What Do I Believe?

The following is a excerpt from “Into the Light” by John Lerma MD (http://www.amazon.com/Into-Light-Afterlife-Pre-Death-Experiences/dp/1564149722). This is from a chapter titled “Father Mike,” who was a 78-year-old, retired, Catholic priest who was well respected and had been president of a Catholic university. He was in the hospice unit to live his last days, diagnosed with terminal cancer. At this time, Dr Lerma was working at that hospice unit, caring for the terminally ill and making their last days as comfortable as possible. This section deals with the final minutes of Father Mike’s life:

“As I arrived at the hospice unit, the lights on the hospice floor were flickering on and off. There was an incredible sense of peace in the midst of the chaos that was occurring. Several nurses and my secretary were present. They had rushed me there to experience an inconceivable event. Every time the lights turned on and off, little feathers fell from the ceiling, drifting down as if they were snowflakes. One fell in the hand of a nurse and disappeared. As soon as they fell, they disappeared. Father Mike’s call light was going off and on. His door, which had been closed when he died, was now open. The secretary and one nurse saw a bright light shining from his room. They thought the lights were coming back on, but the bright light was radiating from his body or bed., Out of that light came this bright sphere that floated out of his body and circled the bed about three times before it soared out of the closed window. Less than a minute later, the lights came back on, it stopped raining and all the feathers disappeared. We all had goose bumps.”

I’ve tried to write this piece several times now. Each time I ended up ranting about the people who refuse to accept the evidence of the paranormal, in all it’s different forms, and I didn’t like that. I kept rewriting it, but it still didn’t feel right. Then I finally got it: The real question is, do I believe it? And the answer is, <ding> I’m not 100% sure that I do. Sure I have my intensions, but can I really accept that feathers can just appear out of nowhere and then vanish?

This now brings something into focus. There is an idea in the psychological world that everyone and every thing you dislike or hate, is part of yourself that you can’t accept. You then project it out onto people or things in the world, both separating yourself from it and unconsciously hoping that destroying it will purge it from your psyche. If that is true, then my issues with hypocrisy and abuse of power stem from my own fears and tendencies in those areas. Guess what? It turns out that I don’t have to look too long to see the truth of that, which some recent incidents have made all too clear. This leads me to the next question: What do I do about it?

I’ve been watching some Abraham-Hicks videos on YouTube. These are about a woman named Esther Hicks channels an energy that calls itself Abraham. (It took me a while before I figured that out.) Usually I don’t watch, I just listen. He/She can be very entertaining, though, at points, I sometimes I wonder why everyone is laughing so hard. (Maybe being in a seminar for 8 hours makes you a little punch-drunk?) Anyway, most of her talks center about manifesting, abundance, getting what you want, the life you want, you get the idea. I listen because these talks resonate on a very different level than someone like Tony Robbins, and give me the idea that there’s something there, if I can just wrap my head around it. In pondering/meditating while listening, the question came up about knowing who you are and what you want. At that point, I realized that I don’t know who I am.

Isn’t that a strange thought? How can you not know who you are? When I looked, I mean really looked, I could see that there is a significant part of me that I don’t have access to. It’s just an indescribable something, that is just there, and it’s completely impervious to my usual techniques to getting a handle on it. I am getting that I need to meditate in a new way to deal with it and move to the next level. I need to get out of my head, with it’s logic, language and symbols, and into something more abstract. Forget what I have been taught and practice just be with certain “concepts.”

I have spent a good portion of my life stripping away layers of conditioning and expectation, a process that has steadily accelerating over the years. At first, it was no big deal. It just made me feel better about stuff and my life better as a whole. But, as I continued, my personality and outlook began to shift. The changes were subtle at first, but over time my tastes began to change, and, eventually, I became profoundly dissatisfied and my choices led to a wholesale life restructuring. That’s a fancy way of saying that I left my career and my marriage, got a new place to live, new job and new friends. Not really on purpose, but things just happened when I realized that I could do that any more.

