by Liz B | Feb 23, 2016 | Consciousness, Out of Body Experiences, Spirituality
A couple of weeks ago I left my body for the first time, consciously, yet during sleep. In the last 6 months or so, many “lights” have turned on in my head and I have come to understand the self in a much larger sense even than before even though I wasn’t necessarily seeking to.
For those of you who might be reading this that don’t already know me, I’ve had a natural “spiritual sense” for as long as I can remember. Meaning, I was never one to blindly believe in anything (I grew up an atheist regardless of going to the Mormon church for years as a kid and a Catholic high school), but spirituality was a natural part of me since the time I was young, and I wouldn’t have ever given it a label if I didn’t have to in order to communicate the idea. In fact, to say it’s a part of me is strange – because everyone is a spiritual being; it’s just that only some are aware of it.
“I wish I were a real girl”
One of the many things I’ve felt over the course of my lifetime is that I’ve never felt “real.” From the time I was as young as 5 years old and probably before that, I’ve always had this feeling of life being surreal to me. I even remember once saying to my friend at age 7 or 8, “I wish I were a real girl” (funny, I know).
As I got older and started to understand myself, spirituality, and my place in this world further, I realized that the part of me I identified with the most was not the one interacting on a daily basis. It wasn’t the one working at a job, interacting with people, or playing my role here on this Earth. That was secondary to who I was. I intellectually knew this already, but the self comes in many layers that can be deeply explored to greater and greater levels. There was something very far behind all of this that I kept wanting to further explore, to understand it more and receive any insights along the way.
It wasn’t until I came across near death experiences on nderf.org (and I must say at the right time in my life; at any other time I may not have been as open and the stories may not have been as relatable as they are to me now). Reading these actually gave me a faint sense of “remembrance” – of remembering things that would come back to me based on certain things people would say and how they’d phrase certain things in the journey into other states of consciousness. That’s what was so remarkable. Sometimes what they would say would spark visions in my mind of another world.
In fact, I read hundreds of them before I finally had an out of body experience myself, which was completely unexpected, as I had never had anything like it in my life, wasn’t anticipating it, and wasn’t meditating at the time (though I suppose you could call reading near death experiences a sort of meditation).
Lucid Dreaming
The experience started in what felt like a lucid dream (I’ve also never had a lucid dream previously in my life). Right before I had fallen asleep that night, I had read an experience about a man who was at a funeral for his niece who had died at only 19 years old. He had had no previous spiritual experiences of any sort, and yet he heard her talking to him during her own funeral. He barely believed it, but she kept talking to him and showing him things – images and messages. She told him that she wasn’t talking to him directly, but he was the only person to be able to hear her. Her name was Michelle.
After I finished the story, I fell asleep. Then I found myself in what felt like a consciousness state where I felt awake and asleep at the same time (essentially a lucid state), and wondering if I could possibly talk to Michelle. I expressed with my mind in this “dream” that if in the nonphysical dimension, time is more or less meaningless and energy can will itself to wherever it wants, then SHOW me – maybe I could communicate with a spirit like Michelle right in that moment (this was essentially me first understanding certain attributes of a non-physical dimension, then inviting and wanting an experience).
What was different about this was that I was asking for an experience to happen while not being in an ordinarily consciousness state. I could not, while completely awake, just think about wanting an experience then willing it to happen immediately. My state of consciousness was already different being that I was in this lucid state.
Immediately after that, my entire body started vibrating HARD. Legit, actual vibrating, and my body kept fluctuating from hot and cold, and it was LOUD. Not loud in our everyday physical dimension, but the noise was heard in my mind. It sounded like a train chugging along on its tracks. The vibrations woke me up, so after they stopped I was essentially awake but had the strangest sensation I have ever had. Almost as though I can lift up out of myself, but I didn’t know what had just happened so I didn’t even realize that I was somewhat disconnected from my body and likely could have willed myself further out.
It ended there because being mostly awake now, my rational mind piped in and went “WHAT just happened?” and I had a natural fear response to it – I laid there for a while then when I could get myself together I looked up the “vibrations” and realized it was a common symptom that happens before you’re able to leave your body.
The vibrations in and of themselves felt very significant to me personally, since they encompassed my whole body, and felt as though they could take my body to another dimension of reality. I thought it was incredible in the moment, and the vibrations actually felt pretty good to me (albeit intense) as long as I was able to enjoy them.
I wish I could have gone farther, but what was a bit odd in my experience is that it wasn’t until the next day that I began to realize some of the other aspects of the experience (perhaps I needed some time to process what had happened).
The next day, I realized an intense, all-encompassing, pure sense of love.
Love doesn’t even do the word justice, because our Earthly experiences of love are nothing like what this was.
