Awakening:
The desert has long been regarded as a place of mystery and spiritual power—a vast, stripped-down landscape that mirrors something ancient within us. Its stark simplicity, silence, and unforgiving beauty seem to pull at the soul, calling us inward. It is no coincidence that several of the world’s great religions were born in desert regions, or that countless cultures have passed through these lands seeking meaning, revelation, or communion with something greater than themselves. The desert has always been a threshold—between survival and surrender, isolation and awakening.
It was in the desert where I found validation of the greater truths I has been searching for and oddly enough the place where I quenched my spiritual thirst. I was not sure what my first military deployment to the Middle East would bring, but I surly did not forecast what a life changing experience it would become. As I prepared to depart on my twenty plus hour flight I downloaded several Shawn Ryan Podcasts episodes two of which included a guest from the Monroe Institute, Sean Webb. The Podcast discussed the infamous CIA Remote Viewing Program and the Gateway Program at Monroe that was validated by de-classified CIA documents investigated by the Department of the Army. Little did I know this would be the next turning point in my life that would alter my perception of reality and forever change my perspective on how I view life, death and reality as a whole.
I would not say my journey to awaking began here, that began in Florida and was rooted in the stoics which lead me to making a life altering decision that lead me to meeting a dear friend who introduced me to the band Tool and encouraged me to open my Third Eye so to speak and dig into their lyrics. Her encouragement to dissect the bands lyrics opened up my world even further and ultimately leads to my discovery of Swiss Phycologist, Carl Jung which will tie into this account a bit later. To the point, my knowledge of such spiritual subjects began stateside, but my direct experience was found in the desert.
Back to the Middle East, upon arriving in country, with my newly sparked curiosity of the Monroe Institute and these mysterious audio recordings known as the ‘Gateway Tapes’ that could open doors and alter states of consciousness. I fired up my WIFI puck and quickly searched the Monroe website. On Monroe’s website they offered a free meditation, naturally I downloaded it. I had never meditated in my life nor had any inclination on how to even do it, but with a little research from Monroe I learned enough that binaural beats required stereo headphones and all I needed was to lie down and make myself comfortable following the guide. I attempted my first meditation, the reaction was visceral and very intense, not only was my experience enlightening it was physical! From there I was hooked and quickly downloaded as many Monroe mediations as I could! As my journey continued not only had physical experiences such as feeling energy in my body, intense vibrations, a pulsing sensation in my pineal gland and other physical stimuli but I also had profound revelations of self as well as the greater whole, feeling the interconnections and gaining insight into our meaning, the duality of life and even what comes next after this earth life system.
Soon after trying many guided and free flow exercises I began the infamous ‘Gateway Tapes’ and soon the effects began to bleed into my waking reality in the form of synchronicities and experiences with what many would call spirits or ghosts. The proverbial rabbit hole was about to spiral even deeper.
Synchronicity
One of the more profound experiences that illustrate this bleed over was one of my earlier meditations in which I came across a white lighthouse with a traditional spiral stair case. The lighthouse was surrounded by rocky coast line much like you find in the Pacific Northwest, on the beach a white life boat and slivering snake. This meditation was so vivid and was so rich in symbolism, it really resonated with me and I spent a lot of time analyzing it, in fact I even did an internet search of lighthouses in the United States and spent hours trying to find something that matched the lighthouse in my meditation and to my surprise I did find a match. That match was the Yaquina Head Lighthouse in Newport Oregon. Now here is where things get interesting, one of our guys had a family emergency and was sent back to the states, and in his place to backfill him was an Airman named Andy, yes, that one, the now co-owner of this company. Andy and I were assigned to the same post one night and had just met, during the early morning hour shooting the breeze, he asked what the first thing I wanted to do when I get back to the States was. I told him I wanted to go to Newport, Oregon. Much to his surprise, he relayed that he was from there and still had family in the area. Andy invited me out when we returned to the states and I visited that very light house, it matched my mediation to a T, minus the lifeboat and snake! What are the odds of such a connection? That I have a deep vision of a place I have never been to, then match it on a Google search and finally within a week’s time frame meet a new friend from said location? Is this evidence of a holographic universe? I would say this is a very meaningful coincidence or in the words of Carl Jung, Synchronistic.
