Hi, I'm brand new here but have been reading this board for a while with interest.  I recently read 3 of Bruce's first 4 books, haven't gotten to the 4th yet, and realized that I had already read at least the first 2 or 3 years ago but they had faded from my memory until halfway through them again.  I have experimented with various meditation methods for many years but have only brief experience with hemisync.  I have built a collection of some different meditative aids but switch them out a lot.   Anyway, to make a long story short, could this have been some kind of a retrieval today?  I was listening to a theta level meditation tape (short, only 20 minutes).  I was in a relaxed state from listening to two other different tapes during the day and being alone for the day.   I  quickly visualized a young  male off to my left who was looking right at me, pale, light brown hair, kind of smiling.  I spoke to him, sort of welcoming him, but never heard anything but my own thoughts during this experience.  It seemed that I was then sitting on a completely deserted, pristine cobblestone street, white stone everywhere, like merry old England.  I sat on a bench and I asked, well, where are the people?  I did  then vaguely get the blurry sense of a busy street but way in the background.  Then my attention was diverted to something made of carved stone, very old and massive, seemed just a lot of carving and I wanted to stop looking at it but couldn't control my vision and was stuck there for a little bit.  I seemed to swoop upward then and then down into a building, very dark.  It was a little scary and I didn't feel in control at all.  Then I was inside a room like a prison cell.   I saw a young man in shackles next to me, head drooping way down.  I was sitting right next to him and examining his hands behind his back in shackles.   I said, well let's go toward the light-- I didn't like it there.  There was a window up high and I just kept directing my attention to it.  I got the sense of a white bird flying around and then a  very fast movement, like a dark videotape moving quickly from right to left.  I kept seeing it moving fast like that until a sense of a complete stop and I was asking, are we there?  Then the cd I was listening to stopped, and it was definitely after I asked are we there.  Imagination or retrieval???

Blink;
Definetely a retreival in my book, congrat keep up the work and i'll get easier with time.

With love
Romain

Thanks for the replies and encouragement, all.   I will try the repeating loop on the cd next time, Jenn.  Great idea, and  I totally forgot I can do that.  This was kind of different for me.  Meditation on my own without guided imagery usually produces for me different kinds of lights and colors, expansion, sometimes a feeling of a presence and often a blissed out wave of emotion but I haven't kept up a regular practice for years, more just like relaxation periods and to help me go to sleep.  Interestingly, I had a bizarre lucid dream a few months ago.  I was in a dim room looking at a clock and realized I was dreaming.  I decided to walk out the door and went into the bright hallway.  There were a number of "light" hands reaching out to me a few feet away in the brightness and then I just felt a gigantic wave of joy and woke up.  That got me thinking that something really interesting was definitely up.... Reading Bruce Moen's books just recently has clarified for me that an ordinary person can just go out there and explore.  Certainly he approaches his experiences with an open mind so I am trying to follow through like that.