14 April 2008
Seth Events: An “Out”-of-Body Experience*
If
you ever want to test the mettle of your relationships, try telling people that
you’ve had an out-of-body experience. It’s actually quite amusing. After I had
one, most of the people I told were either wary or uninterested, though most
came around after a while.
The new physics says that particles appear because we believe in particles. For
science, this is a good first step. The second step is realizing that the
individual is those particles. When Seth or Elias or Kris say that you ARE the
motions or particles you see around you as air and chairs and cars and people,
they’re not kidding. This is no longer a concept for me. I know that the
individual is energy. The individual is the action of the entire environment.
This is not at all apparent in waking life. It’s fact nonetheless.
Now, in the past, I used to think that was bullshit. I used to think that I was
my body and the couch was the couch and anyone who said differently was not in
possession of their full faculties. It seemed self-evident. Experiences will
change your perspective, and an “out”-of-body is a whopper of one. I now
understand that the reason we all think that we’re our bodies is that we focus
from that perspective with such intensity (and I mean millions of suns type of
intensity). Because you’re so focused, you don’t sense your own energy as the
air and the chair and the other individuals. It’s not that you are the other
individuals (although in more than one respect you are), it’s that you use your
own energy to perceive them. You create your own imagery of them. Now, this is
probably nothing new to people who’ve been reading channeled material for an extended
period of time, but I think my experience in the “out”-of-body is a little different
and worth sharing for that reason.
Unlike a lot of NWVers, I’ve had very little interest in other focuses (for
those of you who don’t know the language, “other focus” is a term used for a
reincarnational life if you use the term in a non-linear fashion—that is, if
you view these other lives as all happening simultaneously as opposed to one
after the other). I’ve had no interest in “out”-of-body experiences either. I
figured the dream state was a form of “out”-of-body and that we all simply
block memory of the particulars because we’ve been brought up to believe that
there’s no such thing as being “out” of the body. Though I’ve thought that
these other types of experiences contribute to our daily lives, my attention
has been elsewhere.
Instead, I’ve had an intense interest in this reality, what we call waking
life, and the mechanics of it. You could call it an obsession, and that would
still be an understatement. I don’t know what the deal is with me, but I have
to KNOW how this reality is put together, so I’m always reading, thinking,
talking and exploring. Now, I should have had a hint of what was to come from
an experience I had about a month before the “out”-of-body experience, and I
use the term in quotes quite purposefully. Here’s the precursor of what was to
come.
Electric Energy as It Pertains to the Body
I had a dream. I was in our apartment. It looked exactly like our apartment
down to the pattern of the grain on one of the wood doors. Visually, you
couldn’t tell the difference between our actual apartment and this dream
apartment. However, at one point, I looked at one of the walls, and I knew that
I was in another environment, that I wasn’t in the waking state and that I was
far, far, far from what I called waking life. I thought, “What you see around
you has nothing to do with actual location,” because the imagery surrounding me
looked exactly like our apartment, and yet I knew that I was at an unimaginable
distance from the actual “place” I called waking life. The distance scared me a
bit. Not a lot, but I was concerned.
So I tried to go “back”** to waking life. How I did it was to feel my body FROM my sleeping body. It was a very
visceral kind of thing. I heard this noise like a light saber from “Star Wars”
or how energy fields are portrayed in movies, a kind of buzzy,“Eyaaaeemp,”
noise, and then I could feel this energy field that extended about a foot and a
half outside my actual legs and feet. The rest of me felt physical, but there
was a lag on my legs and feet. I thought, “What the hell? It turns out that
Abraham [another channeled author] is right when they say that you’re more
electrical than anything.” Then I felt a bit concerned because I didn’t know
how I was going to get this electrical field back “into” my feet. But, all at once
and without any effort, I was in my bed in waking life, sound as a pound, as
the British say.
What I didn’t know then was that this was a test drive for the “out”-of-body I
was about to experience. Here’s what happened a month later.
An “Out”-of-Body Experience
The day before the “out”-of-body happened, I’d been thinking about a Seth
quote. I’d read about a dream that Rob Butts had where his dog walked through
their screen door, and Rob asked Seth how this was possible. Seth replied,
“Because in the dream state, desire is action.” Well, I was thinking about that
quite a bit, and I thought, “The physics have to be the same in waking life.