At this point, it seems like the process has removed most of my cultural conditioning and expectations, those “shoulds” and “should nots,” along with the fears of what will happen if deviate from the norm. I have lost a lot of comforting beliefs and rituals about the world and my place in it. But, at the same time, I have become a lot more open to new ideas. Most people cloak their skepticism in science or faith, but we all know that the simple truth is that they’re mostly worried about “what will people think?” While I wish I was completely free of that, I’m not, but I am about 90% less worried about it than I used to be. I get now that I can never be who a really am, until I can stop pretending to live up to someone else expectations. Make no mistake, we are all pretending, one way or another.

Do I believe that those paranormal things actually happened, really? Yes I am, and I’m willing to take all the flack that that engenders. What about everything else in “Into the Light?” (It has a very Christian focus) I still have very negative feelings around terms like “God,” “Jesus” and “faith.” Probably because I constantly hear those words used to justify the most hateful, hurtful and destructive actions and I can’t understand how anyone would want to be associated with the awful things that are said an done in the name of “God’s Love.” That aside, I can deal with the idea that these concepts have just as much claim to legitimacy as ghosts and guides, so I shouldn’t toss them out due to personal prejudice.

In reality, (funny to say that in connection with the paranormal, but, oh well) all “supernatural” forces are conceptually the same, whether you’re talking about God on high or the things that go bump in the night, and all evidence needs to be evaluated and considered. The waters around these phenomena are muddy enough already, there’s no point in making it worse by buying into artificial distinctions. It’s a good idea to keep my mind open all aspects of the paranormal, for that is the only way to ever begin to draw any kind of comprehensive understand of what’s going on, and what are the implications for everyday life. Then, perhaps, I can stop being upset by the compulsive skeptics.

“Who are you going to believe? Me, or your own eyes?” —Groucho Marx

Follow the Bird

I had idea for a way to refresh my meditation sessions: I had been noticing images pop into my head, from time to time, while I was lying there with my eyes closed. Usually they came and went so quickly that they barely registered. Yesterday I had the idea to go with them and see where they went. Not to try and do anything with them, just notice them and be with them and watch what happens, without any expectations.

Yesterday, when I tried this idea, I had a little fun. I first noticed just a flash of turquoise water. Then I just let it come back and just looked at it, without trying to make any sense of it. I just let it form, at it’s own pace, until I had a complete image.

What I was seeing was turquoise ocean water, view for directly above. Maybe 100 or so feet above. The sea was a little choppy, but not big waves. I had the impression that there was a small, rocky island, just to the right, slightly out of the picture. Just going with it, it felt warm, like the Mediterranean. I watched the waves move for a bit, then, as though I raised my head, the picture shifted until I was looking horizontally, out toward a coastline in the far distance. Then I saw the white head and realized that I was a bird, a seagull, flying over the sea. That was it.

Nothing really earth shattering, just a nice, peaceful little few moments in the life of a bird. Like a small vacation from my daily worries. No worries there, nothing to do there, no future to worry about. Just gliding through the clear, bright air. I don’t know if there was a message there, but it was nice, none the less.

I have a lot of pictures pop into my head, from time to time, and I’ll now take some time to explore them. Perhaps they’ll just be interesting, or maybe they might lead to some journeys with teachings and healings for me. I doesn’t really matter, it’s all a learning experience. There are so many things we ignore in our endless race to pass the test, get the job, earn the buck, and that leaves each of us to discover them on our own. We could value the inward journey and teach our children from a early age things to do and what types of things to expect. But, instead, we ignore it entirely and leave every person to discover it on their own, with all the false steps and dead ends that are inevitable when people are wandering in uncharted territory.