I realized during the experience that I felt as though I had fully “met” my higher self, and this higher self actually felt like it was almost a separate being from me, but was myself at the same time. I’m still not sure 100% of it was a separate being or not, but I am fairly sure it wasn’t. I felt like this presence is with me at all times, and one of the strongest parts about it was that I felt like I was the child and it was the parent. It gave me the sense that I was always being taken care of by it, or looked over by it. Even now a few weeks later, even though I don’t sense its presence the way I did during and shortly after the experience, I can still feel its love at any time, and I talk to it often (if some witnessed my conversations in my mind they’d think I’d gone insane).
This love I felt is a love unlike anything experienced in our typical earthly lives – it carries incredible wisdom. You can learn so much from it just by experiencing it. Your current beliefs or thoughts would not matter, because this love shows you, in direct experience, that you belong to something greater. Nothing that we do in our earthly lives matters (not achievements, nothing) as much as how well we are able to love ourselves and others.
It is incredibly difficult (if not impossible) to accurately describe. But it also showed me directly, just by being itself, that we are not alone in a cold, and indifferent universe left with only our speculation or interpretations of it; but rather we are here on this earth for just a temporary time – a small interval of our existence to experience things, to learn, and most importantly, a complete part of a massive whole. While it’s important for now, there is so much more to YOU than your earthly role and your body.
We are just children here and very immature in our wisdom. Again, I grew up an atheist, non-religious, and I still don’t interpret anything as a “God,” but if I did I would call this love “God,” and this love is equally and us all, accessible to varying degrees at any time, always guiding us, should we only remember how to recognize and listen to it.
By the way, I am only one out of thousands that have had this experience of love and higher vibrational states, most often experienced in an NDE rather than purely an out of body experience. I am forever grateful for what this experience showed me – or in other words, what I allowed to happen to myself.
By the way: If you have had an out of body experience yourself and/or know a lot about this topic, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
by Liz B | Sep 13, 2015 | Consciousness, Mental Health, Mindfulness and Meditation, Spirituality
The other night I was on the phone with my mom, and she recalled a spiritual experience I had in 2005 (but this isn’t the exact experience I’m going to talk about in depth today. Stay tuned for part 2 for that one). She said, “tell me what you saw again exactly? And, how did you even get there to begin with?” She had been coming across more and more accounts of people from all different backgrounds and life experiences that were experiencing these remarkable things in regards to evolution of their mind and consciousness. She noted that so many of these people seemed so different, but were coming to the same conclusions as each other and as I have.
Similarly, what I’m seeing now the longer I’m alive, is that more and more people are become “spiritually” aware (which in my mind is something I’d normally just term “awareness” in general). Though we still have a gaping lack of this spirituality (or awareness) in this day and age, I feel like I see more people around me that get it. It could just be me noticing it more, too. Regardless, I always knew it was something inherent in all of us. But many times, what people do and what they believe actually turns them away from their own guiding light.
My mom had began to become more and more curious…with herself wanting to see what others have seen. This conversation with her led me to decide I would write a bit about how my own spiritual experiences happened and how they have affected me today for any others who might have this same wonder; or for those who might be curious about how their own experiences are similar to mine. It’s been a while since I’ve thought about them much and recounted them, so I’ll take you with me on my journey:
My Journey Into a Higher Awareness: The First Experience
First of all, I’ll start by saying…I’ve always been a “spiritual” person. And by that I don’t mean I was ever into church, religion, or even doing anything that represented the typical concept of spirituality. I can just say I have always been introspective, and I’ve always listened to my intuition. Aside from that, I wish I could recall every important detail about what was going on in my mind at the time of my actual spiritual experiences. But there was a lot, and it was a long time ago.
The first one started when I was about 18. I became more withdrawn…preferring to be alone most of the time. As mentioned, I was always introspective and somewhat introverted. But this felt like a strong pull. I really don’t remember what specific things were going on in my head except for a few moments that stuck out to me forever. Like how every night I would go to bed and I would feel like I was somehow getting closer to myself, my essence. I was also a big runner back then, and while running I’d often imagine myself running through a forest path with parrots flying alongside me and being completely and totally free. Attached to nothing…just running, just living, just experiencing.
I then somehow came across 101 Zen Stories from some online forum, and I began reading them. I didn’t know much about Buddhism or Zen Buddhism at the time, but I noticed a particular sense of deep calmness that came over me when I read them. I thought, “hmm, that’s weird…I just feel so at peace from these.” That clued me on to the fact that there was something deep within me that resonated with these stories.
Many times other thoughts, concepts, and images would come to me that felt strong, but I had no idea where they were coming from or even the full picture of what they meant. This was my intuition working for me. I became inspired to write poems at this time that tried to express concepts that were coming to my head…but I didn’t even fully understand their significance at the time.
