How Did I End Up in a Documentary About Consciousness?

Part 4: Trusting My Own Experience

Probably the biggest lesson I’ve learned through this entire journey is how to trust my own intuition.

Not because I’ve always been right.

But because I’ve learned that when we encounter something we can’t explain, everyone wants to explain it for us. And more often than not, those explanations tell us more about the person offering them than they do about the experience itself.

Over the course of just a couple of years, I began having some pretty wild experiences.

When I shared them with people I considered knowledgeable in the spiritual world, many were genuinely astonished by how much had happened in such a short period of time. Several told me it was as though I had been put on the “spiritual awakening fast track.”

I wasn’t trying to be on any fast track.

I was just trying to understand what was happening.

One of the strangest experiences began while I was falling asleep.

It didn’t happen every night. Sometimes it would happen two nights in a row, then disappear for weeks before returning without warning.

Just as I drifted toward sleep, I would feel an intense vibration surge through my entire body.

Not a little tingling.

It felt as though every cell in my body had suddenly come alive.

The vibrations were so powerful I was convinced they were shaking the bed. I was certain my husband, peacefully asleep beside me, would wake up.

He never did.

He never felt a thing.

Meanwhile, I was lying there wondering if I was about to vibrate right off the mattress.

Naturally, I started asking questions.

I asked teachers. Healers. People who had spent decades exploring consciousness and spirituality.

No one had an answer.

Some people thought it was energy work.

Others believed my body was healing.

A few even cautioned me to be careful, suggesting something might be wrong.

At first, I searched for the “correct” explanation.

Maybe my guides were working on me.

Maybe dormant DNA was being activated.

Maybe something else entirely.

Eventually, I noticed something interesting.

Every explanation reflected the beliefs of the person giving it.

The experience never changed.

Only the interpretation did.

So instead of asking everyone else what they thought was happening, I started asking myself a different question.

How does this actually feel?

Did I feel afraid?

Unsafe?

Like something was wrong?

Or did I feel curious?

Every single time, the answer was the same.

I never felt afraid.

I never sensed anything harmful.

In fact, I felt oddly peaceful.

So instead of resisting the vibrations, I stopped fighting them.

I relaxed into them.

I became curious.

Eventually they would fade, and I’d drift off to sleep.

Looking back, I realize those vibrations taught me something long before I understood what they were.

Sometimes you don’t need an explanation before you can trust an experience.

Around the same time, something else began happening.

In my dreams, I would suddenly become lucid.

I might be sitting in a chair when the floor beneath me would begin to melt away. The moment I realized I was dreaming, I could feel myself being pulled somewhere else entirely.

I started calling them “dreamscapes.”

Sometimes I found myself flying over landscapes I had never seen before.

Other times I explored worlds where every living thing was miniature—tiny dragonflies, bees, and animals no larger than my hand.

What struck me most wasn’t what I saw.

It was what I felt.

I could feel the delicate legs of a tiny dragonfly crawling across my palm.

I could smell the air.

Taste food.

Feel textures.

Everything seemed as real as waking life.

At the time, I didn’t connect these experiences with the vibrations.

They felt like separate mysteries.

Then something else began happening.

I started becoming aware of what I could only describe as my “ethereal body.”

I didn’t know what else to call it.

I simply knew that part of me no longer felt confined to my physical body.

Whenever these experiences happened, I always sensed two helpers with me.

I never saw them.

But I could hear them.

Feel them.

Sometimes I would bump into what felt like a wall, and I could sense them gently guiding me through it.

Occasionally I felt them doing what seemed like healing work.

Sometimes it was even uncomfortable or briefly painful.

But just like the vibrations, I never felt afraid.

I always came back to the same question.

How does this feel?

And every time, the answer was the same.

Safe.

Helpful.

Loving.

So I kept exploring.

I kept paying attention.

And I kept looking for answers.

At some point during all of this, I stumbled across a book called Journeys Out of the Body by Robert Monroe.

I bought it.

Put it on my bookshelf.

And promptly forgot about it.

I have a bad habit of buying books much faster than I can actually read them.

About a year later, I came across the same book again.