It’s really so sad. There are so many out there promoting fear and hate and exclusion as “spiritual,” and they get away with it because no one is taught what spirituality is, and to distinguish it from blind faith and fanaticism. And so, for the nonce, we must each blaze our on paths. I wish you the best on your journey and I pray that you will find help that will allow you discover your own path, and not insist that you take theirs.

Speedbumps

Today I confronted some speedbumps, and new ideas, in my path to awaking. I don’t really like the term “enlightenment,” it’s got too many connotations I’m not comfortable with, and, frankly, it really feels to me that I’m waking up and seeing all the worlds around me that I never noticed before.

Fun fact: The book we call “The Egyptian Book of the Dead,” was actually called “The Book of Going Forth by Day,” by the Egyptians. I know, that sound a bit like, “say what?” Other translations I like better are, “The Book of Going Forth into the Light,” or “The Journey to Enlightenment.”

I have been feeling somewhat stalled in my process. You know, we all hit these plateaus, from time to time, where nothing seems to happen. It doesn’t matter if we’re playing golf, music or taking over the world, we all hit periods where we can’t seem to make any progress. Worse, all the we’ve accomplish up to this point seems worthless. Well, maybe not worthless, but, well, you know what I mean. I’ve been facing that for a few weeks now, where nothing seemed to be happening and I wasn’t making any progress on issues and in areas I consider important.

The other day I, for the first time, started to dive into the Seth writings. This is another body of work that I’ve known about since the ‘70s, but had never read. I started to listen to bits on YouTube and started to get intrigued by what it had to say. Then I found someone who has read and recorded the entire Seth book, “The Nature of Personal Reality,” and posted it on YouTube. I started listening while meditating.

Some of the writings in the book triggered things in me. I have noticed, in recent weeks, that I have certain “discomforts” that only appear when I meditate. They show up after I start and disappear when I’m finished. Odd? Yes. I have looked at these with all the tools I have and haven’t been able to make any headway on finding out why I have them or how to get them to go away. This is one of the reasons that I’ve been feeling like I’m not getting anywhere: I’d run up against something that none of my tools had any effect on.

The Seth text was all about personal beliefs, and how they shape your reality. (“Beliefs” are a huge topic. When you get right down to it, they may be the most important concept you need to wrap your head around, if you are going to awaken. Much bigger than I have time for here. There is no way to overemphasize how important this subject is, but, for now, you’ll just have to go with me on this.) His words gave me a spark the evolved into an idea: It occurred to me to talk to the pains.

So I tried it, and what I found, was that looking into the discomfort and asking, “What would you say, if you could?” resulted in me gaining access to beliefs I hadn’t noticed before. That allowed me to process them out, diminishing the discomfort or eliminating it altogether. So far, I must have already spent at least three hours finding and processing beliefs. Beliefs that were holding me back, in many ways, without me even knowing it. I’m going to get a soft copy of one of the books, so I can read it on our upcoming trip. But I definitely want to have hard copies for my shelf. I like reading from paper much more than from screens.

Graduation

A few days ago, I graduated from HCH Institute with my certificate in hypnotherapy. Cool! It’s been an amazing journey. I needed to plow through a lot of self-doubt, and other issues, that came up throughout the process. Fortunately, we were constantly working on each other so that there was ample opportunity to process stuff. I know now that if you decide to take on this kind of work, it’s always best to have issues to work on. Nothing beats personal experience with each technique from the inside!

We had a graduation ceremony on the last day. As you might expect, it was more spiritual than ceremonial. And I have to add here the qualification “spiritual but not religious,” because the things you learn and deal with in this course of study simply cannot be completely contained within any of the religions that I know of. From my point of view, all the mainstream religions have dumbed-down their metaphysical aspects to the point of simplistic absurdity, then imply that any evidence or experience or philosophical idea that doesn’t fit should be ignored and discarded. I don’t know, call me crazy, but where I come from, if the evidence doesn’t fit the paradigm, it’s time to change the paradigm. I have witnessed and experienced many things that don’t fit into any materialist or religious framework, and they are simply to practical and useful to discard simply because certain people find them unacceptable.

