Category Archives: Meditation Questions

astral-consciousness

How to Access The Akashic Records or Contact Your Spirit Guides

Posted on by

What most people have to realize is that the “akashic records” isn’t a place… it actually isn’t any “THING” at all. It’s not a “place” which you “go to”. It’s more akin to a huge database which collects and records data. Consider it a record of everything that HAS happened and everything that COULD HAVE happened… along with a potential for anything that COULD happen in the future. But mostly the first two things, because those are the more concrete things which can be recorded.

First off, remember… everything is consciousness… and that means YOU ARE PART OF CONSCIOUSNESS TOO! As such, this means that you always, at anytime, have direct access (although it might not seem that way at times) to it. All you need to do is learn to listen to it.

Through our non-physical experiences (what humans subjectively call a “dream”, “lucid dream” or “astral projection”, or any of the various other labels we use -> because, meh, they’re all the same thing anyway) we have more direct access to this information. While we’re experiencing this physical reality, we DO have direct access to it as well, but it’s only accessible through the same filters which our consciousness currently experiences this physical reality through. Meaning, you have to put up with all the interpretations and snap judgments your consciousness makes on a secondly basis. So, how do you go about to do this?

FIRST, you meditate… focus your mind. Unless, that is, you’re a person who is always in a focused state of mind… then you can kind of just shift your attention towards that focus.
But let’s face it, most people are absent minded these days. So, meditate… focus your mind for a few minutes… push away as much physical-ness from your awareness as you can. THEN, ask your question. Say it out loud… think it… do whatever you want… just make sure the Intent behind your question is strong and with a powerful purpose. THEN, sit back and wait for an answer.

This is the most important part of this process… your answer will most likely *NOT* be something verbal. Don’t get me wrong, it COULD come to you in a neatly verbal reply which you “hear”, but it probably won’t. As such, you need to listen intently to your body. The answer could come as a change in temperature… a breeze… it could be in the form of a memory popping into your mind… the point here being, remain COMPLETELY OPEN to *HOW* the answer comes to you. Don’t judge it, don’t analyze it, just accept it into yourself, however it comes.

That’s how you access this stuff while “physical”. This can be used to do more than just gaining access to the Akashic Records, or contacting your Spirit Guides… you can do anything you want with this really. Speak with your Higher Self, talk to other people’s Higher Selves… contact animal guides… your subconscious… anything. Keep in mind though, that all of those things are, pretty much, the same thing anyway.

Enjoy!

meditation-mindfulness

Meditation Mindfulness – How to Live in the Here and Now

Posted on by

Another Astral Pulse Moderator, Lightbeam, made a really great post on practicing Mindfulness which I wish to share here.

How to Live in the Now

I decided to make a post about mindfulness, because I see so many people around me either running ahead of life, or being left behind in their past. I catch myself sometimes doing this as well, but when I become aware and shift my thoughts, come back to the present moment and fully submerge myself within, the whole perception of life changes instantly. A lot of people are not even aware of this occurrence. Now, stop and think about what moment of the day have you fully experienced, observed and enjoyed without having rolling thoughts in the back of your mind about yesterday, or what are the plans for tomorrow? Sometimes we are given opportunities to experience wonderful events, but we fog them with constant worries, fears, etc. 

Have you come back from a vacation and you wished you could do it all over again, but this time  enjoy certain moments in stillness, rather than worrying about flights, hotels, expenses, etc? 

How many of you have actually stopped and analyzed a present moment with full awareness and have gotten so excited over your observations? I am asking this because I have noticed in my OBEs I am constantly in such a state. Here, not so much and I am trying to change that. But since I consciously started observing present moments, I feel happier and happier. Thing make more sense, life lessons become very transparent and challenges easy to overcome. 

If you forget to stop and smell the roses, then write it down somewhere , so that you get reminded and with time it will become like a reflex. That will help those who are trying to AP to gain more lucidity during dreams. By spending time everyday to observe your surroundings, events, interactions (good or bad) your awareness will raise its frequency. And don’t forget that the power is in the NOW.

