The Psychology of Vibration

What is It? March 14, 2009

What do I think is happening to me?  Of course, there is a chance that my brain began playing tricks on me as I crossed into my forties.  Those of us who have enjoyed solid mental health most of our lives usually assume that we always will.  So if our world begins to radically change, it is tempting to look for explanations within the realm of what we already know.  Even if this means we have to stretch our idea of reality to contain what is happening to us.

But this is a big miraculous world.  So while loss of sanity is a quick, clean explanation – for third parties that is – it cannot be the only possibility.  There is the chance that what I feel when I lie down actually does exist in our physical world or in some other dimension.  Or, it may be my brain’s translation of some untranslatable vibration.  After all, the human system is designed to recognize finite types of vibrations such as light and sound.  How would we experience something outside of that range?  Perhaps for us, the experience would not exist at all.  Or maybe it would exist as a variation of something for which our mind already has a template, such as the feeling of wind or water on our skin.

If you were born without sight, this would mean that you don’t have the capacity to translate light into what most of us know as the sight experience.  It would not mean that light does not exist.  It would simply mean that you wouldn’t experience light as others with sight do.  If you asked someone to explain vision to you, they may use words such as “bright” and “colorful”.  But these words would be meaningless to you.  Each word chosen would require further explanation but ultimately you would find words to be an inadequate way to learn about the experience of sight.  It would be the same with any of our senses.

Fortunately for me, there has been much said and written about what may be happening to me.  For this (and the internet) I am grateful.  This collection of information is diverse, continually growing and extremely confusing.  But it offers the hope for me to someday understand this very beautiful and amazing phenomenon – and perhaps fulfill its purpose.  While it may sound a bit dramatic, some days I feel like a man who has gained sight while living in a blind world.

Mystical Answers

It is difficult to discuss my experiences without at least detouring into the territory of the spiritual and/or the supernatural.  I have only shared this part of my life with a few people, and each of them quickly turned the topic to the spirit world (dead people and ghosts) or spiritual awakenings.  Initially I had an aversion to this.  But eventually, I realized that unless I was prepared to accept my madness and check into a mental institution, I would need to become comfortable exploring all options.

One stumbling block that I encountered early in my quest was cultural boundaries.  Much of the information on spiritual or mystical topics is enveloped by the culture or religion within which the information is presented.  My mind was so easily distracted by these differences, that often I was not open to seeing obvious truths.  I was not prepared to identify myself with these different groups, so I rejected much of the information that they offered.

Having distanced myself from organized religion years ago, I found myself tensing up anytime I read doctrine that I didn’t fully accept.  It was only later that I began to understand that what I considered as my “identity” was only an elaborate group of limitations that I had designed for myself.  But I will save that topic for a later post.  I had to begin to allow others to have their beliefs while I found my own unique beliefs.  This is still a challenge for me sometimes but I have opened up enough to feel as if answers are on the horizon.

The “K”

One word that came up early in my rapid-fire internet search sessions was “Kundalini.”  It was odd and exotic sounding, a word that was outside of my cultural experience from the beginning.  As I started to read about the story of a snake coiled three and one half times around the base of the spine, I was reminded of ancient Greek mythology.  At that time, I was more likely to accept insanity as an explanation for my condition.  I won’t go into the whole explanation of Kundalini because I don’t wish to reinvent the wheel.  But I will provide a link at the end of this post for those that want more.

I continued to research this term and found one after another discussion groups on Yahoo.  There was one group that was heavily moderated that had a highly intellectual flavor that spoke of the intricacies of topics such as Taoism and Dualism.  Another group was very loosely organized and included people from all religions who claimed to be experiencing this phenomenon called Kundalini.  The common thread was that all felt this moving energy and most were undergoing dramatic changes in their thinking. 

I never really found a text or a group that was able to contain a full explanation or definition of what is happening with me.  Everyone’s experience in this arena seems to be unique.  But I do believe the phenomenon of “Kundalini Rising” (or just “K” for short) to be the closest term that describes this “sight experience” for me.  I also believe that there are terms in Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism and other religions that also offer explanations for this phenomenon.   I am convinced that the experience cannot be defined or contained within one religion.  Each may try to claim it as their own, but it does not belong to religion – it belongs to our world.

My favorite Kundalini web site is www.KundaliniAwakeningSystems1.com.  This site is hosted by “Chrism”, who I have found to be a wonderfully strange being.  At first blush, I was baffled by him and his writings.  But time has proven to me that this man is incredibly gifted and connected with something that I have not yet begun to understand.