To complete the graduation ceremony, the head of the school lead us in a guided, group meditation. This meditation is known as the Crystal Cave meditation. It takes you on a  journey to a round cave with a fire in the center and the walls lined with crystals. Once in the cave, you are invited to study the flickering firelight dancing through the crystals, looking for inspiration in the ever-changing patterns and colors of light. This time, we were invited to all enter the cave together and form a circle around the fire. Once there, we each had the opportunity to share whatever we wanted about the class and our time together, over the past four months.

I was the last one to go, which gave me plenty of time to consider what I wanted to say. Actually, there wasn’t really many options for me. As soon as we settled into the cave, an image came into my head, and my only options were to either share it, or not. I chose to break from my usual paradigm of questioning everything and keeping all the weird stuff to myself, and tell everyone what I saw.

What is saw was each one of my classmates standing around a fire, each one was a avatar that, I suppose, represented them to me. 

The first person was a female figure dressed in black and white that I knew was Quan Yin, a Buddhist deity that I know little about, I just knew that’s who it was. The next was a cross between a leopard and tiger: fierce, protective, clever and tenacious. The next was a bear: strong, yet gentle, loving and, perhaps, a little clumsy, not yet in full control of her power. The next was a female figure I still didn’t recognize: She had dark hair, was dressed in robes of red, orange and yellow, reminding me of fire, and held a thin, golden staff with a ball on the top, which spoke to me of power, guidance, leadership, and intuitive wisdom, still trying to find her way. 

At the time, I skipped myself, having no idea what I looked like. Looking at it later, I just get the impression of a mineral with black, white and brown streaks, and a sense of licorice, whatever that means.

That covered all the people in the class, but there was one more figure in the circle, a tall figure of light. There were no real details, it was too bright for that. As I talked, it seemed to me that the figure had it’s hands open and, from them came a circle of light that passed through each of us, binding us together through experience and support, from now on. 

I’m not generally the kind of person that “sees” things or usually speaks in this fashion. But times and people change. I know now that it’s time to speak my truth, and let the chips fall where they may.

Comforting a Spirit

This is an interesting experience during a meditation. I did it while listening to The Crossing Point of Light A Workshop with Dr Steven Greer. Maybe it’s odd to do that. Perhaps I should listen to music or just silence. I find that different things trigger different experiences, like when I watched that documentary about the oldest cities in the word and it triggered memories of living in them. This, not so much. I wasn’t sure what to expect, and it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. A lot of these UFO things focus on fear and conspiracies. This one, less so, but it was still pretty dry and not too interesting to me.

When I meditate, it seems that I go through a period of calming down, then a blank time, then a part where it seems like my body is asleep but my mind is awake. Today, nothing interesting happened until I was in the third part.

I have generally found the third part to be a bit frustrating. It seems to me that since my body is in this really relaxed state, I should be able to go on some amazing mind trips. But I can’t, as a rule. Today was no exception, though I can’t be sure why, since odd things have been happening or not happening of late.

For lack of anything better to do, I set about doing some healing of my left leg. There’s really nothing technically wrong with it, but lately it I’m getting really odd vibes about it. It feels like the foot want to curl under when I’m not looking, causing twisted ankles if I’m not careful. And, from time to time, I get the feeling that it’s not there. Like I’d lost it at some point. This makes me a little nervous, I don’t know what this might mean. What it might cause to happen. At any rate, today I was letting the energy flow into my leg and trying to do something about, what looked to me like “stuck” energy, when I felt someone next to me.

That someone was sad and lonely and seemed to be crying. It could have been someone I know, maybe not. I had no idea what to do except give her all the comfort and love I could. It seemed like a “her.” I tried to make her feel loved. I did everything I could for a while, and then she was gone. At the point I decided it was time to wrap it up and get on with my day.

