NEWS FEED
A Change of Being
Friday, June 29, 2012
I have not added a journal entry in months. The reason is that I have been at a loss about what to say. But I'm going to try, at least to put down a few paragraphs about what's been happening to me. Outwardly, I've been living my life, writing, working on this website, interacting with friends, all the usual things.
Inwardly, though, something has changed and is still changing. My difficulty is that it's so very hard to put into words. Also, as time goes on, I get more and more reticent. I don't think I'm becoming a hermit, but it's a struggle not to do what I have seen so many close encounter witnesses do, which is to turn entirely toward their experience and close the door on the outside world.
I love the outside world, and I think that I'm meant to be a worldwalker, which is why I have had so much experience lavished on me. I cannot say how grateful I am, or how hard it is to do this.
The enormous, overriding problem is language. Words, Sentences, the whole structure of the thing. It does not reflect the reality I'm experiencing, and I know that many of you who come to Unknowncountry because you have the same sorts of life experiences that I do will know exactly what I mean.
Anyway, I am going to try to chronicle a few things. First, I'd like to say something about life and death. They don't have the same meaning to me that they once did. Death isn't a mystery anymore, but rather I see it as another part of the art of being. What happens is this: during life, we take experience in. We are in an active state. After the life is finished, we enter a passive, or contemplative state. It's breath. Life is breathing in. Death is breathing out. Two sides of a triad: life is the active side, death the passive.
However, there is a third side to every triangle, and that's what the change of being that I'm experiencing is about. Active and passive energies are easy to perceive, but we are third force blind, and this is the essence of the human predicament.
So what is this 'third force' that is neither active nor passive but can create balance between the two? As there are an infinite number of triads, there are also an infinite number of manifestations of balance, most of them fleeing and essentially automatic, touched only briefly as we slip randomly between active and passive life states.
Being is larger than either the physical or the nonphysical state, but it bears reference to both and is infused in both. What has been happening to me is that I'm beginning to be in both states at the same time, which has been true for some time, but is true now in a much more clear way. It isn't that I am literally both alive and dead, but rather that I am living this life while remembering my past before I came to it, and knowing how I am unfolding now not only as I move along my physical timeline, but I am also seeing into the conscious world that suffuses and surrounds the physical, but is not contained by it.
The Sphinx is the key to understanding this state. It has the strength of a bull, the courage of a lion and the intelligence of a man. When the three parts work together--active courage and passive strength being balanced by neutral and harmonizing intelligence--then it spreads its wings and soars aloft like and eagle.
This feels like a state of objectivity. One looks down not only on what is transpiring in the active, living state, but also what waits in the passive state that we call death, but which is not death at all, and very far from the nothingness that we imagine and dread. In other words, there is a condition of being that transcends life and death. It is this that I am tasting now.
One thing that I find interesting about it--one of many--is that, as I enter deeply into the state, I seem to actually change physically. I can feel this, as if my body is becoming a kind of energy and is not entirely material. I was in such a state in March one evening while meditating. The sense of the presence of fourth mind was so palpable that I picked up my phone and snapped a picture of myself, just to see if the sensation that I felt around my head--as if I was materially both inside and outside myself at the same time--might be recordable. The picture above is the result.
More recently, in late May, I began to feel as if Anne and I were not alone in this place. There was somebody else here, whom we could not see. I have a small automatic camera, which I set up on the night of May 28. It was motion sensitive. I set it to take images in our bedroom, just above the bed so that our movements in sleep would not activate it.
The next morning, I not only discovered that it had gone off a number of times, I found that the clips contained what look like moving orbs or bits of dust, as if there was air moving in the room. But there wasn't. The windows were closed and it was absolutely still. Not only that, specks of dust wouldn't have activated the camera, but something certainly did. On prior nights, the camera took video only when one of us got up and moved around in the room.
