Tough Teenage Transition
During the following year, as I continued college amidst the party paradigm that most beginning students experience, I also continued my exploration into the deeper realms of consciousness. Beyond the normal studies of Biology, Chemistry, Statistics, and English, I was a voracious reader of metaphysical books. After my initial white light experience, I felt it imperative to know more about past spiritual masters and their writings and lives, even though I felt Christ to be the epitome of them all. I also began to thirst for direct experience of continued experiences carrying them forth from my earlier years.
Be Here Now, the Bahgavad Gita, the Bible, Sidhartha, Doors of Perception/Heaven and Hell, The Teachings of Don Juan, and the Urantia Book were just a few of the books that I poured through at the time. More came although I worked as much with astral travel, psychokinetic and telekinetic experimentation during this period. I'd met a guy in high school who turned up in one of my classes and we became fellow explorers. He worked as a grounds keeper for one of the most well-known spiritualist communities in the world at the time - Camp Chesterfield. Through our association I found that, along with a few others, we could move energy back and forth between us as we sat across the room from each other. This energy was emanating through the palms of our hands and could be directed at will, it seemed. It took a lot of concentration to focus. I also noticed that, at times of particular sensitivity, I could 'feel' the energy of other students as I passed their rooms in the dormitories. Increased sensitivity from use of psychotropics seemed to make a big difference as well. I lived on the top floor of the honors dorm at the time, and many of my dorm mates were involved in this exploration of conscious connections. We were teenagers with too much time and curiosity on our hands.
There were other times when the empathic/telepathic experiences were a bit much to deal with for anyone. I became aware that I could hear many different voices as I traveled back and forth from the honors dorm to the cafeteria, where I worked as well. I could hear very negative remarks that seemed to be all directed at me. I felt so disturbed that I retired to my dorm room for a couple of days. I realized that the voices were not my own and that the comments always began with, 'You...' What I eventually recognized was there seemed to be a constant negative self-talk going on within the minds of students at the time. I'm sure it is consistent with students today as well, feeling like they have to be perfect in their actions and studies, beating up on themselves for every little mistake. At any rate, there were times that I would be so sensitive to these 'voices' that I thought they were my own. Only as I began to observe when they would happen did I realize they were coming from the other students as we would pass on the walkways on campus. When the experiences first started happening, though, I had to figure out what these voices were in my head and why they were so negatively oriented. I became less affected by them as I realized that they were outside of me rather than coming from within. Still, it was a tough time for anyone going through sensitivity training and admittedly I had some of those thoughts, too.
Apparently with the lack of distractions and responsibilities of life, our awareness was able to advance without much disciplined practice. Experiencing the freedom that resulted from allowing this innate 'trust' to permeate our lives gave us opportunity beyond imagination. One of the things I really enjoyed were the times that the guy I mentioned earlier and I would consciously get out of our bodies and go exploring around the campus together. We could actually 'see' each other as we exited our bodies to go play. We stayed around the dorm most of the time, as we hadn't realized at that point that we could travel further. Instead, we would observe the activity in the lounge area connecting the girl's and boy's honors dorms. Several times we were able to observe, re-enter our bodies, and relate to those in the lounge what they had been doing. Not too many people were real excited about the fact we could do this. In fact, it was frightening to most of them as they were unable to comprehend that we all have these abilities. The Midwest is fairly conservative and steeped in Christianity of organized religion fame... fearing and judging everything folks are ignorant toward.
Music was also a great facilitator of these internal/external bridge experiences as well. I already knew that music was supposed to be the language of the soul. What I didn't realize was that it seemed the progression of music was such that it held many keys to the discovery of my own identity and the understanding of many emotions related through musical expression. Journey, the Moody Blues, Rush, and Yes were big favorites at that time... still are. There were others as well. Many personal fears can be addressed during the process of listening to music and the deeper one goes into consciousness, the more clearly one can see their connection to the cosmic cords woven throughout the music. Now, this also brings up the question that is often raised about the ONE who was/is the Angel of Light and Music. Eckankar is a religion based on the study of Light and Sound. Its been proven that vibrational waves are what truly make up our physical reality. This kinda slaps modern day Christianity in the face... rather rudely I might add. The fear, guilt and shame scenarios are losing their grip on the congregation. I did have to attend to yet another rite of passage as I was not one to keep my mouth shut, nor was I without very creative actions in time of need.