use the technique of focusing on my breath with a spotlight on my heart but I have also added a focus on the pineal gland within my brain. I breathe in through my heart, imagining the energy of my breath traveling up my spine from the back of my heart, to the area in my brain where the pineal gland is located -in between my ears and approximately at a height just above my eyes. When I exhale, I imagine expelling the breath out the top of my head, where the crown chakra is located. On the next breath, I reverse the order and breath in from my crown chakra into the pineal gland, and then send the energy down along the same path as before but in reverse, into my heart and then exhale outward from there. I will alternate this breathing pattern back and forth throughout a session.

I added this extra pineal gland focus to my practice because this area of the brain has long been understood to be the seat of the third eye. Interestingly, the pineal gland somewhat resembles the ancient Egyptian symbol, the Eye of Horus, which represents protection, health, and restoration. The third eye chakra has long been considered the gateway of the soul and the higher spiritual self. From a scientific standpoint, the pineal gland is known to be sensitive to light and this function helps aid in the regulation of melatonin secretion. Through the work of Dr. Joe Dispenza, when stimulated by focused attention and higher bioelectric activity, the pineal gland has been shown to produce profound metaphysical experiences. Dr. Dispenza’s research indicates that practitioners of pineal gland activation can connect to the universal quantum field that underlies our classic, material reality. Once connected, it is believed that practitioners can influence the field to their benefit, also known in metaphysics as ‘manifestation.’

The pineal's link to spiritualism and the quantum field is made more clear when you consider its activation by light and the regulation of melatonin. Light is composed of elementary particles called photons, and these are understood to be fundamental carriers of information. Melatonin is a hormone secreted in the brain by the pineal gland and plays a key role in regulating the body's circadian rhythm and sleep cycles. Sleep and dreams specifically have long been understood as a way for your higher self to connect and communicate vital information. When you put all of this together, pineal gland activation can put you into a dream-like state in which you can directly connect to a universal field of information to gain knowledge, key insights, and personal and spiritual growth.

When you overlay this understanding of light and information with meditation, it also becomes apparent that the human mind has the ability to transcend reality and connect to the omnipresent field of energy and universal consciousness. Thoughts, after all, are electromagnetic representations of neuronal information. Put another way, thoughts are energy and energy radiates out from its source in the form of waves (or particles, it depends on how one is watching), carried by photons. And when you factor in quantum entanglement- which I will, again, touch on in a later post -it could very well be that these outside thoughts I receive during sessions, is information from a distant source. If more time is spent in meditation, more information can be received to fuel the goal of discovering the higher self.

As a result, I often incorporate into my meditations, positive affirmations for quantum manifestations and loving-kindness intentions, while I send my breath along this path to and from my heart and brain.

I know, this probably sounds highly involved and maybe a little over the top but it works for me. I also haven't just thrown this together willy-nilly, despite how much of a hodgepodge it may seem. I feel that this mode of practice is more aligned with my place along the spiritual spectrum as I have created this practice for myself and developed it over several years. I see all the aspects I have incorporated into my practice as closely related to one another and each fosters a part of my inner being I wish to cultivate.

The last aspect of my practice includes a CE-5 protocol using coherent thought sequencing but this post is getting a bit long and I have future plans to write a separate post about CE-5.

Whatever method you choose for your mediation practice, there are some commonalities that I feel link them all: focusing on the breath, quieting the mind, observing thoughts, feelings, and emotions, fostering positive intentions and emotions of love and universal connectivity and oneness. I feel that these experiences are revealing of one’s true nature and they give a glimpse at the underlying reality of consciousness.

Despite everything I’ve described above, my practice is by no means perfect. I am, on occasion, very distracted during my practice and struggle to observe, getting caught up in my thoughts and other occurrences of consciousness. Often, I fail to practice each day, allowing days to pass before I create time to sit again. Sometimes, I lose mindfulness altogether and struggle to integrate the experiences of meditation into my daily life. As a result, I’ll find myself drenched in feelings of fear, frustration, lack, inadequacy or anger, and can't seem to understand how I’ve let these get the best of me. As I write this, I am experiencing such a period. I have definitely strayed from my path of practice and I am struggling to find my way back. I have become caught in the proverbial weeds and my feet are so tangled up in them that getting back to the path seems like a monumental task.

As much as I would love them to be, my moments of insight and mystical experiences aren’t regular occurrences. I’ll will sometimes put extra pressure on myself to have these experiences, trying to force them, which is ineffectual and counterproductive. However, part of me understands that these moments of resistance and blockages are opportunities to learn and grow, even if it isn’t obvious at the time. It’s in moments like these that I need to dig deep and step back from myself and my thoughts and just watch without expectation. Meditative practice is very much a journey, one of discovery, without a destination. In the words of writer Gertrude Stein, “there is no there there.” Even without a destination, the practice of meditation is still valuable. Apart from cultivating a sense of calm and inner peace, mediation has produced some profound experiences for me. The closest things I have previously experienced to these were induced by psychedelic substances. Psychedelics are valuable tools but like any tool, if you overuse it, it wears or breaks, so I feel it's best to have these types of experiences in moderation. Meditation does provide a doorway into this realm, and with practice, it's possible to achieve -some will even claim, more intense- metaphysical experiences. Plus, I am a husband and father of two, so ‘tripping-balls’ all the time isn’t really practical.

Still, I so desperately want to be perfect, for my wife and two boys especially, but there is a part of me that knows this isn’t possible. Anyhow, I suppose life isn't about being perfect but about learning and gaining experience, and mistakes and failures are essential for personal and internal growth. If we were perfect all the time, growth opportunities probably wouldn't exist.

Evidently, my practice has an ebb and flow to it, for better or worse, and eventually, I will find my way back to steady practice. When I do, I hope to stay on the path just a little bit longer, and over time, hopefully, the weeds that border the path won't be as thick, or perhaps not present at all.

Despite the inherent challenges, one thing is for certain, with even a little practice, the time it takes to recover from negative thoughts, feelings, and emotions is greatly reduced. With a few deep breaths and a brief moment of internal quiet, I can bring myself back into balance, even if it's just momentary.

"Here is my secrete. It is very simple: it is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye." - Antoine de Saint Exupéry