The next thing I knew, the water went down and two horrific creatures appeared, looming up out of the well with their teeth bared. Anne was safe behind me, but I couldn't back away from them. They were going to devour me--and yet...not. They seemed soft and somehow unable to actually reach me.
I then woke up and saw three dark, blocky figures standing beside the bed. Of course, I was absolutely terrified, and thrust out my hand, slapping at them. The three of them at once disappeared, and I felt my hand slap against something soft, like a smooth bald head, which immediately slipped out of my grasp.
I experienced a powerful moment of knowing that has extended, and has become me. I look, act and physically feel the same. But I am not the same.
What I want to leave you with is the idea that we should think of ourselves in terms of the overarching being that we actually are, not simply as a living body. We are here in the physical world inhaling the breath of experience. We are enacting life plans we have intentionally hidden from ourselves so that we will react to the experiences we have not out of our knowledge, but out of our deep personal truth. Thus, when we are in the contemplative state that we the living refer to as death, we will be observing our lives, and integrating the energy we have retained in the form of essence-memories into our larger selves.
I have seen a few other things. First, we are not a 'species' that evolved on Earth. We are the product of a very advanced science of our own devising, engaged in a deep practice of energy management, breathing experience in when we are in the flesh, then releasing the energy when we are not.
This place is not natural--or rather, our place in it is not natural. The human species is not only an outcome of natural selection, it has been interfered with and elements of design added. Specifically, we have done the interfering. We have created mankind as a mechanism of evolution. Ours has been a much longer journey than we realize.
We are an enormously complex, profoundly conscious and deeply lonely presence that emerges out of endlessness and slips away into the infinite. We are searching for freedom of a kind that is almost impossible to imagine--for ecstasy, in the end, that is absolutely pure and absolutely authentic--in short, that is perfectly true.
We are our own bright angels and our own dark gods. There is nobody here but us, but when I say that, you must release your imagination as best you are able, to glimpse from the vantage point of the physical, the poignant, searching immensity that is being.
Inwardly, though, something has changed and is still changing. My difficulty is that it's so very hard to put into words. Also, as time goes on, I get more and more reticent. I don't think I'm becoming a hermit, but it's a struggle not to do what I have seen so many close encounter witnesses do, which is to turn entirely toward their experience and close the door on the outside world.
I love the outside world, and I think that I'm meant to be a worldwalker, which is why I have had so much experience lavished on me. I cannot say how grateful I am, or how hard it is to do this.
The enormous, overriding problem is language. Words, Sentences, the whole structure of the thing. It does not reflect the reality I'm experiencing, and I know that many of you who come to Unknowncountry because you have the same sorts of life experiences that I do will know exactly what I mean.
Anyway, I am going to try to chronicle a few things. First, I'd like to say something about life and death. They don't have the same meaning to me that they once did. Death isn't a mystery anymore, but rather I see it as another part of the art of being. What happens is this: during life, we take experience in. We are in an active state. After the life is finished, we enter a passive, or contemplative state. It's breath. Life is breathing in. Death is breathing out. Two sides of a triad: life is the active side, death the passive.
However, there is a third side to every triangle, and that's what the change of being that I'm experiencing is about. Active and passive energies are easy to perceive, but we are third force blind, and this is the essence of the human predicament.
So what is this 'third force' that is neither active nor passive but can create balance between the two? As there are an infinite number of triads, there are also an infinite number of manifestations of balance, most of them fleeing and essentially automatic, touched only briefly as we slip randomly between active and passive life states.
Being is larger than either the physical or the nonphysical state, but it bears reference to both and is infused in both. What has been happening to me is that I'm beginning to be in both states at the same time, which has been true for some time, but is true now in a much more clear way. It isn't that I am literally both alive and dead, but rather that I am living this life while remembering my past before I came to it, and knowing how I am unfolding now not only as I move along my physical timeline, but I am also seeing into the conscious world that suffuses and surrounds the physical, but is not contained by it.
