How Did I Ended Up in a Documentary About Consciousness

Part 5: I Went Looking for an Out-of-Body Experience and Found Something Else

I did surprisingly little research before heading to the Monroe Institute.

That was intentional.

I didn’t want to read a hundred people’s accounts of what had happened to them and arrive with a checklist of what was supposed to happen to me. I didn’t want someone else’s experience—or expectations—coloring my own.

Honestly, I didn’t need much convincing anyway.

When I got the email about the documentary, I just knew.

I was supposed to go.

So I applied.

I got accepted.

And I went.

No exhaustive research. No weighing the pros and cons. No existential debate about whether flying across the country to spend a week exploring altered states of consciousness with a bunch of strangers was a reasonable thing for a fifty-one-year-old woman to do.

What I Thought I Was Going There to Do

I knew Robert Monroe as the out-of-body guy.

I’d read his books. I’d had dozens of out-of-body experiences of my own. But surprisingly, I had never actually tried very hard to induce one.

It seemed like a lot of work.

And I had other things on my plate.

My out-of-body experiences had always just happened spontaneously, so I figured if they wanted to keep showing up uninvited, great. I wasn’t going to spend hours lying perfectly still trying to force the issue.

But Monroe seemed like the perfect place to finally learn.

In my mind, I was going there to figure out how to control my out-of-body experiences, understand who these “helpers” were who always seemed to be around when they happened, and—most importantly—learn how to trigger the experiences whenever I wanted.

Then I could go do really cool shit.

Visit the pyramids.

See ancient civilizations.

Travel back in time.

Explore places I couldn’t normally access.

Basically, I had a very modest agenda.

It wasn’t until my second day at Monroe that someone explained something I probably could have learned had I bothered to do even fifteen minutes of research beforehand:

Gateway Voyage isn’t an out-of-body-experience program.

It’s more like a sampler platter of different states of consciousness explored through the Monroe Institute’s programs.

Oh.

That actually came as a huge relief.

Because in the days before leaving, a tiny voice had started creeping into my head:

What if I’m the girl who shows up for a documentary about consciousness talking about all the out-of-body experiences she’s had...and then can’t have one?

That felt like a lot of pressure.

I had started getting genuinely nervous that I would spend the entire week lying in my little bed thinking, Hello? Anyone? I’m ready to leave my body now.

Finding out that wasn’t actually the point of the program allowed me to relax.

Which was good, because apparently my body had already decided to create some drama of its own.

The Strange Thing That Started Before I Left

About six weeks before Monroe, I started having dreams where I was dizzy.

In the dreams, I would be spinning or doing something that would naturally make me dizzy—and I could actually feel the dizziness in the dream.

That had never happened to me before.

I was intrigued, but I didn’t give it much thought.

Then, about three weeks before I left, I was sitting on the couch watching TV with Jason when I suddenly had a small bout of vertigo.

I’ve only had true vertigo once before in my life, shortly after Connor died, during a period when my body and nervous system were carrying an almost unimaginable amount of grief, trauma and loss.

That episode was horrific.

This wasn’t anything like that.

This was mild—some dizziness, a little nausea, enough to make me feel off but not enough to completely take me down. I drank ginger and peppermint tea, used some peppermint oil, went to bed and felt fine the next morning.

A few days later, I had another dream where I was spinning.

Then, a couple of days after that, another small bout of vertigo.

And then...nothing.

For the next couple of weeks, I felt fine.

I mostly forgot about it.

Until I got to Virginia.

Charlottesville

Because I couldn’t get a flight into Charlottesville that would get me to the Monroe Institute in time for the start of the program, I flew in the day before.

A handful of us participating in the documentary had done the same thing and were staying at the same hotel, so we connected and decided to go to dinner together.

Charlottesville has a charming downtown area with shops and restaurants lining a pedestrian street. We arrived on a Sunday evening, so most of the stores were closed and everything was relatively quiet.