Meditation – Quieting Mind?

Posted on by

Everyone hears about meditation and hears that “quieting your mind” is a must or else you’re not doing it right!

Meditation isn’t about quieting the mind. It’s never been about that.

Yes, you can ATTEMPT to quiet the mind… but then you’re using a manipulative force in order to do so… and when is manipulating anything into doing what it doesn’t want to do ever been a good thing?

Simply realize the truth… you are the awareness being aware of the thoughts being passed by it. Then simply let that event take place, non-judgmentally.

That is meditation.

Eventually you’ll also realize another truth about meditation… that meditation isn’t an act you do, it’s not something you put 10, 20, or 60 minutes aside per day to do. That’s the very act of blasphemy.

Meditation isn’t something you do, it’s a state of consciousness you exist in, at all times.

So by all means, don’t ever quiet your mind… instead, quiet yourself and listen to your mind.

Learning Astral Projection & Meditation – Emptying Your Cup

Posted on by

I think everyone, at one point or another throughout their lives, has hear this phrase before – “Empty your cup”.
It’s not directly spiritual or religiously related, although it can be related to just about every aspect of your life.

This is something that I have personally experienced, and I whole-fully believe that everyone has to do in order to progress on their path. That path can be learning Projection, Meditation, Spirituality in general… anything.

Empty your cupFor myself, it was relating directly to the first two… Projection and Meditation. Over the 15+ years I’ve been practicing meditation, I read and learned much about what others were telling me that meditation was about, the same was true about projection. Everyone was filling my head with what I should be experiencing and feeling when doing these things. What did I actually learn? I learned that all the stuff I was learning that I THOUGHT was the truth, actually wasn’t. What it was doing was getting in the way of what *I* was experiencing. I was throwing away valid and valuable experiences because they didn’t match up to what others were telling me. This is a huge mistake…

So I came to a conclusion that in order for me to actually progress, I had to forget everything I thought I knew about Projection and Meditation. My cup had become so full with the notions, ideas and concepts of other people, that I had no room for my own notions, ideas and concepts to grow and flourish. I don’t know exactly when this action happened, but it did… and ever since that day, I have found my own path through the forest instead of relying upon the footsteps of those who have come before me. I’m now self sufficient in my opinions and beliefs, because they’re no longer beliefs to me… they’re now based solely upon my own direct experiences, and as we know, “direct experiences” are the trump cards with knowledge.

So please, if you’re looking to learn anything new, be it anything about this physical reality or non-physical reality, you’ll be doing yourself a huge favour by forgetting everything you think you know and begin to explore with the wonderment of a child. Everything is new.

Forget the labels you’ve learned… dreaming, lucid dreaming, astral projection, out of body experiences, etc… forget it all. They are the labels of others… they only serve to confuse. Just go out and experience and learn from those experiences. 🙂

EDIT: It’s been pointed out to me that people are taking this too literal. What I suggest above shouldn’t be taken as such, it isn’t literal.
Nothing in relation to projection should ever be taken literally. I’m speaking about everything you’ve been told about what projection is supposed to be or is.

Your ideas.
Your concepts.
Your labels.
What you identify with Projection.

Ditch them as they’re useless to you.
Start from a position of “not knowing”.

Meditation – Myth of the Experienced Meditator

Posted on by

Bob Hiller posted this on Facebook, and I wanted to share it with everyone here too!

If you’ve been meditating for a long time, you might recognize some of the things this fine gentleman has to say. I know I sure did. LoL

The Myth of the Experienced Meditator

I AM, UNFORTUNATELY, an experienced meditator. From the time I stumbled into an introduction to Transcendental Meditation in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, in 1970, through multiple eras (including my present fifteen-year-old Soto Zen practice), I’ve sat and stared at many walls (and mandalas and candles, and the inside of my eyelids) reveled in sundry bells-and-whistles mental experiences, gotten bored, decided I was going crazy, become enlightened (no, really!), and now I’m ready to share everything I’ve learned. It won’t take long. In fact I can sum it up in one word: nothing.

