Post-religion, I was a kid in a candy store, not sure what to believe and open to everything. Study with the UU's? Worship with the evangelicals? Meditate with the Buddhists? I did it all.
Having spent most of my life inside of a high-demand religion (Mormonism) and later the evangelical side of Christianity, I was open to everything and all. I'm sharing this post to highlight what helped me most.
Enter Bob Monroe's Gateway program.
In the 1970s, a radio executive named Robert Monroe started having spontaneous out-of-body experiences, and instead of quietly filing them under "things not to mention at dinner parties," he built a laboratory to figure out what was happening. What he found became Hemi-Sync: a way of feeding slightly different tones into each ear until your brain's two hemispheres stop bickering and start operating as one coherent, hyper-focused system.
That discovery became the Gateway Voyage, long program that walks participants through a series of "Focus Levels," from simple deep relaxation (Focus 10: body asleep, mind awake) all the way to states most people only stumble into during a near-death experience or a very good meditation retreat. No drugs. No gurus. Just sound, stillness, and a surprisingly rigorous map of inner space.
What did I experience?
Levels 10 through 15 were instructive. I relearned how to surrender and reacquaint myself with the basics of energy, seeing it and interacting with what I experienced as a dance.
Then came level 21. 21? This supposedly is a place beyond time. I didn't know what to expect, yet within a few seconds of entering this level, I found myself in a state of pure awareness interacting with my past.
For context, my father was abusive. A part of me wants to believe he was well intentioned, but for all practical purposes, he loved to bully me and have me on my heels. His God expected perfection of him and that trickled down to the boy who never felt "enough" for this demanding and demaning father.
For context, at around age 15 or 16, I shifted to confidence in dealing with my father. It was as if he could no longer bully me as each time he tried, I held up a mirror as an assertive adult and showed him what I was experiencing.
How does Gateway factor into this? At what Monroe calls level 21, I found myself in a state of pure awareness, floating throug the house of my youth, helping my younger self shift to confidence. The pure soul "me" could not be triggered by any of the antics of my toxic religious parents and did exactly what the soul me knew needed to happen and that was help my younger self shift from fear to a form of assertive love.
Cool, no? Actually, yes and no.
My younger self pissed off my father, a man who sensed he had lost control to a son who calmly looked into his eyes and explained what he was seeing. I nearly got kicked out of my house several times. Religious men like my father hide behind the bullshit of piety and perfection, when in reality they're just hurting assholes wanting to feel better. My only leverage was that I told my father I would not serve an LDS mission if he kicked me out.
Years later as an adult when I was saying goodbye to his rotting, nearly dead corpse, I smiled and said goodbye to the man who couldn't speak, yet he looked up trying to communicate with desparate eyes that I had left the truth and was in Satan's power. Little did he know that fear and deception, the real masters of his life, were his true legacy.
The takeaway? Religion is a lie and I mean, all religions. If you want to gain perspective that helps you understand the consciousness that you are, Gateway proved to be the most useful of everything I've experienced. Here are the Gateway meditations if you want to give it a spin. Or sign up through the Monore Institute. You do you. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ldBXLf_PvN5ZVldiuKtNsJr_jVqfZLwJ?usp=drive_link
You don't need to denounce your religion to experience the insights of consciousness that Gateway offers, but take it from a guy who had a little too much rum an hour ago; your religion is a pile of steaming shit. Lies. Worthless drivel. Like the Wizard of Oz exposed as the con he is, offers nothing. Gateway proved to be more.