Speaking of Jung, he details a rich account of an example of synchronicity in which a patient's dream coincided with a real-world event, breaking her rigid rationalism. During a session, a patient of Jung’s described a dream about a golden scarab; immediately, a real, rare gold-green scarabaeid beetle tapped on the window, which Jung caught and presented to her, acting as a catalyst for her psychological transformation. I had a similar experience of my own, although instead of a beetle it was a Dragonfly, also very rich in symbolic meaning and quite appropriate for the time in my life.
After Andy and I connected over Newport, we became good friends and often worked together. One day on post in our attempt to fight the sleep and boredom of the job, we came up with the idea to use a random word generator on his phone to give us a random word in which we would then attempt to use that word five times in a sentence when interacting with other personnel; this was strictly done for our own amusement. It was Andy’s turn to play and his word was humming bird, a contractor approached and Andy tried to inject his chosen word into conversation with the unsuspecting passerby. In doing so, he compared humming birds to dragonflies, as soon as he mentioned that word, it stuck out as odd to me and I remember saying it in my head multiple times before I dismissed the thought. Fast forward to my next shift, less than 24 hours after this event, I went to relieve another Airman and while standing at his post, a dragonfly came and hovered right in front of my face for what felt like several minutes. This was the first dragonfly I had seen since I had been in country mind you, and as for the timing and odd resonance this word had on me the day before, I found It most unusual but very profound. Was this interaction with the dragonfly somehow spoken into existence or in the spirit of quantum physics was this created in my mind and projected into my reality? Either way it was an impactful event and began to become one of several prevalent symbols to appear later in my life as well.
I should note I did have a couple synchronistic events prior to deployment and the Gateway tapes but nothing quite like the aforementioned examples.
Paranormal
The base I was stationed at had a large scale history of death, during the Iraqi invasion a multitude of soldiers were killed and those who did not survive in the initial raid were rounded up and executed. Take this information as you will, it is not an explanation for what I experienced, but certainly could be. In my stay there I had two very interesting experiences; the first may qualify more as synchronicity then the latter.
While on duty, I was posted with several other individuals in an office type building, everyone was quiet and doing their own thing, myself included, as I was reading a book that consisted of a collection of works by Carl Jung entitled, “Synchronicities and the Paranormal.” Just as I was reading about Jung’s experience as a child with hauntings and his story of a kitchen knife mysteriously shattering into multiple pieces, a speaker crashed to the ground right behind me, startling the entire crew! Everyone looked at each other and no one knew how it fell, from my recollection it was not near the edge of the desk, the guy nearest to it, swore up and down he was just sitting there. After some discussion on what happened and no one owning up to it did I decide to share the strange coincidence that I was literally reading about paranormal activity when it fell! Was it a trapped spirit in the first astral plane that knocked the speaker off the desk, was it simply the solider sitting near it and accidently bumping it, was it my subconscious creating my reality for me or something else altogether? Maybe it was sheer coincidence that I so happened to be reading a book about similar accounts when one happen but the odds seem slim. I cannot be sure, but the timing could not be any more perfect and if the explanation is metaphysical or based in materialism it still was certainly was profound in my experience.
My other encounter happened over the course of a few days and again another time a few weeks later. Often as I was trying to go to bed or out of a dead sleep I woke up to my mattress moving as if someone was sitting there and bouncing up and down on it. The movement was isolated to the foot of the bed. When I would open my eyes it would stop, I would close them and the bouncing would begin again, I would sometime have to verbally state “Stop or knock it off” before it would stop. The first time I thought it was an external force like someone running down the hall, but after it continued for a couple nights and the isolated region it happened no other plausible explanation could exist, it decently felt like an energy manifesting there and was trying to get my attention; the very thought even crossed my mind that it could be a trapped entity from the wars past but I did not feel threatened or scared by it in the slightest. Later at the Monroe Institute I would learn that Robert Monroe actually had encounters with these trapped souls who died in traumatic ways and are unaware that their physical bodies have perished. Could this have been a trapped soul trying to reach out to me? I will add for the skeptics, I was alone in my room when this happened and never noted any external stimuli that could explain this phenomenon.
More than our Physical Body
During this period of transformation, the unexplained phenomena, direct experience both in meditation and synchronicity really did validate that this reality is not what meets the eye, that what we have been told since a child about this world does not hold water, and ultimately this journey was me coming into knowing that we are more than our physical body.
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