Not that “nothing” is to be sniffed at. For years—decades!—I thought there was something to learn, and that all those thousands of hours on the mat were cumulative, that the more I sat, the more aware and compassionate and wonderful I would become. In a world where the attainment of goals is seen as a virtue, thirty-eight years of realizing nothing didn’t come easily or lightly.

By definition (mine), if I did think I knew something about meditation, that wouldn’t be meditation. Sort of like God—if you can describe God to me, that ain’t God. If, as I believe, meditation is simply awareness, then any past knowledge I have about it is not only useless, but slops over into my immediate experience. Knowing is antithetical to openness, and it’s the adventure of not knowing that’s the genius of meditation. Not for nothing (so to speak) are two of the most popular contemporary books on Buddhism called Beginner’s Mind (Shunryu Suzuki) and Only Don’t Know (Seung Sahn). I have this fantasy that next time I open my copies of these books, I’ll find only blank pages.

So what is meditation about? I’ve heard many claims for the practice over the years, that it’s about: gratitude; emptiness; deepened, (or if you prefer) heightened, awareness; compassion; spaciousness; the discovery/realization/dissolving of one’s true self (your choice); attaining liberation; self-realization; being present in the moment; opening to the wonder of it all; finding inner peace; encountering one’s Buddha nature; becoming one with everything; cutting through delusion; fill in the blank.

It seems to me, though, that meditation isn’t about anything: meditation is meditation. Any attempt to define it in terms of something else simply confuses the issue, making it vulnerable to being treated like any other self-improvement system. Lord knows, these days we are offered enough ways to be better people, get closer to God, find ourselves, and enhance our circumstances. We’re swamped with therapies, self-help books, and techniques—what musician and activist Bob Geldof called “the thriving economy of psychotherapists, designer religions, and spiritual boutiques”—which treat our lives as projects to be tweaked and fixed. Isn’t meditation (if it’s anything at all) a relief from all this? Isn’t it the opposite of repairing and adjusting and striving and perpetually wanting things to be different?

For me, meditation is a haven away from the ubiquitous world of self-improvement. It’s not just that there’s no such thing as “bad” meditation, but there’s no such thing as “good” meditation either. It is what it is. So when I hear words like “effort” and “discipline” and phrases like “deepening one’s practice” and “advancing along the spiritual path” spoken in the same breath as the word “meditation,” I wince. Just sitting (shikantaza)—doing and wanting nothing, breath coming and going unbidden, eyes seeing, ears hearing—in this effortless state, thoughts flurry like falling leaves.

So can a so-called experienced meditator offer anything to someone new to the practice? Probably not. If what we’re really talking about is awareness, how can we help someone notice what’s going on? This is what’s going on: no more, no less. Unlike a subject like, say, carpentry, where we learn from the experience of those who have gone before us, meditation is defined by spontaneity, by not knowing. As the Roshi says, “practice only one level.” Perhaps the best we can do is to reassure newcomers that each of us starts over with every sitting and every breath.

Trust me. I’m an experienced meditator.

Meditation – Correct Breathing

Posted on by

A lot of people don’t know this, but there actually is a “CORRECT” way to breath. And yes, this does relate to everything you do… from simple meditation, to living your daily life. Breathing properly will enhance everything you do. You’ll feel much better too!

You’re supposed to breath using your diaphragm. Simply put, if when you’re breathing anything but your stomach is moving then you’re doing it incorrectly.
Most people these days breath from their chest… this is horribly bad because those muscles are vastly weaker than your diaphragm. It’s easier and better to breath from your stomach than it is your chest. Breathing from the chest is something that most people learn to do as they get older, it’s an image thing.
My Sensei (I train [well I haven’t for year or so at the moment hehe] in yoshinkan aikido) always said that to breath properly means to “get fat”… then “get skinny”! This is the kind of autonomic breathing that kicks in when you fall asleep.

If you watch a baby lie there breathing, you’ll notice that it will do all the breathing using its stomach. This is what adults should strive for as well.