We wandered down the brick-lined street, restaurant patios filling the center, and eventually landed at a little Italian place for dinner.

And almost immediately, I realized something:

These were my people.

We were sitting around talking openly about extraterrestrials, out-of-body experiences, altered states of consciousness and all kinds of things that, in normal conversation, require you to first carefully assess your audience.

You don’t casually drop, “So, who do you think the beings are that help pull us out of our bodies?” into dinner conversation with just anyone.

At least I don’t.

Usually.

But nobody at this table flinched.

Nobody gave anyone the Ohhh...okay look.

Nobody suddenly became extremely interested in their bread.

We shared stories about experiences we’d had, how we’d ended up applying for the documentary and what had brought each of us to Monroe.

It was exhilarating.

One of the men, who had flown in from Australia, told us he had submitted his application for the documentary and booked his flights the same day—before he’d even been accepted.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who just knew I was supposed to be there.

Although booking an international flight before getting accepted was definitely a stronger commitment to the knowing than I had made.

When I got back to my hotel that night, I called Jason and told him how incredible it felt to sit with a group of people and talk openly about all of this without anyone immediately assuming you had lost your mind.

Even more meaningful was that nobody had to believe the same things.

There was curiosity.

Openness.

A willingness to listen.

That alone felt rare.

Then I hung up, climbed into bed and turned on the TV.

And that’s when things got weird.

You’ve Got to Be Kidding Me

I was lying there watching television when suddenly my vision changed.

The TV seemed to zoom away from me.

My peripheral vision narrowed until it felt like I was looking through a tunnel, and a massive wave of vertigo washed over me.

My equilibrium was completely off.

I remember thinking:

You’ve got to be kidding me.

I had flown all the way to Virginia for this experience, and now, the night before I was supposed to arrive at Monroe, I was going to get sick?

Absolutely not.

I decided the best medical intervention available to me at the moment was denial and sleep.

So I went to bed.

When I woke the next morning, the intense vertigo had passed, but there was still an underlying dizziness. I felt unstable on my feet.

We had about a forty-five-minute drive to Monroe, and I was worried I would get carsick.

Still, I got dressed, packed my bags and headed downstairs to meet the shuttle.

When the van pulled up, I walked outside expecting a driver.

Instead, the door opened and out jumped Jonathan Braue—one of the executive producers I’d interviewed with during casting—along with a cameraman.

Oh.

We’re filming already.

Good to know.

I suddenly became acutely aware that I was slightly dizzy, wasn’t feeling great and was apparently now expected to look documentary-ready.

I climbed into the van.

There was already one woman inside named Avery, who, as fate would have it, would soon become my roommate—and very quickly, a close friend.

And off we went.

The Monroe Institute

The Monroe Institute sits on hundreds of acres tucked into the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.

The property is beautiful—lush, quiet and secluded, with this enormous quartz crystal sitting toward the back that looks as though someone dropped it there from another planet.

We were the first group to arrive, so we got a little time alone with the center before everyone else showed up.

The first thing I noticed was the heat and humidity.

I live in a desert, so the air felt thick and heavy, almost like it had weight to it. It was a stark contrast to the energy of the property itself, which felt peaceful and calm.

Then I noticed the crows.

A murder of them surrounded the property, cawing as they soared from tree to tree.

I love crows. I’ve always thought of them as messengers, so seeing them there felt significant to me—almost like a little nod that I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

When we checked in, we were shown to our rooms.

I had been nervous about sharing a bedroom.

I like people.

I also really like having a door I can close on people.

Instead of one roommate, I discovered I had two.

Perfect.

The three of us had been assigned to a downstairs room affectionately known as the Bachelor Pad.

Why three women were put in the Bachelor Pad, I have no idea.

But it turned out to be perfect.

My roommates were wonderful, and the room became our little home base for the week.

Our beds—called CHEC units, although I quickly began thinking of mine as my Bed in a Box—were essentially enclosed sleeping compartments wired with speakers and headphones.