Desire is probably action, but the motion of the action is different. It would
be slowed down.” This is my kind of entertainment, to think about things like
this, and I thought about it off and on the whole day. Then I went to bed, and
thought of it no more.
The next morning, I woke up and then fell back asleep, only I didn’t quite make
it all the way into the dream state. Instead, I found myself “floating” or
“permeating” my body. I woke up to this state where I was awake, but I wasn’t
“attached” to the body (bear with me; I use the quotes quite deliberately
because it’s a more accurate portrayal of the facts). I knew immediately that
I’d given myself some kind of gift. I thought, “How did I ever manage to pull
this off?” Then it was as if I began to wake up to this state. It became more
real and more intense than normal, waking life.
At the time, I was staring at the wall by our bed, but when I realized that I
was not “attached” to the body, and that my body had it’s eyes closed, I
started to close out what I was seeing. Then I said to myself, very calmly,
“You can see without physical eyes, so let yourself see,” and slowly I was
seeing the wall once more.
It was fascinating to feel what I was without a physical body. I had great
admiration for the very precise use by channeled authors of the term “focus,” because
that’s exactly what I felt like, a focus. I was very careful to study what I
was experiencing in this state. I could feel the enormous momentum that I had
at my disposal. At the simplest whim, I could whip myself “out” of the area of
my body.
I use the term “area of my body,” because I seemed to permeate the body as a
sort of concentrated field out about two feet or so around the body. But I
wasn’t content to just take that at face value, I stayed in that position and
felt what that energy felt like for about an hour (though time was a bit
different in that state and therefore not so easy to track). I just “hovered,”
studying every little nuance I could. You see, I had no idea how I’d gotten
into this position, and I didn’t know if I’d ever experience it again, so I
tried to take advantage of it while I could.
This field that I could feel as a concentrated focus of my attention felt
incredibly mobile. With no effort whatsoever, I felt like I could do, be, or
experience anything. Staying centered where I was took enormous control. I’ll
admit it, I felt rather badass that I had the presence of mind to remain where
I was and to calmly examine what I was experiencing.
The longer I did it, the more I realized that my energy was not just this
highly concentrated field around the body. It was also the body that I seemed
to no longer be “attached” to, and it was the air and the bed and walls and
everything else I call the physical environment. I thought, “Holy cow, these
channeled authors are right. You actually are the entire environment.”
I think it’s easy to miss the fact that you’re not only the energy field that
seems like it’s you but also the environment because the concentration is so
specific that it feels like you’re the concentration exclusively. That concentration
feels like a massive, massive laser beam of energy being pinpointed in one
particular area, the area that we normally call the body in waking life, or
what people call in an “out”-of-body their energy body or etheric body or whatnot.
That intense focus of energy is not something that is separated out from
everything else. It only seems that way because there’s a gigantic amount of
energy being focused from a particular perspective, and that concentration has
most of your attention.
The amount of energy of that focus is so enormous that it would be easy to miss
the much lesser concentration of energy that is the actual body and air and
room, etc. in waking life, and that is the imagery of dream environments in the
dream state and that is the imagery of “out”-of-body environments in those
states. It’s your own energy that creates all of it, and in that sense you are
all of it.
I kept asking myself as I hovered there in that condition, “What am I?” I was
trying to figure out what I called “me” in that state. I was trying to find
words to describe myself, and this is what I came up with. I am action.
The “thing” that I call me is really action and not a thing at all. This was
the closest and most accurate description I could find, and even so it’s
lacking.
I realized as I was “hovering” there that different states of attention come
complete with different sets of knowledge. That is, you don’t add knowledge to
yourself. You explore and experience knowledge that you already possess. You do
this by focusing your attention, and then that underlying information becomes
experienced knowledge, live knowledge. It shows up in the guise of whatever
structure you happen to be focusing on. Where form is involved such as in
waking life and dream environments, the information is clothed in those terms.
In this other state, which was a type of objective state because I was still
experiencing form, I knew more than I know in daily life, and there was no
effort involved. I just knew more.