I wonder if I just make this stuff up. This entity shows up, from time to time, sometimes very affectionate, sometime aloof. This is the first time it was sad. It seems like a woman, but not always. There are periods when it disappears for a time. At those times, if I look very carefully, I can sometimes just make it out. It’s very faint. No way to know if I’m just imagining it or not. Perhaps it’s attention is somewhere else. This is the first time I’ve see it sad. And it was very sad. I could feel the despair and loneliness as strong as my own. I want to think I helped, but I expect I’ll never know. I’ll never know if it’s even attached to a living person. And so we’re back to that annoying question of, Is this real?

Well, I’ve spent most of my life saying that anything that made me uncomfortable, didn’t exist, was just my imagination. Now I’m just going to go with it. It is what it is and it means what it means, and someday I’ll find out what that is, or I won’t. Fine either way.

Afternoon Encounter

A fellow QHT practitioner posted this video on the practitioner forum: Mary Rodwell about Starchildren & Starseeds. I thought it was interesting and listened to it before bed. I was interested enough that I looked around a bit for a some more stuff from May Rodwell before I went to sleep.

That night I had a long series of dreams, and didn’t get much rest. The dreams were about seeing hyper-realistic pictures in my mind and being able to control them. The first one I remember is I was looking down at my hand that was holding a large check. I mean physically large. Not the small ones that like you have in your checkbook, but the large ones that companies use. I don’t remember the amount of the check, but it was significant. Behind my hand was a cluttered desk that I don’t recognize. I remember having plenty of time to study the image. I noted that I could see it in my usual fuzzy way, or have it snap into sharp focus where I could study each detail.

It seemed to me that the rest of the night was spent seeing different pictures. I could call to mind whatever I wanted to see. Create whatever reality I wanted. It was exciting and I was trying and creating everything I could think of. A lot of the time I was focused on creating a new reality for myself, seeing my future where I was doing all the cool stuff I dream of: writing, giving lectures, speaking at events, working with people and groups, and traveling.

The next morning, I didn’t remember any of this when I woke up, but the entire day I felt jittery and anxious, like I was afraid that I was forgetting something important. I couldn’t really focus on anything, I couldn’t relax and my head felt weird.

In the afternoon, I recalled an incident from the day before where I offered my services to a prospective client, without prompting, for only $20. It hit he really hard that I was sabotaging myself. I felt really bad and wanted to cry. Later, in meditation, “They don’t love me!” came up very strongly. I took me a while to process that through.

While I was meditating, I was playing another Mary Rodwell video: Mary Rodwell Part 1 Bases Conference Lecture, more or less chosen randomly because I wanted to hear more Mary Rodwell and this one was long.

After I had processed off the emotional edge to the “They don’t love me!” phrase, things took an unusual turn, I started feeling a strong pain in my chest. It was not quite centered, but a little to the left. This pain was dynamic. I came and went, got stronger and weaker, changed shape and moved around. While I was puzzling about the pain, some of the words from the video caught my attention, about alien encounters, and drawings people had made. I glanced at the screen and one of the faces caught my eye. A short while later I was seeing it in my minds eye, as if a person was standing at the foot of my bed, looking at me.

I got, “I am your father,” and “the other guy didn’t know anything.” Then I saw a bunch of little round heads running back and forth in front of him. Whatever they were, they were so short that I could only see the top part of their bald heads. Seeing them caused me chills and shakes for a while, then I calmed down.

Next, my perspective changed, like I was lying on a bed that had been tilted up, and now was laying down flat. The pain in my chest kept morphing and at different points pains ran up to my shoulders. First the left, then a while later, the right. I repeatedly heard “it’s damaged, ” “he’s damaged.” At no time was I afraid or nervous.

