In June, 2018, I attended the Monroe Institute’s weeklong residential course titled Discovery. The attraction for me was that all participants would be wired up to Mind Mirror software that recorded brainwave patterns during the exercises.
In the very first exercise, which was as much calibration as anything (measuring our base lines), facilitator Judith Pennington was surprised at the level of integration I was able to achieve. When we talked about it, I suggested that it may be because for 20 years I had been accustomed to staying in a slightly altered state (talking to the guys) while not only interacting with them but writing it all down.
After the program ended, we came to my house and she wired me up to see just what the process of talking to the guys looked like electrically. The following transcript of that session may be of interest.
Session for Judith Pennington
Friday, June 29, 2018
10:15 a.m. Beginning. Guys, you know what we’re doing here, I know. What would you like to say to Judith and me?
We approve the idea of verification by electronics, although it isn’t necessary, of course, strictly speaking. Yet – it is. There is a type of person – you should know! – who needs to be sure “I’m not just making this up.” Electronic signatures don’t give content but they do give an indication that something is happening.
Now, looking at your whole week at Monroe, you cans see that merely seeing electronic signatures of brainwave activity validated your process to you even though you didn’t really understand what was being measured, nor what it really means.
Yes, I know. Sort of a circular process, I thought. They tell me it’s real and I say, “See, this proves that it’s real.”
Nonetheless, it did help. Your difference from others – or in the case of Dirk, your similarity and difference – shows you in isolation.
Not “isolation,” I think. “In relief”?
Yes. Better.
So subjectively as you know I feel like things changed. To go from a housecat to an eagle is if nothing else great symbolism.
You already knew it was going to be a big week.
True.
Well, must have been a coincidence.
Very funny. Ready for questions?
You can try.
[I had thought to allow Judith to ask questions, but she had none at this time.]
What can you tell me about where I go from here? I get that you want me to write out the gist of the material I have been given all these years, but – beyond that?
It isn’t so much a “beyond that” as a “how to do it.” It begins with seeing yourself differently. You have come to that, this week. Decide and execute. Once you know what you want – and decide to get it – the way clarifies.
Specifically?
There is the speaking aspect – interacting persona to persona, so to speak – and the writing aspect – interacting mind to mind, or, in TMI-speak, mental body to mental body. You can see which one has the potential to reach the largest number of people.
Go at it through the emotions, in other words.
Not exactly. Slow down.
Okay.
Emotions are a part of the persona-to-persona interaction, but that doesn’t mean “emotional” in the sense of drama. It means, your whole essence, who you are in toto – in relation to the given listener – rather than merely mental constructs. Mental constructs can be as valuable as anything else, but they are limited, and that limitation has advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, it puts things in isolation, eliminating misleading context. On the other hand, the “extraneous” aspects it weeds out may be (necessarily are) important in the overall scheme of things, and their absence results in a distorted picture.
It is a matter of words as sparks versus words as markers.
Yes. Direct speech in someone’s presence – even virtual presence such as a telephone or internet connection – allows for a greater jump of understanding between the two (or more) people. Fixing the speech in writing – still more, in print – reduces, though it does not eliminate, that potential, with the corresponding advantage in permanence of presentation.
So I need to be taking the show on the road, so to speak.
Yes, but virtually does at least as well as physically. Telephone, skype, web seminars, anything that brings it present-tense to present-tense, will serve the purpose. You don’t have to be P.T. Barnum.
Okay, I hear that. A word on process. I am very aware of Judith watching the monitor as I do this, and in the back of my mind I’m wondering, will any of this show? Will it demonstrate that I’m fooling myself? Now, I know it isn’t that, yet the background worry is there. Is there anything to be done besides ignoring it?
Just remember the doubt as part of the process. If you still occasionally doubt in unusual circumstances after 25 years, what must the person trying it for the first time (on faith, so to speak), experience? Remember that and allow for it.
Allow for it, how?
To a great extent, merely mentioning the problem reassures people that you are not qualitatively different from them, and so reduces the perceived distance they have to go.
Okay. I can’t understand how we can have covered so many pages in 20 minutes.
Perhaps you are a bit hyper being under observation.
Hmm. Maybe so. All right.
[Later when we looked at the charts, we saw a difference right here. My energy became less spiky, and more normal.]
Can we talk about housecats and eagles? [Two images of myself that came up during exercises.]
Housecats balance energies unnoticed. Self-contained, alert, curious, they interact without much being interfered with. Eagles live away from everyday human activity and may serve more as a symbol of freedom and flight than as an everyday part of life. But both have their place. What you really want to see is the movement from seeing yourself as a housecat to seeing yourself as an eagle. The progression is a different thing from either given state.
Your life becomes less your own, and becomes at the same time of more consequence. People tend to hang their drama upon symbols, and, as you learned from watching Hemingway, public attention can be like the drag of a fishhook in a fish’s mouth.
Gary Powell is facing that concern.
It isn’t a unique problem. Life involves tradeoffs.
Somehow during the program – I’ll have to look back among my notes to remember how – I changed my image of things. Seeing myself as “a point of awareness extending” means that past lives, etc., are all part of my extended being.
You will find it much less constricting. You are already living as if; now you will live not as if, but as.
I think I’ll bring this to an end (I’m tired), unless you have more you’d like to say.
No, enough for now. Good work. Be well.
Thanks, and you.
[I then told Judith that I was ready to quit, and she had something for me to ask.]
Judith has a question. “What are the conversations that I’ve been listening to just now?”
Your framework has been slipping, so to speak, just as Frank’s. You are no longer seeing yourself as separate in the way you did previously – if only from sitting among so much evidence to the contrary all week. You are so much more than your consciously identified presence – “Judith” – and your awareness is now extending to be more conscious – more actively conscious – of interacting continuously with those other elements. At first they will seem to be “other” but in time they become familiar.
“Is this the astral realm that I’ve been listening to?”
To say yes or no would be to implicitly affirm a way of seeing the world that we do not share. Let’s say merely that you are experiencing greater range of —
“Range of motion” isn’t right. What is?
Greater range, let’s leave it at that.
[end 10:55 a.m.]