Hi Andy,
Seems like you're doing all the right things to attempt some non-physical exploration. Being able to get to that altered state by just "tuning-out" of bodily awareness without need of absolute quiet or a perfect setting/posture shows you're doing well. Keep practising the expression of intent as you've done, and you'll surely make good progress. But don't have excessive expectations of 'special' things happening, because just doing that is likely to have the opposite effect. Just accept (and enjoy!) whatever does happen, if anything, in any session. Do you experience any tingling or vibrational feelings at all whilst in your meditative state, or when you express an intent for contact?

Alfred

PS. Have just read your other thread on this forum, which answers my last question above. I asked it because the same sensations now occur regularly in my own sessions and can come/be induced almost at will whenever I'm in a sufficiently relaxed or sensitive mood, even if driving (though not in hectic traffic!). By all accounts anywhere, it's good progress.

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Thanks.  I’ve never done that before at work, or anywhere else other than at night time at home right before or during bed time when the house was quiet.  I am always fighting against sleep while I do these things. 

At work, I just closed my eyes in rest while I waited on a computer program to run its course and started daydreaming shapes and spinning them around absentmindedly.  Then I felt a subtle shift in my awareness - A move away from physical sensation and a clearing of mental thought/attention.  I was able to conjecturally decide to ‘do something’ while feeling this way, not knowing what it was I was experiencing.


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I have done that, but this time I wanted to just ‘throw something out there’ and see what kind of responses (both from me and anywhere else) I might perceive, what ever they may be.  I must say, I was surprised to get anything at all.  Again, I’d never done anything like this before.

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That vibrational feeling you read about in my other post has only come on accidentally and forcefully.  It is always a very frightening experience whose fright usually knocks me out of what ever is going on.  I am still working on making it happen and getting used to it so maybe it’ll last and I can explore it.

It feels very “deep” consciously.  Like the deepest I’ve ever gotten without being asleep.  Not sure if that’s right, but it’s how it feels to me.  I never get these vibrations with the relaxed meditative states I have achieved.  And I only meditate very rarely.  Perhaps I should set up a more regular schedule?

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Thank you.  I believe that part of my recent success has been because I stopped trying to do it only the way others have taught me.  Taking a leaf from the Book of Bruce Moen I decided to use the tools available and see what my own self would do with them.  These posts I make on this forum have been my results so far.

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I imagine so.  I have been awakened from many a reverie due to outside noises.  Dogs barking at something I can’t hear, the phone ringing, car back firing, what ever.  I have only found it to be frustrating.  Then again, I’ve never ‘connected’ with anything/one before during one of these sessions.

I want to note though that this connection I made at work ended abruptly on it’s own.  I was actually surprised by the swiftness and completeness with which it ended.  It just stopped, I slid out of it with ease and comfort, and in less than a second, as I looked for the time on my desk phone, the phone rang.

I mentally noted that it was very fortuitous that my ‘session’ should end so perfectly that I was not uncomfortably jarred out of it by my call.  I wonder if that was not facilitated.  The doubt is there, I lean towards coincidence, but there is a nagging wonder… could it have been purposefully halted to avoid a jarring return to C1 from a phone ringing?

Hi,

Regarding the ending of your session,
yes, it often seems that there is a cosnciousness of what's about to happen --  the intent of another person to contact you, etc-- and so usually we are protected from strong  interruptions. But those times when we do not get out in time to avoid a noise etc can be very hurtful. That's why earlier I mentionned being careful.

You seem to be doing quite well ! Congratulations!

Bets

Some people get yanked back so sharply by interuptions that it's uncomfortable.  I don't think she meant hurtful in the usual sense of emotionally painful, but rather a discomfort that's a reaction to the "wham" of getting slammed back into C-1.

Or not...but that's how I understand it.  I've never had that issue, but I don't tend to wander out much anyway - too tired, when I thinks I falls asleep, as the joke goes...

Tried another 'zone out' during a break at work.  There I sat, stilling my mind, trying to be open to anything that might come into my awareness.  I felt very stoic-faced.  I suddenly sensed something to my right.  Like right up next to my face.  I didn't turn to look at it, but I could almost see that it was a yellow cylinder.  It was foggy and dark around my little 'spotlight' of vision, but I could see one side of the mouth of a smiley face on it.  It kept cycling from a flat line to the curve of a smile.

I eventually got it.  I smiled.  It kept cycling.  I smiled again.  It continued to cycle.  I smiled and felt it, the smiley face changed to a big cartoon gloved hand in a thumbs up gesture.  Then it was back to the cycling smile.  I smiled again and felt it, another thumbs up and the smiling face continued to cycle; I was missing something.

Oh!  I'll try to feel a smile without physically smiling.  I got a thumbs up and sensed (but did not ‘see’) a head nodding in agreement.  I tried and failed.  I saw a thumbs down gesture and felt a frown out there in the nothingness around the spotlight.  Then it was back to the cycling smiley face on the side of the yellow cylinder.  I tried a few more times before I could feel the smile without smiling.  Deep in my chest.  I got a big double thumbs up and it all went away.  I just sat there for a few moments and then started to feel myself nod off, so I opened my eyes and wrote this.  

Gotta' get back to work.

That  is a really cool sensation. I just tried it at work myself, to smile non physically and I think I did it, but I got no thumbs in there. Pretty cool post.