After a while, the face moved around to my right side, a little past my head, and there was more than one of them. Then my right arm and hand raised. It was like someone was examining it. Pulling it this way and that, testing all the joints, looking at the fingers and both sides of my hand. This was done gently, pretty much like any doctor would to it. At this time I again heard “Damaged,” and “Repair.” Then I felt heat and other sensations moving throughout my forearm, palm and fingers, like they were doing some kind of energetic healing. After a while, my arm moved down to my side and there was an impression of it being wrapped, like in a bandage or cast. At this point I got the distinct feeling that this was happening right now! It wasn’t some kind of memory but a real-time experience on some parallel level.

After that I kept listening to the video, while certain things she said kept triggering reactions and feelings from my mind and body. Eventually I decided that I needed to get up and get on with my day. And then the first thing I did was to write this down.

Healing and Being a Healer

Today’s meditation had two interesting things in it.

The first was that I found myself looking in on people I know. I used to think that was cool, way back in the beginning, but now I feel it’s more like an invasion of privacy and I avoid it. However, this time it was insistent. I Ended up throwing comfort at them, not knowing what else to do. Perhaps they were in a sad way.

I one particular case, I kept seeing more details about their life. Difficulties and other things I really don’t want to know about. But it was insistent and, apparently, there is some reason that I need to know it. I tried but could not get a reason why. Perhaps I just need to understand them better.

At times, I think that being a healer means “keeper of secrets.” I just get so much information that I really can’t share, but I need to hear it to do my job. in some ways it would be nice if I could forget everything I hear. But the experience I gain does help other people. So I suppose that’s part of the price I pay for doing what I do.

The other thing that I experienced revolved around healing. At one point, I started feeling warmth in parts of my torso. I normally just go with these things and don’t ask questions. Not today. Today I asked. I was told that I was feeling energy, and it was uneven because of my blocks. If I let the block go, then the energy would be able to flow to all parts of my body, especially my hands and feet. They have not been getting their fail share of energy so far. The lightbulb went on: I’ve been have a problem with cold hands and especially feet since the weather turned.

Next I asked about the blocks. I got that I needed to release my hate. My hate for my body. I had always undervalued my body, and, despite the fact that it has served me very well for many years, it was never good enough for me. All this came from someplace so deep that I wasn’t really aware of it at the conscious level at all. But once I started thinking about it, it did make sense. Over the last couple of years I have begun to notice, accept and acknowledge how well my body has served me and how well it has held up. It has useful attributes that I did my best to ignore. But now I am starting to use them rather than deny them.

This litany went on for a while, covering the many ways I thought poorly of my physical being. I don’t remember most of it now, which I think is a good thing, but afterwards things must have cleared, because energy tingling and heat began to flow wider and more evenly throughout my upper body. It slowly spread up and down my right side and worked it’s way down my right arm into my hand. After a while it was throughout my right side and somewhat over to my left.

When it reached my left shoulder, it felt hot and cold at the same time. Finally it got to the point where all my bones above the hips felt incandescent white and glowing. The message was that it was rebuilding and restructuring my bones to be stronger and healthier and with advanced functions (whatever that means). It eventually did reach all my bones, but the ones below my hips seemed dimmer.

Then the focus moved to my teeth. There was a long monologue about how the fillings in my teeth needed to be restructured and their energy re-aligned. That the materials had been removed from their place and their energy had be twisted and distorted by being mined, refined and turned into fillings. So all of that needed to be sorted out and harmonized. I felt a lot of heat and pressure around my back teeth at this time. This went on for quite some time. Other things began to happen after that, but it was clearly time to wrap up and get on with my day.

I seem to be having a lot of focus on healing right now. Getting myself ready for what’s to come, I suppose.

Just when you thought it couldn't get any weirder...

I’m going post this here because there’s nowhere else I can talk about it.

Today I was doing my meditation. I am trying a new technique that consists of, essentially, throwing out rules and expectations and letting my mind wander and imagine whatever I like. After an unknown period of doing, I don’t remember what, I found myself in an industrial setting. I was watching an open metal cage, shaped like I slice of bread, but large enough to hold two people side by side, coming toward me on some kind of assembly line. All around there was industrial equipment, pipes, wiring and boxes. The cage had a person strapped in on right side and the space on the left was half-full of equipment.

