When I was around 13 or 14 years old, some interesting things started to happen to me.
I didn’t know what was going on but a lot of the time I would go to bed and I would lay down, always on my back (never on my side or my stomach), and I would start to feel like there was a vibration in my body. I felt my body start to get really heavy, and I’d explore this sensation. Why am I getting heavy? Why do my sheets feel like they’re a thousand pounds?
Until one day I had what is called an out of body experience, a spontaneous one where I was laying down and my consciousness rose up out of my body. I could feel myself going through the sheets, going up, and then I rolled over in the air, and here I was looking down at my body. As soon as my mind was able to ask the question, What the hell is this!?
Boom. I snapped back into my body.
I think everybody’s had that experience. You start to fall asleep and then every single thing fires at once. Well, I was conscious when that happened. And it would happen on occasion, but then I started being able to get a little bit further from my body. Sometimes I’d float up to the ceiling. Sometimes I’d go up through the floor, through my parents’ bedroom and up through the ceiling and up through the attic and the roof to the outside, but I never went too far. Later on, I started understanding more of what was going on, but at the time it was a novelty, but still kind of freaky. I kind of thought there was something wrong with me or maybe I was sick.
When I was 15 1/2, I got my learner’s permit and when I turned 16, I got my first job. My birthday is July 4th, so probably by July 7th, I had a job.
I had wanted nothing more than to have that freedom, and the first thing that I ever bought with my own money was the book right called Journeys Out of the Body by Robert A. Monroe. This is the quintessential work on out of body experiences.
I went to the used bookstore and I told the guy what was happening and he looked at me and said, “I have the book for you.” He comes over and hands me the book and you know, it still smells like that used bookstore. It’s very nostalgic for those of us who spent a lot of time in places like that. The younger generations will probably never know that smell.
That started me on an interesting journey where if I had not had those spontaneous out of body experiences, I don’t know if I would be doing what I’m doing today. Because when it rang that bell in me, I couldn’t unring it.
I couldn’t stop wondering, what more is there? It’s obviously more than just this.
It’s by asking those questions that we’re going to find answers. It’s when we think we know that the universe tends to slap us down and say, “No, you don’t know anything yet.”
But when we ask the questions, What more is there? What does this mean? How much more can I perceive? How much more loving can I be? How much more expansive can I be? What else can I do? Then sit and listen.