No Value Judgments
I remember walking around Portland, OR, where I lived, and at this time a feeling overpowered my mind about an idea of a world without value judgments. Where nothing is judged as good or bad by anybody or anything, but is seen completely free of these value judgments. Try to imagine that. A world where people just see things, and don’t apply values to them as one way or another. Things just exist as they are and there is no attachment to things. Complete neutrality. At this time, this theme was really strong during this first spiritual experience. When it came to me strongly at this moment while walking around, it seemed to actually alter my vision of what I was seeing. Everything started to blur together. Everything felt strange. And I knew that what people spent so much time doing, worrying and thinking about was essentially meaningless.
I think what was really happening here that made me feel so strange is that our world is of course based on value judgments. We’ve built up a world based on shoulds and shouldn’ts, on rules, on definitions, on concepts. We interpret the world through concepts that we’ve learned and accumulated over time. What’s behind the concepts? What is our perception made of if we erase the attachment we have about the ideas of what things mean and are? My intuition began to allow me to loosen up this meaning that myself, society, and individuals had attributed to things and my own self.
Fast forward to closer to the night before the actual direct experience. All I remember is that I was telling one of my friends, “I keep thinking of a world that has no value judgments… everything just is as it is…I can’t tell you how weird I feel right now, and I don’t know why.” The feeling I had was the key. I couldn’t put my finger on it. And why was it so strong? But I remember his response really clearly, which was, “Liz, utopia doesn’t exist.” There was more that he said, but that’s the part I really remember. I remember thinking too that his response was irrelevant. That what I felt didn’t have anything to do with trying to change what was existing currently, but rather that it was something more personal to me and what was going on with the framework of my mind.
Attuning My Mind to a Breakthrough
Also important to note during this time, I didn’t have a car so I took the bus to school. It was about a 45 minute ride from my house, through downtown Portland, and into SouthEast Portland where campus was. I would often naturally zone out on the ride there. My mind would automatically become mesmerized by the noises of my surroundings, and tune into something stronger, bigger, more massive than my own thoughts. This was basically meditation, but not only did I not consciously try to meditate, I didn’t even call it anything. It just was. It just happened.
I also had been reading books I had come across ever since the 101 Zen Stories (since that ended up affecting me in a positive way). The most important one I had encountered for me, was “Way of the Peaceful Warrior” by Dan Millman. This book was ridiculously funny (and by the way I’ve read it now 8 times or so and still find it hilarious), and it incorporated eastern philosophical concepts in a practical, easy to digest way. Especially the ever-so-commonly talked about concept of “I” in spiritual literature: when you use the concept of “I” — such as “I’m going to the gym” — who is the “I” in that statement? What ideas do you have about your own identity? It illuminates the fact that we conceptualize ourselves and attach ourselves to this idea of ourselves. And that this idea really just is a mental construct — it isn’t our true selves. Anyway, that whole subject could be a separate one or two blog posts. Or a whole dang book. The point is, I really marinated on these concepts in the book, and they only furthered the progress of what was already going on with me mentally.
The next day after speaking with my friend about a world with no value judgments, I ran on the treadmill at the gym. As mentioned, running was always a mental release for me too. I’d often automatically focus on the repetitive noise of my feet running on the treadmill, and it’d spur me out of my thoughts and focus just on the noise. My thoughts were being given less power, because I wasn’t putting energy into them. I was zoning into something else, a world that my thoughts didn’t dictate. A world where my mental constructs weren’t in the way. Weren’t dominating my perspectives.
The Direct Experience
After a few minutes of running, everything in my vision began to turn white. And, I could no longer feel my physical body while running, AT ALL. It’s almost as though I was dissolving. And I felt something open up in my mind…but it was just a few seconds of this (30 seconds or so) and I began to feel fear. Seriously — what in the hell is going on? What’s happening to me? But at the same time, I had the strongest urge to cry that I had ever had. Not out of sadness, but of pure relief and bliss. The strongest feeling I had at that time was that I felt like I finally found something I had been looking for for a long time. But I didn’t know from when, nor was I fully conscious that I was even looking for it. I’m not even sure I could define “it.” I also felt and saw that my entire life that I had lived felt like an illusion.
I went home and I cried that entire weekend, literally on and off crying nonstop. But I felt pure bliss, and a level of happiness that I hadn’t yet experienced in my life to date. I felt like my personal energy was glowing and overflowing from my physical body. I felt reborn. My mom was out of town that weekend, but when she came home, I tried to explain it to her. How do you explain something like that? What context do you give it?
