a Zero’s journey…to becoming One.

Everyone has a different story to tell and a different Purpose in Life… My real journey started at 24 years old when I had an out of body experience while meditating. I had acquired a few good injuries from being thoughtless with no direction. My mistakes had been added up, and at the time, I was a bit depressed, really it was despair. I somehow found my way to the Eastern philosophy section at a book store, where Fate handed me a small book called ‘Teachings of the Buddha’ by Jack Kornfield.  I was brought up with a loose mix of Catholic and Jehovah’s Witness influence, so I had no interest in religion or know anything about Buddhism or the ‘Spirit Realm’. After reading about the history of Gautama Buddha and then a bunch of parables about oxen and ploughing, I was completely absorbed by these profound ideas, and had forgotten about my ‘real world’ troubles. The book then came to some basic instruction on how to meditate. It said to sit comfortably in an upright position, to close my eyes, and to ‘feel’ the ‘energy’ going up and down the body with the breath. Most importantly it said to not think, just observe, just watch.

I was amazed at just how much I could feel this energy literally flowing up and down my body. It was mild but definitely something I never noticed before. I was feeling very relaxed as this subtle energy was washing through my body. My mind was totally quiet as I enjoyed a massage from this sensation. The 20 ton weight of depression I had been carrying a few hours before, was gone. All of my mental thoughts and the ‘voice’ of my conscious were completely removed from my head and I was merely just observing these new sensations in my body.

I remember my breath was hypnotic as I watched it flow in and out, like a wave in the ocean. Then I noticed my breath had synced in with my heartbeat, and I watched as it counted the waves. My focus would wander from different parts of the breath and its effects, but the more I let go of ‘thinking’ and just witnessed what was happening, the more detailed each sensation would be. I spent maybe a half hour of simply observing my breath, not thinking about it but just observing, when I soon noticed something very different. I had focused on my breath so well that every other sense or thought was completely gone, until I noticed my ‘vision’ was now different.

Normally when I closed my eyes, looking at the insides of my eyelids, it was normally a dark shade with some random light white static noise. But now, my ‘vision’ was ‘seeing’ as if I was staring out into an endless expanse of space; clear, clean and detailed. It was like looking out of a plane above the clouds at night, but way different. Then I noticed, right in the center where I was staring, a very clear and absolute black ‘dot’ far out in the distance of this panoramic expanse. I turned my attention to this dot and felt I could draw it closer by concentrating on it. As I pulled with my focus, I was almost instantly engulfed in this pure ‘emptiness’. I was suddenly ‘floating’ in some sort of oblivion, just observing.

I really was stunned by what I was witnessing and could only just observe, but for a brief second during the moment, my consciousness thought about my body, which somehow caused my ‘consciousness’ to start ‘pulling’ down/’back’ into the body?! I was able to snapped my conscious attention back to observing this ‘nothingness’, and was only able to hold on to it for a few more moments. I was stunned by the complete and absolute emptiness for those moments, but my consciousness was aware, and complete, and at the same time completely separate from any reality or confines of a mind, body, time or space. My conscious thoughts continued.

The feeling of the ‘Abyss’ left me wondering what in the world had happened, and I had to find out what it was. I started reading all I could about Buddhism since that was my introduction to Eastern philosophies. But, I also researched and read all I could on Gnostic mysticism, Rosicrucian’s, Masonic and Kabaalism, Zen mysticism, Egyptian, and Indigenous culture. Anything I could find I would practice the techniques that had to do with the deep levels of meditation. Breathing, zoning out on mantras, trance dancing, hypnagogic adventures and lucid dreaming are just a few hacks to initiate the body’s energies.. But, in those early years I keep the focus with what I knew and soon started attending a Vietnamese Buddhist temple and began practicing Vipassana meditation daily.