But here’s one of the weirdest parts of the whole experience. As action, as energy,
as this field, as an attention, I felt like I was composed of sexual energy.
That’s what the energy of my being felt like. I’m going to lose many of you
here, and I don’t blame you. At one time, I would have thought such a notion
beyond absurd.
Years back, I read a book called, “Think and Grow Rich,” and I thought the book
made a lot of sense until I got to the section called, “Sexual Transmutation.”
At that point, the author lost me completely. His premise was that you could
channel sexual energy into a business venture, and the business venture would
thrive. I thought he was nuts. I thought, “What happened? We were going along,
and then the author lost his mind.” Well, I take it back. He knew a lot more
than I did.
What I felt like as energy or action or as an individual in this other state
was exactly like sexual energy. It was a “Whooooopeeeee!!!”
feeling—unconcerned, cheerful, adventurous, buoyant, pleasurable, confident,
trusting, and fun loving. It was a state of total connection, safety, belonging,
and humor.
In this other state, I felt more me than I’ve ever felt in waking life. And
yet, I had great admiration for physical life, and a little humor about it as
well. In that other state, it was the height of hilarity that anyone would attach
value judgments of good or bad to their form or their experience. It was
crystal clear that all experiences were equally valuable. It didn’t matter what
you looked like or what you experienced. It was all great, and I thought that
it was very funny that anyone thought otherwise. At the same time, I didn’t
worry about the fact that anyone thought otherwise. I had this absolute certainty
that all experiences are equally useful.
My ideas about death changed for me radically in this other state of focus
because it was clear that I was not only alive without a body, but vibrantly,
pleasantly, wonderfully alive.*** It was also clear that death is very easy. I
knew I could slip right out of the physical experience with a mere desire to do
so. It also made me appreciate my decision to have a physical experience
because this experience was not thrust upon me. It was a choice that I made
moment to moment, and the choice was meaningful. The “out”-of-body state enhanced
my desire to make the most out of the waking state. No matter what your
experience, the physical state is a wonderful, precious opportunity to explore.
While I continued to “hover” there, I knew that my slightest desire would turn
into a three-dimensional experience. I knew that all of that rhetoric that I’ve
read about ask and it’s given is true in the most literal sense. You literally
become your desires. Your energy transforms into the physical equivalent of the
sum total of your desires and ideas. In this other state, it was instantaneous,
and there were no obstacles except that you could view your own ideas as
obstacles. That is, if you didn’t think you could have something, that would
act as an experience where you didn’t have that particular thing. However, in
the “out”-of-body I knew I could have anything because I could feel myself as
the action of whatever I wanted. You could say that you’re almost the
equivalent of your desires because desire is definitely an action. In waking
life, you hold a lot of ideas simultaneously that might act in a way that would
make you think that there are forces that oppose you. There are none. Your
ideas are the key to everything.
The force, the momentum, the thrust of your being is monumental. While I was
experiencing all of this, I knew that with the tiniest desire, I could be
anywhere. In fact, the choices were overwhelming. At one point, I decided to
leave the area of the body, but I didn’t want to see my body. With a giant,
“Whoosh,” I was in a dream-like environment, “hovering” at the tops of a group
of trees. Language is pretty limiting because first of all I wasn’t “hovering”
because I had no body, and I was also the entire environment. What I was doing
was focusing with intensity at that particular “location” amongst this imagery.
The environment had a very strong “baby blocks” feeling. It was as if I could
sense the presence of others who thought it was cute that I was so proud of
myself, and who were encouraging me to keep exploring, all the while holding
back laughter. I felt like I was mentally being patted on the head, like I was
being lovingly patronized.
I didn’t know what to do with myself in this environment, but I knew I had to
be careful because with the slightest desire I could get myself into trouble.
Not serious trouble—more like a situation that I wasn’t competent to deal with.
For instance, I could focus somewhere that was very, very far from physical
life, making it so difficult to get “back” that I’d have effectively terminated
that action. This wasn’t worrisome knowledge; it was an understanding of the
boundaries of my skills.
