The Wayfarer's Blog

Earlier this week, I began a program of meditations that have the intention of inducing out of body experiences. The program that I am using is from The Gateway Experience series designed by Robert Monroe and available from The Monroe Institute. This series uses the Hemisync method, which consists of tones that induce binaural beating, or different tuned frequencies to each ear. Seeing how I have been working with binaural beating in my own Meditational practices and compositions, I felt like this would be a good method for me to become familiar with.

Robert Monroe, founder of the Monroe Institute

I first became aware of the binaural beating approach from a freeware software that I had downloaded years ago called Mindsync. I have not been able to find it again in more recent years, but at least, its documentation came with the frequency values for creating binaural beating waveforms at the correct rates to make alpha, beta, delta, and theta waves for stimulating the brain to different levels of consciousness. I did further research a couple of years ago on stimulating chakra centers using binaural certain harmonic frequencies. This research ended up in the Meditations CD. I used some of my prior knowledge of stimulating alpha through theta states to enhance these harmonics through binaural beating for the approach of the CD.

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In continuing my research as well as fulfilling my desires to experience an out of body experience that can be controlled (instead of accidentally happened during sleep), I took up the Monroe approach. I will continue to detail my results and comments in the days and weeks to come, but I will keep this first post to the first stage of conscious experience, Focus 3

The Gateway Experience – Wave 1

Focus 3 seems to me to be something that encourages the delta state, a state of focused alertness for the mind and sleep for the body. Now, this state does not mean that your alertness makes you high-strung or overly active, but rather focused on alertness that the body and mind are more relaxed than usual, but as a result, the mind is capable of being more focused. I interpret this hypothesis from counting the beats per second in the binaural beating and from what the recorded voice seems to be asking from the participant’s mental focus. In going through this recording, I found it quite helpful in achieving a relaxed state in which my mind was alert and more focused (less busy) than usual. I do have issues with quieting my internal verbal dialogue, or the mind continually analyzing and going from thought to thought rapidly and sporadically. This meditation did indeed help. I also derived a visualization from the experience, which I depict below.

The above picture is my rendering of the image I saw. Its size, from my closed-eye visual perspective, would be that of a grain of corn at most times. I often see what they call “floaters” when I close my eyes, small masses of purple light that oscillate and move around, but this was quite distinct from that. I was able to make it move around my visual field without moving my eyes. It was also a clear image that I knew was “seen” and not “imagined.” The small image would also mutate its shape slightly like it was some microscopic cell moving around in fluid. It also oscillated with the rate of the beating form the binaural effect of the sound recording. Its clarity was greater than that of the “floaters” as well. Its color was primarily what you see in the image, but the green shading, grey shading, white shading, and light blue shading would consistently change, mutate and cover different parts of the overall image.

After the experience, I did retain this focused state of awareness. I felt that my body was more invograted as well. I walked down to the store to run some errands with much more energy at that time of the day than usual. I felt like it was more productive than a power nap. In this way, I feel that Focus 3 had accomplished its stated results. I decided to save the rest of the approaches leading up to out of the body experiences for further practices down the line. At this point, I am trying to establish a stronger ability to move into Focus 3, which means quieting my busy mind more easily. With practice, I hope that this obstacle to my meditational experience can be overcome.

I intend for this post to be the first part in a continuing series of my use of the Gateway Experience recordings from The Monroe Institute. Other posts will contain some of my results as well as my comments on the method as well as the recordings’ effectiveness.

The word “wayfarer” refers to travelers who engage in journeys as a life purpose. It typically refers to people from ancient times who traveled around from place to place rather than living in one spot. As a term, it can refer to travelers from a wide variety of cultures, but it commonly refers to those who traveled across Europe merely because it is an English word.

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The reason why much of my music is released under the artist name “Wayfarer” is because the music is like a journey. when one travels,, he or she becomes exposed to ideas, philosophies, and cultural influences from a wide variety of world regions. As you will find by listening to the music, Wayfarer music incorporates stylistic influences from many world genres. Additionally, Wayfarer explores abstract artistic influences that can be thought of as being beyond known world cultures. This trait shows a desire for individual creation and finding a uniqueness in sound.

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Wayfarer music is inspired by a sense of liberty and individualism. while one comes under many cultural influences through travel and open-mindedness to other cultures, a wayfarer engages in a choice of what expressions he or she chooses to adopt. Unlike a lot of New Age or World music, Wayfarer music stands for individualism rather than fitting into a single niche, trend, or genre. It is my contention that true journeymen are individuals. They choose where to go and they choose what ideas, philosophies and cultural influences they choose to incoporate within themselves. This choice is an essential part of individual liberty.

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Spirituality is an important part of Wayfarer music. I believe that the journey we undertake in trying to learn about life’s purpose and our individual place within it is probably the most important journey that we undertake. In this journey, open-mindedness is very important. What is also important is the choices we make in what we choose to investigate further and what we choose to disregard. We cannot adopt every single spiritual philosophy that we come in contact with. Many ideas come in conflict with other ideas, so a choice in necessary in continuing the exploration. While Wayfarer music incorporates ideas from many faiths and traditions, due to its variety of influences, the theme that remains important is the individual.

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whiloe Eastern qualities are part of my spiritual explorations, i resist the common Eastern tendency to downplay the individual and, in some circumstances, putting rejection of individuality as the ultimate goal in “liberation” of the soul. If we believe that there is a purpose to life and there is a higher power guiding all of reality, there must be a purpose to the creation of individual beings in humanity. I don’t believe that this creation is for the sole purpose of overcoming one’s individuality completely. I beleive that much of the wisdom in reality can only be learned by an individual. Unique perspectives, ideas, and discoveries only add to the wisdom of any collective entity. While seeing the connection between all life is probably an important part of spiritual understanding, I beleive that the liberty of the individual must be important in contributing to the wisdom of humanity as well as any thoughts of “liberation” in general.

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Through individualism that is balanced with compassion and respect for all life, humanity has the ability to discover more. It goes without saying that all of the world’s religions do mention individuals in the history of mankind who rose to levels of importance in the discovery of knowledge, Jesus Christ, the Buddha, Moses, and Mohammad to name a few, and who were instrumental in bringing about further discoveries in the path to spiritual purpose. Despite any collectivist mentality, these individuals made great strides toward the universal knowledge that their respective faiths pursue. As such, Wayfarer music takes the approach of the liberated individual exploring life, reality, the spirit, and culture as a journey that is expressed through sound. This artistic expression is done in the spirit of a wayfarer, in which one explores with an open mind and preserves that which is found to be a powerful influence on one’s own self.