I spent about 7 years with the Vietnamese community and anywhere from 0 to maybe 20 hours a week in silent meditation, trying to recreate what had happened. I could sometimes quiet my mind enough have feel those subtle sensations within my body.  I would start seeing different visual lights which would shine into my mind’s eye from ‘behind my vision’ in rings or patterns of light. I was slowly building my practice and it seemed that when my ‘vision’ had turned into what I now know is the ‘third-eye vision’, that’s when I knew I was getting closer. I would try to focus the breathing with the energy, and trying to focus my inner vision on point, but would only have the most minor experiences as compared from before.

It’s hilarious now, but at the time it wasn’t, but I kept reading that I had to find a master to teach me art of meditation. I was looking and was willing, but the only instruction from the monks was basically ‘we breathe in the short breath, we breathe out the short breath, we practice like this. Breathe in the long breath, breathe out the long breath, we practice like this…’ When I asked the monks about my OBE, they had no experience with what had witnessed, but said there were different levels of experience. We would have dharma talks after meditation, and the monk were great at explaining the vast stories and morals of Buddhism. That Vietnamese community was a beautiful experience, and I was fortunate to experience those traditions about Universal love, compassion, and practical daily living and understanding. But, I still had questions that needed answered…

I kept on studying. I read as much as I could on all the different schools of Buddhism, but all I could find was mostly on those ideas of suffering, followed by understanding, followed by love and compassion. Poetically simple or ascetically devote, I read them all. But, I couldn’t find anything about these esoteric and super-natural experiences I had briefly glimpsed, but where was I to look? It turns out that Fate delivers clues for us to follow, when we are ready for them. In the case of reading this is especially true. I was looking for secrets of the universe but couldn’t find any. I realize now that I was right where I was supposed to be. As well, in the esoteric arts, it is almost always said that this information is to be transmitted from master to student when the student is ready for that lesson. This is to protect the student from making harmful mistakes as well, so that the traditions are kept complete. Also, these esoteric arts can be influenced by the ‘thinking’ mind, causing an illusion of false experiences. This is why the Vipassana tradition does not give much instruction on exactly how to meditate, because it is supposed to be observed, not induced by thinking. The Chinese call this wu-wei or ‘non-doing’, and it is an exercise in controlling the mind from thinking.

I then went on to study more of the ancient Chinese philosophies; Confucius, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Daoism,  and others traditions…  any and all divisions of Chinese spiritual thought, but these subjects were so voluminous and mostly historic or technical, and I still could not find one person who could relate or reveal anything about my experience. But, when I did finally come across Daoism, things started to line up.

One of the most interesting daily readings was provided by the French website wengu.tartarie.com, which has all of the ancient Chinese texts available. One of those texts I read almost daily was a divination game based on the Yi-Jing (or I-Ching). Chinese tradition says the Yi-Jing is the oldest text of their culture, and given to mankind as a gift from the Gods. The Yi-Jing is the basis for all other Chinese schools of thought, and is at the heart of TCM, Confucianism, and many of China’s martial arts . The Yi-Jing is called the ‘Book of Changes’, and seemingly talks about the social, environmental, political and other daily events, in 64 different ‘cycles of life’. The awesome quotes from the site would have real world examples about how to act right in difficult situations.. After studying and contemplating these 64 Hexagrams from the coin game at the above website, along with thousands of hours of meditation on those readings, I started reading a hidden message in Yi-Jing. This hidden layer was forming a detailed road map of the human body and the technique to activate it to reach higher states of meditation. The Yi-Jing is truly a holy book written by someone far more advanced than this planet has produced in a few thousand years.