We slept in them at night.

We also meditated in them.

A lot.

I had no idea yet just how much time I was about to spend inside that box.

Twenty-Four Strangers

That first evening was mostly orientation, dinner and introductions.

We gathered around couches and tables, talking and getting to know one another.

Again and again, I heard people say some version of what I had felt the night before:

It is so nice to be able to talk about this stuff.

There were twenty-four of us from wildly different backgrounds.

There was a physicist in his seventies who had worked on the Hubble Space Telescope.

A former New York City police officer.

Engineers.

Professors.

People from tech and business.

A woman living with stage-four cancer.

A man living with chronic pain.

A mother searching for some kind of continued connection with her two sons who had been tragically killed in a car accident.

And a couple of Instagram influencers.

On paper, many of us probably had very little in common.

But that night, none of that seemed to matter.

I wanted to know everyone’s story.

Why were they here?

What had happened in their lives that made them curious about consciousness?

What had they experienced that they couldn’t explain?

What were they hoping to find?

I could have stayed up all night talking.

But eventually we climbed into our respective Bed in a Boxes and went to sleep.

We had no idea yet what the week was going to ask of us.

So...How Is This a Documentary?

Within a couple of days, I had settled into the rhythm of Gateway Voyage.

No cell phones.

No watches.

No clocks.

No technology.

For the first couple of days, one question seemed to come up over and over:

“Does anyone know what time it is?”

Turns out, giving up your sense of time is a bigger ask than you might think.

Our days went something like this...

Wake up.

Breakfast.

Instruction.

Bed in a Box.

Meditate.

Come back.

Process what happened.

Ask questions.

More instruction.

Bed in a Box.

Meditate.

Come back.

Process.

More instruction.

Bed in a Box.

Meditate.

Lunch.

Repeat.

Dinner.

More instruction.

Meditate.

Process.

Go to bed.

One evening, I called Jason and he asked what we had been doing.

I explained the schedule.

There was a pause.

Then he said:

“How is that a documentary?”

Fair question.

From the outside, twenty-four people repeatedly climbing into little beds and lying perfectly still doesn’t exactly scream cinematic masterpiece.

But something was happening there.

And by the time I left Monroe, I wasn’t sure the most important part of the experience had anything to do with leaving my body.

When I arrived at Monroe, I thought the extraordinary part would be whatever happened when I closed my eyes.

I thought I might learn how to leave my body on command.

Maybe meet my helpers.

Maybe finally figure out how to go visit the pyramids.

That isn’t exactly what happened.

I didn’t have some earth-shattering out-of-body experience while I was there. I didn’t blast out of my body, travel across the universe and come home with the secrets of consciousness.

There were interesting experiences.

There were things I couldn’t completely explain.

There were moments that made me question what I thought I understood about consciousness.

But the thing that affected me most while I was there wasn’t what happened when I closed my eyes.

It was what happened when I opened them.

It was the people.

Twenty-four strangers walked into that building carrying twenty-four completely different lives.

Grief.

Illness.

Pain.

Questions.

Skepticism.

Curiosity.

Hope.

We had different beliefs and different reasons for being there. We didn’t agree on everything, and we didn’t need to.

We simply became willing to be curious about one another.

To listen.

To sit beside someone when they were hurting.

To celebrate someone’s experience even when it was completely different from our own.

To hold space for things we couldn’t explain.

Somewhere between breakfast, those endless trips to our Bed in a Boxes, the processing sessions, the laughter, the tears and repeatedly asking, “Does anybody know what time it is?” something happened.

We became connected.

And that alone changed me.

I went to Virginia wanting to learn how to leave my body.

Instead, one of the most profound things I experienced there came from being fully present in it—with twenty-three other people willing to do the same.

At the time, I thought that was the lesson.

I’m beginning to wonder if Monroe wasn’t quite finished with me yet.

Another thread from my heart to yours