This is what I said to her, when I could get the words out between tears: “The best way I can explain it is think about living on a planet that has a certain way of operating. It has certain characteristics about it that define it. You come to understand this planet, this world by the laws that you learn and perceive are defining it. You have an idea of what the world is by perception developed from experience and practical knowledge that you gain. It is the world as you know it. It’s life as you know it. Then, imagine suddenly waking up on a new planet (when you didn’t even know a new planet existed in the first place) that contained a whole new set of laws. It had a whole new set of definitions, or maybe a lack thereof, because it caused you to loosen up and dissolve your own definitions about your place in the world and the world itself. A part of your sense of identity dissolved away. You realized the perception you had of yourself and the world was extraordinarily limited and not relevant to the massiveness that it actually is. I directly experienced a glimpse of this massiveness. And it made my definitions, my framework of the world fall away. It shattered my life.”
This is why the tears were streaming down my face. In that short time period on the treadmill, that experience had shattered my boundaries, my perceptions, my framework, what I knew to be life, for good. That’s why my life in that moment up to that day felt like an illusion. Because the concept I had about it and myself was the grand illusion. And it made me realize that the world and myself can’t be defined by me, or they can, but those definitions have to be seen for what they are. Maybe as temporary tools, but nothing with any significant meaning. And they are potentially, and likely, limited. In our true nature, we are boundless, we are infinite, and full of endless potential. So when other people say things like this, they aren’t just spewing empty positive bunk. It’s true. You just have to believe.
Death Isn’t the Only Release
Some people don’t experience a release like this until death. When we are near death, we begin to let go of our attachments to this world — through our senses, and through our mind. I believe this is why so many people feel at peace in the moments before death. Death begins the process of the dissolving of our bodies and minds into the massiveness of the universe. The truth is, we can take our minds there now, while we’re still alive. We just have to be open and learn to let go of our ideas of ourselves and the world.
Why did this all start to unfold and then finish in one single direct experience, in a way that ripped through my mental limits, instead of just loosening them up slowly over time? Partly I can say this is because it wasn’t an intellectual process. It was a direct experience of a higher level of consciousness. But other than that, I’m not entirely sure and that’s something I don’t think I can put in words. How I describe the experience doesn’t even come close to the experience itself.
“After ecstasy, the laundry” –Zen Proverb
Well so that was a fantastic experience, but what now? Back to everyday life. Am I supposed to do anything different now? Experiences like this are ground-breaking, but eventually the potency and feeling of them fade away into a memory. I can say about 13 years later that while my mind’s framework is less limited and more aware, it is still easy to fall into the holds that society, people, and life experiences place on you. It can be really difficult to escape certain situations and circumstances and live closer to your soul (for lack of a better term). Sometimes your soul can get covered back up, a little bit. Some things end up tying you down — financial troubles, or maybe it’s just fear — and they can feel nearly impossible to get out of. But if you have an experience like mine, it’s hard to forget it. It’s hard to forget its importance. It’s hard to put something like that on the backburner and just succumb to a limited life. Yes it’s mostly mental, but when you have so many circumstantial things (such as your job, or other people) constantly controlling your life, people imposing their ideas of how you should live your life on you, I won’t say it’s impossible — but it is very difficult to feel free, and not like a slave.
If you listen to your intuition (or learn to listen to it), you’ll notice when something in your life isn’t aligning with you. But you have to have an understanding of what you truly want, first. It doesn’t have to be an intellectual understanding. Just an inherent feeling. But if you have fashioned your idea of yourself and your life completely after what other people have dictated and aren’t very aware of what’s outside of this (or aware that you have even created your own limits), you may not feel a strong contrast between what you truly want and what you have now. You may need to uncover the bullcrap first, and lean into your potential. It’s up to you to take action and learn what a truly happy life means for you, to understand limitlessness in perception, and how to take the steps to live it. It takes a strong and courage soul to pursue this, because it usually isn’t easy, and it requires patience and a strong belief in yourself.
I feel the best advice I can give to anyone about this — including myself as a constant reminder — is to think about every day what you want out of your life. What you truly want. Don’t let go of it. Don’t doubt it! Doubt will dim your light. I’m guilty of doubt, too. And in this world, it’s so easy to become so covered up and so used to limited feelings of happiness. So many of us don’t know what true bliss or freedom of mind feels like, or that it’s even possible.
Just remember: there are people with different levels of awareness walking around on this earth. Some whose light has been dimmed, some who have discovered their light and are 
following its path. There are a myriad of mental dimensions (maybe physical ones too) and levels of consciousness and no one can know their true limit. You are not truly defined by anything.
Stay tuned for my next blog post on my second spiritual experience in 2005.
“You cannot speak of ocean to a frog living in a well—a creature of a narrow sphere. You cannot speak of ice to a summer insect—a creature of a season. You cannot speak of the unvarying way to a pedagogue: his scope is too restricted. But now that you have emerged from your narrow sphere and have seen the great ocean, you know your own insignificance, and I can speak to you of great principles.” -Chuang Tzu
