Astral Journey (No Not Like The Band)

Hello everyone, first official Steemit post. Hope you all enjoy my journey as much as I did.

I would like to start off my story with a short background so you understand why I was doing what I was doing. In 9th grade (so timeline, 2008-2009 school year), in an attempt to help me manage any stress I may start having (and as a way for me to "understand who I was" to quote him), my father talked me through a very light meditation session. Nothing fancy, just calming breaths and clearing my mind. Left with some literature and the internet I started getting more and more into meditation and broke away from guided ones as I got better at clearing my mind alone.

After a few years of meditating 3-4 times a week, I got curious about something I read about called Astral Projection. Basically, it's taking on what’s called an "astral form" (rather than physical) and having the ability to travel outside of physical restrictions. I found an audio recording that was like, 2.5 hours long online so I popped on my headphones, sat comfortably on my couch, and started the recording. I don't remember exactly when I stopped hearing the proctor’s voice, but what I do remember was that he was very calming, and he was telling me to relax my tension. I took the relaxation into my own hands, and let his voice soothe me into my "trance". This is where my journey began...

I walk into a smallish room. Red-delicious-apple walls with gold molding. It's gaudy to say the least. The wall across from me and the door, as well as the wall to the right, is lined with bookshelves that are filled with books of varying sizes and colors. I can't make out any writing on any of the spines, but I'm finding it hard to concentrate on them. I'm being drawn to a couch in the center of the room. It matches the same color/accent scheme as the walls, it’s just as gaudy, but comfortable. I sit and sink into the fibers of the couch, I can’t tell where my ass ends and the fabric begins. I've just noticed a large TV in front of me, and as my eyes adjust to my reflection, I briefly see myself (or what I instinctively recognize as myself) before it flickers on. A white glow accompanied by a low hum fills the room, the bright light fills my view and I feel as I’m falling into it.

The first colors that come to me are blues and greens, slowly separating into the brilliantly green grass of my childhood and the endless expanse of blue skies above. I’m in some park, it feels like summer, the wind is playing with the pines of evergreens dotting my surroundings, the old weather-soaked wood of picnics-past feels cool to the touch as I rest my forearms and hands on the table top. I’m watching myself playing with my friends, some weirdly awesome sport we invented as we come up with more rules and regulations. What’s fair and not, what we should allow to be fair despite being “pretty fucking awesome”. We play for hours, point after point, game after game, breaking only for the ice cream man or high fives of triumph. I start feeling a weight on my chest, slowly growing and fading, like a heartbeat I only now realized I hadn’t felt since I found myself here. I clutch my right hand to my chest, for half a second, I feel my skin, the pressure of my hand against my bones, but then, nothing. My hand slowly gets pulled into me, and I can feel a warmth slowly growing in my palm as it gets pulled deeper. The weight dissipates as the warming sensation gets more intense. I slowly remove my hand from my chest cavity (not something I thought I’d deal with to be honest) and in my hand is a small globe of swirling deep-red colored energy. Honestly it looks like those bouncy balls with the glitter inside of them... There’s nothing containing it, but I can’t bring myself to disturb it. I named it Joy.

I’m fascinated by this, and I don’t realize that I’m pulled away from my friends and the park in the summer. The orb grows dim and its warmth disappears from my senses as the color fades. I’m left staring at my empty hands on a white tablecloth. It’s rough to the touch cause its cheap material. A small bud-vase is good enough decoration I guess, but the 0.25 votive candle really takes the cake. Music fills my ears, as does lots of screaming and shouting. The hustle and bustle of dress shoes and heels on concrete beat in disharmony because white people can’t dance, and these people are no exception. I came to a logical conclusion: It’s my senior prom. I look around the floor and see my friends enjoying themselves, shooting the shit and drinking whatever the hell it was, my PE teacher was DJ’ing and getting way to into it. He gets on mic and hushes the crowd, announcing slow dance time akin to the finesse put into advertising couple skating. Almost on cue, the crowd parts and my eyes fall on me and my girlfriend, tightly embraced in each other’s arms, our eyes locked together in a gaze that could only have been described as like when a fat kid sees free cake. Our bodies swayed together in time with the music, our own rhythm taking control as we spin and step together. Stealing small kisses from the others cheek when we get close in enough, her head rests on my shoulder as we slowly rotate on the dance floor. I see my face as I turn in the direction I’m sitting, and as my eyes locked with….well, my eyes, the weight in my chest came back. Knowing what to expect this time, I reach my hand into my chest with ease, the warmth I felt before grew in my hand once more and I pulled out another orb, this one was a light teal, but it was just as magnificent as the one before it. It held my gaze much like the previous one had, and I was pulled away once more. I named it Love. (For those curious we’re celebrating our 5th year together in Jan)