Next, I was down, next to the cage, at eye level. I could see the persons’ head and shoulders right next to me. I was looking for something. Right then I realized I had no idea what I was doing there! This wasn’t anywhere I had ever been, it wasn’t from any movie I’ve seen. I wasn’t even asleep! As I pondered that, the scene faded.

After a bit, I had the idea to imagine a spaceship. The inside of a space ship. And I came up with a control room that was a mashup of details from Start Trek TOS, Star Trek, The Menagerie, and UFO stuff I’ve read. Everything was white and roundish and curvy. I was looking at my scene and thinking about all the Star Trek similarities when a Grey somehow appeared in the center of my view, then walked off to the left. As he left, he raised he raised his left hand in a awkward wave and said “Hello.” Right then I felt a mild shock and my whole body jerked.

I was really not expecting this. The scene, never very clear, came and went. I figured I’d play along and ask questions. I tried for a while, but things kept wavering in and out and my mind kept wandering. It was sort of like the old days of analog TV, when you were watch a distant station and the picture was awash in static and it would fade in and out. Every now and then I’d get what felt like real contact with someone, for a few seconds, and then it would all wash out again.

I wasn’t able to learn much, but here’s what I did get: The reason contact was so bad was that I wasn’t yet “tuned” properly, “we” were currently working on that. Right then I felt strong tingling over my upper body and a pressure/pointy feeling in my head, bordering on pain. It didn’t last too long. The other piece of information I got was this: I, apparently, am conducting, or are part of, some kind of “research project.” Things got really fragmented by this point and right then our cat insisted that I get up. It’s pretty unusual for her to yowl at my bedroom door like that. I think she wants my attention and is waiting, not too patiently, for me to stop typing this and give her my full attention. I really wanted to get this down before I forgot it.

I honestly don’t know what I should make of this. Should I just accept it at face value, keep going to see what more I can find out?

A field around the body?

Had a strange meditation today. The whole time I had the feeling that things were happening that I wasn't able to catch, things were whooshing by and I would just catch a glimpse of them as they passed.

The first thing I noticed is that my "field," (I don't know what else to call it. Some people would call it an aura, but to me an aura is insubstantial, while the field is a significant energy field that surrounds the body) didn't cover my feet. It only reached to about the middle of my shins. I tried to stretch it to cover my toes, but that didn't work. I don't know what that's all about, perhaps I'll figure it out later. 

In a way, it's a bit odd that I would talk about a field around my body, because that wouldn't have occurred to me just two months ago. It's just that lately I've playing with ideas like out-of-body-experiences, seeing auras and picturing a field of some sort around my body. I don't know where I came up with the field, it was just something I thought to try. And when I did, the halo around my body made if feel very warm and comfortable. So it feels natural for me that if my feet are outside of the field, they would be cold. They have been unusually sensitive to cold for the past month or so. We took a trip last week and I couldn't believe how cold my feet were, no matter how warm the rest of the car was. 

Next, I kept seeing heads and faces. They were all different ages and different people, but they were all with pale skin and straight white-blond hair. One, young, one was me and the others seemed to be talking to me, or holding other conversations, but I can't make out what they are saying. I only have the idea that they just said something, but I wasn't paying attention. The heads and faces would just show up, say something, then zoom away. I have no idea what that was about.

And then, for about the last 20 minutes of the meditation, I got an uncomfortable feeling in my upper right arm, almost like a massage. Pressure in ripples, almost strong enough to be painful, that constantly moved throughout the muscles. This lasted for some time, then the feelings migrated down to my lower arm and stayed there until I was finished for the day. 

When I was finished, I noticed that I much more time had passed than I thought.

If anyone has any comments on this, I sure would like to hear them.