In light of that, I decided to do something simple. I’d read about people
merging with things, so I decided to try to merge with something. Out of
no-where this bed appeared in the parking lot below me. I think that particular
image appeared because I associate beds with security, so this was my way of
providing a secure image to merge with. You have to understand that this environment,
while having dream-like qualities, was as clear as waking life. When the bed appeared,
it was as startling as it would be to have a bed appear instantly in waking
life.
I want to be sure to express that in the act of merging, you don’t really merge
with anything because you’re already merged with everything in every
environment in which you find yourself, but the concentration of your attention
is not fixed on everything. The act that we call mergence is really focusing
your attention on being the thing that you haven’t yet explored. It’s bringing
your attention to something you already are and exploring it.
I decided to merge with the bed. I had this faint concern that I was creating a
shadow image of myself because of my habit of being physical and creating a
physical body, so I wondered if I was just going to bounce right off of this bed.
Since my focus was up at the top of the trees, I had to get it to the bed. I
could do it two ways, by going “through” the environment or just desiring to
focus as the bed. Because I have the habit of moving “through” space in
physical reality, I zoomed down from the treetops to the bed and then had the
rather mundane experience of merging with the bed. At that point, I thought,
“That’s enough.” I felt like a hack and decided to go “back” to my body.
Once again, I knew I could move “through” space to the body or wake up by
feeling for my body from the body itself (because even though I was “in” this
other environment, I was still continuing with the action of creating a body—a
small amount of my energy or concentration was still involved in that action).
I decided to move “through” space because it was a pleasant rush. Then I woke
up from my body, and that was that.
This was, hands down, the least serious experience I’ve had my whole life.
Words can’t convey how fun and exhilarating it was. From that day on, I’ve
thought that physical life can be just as free. It’s all in the ideas you hold.
*For me, the term “out”-of-body is a misnomer because a body isn’t a thing that
you’re in or out of. It’s an action that you trigger and focus through. You
focus through that perspective on an environment that you’re not separated out
of. There are no separations, no “things” or “places.” What we call a “thing”
or a “place” or a “body” is an action.
**Location is not a fixed thing. There are not places that individuals move to
and from, in or out of. A location is an action. You generate locations by your
ability to focus. You focus by deciding to turn your attention to certain
ideas, intents, and desires. An idea, an intent, a desire will create a
platform for experience, what we call an environment. So when an individual
moves from one location to another, be it a movement in a physical setting or a
dream setting or between the two, what they’re really doing is focusing from
one perspective to another. The motion you feel as you move through an environment
or to an environment could be viewed as the motion of your intent and ideas. In
light of this, your intent and ideas are powerful things.
Distance, then, has nothing to do with moving through space. Distance is the
range of your ideas. Distance has to do with the facility of your ideas, your
ability to recall choices and to focus on them. In the simplest of examples,
you will never travel to China if you do not focus on the idea that this is a
possibility. All of the imagery associated with distance, driving to the
airport, flying, driving through China itself, will not appear in your experience
because your ideas do not accommodate the imagery that you call the experience.
The ability to use and understand the imagination is a key part of your ability
or inability to move over long “distances,” be they physical or otherwise. Even
more central than the imagination is the underlying trust that you express in
your own being and abilities.
***What we call dying is just a choice to discontinue the action that we call
waking life. You discontinue creating all of the imagery, not just the body,
and you’re no more dead than when you stop doing any action in daily life.
Samantha Standish is a writer and a former intellectual property and corporate law lawyer. She received her B.A. in history with honors, and her B.A. in Spanish with honors, in 1989 from the University of California, Santa Barbara and went on to get her law degree Cum Laude from the University of Maine School of Law. In her legal career, Samantha worked in government and the private sector, most notably in the financial planning and software industry. In her personal life, she’s been married for twenty years and has a fifteen year-old home schooled son. Samantha resigned from the bar in 2005 and has devoted herself to bridge writing (making complex ideas about space/time easy to understand for the average reader) ever since, focusing mostly on self-help articles for artists and writing bridge books on the side. In her words, “The first forty years of my life were fact finding; the next forty years are about applying, expanding and exploring what I’ve learned.” Her books can be found at samanthastandish.com. Samantha’s NWV blog is titled The Magical Life.