The Sphinx is the key to understanding this state. It has the strength of a bull, the courage of a lion and the intelligence of a man. When the three parts work together--active courage and passive strength being balanced by neutral and harmonizing intelligence--then it spreads its wings and soars aloft like and eagle.
This feels like a state of objectivity. One looks down not only on what is transpiring in the active, living state, but also what waits in the passive state that we call death, but which is not death at all, and very far from the nothingness that we imagine and dread. In other words, there is a condition of being that transcends life and death. It is this that I am tasting now.
One thing that I find interesting about it--one of many--is that, as I enter deeply into the state, I seem to actually change physically. I can feel this, as if my body is becoming a kind of energy and is not entirely material. I was in such a state in March one evening while meditating. The sense of the presence of fourth mind was so palpable that I picked up my phone and snapped a picture of myself, just to see if the sensation that I felt around my head--as if I was materially both inside and outside myself at the same time--might be recordable. The picture above is the result.
More recently, in late May, I began to feel as if Anne and I were not alone in this place. There was somebody else here, whom we could not see. I have a small automatic camera, which I set up on the night of May 28. It was motion sensitive. I set it to take images in our bedroom, just above the bed so that our movements in sleep would not activate it.
The next morning, I not only discovered that it had gone off a number of times, I found that the clips contained what look like moving orbs or bits of dust, as if there was air moving in the room. But there wasn't. The windows were closed and it was absolutely still. Not only that, specks of dust wouldn't have activated the camera, but something certainly did. On prior nights, the camera took video only when one of us got up and moved around in the room.
Even stranger, the camera ceased to work after that. The battery was drained even though I'd charged it the night before, and it could never again be recharged. So all I was left with was the microdisk with the images on it. (Log in to see one of the videos. It's typical of the group.)
The next night, I had what I would describe as a moment of gnosis, in the form of a dream. In it, I found myself looking into a well. The water was perfectly clear, but the bottom of the well was covered in silt. Anne and I wanted something that was there, and were trying to locate it so we could drop a hook and bring it up.The next thing I knew, the water went down and two horrific creatures appeared, looming up out of the well with their teeth bared. Anne was safe behind me, but I couldn't back away from them. They were going to devour me--and yet...not. They seemed soft and somehow unable to actually reach me.
I then woke up and saw three dark, blocky figures standing beside the bed. Of course, I was absolutely terrified, and thrust out my hand, slapping at them. The three of them at once disappeared, and I felt my hand slap against something soft, like a smooth bald head, which immediately slipped out of my grasp.
I experienced a powerful moment of knowing that has extended, and has become me. I look, act and physically feel the same. But I am not the same.
What I want to leave you with is the idea that we should think of ourselves in terms of the overarching being that we actually are, not simply as a living body. We are here in the physical world inhaling the breath of experience. We are enacting life plans we have intentionally hidden from ourselves so that we will react to the experiences we have not out of our knowledge, but out of our deep personal truth. Thus, when we are in the contemplative state that we the living refer to as death, we will be observing our lives, and integrating the energy we have retained in the form of essence-memories into our larger selves.
I have seen a few other things. First, we are not a 'species' that evolved on Earth. We are the product of a very advanced science of our own devising, engaged in a deep practice of energy management, breathing experience in when we are in the flesh, then releasing the energy when we are not.
This place is not natural--or rather, our place in it is not natural. The human species is not only an outcome of natural selection, it has been interfered with and elements of design added. Specifically, we have done the interfering. We have created mankind as a mechanism of evolution. Ours has been a much longer journey than we realize.
We are an enormously complex, profoundly conscious and deeply lonely presence that emerges out of endlessness and slips away into the infinite. We are searching for freedom of a kind that is almost impossible to imagine--for ecstasy, in the end, that is absolutely pure and absolutely authentic--in short, that is perfectly true.
We are our own bright angels and our own dark gods. There is nobody here but us, but when I say that, you must release your imagination as best you are able, to glimpse from the vantage point of the physical, the poignant, searching immensity that is being.