In China, from ancient times to the present, most of the traditions for higher meditation were kept secret from the ordinary people by writing in metaphors and allegories. But over the past few hundred years some of the great books and traditions have been translated, published and accessible, but only explained as well as the translations could be understood. Carl Jung, who was a friend and academic of Richard Wilhelm, was so influenced by the ancient Eastern Upanishads they became the basis of many of his ‘groundbreaking’ insight in modern psychology. Western science has been hugely influenced by Eastern science in mathematics, physics, cosmology, psychology and many other disciplines, as seen by the studies and testimonials of Western scientific pioneers such as Isaac Newton, Gottfried Leibniz, Meister Eckhart, Author Schopenhauer, Niels Bohr, Nicola Tesla, Erwin Schrodinger, Max Planck and countless others. These pioneers were all exposed to the insights of Eastern philosophy, as those Eastern philosophies were only found in western elite society. This wisdom has being introduced to the common people thru western scientific terms. Arthur Schopenhauer is credited with introducing Western philosophy to Eastern philosophy and creating the modern ‘law of attraction’ movement. He declared, “In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads. It has been the solace of my life. It will be the solace of my death.”

One writer, who is credited with being at the right place at the right time to translate the old world texts of China into the modern era, was Richard Wilhelm. Wilhelm translations of ‘Secret of the Golden Flower’ and ‘The Yi Jing’ were two of the most influential books towards my understanding of higher meditation. Fabrizio Pregardio’s many ancient Daoist translations were foundational to my understanding. Charles Luk’ and Mantak Chia’s writings explained in different words of what the Tao is and more importantly, what the big picture meaning of life is. But at the end of all of those books seemed to be mostly just western translations of the Eastern literal meanings, and didn’t seem to have step-by-step instructions or specific understanding of what I had experienced.

During my search I had read a few places where they did talk about some of the more esoteric experience. Most of those were from the Hindu traditions of meditation, and autobiographies from Gopi Krishna, Yogananda, Mileripa and other accounts introduced me to the endless experiences, commentaries and teaching from that ancient culture. I will explain that soon..

It was a combination of all I had learned and the thousands of hours I would sit, stretch, breath and observe, that would finally add up to my own technique for higher meditation. The basis of that technique was mostly from a secret Taoist internal martial art known as Neidan. Neidan means internal medicine, and it is said that the practice can produce results from healing the body, all the way to becoming an immortal. Neidan at the physical level is a cyclical breathing exercise, but wrapped in symbolic language that would have been impossible to understand if I had not experienced some of those meditative insights, and then read about them. It was thru the Neidan technique that I had a second type of Kundalini meditative experience.  Finally all of the small puzzle pieces began to fit together and I finally understood how to predictably reach the transcendental levels, and how to channel the Chi in the body. From my own ‘adventures of the mind’, I have been able to experience the Chi energy electrifying and syncing every electron in my body.

That second transcendental experience happened when I was at a 10 day meditation retreat sponsored by Dharmma.org, who’s main spokesman is the late, S.N. Goenka. At this retreat, it was an intense 10 hours a day of meditation, along with no communication of any kind with anyone else. It was a specific technique they called it ‘sharpening the mind’. Day by day the mind was focused on the breath to a smaller and smaller area, making it possible to observe super fine details of the body. Basically after the fifth or sixth day, I was able to feel microscopic sensations on and in my body, which somehow initiated the sequence to release my body’s hidden power.

I was sitting there in meditation, my thoughts deeply subdued.  Watching my breath, I could feel the energy rising and falling. The lights were shining in my third eye.  I started to scan my body, and again my heart was in sync with my breath. But now, my breath, heartbeat and those subtle energy sensations started speeding up and strength. The energy would rise up my torso with the inhale, down the outside of my arm with the exhale, and back up the inside with the inhale. Then down the outside of my leg, back up my inner leg up thru my body, and then down my other arm, back up into my chest and down the other leg. As this energy gained speed and strength, so did the intensity and speed of the lights in my third eye, until the light turned a pure solid white and I felt my whole body engulfed by this ball of energy. It was a feeling as if every electron within every cell of my body was somehow magnetically aligned and this energy was flowing in whirls in and out of me. The closest thing I can compare it to was the movie ‘Cocoon’. Those who know about acupuncture will understand these energy pathways.