My Brother March 8, 2009

Without descending into the trap of my life story, I think there are a few key characteristics and events in my life that are pertinent to this discussion.  First of all, there is a history of mental illness in my family.  I am now in my forties but when I was a teen my older brother was diagnosed with schizophrenia.  After being heavily medicated, he took his own life at the age of 21.

As I said before, I have never completely aligned my ideas about health (or mental health) with the western medical establishment.  So, when I say that my brother “was diagnosed with schizophrenia” I am just stating the facts and not necessarily countersigning them.  I do believe from my personal interaction with my brother during his time of difficulty that he had in fact lost touch with reality in this world as most of us know it.

With this having been disclosed, I believe that had my recent experiences begun at that tender age – I am not sure that I would have survived.  At that time, not only did the internet not exist but so much of the spiritual knowledge base about these things had not yet migrated to the West.  I also remember those years as much more naïve and repressed times – not to mention that the early twenties is a challenging era even today.  Yet, here I am living – and by some standards thriving – at a time where I spend twenty-five to seventy-five percent of any given day hallucinating and enjoying it.

I will leave to each reader conclusions about how my brother’s plight so long ago may or may not be applicable to my life almost thirty years later.  I suppose in some ways I believe that he was perhaps more highly sensitive to this phenomenon than I, and that he had no guidance or information whatsoever.  Or maybe he was just a schizophrenic.

An Odd Thing About Claude March 8, 2009

Relax

It is a certainty that in our death experience, each and every one of us will ultimately release our grip on all that this physical world has to offer.  Yet, we invent many ways to pretend to cling tightly to this reality while we are here on earth.  I am not here to convince anyone of anything.  But if you can, loosen your clutch on all that you know with me for a few minutes.

My Secret

I hallucinate.  For the last couple of years, each time I lie down on my bed I begin to hallucinate.  Actually, I don’t even have to be horizontal any more.  It now happens periodically throughout my vertical time each day as well.  These experiences have not only become more intense and more frequent as time passes, but they seem more and more real.  It has been a difficult thing for me to admit to myself that I am hallucinating, mainly because most people associate the word “hallucination” with mental illness.  Yet I am not ill.

When I use the word “hallucination”, I mean that the things that I detect or feel are not detected or felt by others in the room.  These phenomena usually manifest as tactile sensations that I feel on my skin and movements inside the space of my physical body.  This may be as subtle as a cool breeze flowing along the surface of my skin.  Or it may be as dramatic as the feeling of an elaborate sea-like creature emerging in graphic tactile detail from my lower body.  Throughout the day, I usually feel a continuous electrical or magnetic type of current flowing from my abdomen to my head.  This varies in intensity from a faint tingling to the buzz of super high voltage.   I also feel sensations of light pressure around my forehead and the crown of my head.

Sometimes, I feel as if my physical body is slowly filling with cool water as I experience the rolling movement of waves.  Drifting seaweed brushes against my skin with startling precision of detail.  Visually, I occasionally see flickering colored light while my eyes are closed.  I have also seen something resembling dark clouds swirling in the air in a dark room while my eyes are open.  The sounds that I have heard have been limited to a high pitched ringing in my ears.  These are just a few examples of literally thousands of unique manifestations I have witnessed.

Usually these breaks from physical reality have a pleasant quality resembling drug intoxication.  I am a non-drinker and I do not use drugs, so I can’t say exactly which drug would cause this type of experience.  But from what I have read I would guess it would be something psychedelic like LSD, mushrooms or peyote.  Again, I don’t have any experience with these so maybe it isn’t a fair comparison.  Unlike a drug trip, I always remain completely lucid and I can stop the sensations at any time by simply refocusing my mind on something else. 

Partly because of curiosity and partly due to fascination, I have spent a great many hours over the past few years lying silently in awe of this thing that has found me.  Often, I don’t sleep enough because at night the flow can become quite powerful and my desire to observe and experience usually overrides my body’s need for sleep.  I would say that spending this much time in a meditative state has made my non-meditating life a little more challenging.  There has been less time to devote to other things, so it has made life a little more chaotic.  I find myself rushing from place to place more and generally being behind on many things.

Not unlike those we categorize as mentally ill, I believe that more is going on here than trickery of the mind.  Not only are the sensations pleasing but the thoughts that arise during this experience are often clearer and more profound than anything I think during my routine daily thought storms.

Accept

For quite a few months after this began, I was alternately exhilarated and afraid.  The possibility that I was losing my mind was most frightening.  But while I may have lost some desire to be a part of the normal world, I did not lose my capacity to function in it.  I examined the possibility of demonic forces or disincarnate souls toying with me.  Yet throughout these adventures, I have consistently felt that something this beautiful and miraculous must have a spiritual component. 

