How Did I Ended Up in a Documentary About Consciousness?

Part 6: Maybe I Was Looking for the Wrong Kind of Experience

By the end of my second day at the Monroe Institute, I was starting to feel a little disheartened.

I had been so certain I was supposed to be there.

From the moment I got the email about the documentary, there hadn’t been much questioning. I applied. I got accepted. I went.

I knew.

Except now I was there, and I wasn’t entirely sure why.

I hadn’t had any remarkable experiences. I wasn’t flying out of my body. I wasn’t receiving profound messages about the nature of consciousness.

Mostly, I was meditating.

A lot.

That night, I went to bed wondering, Why am I here? Why was I so sure I was supposed to do this?

Granted, it was only day two.

Apparently, that was already long enough for me to start questioning the entire reason I had flown to Virginia. Patience has never been my strong suit.

A Little Breadcrumb

The next morning, I woke to Bob Monroe’s voice welcoming us to a new day.

The speakers in our CHEC units played music throughout the night with specific frequencies running underneath it. In the morning, the music would change to gently wake us, followed by Bob’s voice encouraging us to make the most of the day ahead.

Honestly, it was a lovely way to wake up every morning, and I wished I could replicate it at home.

I abhor being startled awake and think alarm clocks are basically the antithesis of a calm nervous system.

At the sound of the bell, I meandered into the dining room for breakfast.

I sat with a few of the other participants while we talked about the previous couple of days, shared stories about our journeys and wondered what might be coming next.

The dining room was almost empty, and it was about time to head back for our first instruction of the day when Jonathan suddenly said:

“I had the wildest dream last night. Does anyone interpret dreams?”

I laughed.

Seriously?

The night before, I had literally gone to bed asking why I was there.

And the next morning, someone was asking for a dream interpreter.

It felt like a little breadcrumb.

Maybe even a reminder.

You’re supposed to be here.

I told Jonathan I interpreted dreams and instructed him to write his down with as much detail as he could remember. Then I left it in his hands.

I’m always conscientious about not pushing my ideas or beliefs onto other people. If Jonathan really wanted me to interpret his dream, I figured he would make the effort to find me.

The day continued, and he didn’t mention the dream.

So neither did I.

Later that day, I think during our last meditation, I came out of my meditative state because my bladder had other plans for me.

We had been meditating for three days at this point, and not once had I needed to get up in the middle of one to pee.

But this time there was no negotiating with it.

Our room was tucked behind the main common area where everyone gathered to talk and get to know one another. The bathroom was in the hallway between the two spaces, and when I came out, I could hear someone in the back common room.

I decided to see who was there.

It was Jonathan.

Of course it was.

So I sat down next to him.

And I interpreted his dream.

At some point, without me realizing it, another participant had walked up behind me and started listening.

Apparently, he was pretty blown away by what I was able to pull from Jonathan’s dream because he mentioned it to some of the others.

And pretty soon, I was known as the dream interpreter.

People started finding me to ask about their dreams and what they meant.

I absolutely love dream interpretation and find it fascinating, so I was more than happy to help people decipher what their dreams were saying.

The funny thing was, while I was interpreting everyone else’s dreams, my own had become almost unrecognizable to me.

Whose Dream Is This Anyway?

My dreams at Monroe seemed so enmeshed with the people around me and their energy that I couldn’t figure out what was mine and what wasn’t.

One night, I had a dream that seemed to indicate health issues I knew I didn’t have. There was something involving the kidneys and something else involving digestion—possibly some kind of blockage.

One of the other participants, Steve, was also in the dream.

I kept thinking about it and wondering why I would have this dream when none of it seemed to apply to me.

Finally, I thought, Well, there’s one way to find out.

The next morning at breakfast, I walked over to the table where Steve was sitting and joined him. I asked if it was okay if I asked him a personal health question.

Then I asked if he had any issues with his kidneys.

The look he gave me was one of complete shock.

It turned out that he had been dealing with kidney issues and had gone round and round with doctors trying to figure out what was going on.

Then the story got stranger.

There was also a connection to his father, whom he had never known. His father had been a physician whose work involved the study of kidneys.

And yes, Steve told me, he had also been having digestive issues.

I’ve received information in dreams before about clients and things that might help them, but this felt different.

It wasn’t like I’d received information about Steve.

It felt almost as though I’d had a dream that was meant for him, and I was supposed to interpret it and give him the message.

I didn’t know if that was actually what had happened.

But that’s certainly what it felt like.

And by day four, things were getting even stranger for me.

I Couldn’t Tell What Was Mine Anymore

I had become so enmeshed in everyone else’s energy that I couldn’t figure out which emotions belonged to me and which ones I was picking up from the people around me.

Everything felt heightened and intense.

People were processing grief and trauma. They were having incredible experiences. We were spending hours every day in meditation and then sitting together talking about what had happened.

Normally, I think I have pretty good energetic hygiene. That’s what I call keeping what belongs to me with me and letting everyone else carry what belongs to them.

I have enough of my own shit to carry around.

I don’t need to start collecting everyone else’s.

But after four days at Monroe, I couldn’t tell what was mine anymore.

I felt extremely emotional. I wanted to cry, and I couldn’t figure out why.

Sometime in the middle of the day, I think after lunch, I found myself sitting inside my CHEC unit crying.

I couldn’t do the meditation.

Finally, I thought, Well, this is stupid. I’m just going to get up.

So I did.

I walked into the main common area and saw Moshe standing outside on the patio looking into the trees.

I went outside and stood next to him.

He looked at me with tears in his eyes.

I had tears streaming down my face.