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I know I speak for many of us when I say that we do know exactly what you mean. But like you say, so much of this is so thoroughly ephemeral, these states of being that we're becomeing aware of, that we wind up being reduced to using clumsy descriptors to try to convey... this. To the point of not bothering to describe it at all, in many cases. But sharing it, on the other hand, is downright sublime. Not to make this soundlike a shameless plug for the Dreamland Festival, but the majority of attendees not only eminate this state of being, we also get to share in it while in one another's company: it's the real reason why the experience of meeting one another is so special to us.
.
For my own part, I can also vouch for that reticent urge: "ordinary" people can seem extremely boring to someone in this state, while interaction with others opening to this state is rich, sublime, invigorating. What interest is there in interacting with the mundane? There are many of us, but we're scattered, making it seem like we're quite alone at times... and it can seem as if no-one is listening. Connection is our new drug... and may we never shake the addiction. ;)
Thank you Whitley, Madd Matt and all of the dreamland attendees. I find it very difficult to share my experiences not because I'm shy ( I'm not) but there are so few constructs in the English language that will convey the depth of differentness of my experience from the masses of people around me. At least at Dreamland I feel connected to others who share that feeling of having experiences that do not fit within the bounds and bondage of a language system. Whitley you come as close as anyone I've ever met who can begin to define the enigma that some of us have had the fortune to experience. To say thank you again is so lame, but say it ...I must. You are our voice when we have not the words.
Thank you Whitley, Madd Matt and all of the dreamland attendees. I find it very difficult to share my experiences not because I'm shy ( I'm not) but there are so few constructs in the English language that will convey the depth of differentness of my experience from the masses of people around me. At least at Dreamland I feel connected to others who share that feeling of having experiences that do not fit within the bounds and bondage of a language system. Whitley you come as close as anyone I've ever met who can begin to define the enigma that some of us have had the fortune to experience. To say thank you again is so lame, but say it ...I must. You are our voice when we have not the words.
Thank you Whitley, Madd Matt and all of the dreamland attendees. I find it very difficult to share my experiences not because I'm shy ( I'm not) but there are so few constructs in the English language that will convey the depth of differentness of my experience from the masses of people around me. At least at Dreamland I feel connected to others who share that feeling of having experiences that do not fit within the bounds and bondage of a language system. Whitley you come as close as anyone I've ever met who can begin to define the enigma that some of us have had the fortune to experience. To say thank you again is so lame, but say it ...I must. You are our voice when we have not the words.
I envy your state of mindfulness that enables the coalescing of that which approaches the ethereal in this reality. I have been struggling to make any progress toward a higher state of understanding during my life thus far. It is empowering that some in our time are making inroads to advance the species. Hopefully lessons can be conferred in manner.
Man, the photo of you really creeped me out at first.
The video: my initial reaction is that "someone", for lack of a better word, did not enter your bedroom, but the opposite. Your bedroom "opened up" to the greater reality surrounding us and the cam caught it.
Whitley and all, thank you for being who you are and open to sharing it with others. I have had some experiences during my lifetime which perhaps are similar. As you say, words are not enough. They cannot give the depth or reality of such experience, just as they fail to give the depth of the experience of being loved unconditionally...BEING loved... for no "reason" except being.
I give 3 aspects using limited words, to describe it:
1. being unattached (to so many "norms of life like results, and understandings, etc) which does NOT mean uncaring it is so different, and so foreign to me that it was a source of fear
2. experiencing oneness...that is...non-separation from all else...? There is a deep connection - an essential piece of how and who we are -i perceive going on...and though you didn't say it, are you experiencing that?
3.being outside of time...which you tried to explain... there is no "time" only the present... the everlasting now.... and i like the use of the word present because there is Presence in being present ... in the now...
Much love and peace to all.... always, and all ways
I want that...