It took me about 10 years of studying Sanatana Dharma and the Upinashads before I understood what was going on there. Apparently it’s not experienced by many, but I had two different experiential separation of my soul’s ‘eternal conscious’ from the illusion, or Maya, of the physical world. Some call it the unification of the soul and the Universe, or in Hindu terms Atman (individual consciousness) and Brahma (or God / the Universe). But to be honest, as extreme as those experiences were, it really feels like I had opened the door but was only looking into the ‘other side’.

That kind of experience will definitely change your view of what ‘Reality’ is… its extremely difficult to explain exactly what the feelings of the spirit realm are, and thousands of others have tried, but this experience of existence is definitely more than what they teach us is possible. I believe, there is actually a very real effort to suppress this ancient wisdom, because it is a path that frees your soul from the confines of time, space preconceived possibility.. It is knowing that there is something far more important than any creation here on earth. The experiences and the after effects are more powerful than any drug and hundreds of times more satisfying than sex. The experience breaks the ignorance that restricts us from believing in ourselves and reaching our full potential in Life.

A feeling of unquestionable Purpose for ourselves and for the whole Universe can be seen through the experience. Some say it brings the realization that we are in control of our Fate and have a responsibility to help create a better world. A realization of what is right and wrong, good and bad, and fills us with the courage to act uninhibited by the outside influences. With these experiences, a true and evident Purpose was awakened in my heart and the reality of Life become a miracle, but one which can be controlled. Most all religions do teach us that we are a special child of God, and that we each have a special purpose for being born. I didn’t understand that as a child, but after having had these experiences connecting with ‘a higher power’, I can’t help but observe everything else in life as some sort of miracle. I’ve come to believe that indeed the consciousness of every creature has an individual purpose, reason and right to be on the planet, and every consciousness experiences the same joys and pains that I do. Every soul want to be happy. Every creature want to grow. Every creature wants the same things I do.. I can say life has been better for many reasons since I have had these experiences, and even better when I went vegan.

So, the out of body/ kundalini experiences are kinda awesome, but even better than them, are the earthly benefits in daily life. The Realization that each of us is in control of our individual destiny. The Realization that our lifetime on Earth is very short and to not waste time. Realizing that living in the past or the future, or wanting things to be different, or not making the best effort and outlook, is all a waste of time. The only moment there is in Life, is right now, period. The past is gone forever but is go if you can grow from it, but cant let it hold you back. The future is unpredictable and usually doesn’t pan out exact how its planned, so just gotta focus and work towards the future that you want to be realized. Finding our own calling and living that cause is Purpose… and maybe see if you can start influencing Fate to bend to your conscious imagination… 

We can experience these very subtle influences of how the mind affects the body and how the body affects the mind. Like how Wim Hof use controlled stress to activate the super powers within our bodies, once you understand how the body works on its own, you can start working with the body. During exercise, the same practice of controlling the breath takes the body to the next level or refined movement. Watching the body and controlling the breath controls the rest of the body. With practice, after you start to strengthen the energy systems in and outside of the body, then you can actually start affecting them with your conscious will. I call it hacking into the body’s extraordinary abilities, but in reality it is taking control of the body’s autonomic systems. I will try to cross-reference what I believe are the similarities between Eastern internal alchemy and western physiology, from what I have learned.

Regardless, by studying and observing, I have been led to believe that the world we are taught, the material and spiritual, are not exactly what is going on, a verisimilitude of sorts. It’s an endless story of history, science, metaphysics, and imagination, but I will try to weave a common pattern with our world histories, cultures, beliefs and wisdoms, hopefully leading someone to the understanding and experience of the Spirit Realm… but let’s start with what we have not been taught about history.  The story about humans evolving into civilizations over a few tens of thousands of years is ridiculous. 20,000 years ago was simply a new time in the history of man. It is better described as the end of the Glacial Age and the destruction of the Ice Age Civilizations. The little recorded histories throughout the world describe a time when the world was far more advanced…