I bought another copy before realizing I already owned it. When I went to put it on my shelf, I saw the copy I had purchased the year prior.

That felt like more than coincidence.

I took it off the shelf and finally started reading.

Within a few chapters, I was stunned.

For nearly two years, no one had been able to explain what I had been experiencing.

Yet here was a book, written before I was even born, describing those same experiences in remarkable detail.

The vibrations.

The sensation of leaving the body.

The helpers.

The altered states of consciousness.

I couldn’t believe it.

I wasn’t reading fantasy.

I wasn’t reading someone trying to convince me of anything.

I was reading someone carefully documenting experiences that sounded astonishingly similar to my own.

I cannot adequately describe the relief I felt.

Not because I suddenly had all the answers.

But because I finally realized I wasn’t alone.

Robert Monroe called them Out-of-Body Experiences (OBEs).

For the first time, I had language for something I hadn’t even known how to describe.

Ironically, after reading the book, I didn’t become obsessed with trying to induce more OBEs.

If they happened, great.

If they didn’t, that was okay too.

My attention naturally shifted toward dreams, lucid dreaming, and dream interpretation.

Those felt like the path I was supposed to follow.

Then one day I downloaded the Monroe meditation app.

As I explored it, I discovered something that completely surprised me.

There wasn’t just a book.

There was an actual place.

The Monroe Institute in Virginia.

People traveled there from all over the world to participate in immersive consciousness programs.

I read about their flagship program, Gateway Voyage, and immediately turned to Jason.

“I really want to do this someday,” I told him.

“Maybe next year.”

I signed up for their newsletter.

Then I went back to my life.

A few weeks later, an email arrived in my inbox.

The Monroe Institute was filming a documentary.

They were looking for participants.

The moment I read it, something inside me simply knew.

I was supposed to be there.

There wasn’t any logical reason to think I would be selected.

Hundreds of people would apply.

But logic had stopped leading this journey a long time ago.

So I filled out the application.

Recorded my one-minute video.

Blocked the dates off on my calendar.

And quietly assumed I was going.

Jason laughed when I told him.

“Of course you applied,” he said with a smile.

I’m not entirely sure he believed I’d actually be chosen.

Months passed.

We were supposed to have heard by April if we had been selected for an interview. April came and went, and I didn’t hear anything.

For a brief moment, doubt crept in.

Then an email arrived explaining that they had received more than 600 applications and needed additional time.

Then something even stranger started happening.

My dreams changed.

Nothing in my waking life had shifted.

But my dreams began telling me something significant was coming.

I’ve learned to pay attention when that happens.

A couple of weeks later, another email arrived.

I had made the shortlist.

I was invited to a casting interview.

After the interview, doubt returned once again.

Jonathan, the executive producer, explained that they were trying to create a diverse cast.

I remember thinking...

Well, that’s probably not great news for me.

There couldn’t possibly be a shortage of middle-aged white women navigating healing, transformation, and spiritual awakenings.

But every time doubt surfaced, that quiet knowing surfaced too.

So I kept my calendar clear.

I kept making plans as though I was going.

And then my dreams shifted again.

This time, there wasn’t even a question.

I knew.

A few weeks later, the acceptance email arrived.

I had been invited to participate in Instructions for Leaving at the Monroe Institute.

Later, I discovered I wasn’t the only one who had simply known.

Several cast members described having the same certainty.

One of them, David from Australia, was so convinced he’d be selected that he bought his plane ticket right after submitting his application, before receiving his acceptance.

Now that’s confidence.

Or intuition.

Or manifestation.

Or maybe something else entirely.

I still don’t know.

And honestly...

I’m okay not knowing.

Because by then I had learned the most important lesson of all.

I didn’t need to have every answer.

I simply needed to trust what felt true.

I thought I knew why I was going to the Monroe Institute.

I intentionally avoided reading about other people’s Gateway experiences because I didn’t want their expectations to become my own.

I wanted whatever happened there to be entirely my experience.

I thought I knew what I was going for.

I had no idea what was waiting for me.

The universe has a funny way of doing that.

Just when you think you’ve figured out the destination...

it quietly changes the journey.

Another thread from my heart to yours.