“I’m just sitting in there crying,” I told him, “so I figured I might as well get up.”

He told me he had been doing the same thing.

So we stood outside and talked while everyone else finished the meditation.

It wasn’t until later that something about that struck me.

In the entire six days I was at Monroe, I left a meditation early exactly twice.

The first time, I walked out and found Jonathan—the person who had asked me to interpret his dream that morning.

The second time, I walked out because I couldn’t stop crying and found Moshe, who had also been unable to continue the meditation.

Could both of those things have been coincidences?

Sure.

But I couldn’t help thinking they weren’t.

And these strange intersections weren’t just happening to me.

Something Was Happening Between Us

There were a lot of emotional highs and lows that week.

Some people wanted so badly to have an out-of-body experience and weren’t having one. They were getting frustrated and sometimes upset listening to other people’s experiences while also being genuinely happy for them.

It’s a very human combination of emotions.

I’m so happy for you. Also, why the hell isn’t this happening to me?

One of those people was John.

John was what I would call a wonderful skeptic, which to me means open-minded and curious, not someone who immediately believes everything they’re told.

He wanted to have an out-of-body experience because he wanted to prove to himself that there was something more out there.

After a few days, nothing had happened, and he was getting frustrated.

Then, during one of our meditations, something really interesting happened.

Another man in our group, Dan, had been practicing out-of-body experiences for quite some time and had already had several of them.

During this particular meditation, nothing was happening for Dan, so he decided to see if he could help someone else.

Dan went out of body and went to John’s CHEC unit. He tried pulling on him and helping him get out of his body.

After the meditation, everyone headed to lunch. Dan sat down at a table and told some of the people there what he had done, but he didn’t tell them who he had been trying to help.

Then John happened to sit down at the same table.

He was excited.

He told everyone he thought he had finally had an out-of-body experience. He had felt his body begin to move and believed he had started to come out of it.

That’s when Dan told him:

“I was there trying to help you.”

I loved watching the excitement on John’s face and the gratitude he had for Dan for trying to help him have this experience he wanted so badly.

I believe Dan actually went to John’s CHEC unit in an out-of-body state and tried to help him.

I also realize not everyone reading this is going to believe that’s what happened. Maybe you think John’s desire to have the experience created it. Maybe you think it was an extraordinary coincidence. Maybe you have another explanation.

That’s okay.

I’m not trying to convince anyone.

I can only tell you what happened and what I believe.

Dan didn’t tell anyone who he had tried to help, and John didn’t know what Dan had been doing when he sat down and excitedly shared his experience.

For me, that’s pretty damn interesting.

And it wasn’t the only time things seemed to cross over between people.

It wasn’t uncommon for another member of the group to show up in someone else’s meditation. People were showing up in my meditations. They were showing up in my dreams.

It was pretty wild.

There were also several people who had lost parents or other loved ones who felt as though they were able to connect with them during the meditations and heal some of the wounds left by their deaths.

It was beautiful to witness.

There were people who really seemed to look inward and connect with parts of themselves they hadn’t been able to access before.

And quite frankly, there were also people who didn’t share much at all about what they were experiencing, which I found interesting considering we’d all volunteered to be in a documentary about consciousness.

Twenty-four people could lie down for the exact same meditation and seemingly go twenty-four completely different places.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped worrying quite so much about whether I was having the experience I thought I was supposed to be having.

The Last Day

Our last day was mostly reserved for interviews and capturing footage the production team still needed.

The structured part of the program was essentially over, so we spent a lot more time sitting around and talking.

Our phones came back out.

People started checking messages and reconnecting with their lives outside Monroe.

And I was surprised by how quickly the dynamic shifted.

For almost a week, we had been completely immersed in this experience together. We meditated together, ate together, processed what was happening and spent hours talking about things most of us didn’t normally get to talk about.

And now that little bubble we’d been living in was starting to break apart.

The experience was ending.

And I wasn’t ready for it to.

I had gone to bed on the second night asking myself why I was there.

By the end of the week, I think I was beginning to understand.

I had arrived at Monroe thinking the extraordinary part of this experience would be something that happened to me.

An out-of-body experience.

Some incredible altered state.

Maybe an answer to one of the approximately 4,000 questions I have about consciousness.

And there were strange and fascinating things happening.

I was having dreams that didn’t seem to belong to me.

People were showing up in one another’s meditations.

Dan and John seemed to experience two sides of the same event.

People felt as though they were connecting with loved ones who had died.

There were plenty of things I couldn’t explain.

But when I think back on that week, those aren’t the moments that stand out to me most.

It’s sitting outside crying with Moshe.

It’s watching John’s face when Dan told him he’d been trying to help him.

It’s listening to people tell stories about grief, illness, loss and experiences they couldn’t explain.

It’s being around twenty-three other people who didn’t need to agree about what was happening in order to be curious about it together.

I thought I had gone to Virginia to participate in a documentary about consciousness.

And technically, I had.

But I came away believing the story we were actually living was about something else.

Human connection.

Not because we all became best friends.

Not because we all believed the same things.

We didn’t.

It was the willingness to be curious about one another. To listen to someone’s experience without immediately needing to explain it, dismiss it or make it fit into our own belief system.

For six days, twenty-four very different people stepped into something together.

Whatever was happening in those CHEC units was fascinating to me.

But so was what was happening when we climbed out of them.

And maybe that’s why, when I had asked myself on the second night why I was there, I couldn’t find the answer.

I was looking for it inside my own experience.

By the end of the week, I was beginning to realize that maybe it wasn’t just about me.

Another thread from my heart to yours.