Much like Joy, Love slowly faded in my hands. But instead of being met with shitty tablecloth, I was sitting in grass. A small plum tree grows overhead, shading my spot, and not much else. I already know where I am, my parents’ house, and the home I grew up in. I can hear voices and shuffling, I wander across the yard towards the noise, towards the driveway. It’s me and my dad loading my car up, I’m moving out. We hug and he tells me not to forget my shit cause once I’m gone he’s calling dibs, I told him I already took all the cool stuff so he can “have fun with the remnants”. We hug again and it’s a little tighter than before, I can feel the pressure around my astral body as if he’s hugging me too. My mom comes out of the garage carrying something I forgot and my dad grabs it saying he called it. We laugh and exchange more goodbyes. I drive off as I blast my music, the tunes fading as I see my tail lights disappear around the corner. I look back at my parents, their eyes fixated on that corner, hoping maybe I won’t leave the nest after all… (Or maybe thinking “thank god” who really knows right?). The orb I extract from my chest is a deep purple, I name it Pride.

As Pride faded away I found myself in a void. Black nothingness surrounded me. There was no chill to the air, nor warmth, but simply an absence of it around me. I look around, searching for some sort of stimuli in the darkness. Looking down at where I would expect my body to be, I see a small thread, my eyes straining to focus on its thin gold profile. As they do it starts glowing, illuminating a small area around it, like a single dim candle fighting back the darkness of a great hall. I feel myself reaching out to it, my hands coming into the light just inches from feeling it brush against my fingertips. I realize it’s extending from my chest, from where I extracted Love, Joy, and Pride. I run my eyes up the length of this golden strand as it disappears into the distant blackness of the void. Before too long, long streams of beautifully vivid colors start entering my view, one or two at the beginning, by now there's hundreds. Going all around me, but none within arm’s reach.

Slowly, a figure appears a few feet in front of me. It’s opaque, and grey-blue in color, and stares into my eyes with an intensity I can’t describe, but it felt as though it was looking into the back of my skull. The strand connected us at the chest, but extended beyond him. I knew him to be me, the real me, the subconscious me. We stared at each other for what seemed like eternity before we spoke. We spoke of my shortcomings as a student and how to go about fixing them, about my trust issues in relationships and how to forgive those in the past to make way for those in my future, about needing to open to those who matter to me because I can’t handle my emotions alone, about my love of the friendships I’ve made and how to keep them, the ups and downs of my life and about why I hate mascots (they creepy, enough said amirite?).

We smile and along the strand grew five orbs. Joy, Pride, and Love are present, along with two others; one a deep forest green, and the other a brilliant sun-like yellow- orange. I slowly slide toward them and one by one they dissipate into me, filling me with their warmth I once held in my hand. I close my eyes as my subconscious self draws nearer to me. I feel a pressure as we first meet each other, not enough to stop the motion, but enough to be aware of it. Gradually I become more aware of the physical word around me. I can feel my headphones again, but there is no longer noise coming from them. My eyes strain to open as I forcibly stretch out my legs and back. It takes some effort as though I’ve been stationary for days, despite my clock only reading 3 hours had past. Closing my laptop and crawling into bed to reflect only one thing is on my mind.

What were those other orbs?

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I have other stories if people are interested in hear them (like opening my third eye, or stories from the restaurant business). But if you want more of this type of stuff NOW, check out this story by my roommate (@mguy808)

Wishing everyone luck on their own journeys,
JRao