I feel I both understand and relate to this post. In a way, it puts me in mind of a book I read many years ago by the Austrian born hindu monk, Swāmī Agehānanda Bhāratī, called ‘The Light at the Center.’ In it, he describes and details what he calls ‘zero-experiences.’ (Not that I would ever presume to suggest a book to Mr. Strieber!)
And the video is just simply astounding, in my opinion. Thank you for sharing that with us.
After a lifetime of highly odd/anomalous experiences, I still haven't found a coherent way to describe "this". So again, my hearfelt thanks to you Whitley - you always manage to describe (quite brilliantly) the ever-evolving essence of what this journey encompasses. I am so grateful that we have the Dreamland community where we can share our thoughts and experiences. Madd Matt - I too feel that I am "reduced to clumsy descriptors" at times. But as you say, it is indeed sublime that we can share this at least once a year in person, and of course through the chats :)
Whitley - an Autumn event would be great :)
I am getting disturbed right now. The thread of this discussion is very different from the one I looked at this morning. Also, I posted information of something that happened to me yesterday, and it is no longer here. Well, hmmm....
Thank you for taking the time to articulate your experiences, Whitley. I understand how difficult it is to put these things into words. I have been having similar experiences regarding my physical form, which is becoming more and more fluid in conjunction with my shifting perception.
Your post reminds me so much of sages that in the later years have said that they are living in both worlds at the same time.
If we came in boxes, you would find me on the left brain, materialist shelf, though nothing is so clear cut.
I ask questions. Other than that I don't say much, because there is enough talk and I don't feel like I have much to contribute talk wise.
Recently (time?) I have felt more separation union. For example, I like to ride my bike. When doing so, I feel more separate, yet more connected to the process. Maybe it's natural aging, or perhaps I'm seeing more through my third eye or out of body.
There is also some premonition. For awhile, I felt as if I was going to be hurt and worried about a bike accident. It turns out I reinjured my knee pretty good at the playground with my kids. Recovery has been fine, thanks to my physical therapists. I don't feel that worry about an accident so much nowadays.
Maybe this is everyday experience for many of you, and it may or may not be related to Whitley's entry. I just felt like contributing.
You ARE the Kwisatz Haderach...
By your startling vulnerability, Whitley, you have initiated a very good discussion. I feel that in my life I have absolutely tried to close the door to memories of experience which do not fit into the current paradigm I am caught up in: of times when people communicated without words and saw their own thoughts in front of their eyes. Also of lifetimes on this planet in which terrible things happened to me and other people and filled me with depression and hopelessness. My struggle is to be an ordinary person and an extraordinary person at the same time - I seem to flop between both possibilities, and am often disabled by fear. Your comments were very helpful and useful and I thank you for them.
This all makes a great deal of sense. The seemingly opposing forces of light and dark coming together to realise and third transformative aspect. I think back to when I first noticed this gathering; I was more naive, readier to please and try to be liked. As processes advanced, I have become a much tougher S.O.B., more critical, both of myself and others but remain determined to be fair and act logically. Also though, there is something else, something that I sense is a part of me/us outside of the Human personage I/we wear. It feels almost robotic, automated but self aware in a sense that is almost shadowy, lukewarm and ghost like. Mr Strieber's comments about becoming more Hermit-like, to a degree, certainly sounded all too familiar. Roll with it.
Well said, Whitley (and all you other wonderful respondents). In the last year or so I have become disconnected from so much, I am almost unmoored. Most of those things that used to command my attention now seem like shadows, dimly recollected fragments of memories from a film about someone else's life. All that I desire is to join those sorts who understand what is written on this page. And I find myself now able to be loving and compassionate toward others without being attached to the outcomes of their struggles. Some of us will move on soon; many more will have to repeat earth-school yet again.
A fall meeting would be a great idea. If I may suggest, rather than formal presentations from the Dreamland crew, could we all just get together and talk? Just being together will give us the recharge that we need.
I do not agree that death is passive. I feel it probably is more active than we realize here. There is a lot of learning to do.