Doing this kind of breathing also assists the body in falling asleep, because it’s the normal type of breathing that it’s used to doing naturally and tricks the mind into thinking the body is asleep.

Have you ever listened to someone make that transition from awake to asleep. You can actually pinpoint the EXACT second that they “fell asleep” due to how their breathing changes. This “sleep breathing” is what you want to emulate while meditating.

So while you’re practicing your projections, or even while you’re going about your daily life, try to breathe correctly. Your body AND consciousness will thank you for it! 🙂

What is “Intent”

Posted on by

People ask me, “How do I project?”.

Well, it’s 95% Intent… 5% Technique.

So, what is Intent and how do you use it to project?

This is the best way I can think of to describe Intent:
Intent is the difference between intending to move your hand, and actually moving your hand. You can intend to move your hand as much as you want. Sit there, look at your hand and just “think” about moving it. It won’t do anything, right? It won’t do anything UNTIL you actually MOVE your hand. That act of actually moving your hand is you placing the Intent to do so. So, Intent is the “action” which occurs a fraction before you do something.

If you can figure out how to harness this power, the power of Intent, then you can Project very easily. In terms of Projection (phasing in particular), it’s all about ALLOWING your consciousness to shift to the non-physical. It’s extremely hard to describe it beyond that, but once you figure it out, you’ll see just how easy all this stuff really is. At that point, the hardest thing you’ll then need to worry about is STAYING in the non-physical. For that, there are other techniques… which, ironically, also involve entirely around using your Intent! 🙂

Have a great holiday everyone!

Help Fight The Negativity! April 2012!

Posted on by

TOMORROW is the first monthly meditation session day!

Don’t forget to help fight the negativity!!

At any point tomorrow, take 10 – 15 minutes (or more!) and meditate using your chosen method/visualization to lock away the negative energy surrounding the 2012 date! 🙂

Monthly Meditation!

Posted on by

I mentioned something about this on Facebook a couple weeks ago.
I wanted to try to put together a meditation group of sorts. The goal would be to try and counter some of the negative energy/thoughts put forth about the upcoming nonsense regarding the 2012 Phenomenon. Basically, we’ll pick a day, a single 24 hour period in a month when everyone can focus their meditations towards sending out positive energy regarding this phenomenon.

It’s almost common knowledge these days amongst metaphysical practitioners that we create our own reality.
The energy we put out in the universe shapes our universe in a multitude of ways.

Now, you can go about this meditation in any way you want. For me, I intend to visualize all the negative thoughts and ideas that people have regarding 2012 and putting them into a big metal box, then tossing that box to be incinerated into the Sun.

The thoughts will include any notion of war, destruction of the earth in various ways, to smaller negative things like fighting with friends and neighbours. Putting energy towards the goal of peace and love should be of the utmost importance.

I was thinking the last Friday of every month would be a good time to do this. Any thoughts?

Feel free to comment here or on Facebook with your thoughts and ideas on this. 🙂

Together, we can make a difference!

The Feeling of “Mind Expansion”

Posted on by

I take the train to and from work now. It’s a wonderful little bit of my day that I’m learning to really enjoy. Why you ask? Cause it gives me 35 minutes twice a day to meditate! If I can’t meditate at work, this is the next best thing. 🙂

Anyway, onto my post…
I was meditating on the way home from work tonight and a thought popped into my head regarding the feeling that I get I call “Mind Expansion”. It actually feels like your mind is really expanding. But I came to realize what that sensation really is, because I noticed it tonight at the same time this “other” thing occurred.

What occurred was a 90%+ reduction in my five physical senses. Well, I was ignoring them. But at that exact moment, I began to feel that “Mind Expansion” sensation happen. I never really consciously put two and two together about this.

The “Mind Expansion” sensation is also the beginning of removing yourself from this physical reality. Point Consciousness. From there, all of consciousness is your playground. 🙂

Meditation – A Requirement To Exploring the Non-Physical

Posted on by

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.