Adding to my confusion, the manner in which this was unfolding did not fit any spiritual or religious template to which I had ever been exposed.  My only exposure to organized religion had been a few years of fairly deep involvement with a Christian pentacostal church in my mid-twenties.  I had at that time had a few isolated experiences that I considered to be interactions with the Holy Spirit.  Other life circumstances caused me to reexamine my faith and withdraw from organized religion altogether.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, the internet has opened tremendous opportunities for locating forums where people can exchange information about common experiences.  Like so many people these days, I devoted a good amount of time to reviewing medical symptom lists and trying to figure out what was wrong with me.  I occasionally wondered if I was dying.    But, nothing felt wrong with me.  Things felt different, but never wrong.  Since I have never been completely aligned (or misaligned) with western medicine, it didn’t take me long to look elsewhere for answers.

I quickly found a few extremely useful resources on the internet that helped me reach the belief  that I was not losing my sanity nor was I alone with this.  Although this experience began to break all of the rules I had spent my lifetime learning, it has happened to many others and there has been much written about it.  I will talk more about this in the next post.

Living in the Middle

Often, people write about things that they know for the purpose of raising others to their level of awareness.  I have to admit that this is not the case here.  Many times, I have sat down to write about these experiences and each time, I have abandoned the effort.  This was because I felt like telling this story creates more questions than it answers.  While for me it is clear that I am in the midst of something quite spectacular, it sometimes feels like I am a long way from knowing what it means.  And even further from telling someone else what it may mean to them.

I have a lot of ideas and opinions about the meaning and purpose of this journey, some of which I will share in the coming posts.  But those ideas sometimes change from day to day.  I am not certain what I have to offer in terms of communicating about this to others, but I am certain of one thing – I am compelled to write. 

What is “Psychology of Vibration”? March 8, 2009

I want to talk about this but first I want to tell a sliver of my story. 

Like most people, I have a very colorful collection of interesting tales about my life that could fill a lot of space and provide extensive entertainment.  I know this because, like many people, I have told these tales over and over and refined the delivery and dramatic effect to perfection. 

After a good fifteen to thirty minutes of listening to the life of Claude, most first-time audience members will ask to hear more and proclaim that Claude should write a book.  Those present that have heard Claude recite his autobiography previously (with the same pitch, timing and inflection) are likely mentally rolling their eyes while maintaining a fixed composition.

And so, I will save those stories for my next dinner party.  I am here to tell the story that my dinner guests do not hear.

There is Nothing New Here. March 8, 2009

Internet search engines have proven to me that there aren’t many completely new ideas or experiences being expressed in our world today.  With the billions and billions of souls that have inhabited earth, this makes sense.  What are the chances that someone else hasn’t already had my great idea?  Or that no one else has experienced something that we feel is unique in our own lives.  This doesn’t mean that there are no new ideas nor does it mean that an old idea isn’t worth re-stating, exploring and expanding.

These days, we can find ideas and thoughts on just about any subject with a few keystrokes and clicks of a mouse.  And for everything we find in the vast expanse of the relatively young internet, there are trillions of things on every subject that have yet to make it to the web and be indexed.  Nothing in recent history has more potential to change the world than this young invention.

With a widely accessible anonymous forum like the internet, seemingly isolated ideas and life experiences can be fearlessly discussed and explored.  In the past, a person having an obscure experience was more likely to hide in shame than to expose him or herself to the brutality of humankind’s judgement.   

And so over the centuries, we have depended on a few courageous figures to blaze our trails.  These leaders have emerged only seasonally throughout history to help us reach new heights.  Because of this, it has been a slow, arduous evolution from the cavernous hells of torture, slavery and other abominations that have littered the history of humanity.  Now things are changing.

It is exactly the openness of this novel forum that has brought me here.  The specific words and ideas that I will write and you will read here have never appeared anywhere else in exactly this form.  Yet, there is nothing new to this old world here.  Throughout the ages, people before me have played with these ideas and experiences in greater depth than I.  The wisdom and error of my teachers lives in me and in my words as well.  Let’s see what unfolds.

Claude IS March 8, 2009

Claude is a partially aware spirit, deposited from the emptiness into the paradox of the modern Western World. He has struggled defiantly to live life outside of the constraints of the collective but has repeatedly fallen short and begun anew. His life circumstances are such that every turn illuminates the need for illumination. He wants to be a lamp, but often realizes that he has yet again chosen to be the shade. Claude will not stop choosing and his choices are getting better and better.

Claude doesn’t always speak in riddles and new age mumbo jumbo.  You will see.

I have only just begun. January 18, 2009

So give me a break.