I'm sorry I do not agree with you on the loneliness part. I feel that that path is a choice. There are other paths that aren't self centered. The only way to attain happiness is to not accept self which can be a bottomless well. But to accept all which is made by love and limitless in its bounty.
wow and i thought i was experiencing these things because i was growing old. thought they were natural changes about people and things that happened with time.
Whitley, I opened an e-mail today sent to me from a friend and felt it to resonate with your new WHITLEY'S JOURNAL. None of this comes from me but from a woman named Peggy Black (Author and teacher). The few paragraphs that I copied over below do however echo my own belief and she says it more eloquently then I could have.
"When your awareness is within your heart, it becomes the portal or the gateway to the non-visible realities. You heart is the doorway and the connection to other streams of consciousness and other dimensions. This is a most important aspect for you to realize and understand. Part of what is occurring within the evolution of humanity is that many humans are beginning to realize that part of their role is to be the INVITER, the physical connection to these higher realms of vibrations and frequencies."
"You are awake and aware, an intuitive in a physical and human form, and you are also an anchor or receptor in your reality, capable of connecting with other beings and forms of consciousness that vibrate at a different frequency. It is time that you acknowledge your ability to interact and reconnect with the energy streams of consciousness offered by other expressions of life."
Now as for me.....
I have always taken Psalm 82:6 literally.
6 I said, “You are gods,
sons of the Most High, all of you.
I have to agree with everything that Whitley wrote, ~ and all of you wrote as well ~ it is very hard to relate with people outside of this tiny circle ~ I'm not sure how to respond further, so I will just leave it at that.... Peace
i am going to write some music for you Whitley if this is ok????
Whitley,
I don't think I understood more than half of what you were talking about, and I'm sorry about that. I wish I could be like these other posters but I can't and there's no sense in pretending. I find that as I get older I look more for the simplicity of things, the bare essence if you will. Maybe that has made me lazy, I don't know. I did agree with you however on the life/death triad. While I don't know what will happen when I die, I do think I will still be me, and that whatever"death" is it will definitely be another great adventure. Your journal brought to mind a random thought I had about a year ago complete with imagery. It was that whatever it is that created life is completely unaware. It is sleeping. When it breathes out, there is life. When it breathes in there is death. There is a rhythm to it, a balance. And in between the breaths... well, maybe that is what you mean.
Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.
The whole point is we are meant to be blind for our own development,for instance i've been through a ton of girlfriends before i married,if i knew who my wife was in the beginning i might well have skipped a bunch of these girls and headed straight for my wife.I would have missed out on a whole range of experiences and lessons i was here to benefit from.Live in the moment,it's all there really is.
From my experience, that third state of being is what I consider the "maybe" state. Sooner or later, the abyss that has manifested in us has expanded the role that Maybe plays in the triad, on an equal footing to Life and Death.
All these things are well stated given the limitations of language. WE are like blindfolded children swinging with short sticks at Piñatas suspended way above our heads. And the Dreamland Festival is sublime in the company of others deep in searching. It takes me a month os so for me to "reintegrate into society" as I call it.
As someone who has experiened the state that you have, I know exactly how it is. The state of experience that you are in, is so great, so much larger than what we are accustomed to in our daily lives, first, there are no words to describe it. There is merely the existence of it. Secondly, because it is so much larger, life, as you normally experience it seems insignificant in that the daily routines and such that seemed to have had significance seemingly don't have that significance anymore. One is so completely drawn into this greater feeling of existence that, after a time, returning to normal life does not seem possible. But, once you return to normal life, it is hard to readjust to such the limited experience we are all so used to. When I reached this objective state you describe after following your guided meditations, and then returning back to normal reality, I felt almost as if I had been reborn again. Every experience was completely new and I cherised every experience like it was the first time I had had it. If this experience mirrors the death that we fear so much, or at the very least it is a middle ground where we are still experiencing our lives, humanity can benefit from such knowledge. We may be at a crossroads now, having the chance to taste the greater whole that we have hidden from ourselves for far too long.