Meditation — Entering the Void
There are many reasons why one may start the practice of meditation. My initial intention was to try to reduce some anxieties that I had been experiencing. At this point in my life, my knowledge of Eastern religions or the New Age was very slim. What was clear to me was that my mind was too anxious, and something had to be done to take back control of my state of mind. I had heard that meditation could be a useful tool for that, and so I began my journey into meditation.
Surprisingly, I was able to find many secular sources on ways to meditate; they were quite simple, find a quiet place, sit down, and concentrate on your breathing; if thoughts come, turn your attention back onto your breath. It’s tough to do so initially, and it was hard to see any immediate or short-term benefits from it. One thing I noticed, though, was that it felt good at times while meditating, and my thinking patterns slowly started to change for the better.
My desire for meditation continued to grow, and I found myself searching the internet more and more for different perspectives and techniques on the practice. Before I got too far down the path, something unexpected and incredibly life-changing happened to me, and it all happened one night when I went to sleep.
Waking up in the Void
Surrounded by infinite darkness, my consciousness awakens in the void. It is not the same as thick-veil of darkness one experiences in the absence of light—in this experience, I can see infinitely, yet nothing is there to see.
My mind soon starts to panic as I try to grasp where I am and what I am ‘seeing.’ There was no sense of being anywhere nor even a sense of my body. It came to me to think back to my last memories, and as my panic continued to accelerate, I remembered that my last memory was that of going to bed. This was somewhat comforting to me to have a starting point of figuring out what was happening. I quickly realized that if I was sleeping, then this must be a dream. “I’m dreaming!” I exclaimed. The thought was so exhilarating, but “how could this be possible? How could I be fully conscious within a dream?”.
As my excitement built up, the experience soon started to fade, and I found myself lying in bed again—staring at the back of my eyelids in utter amazement.
The Awakening
The ‘void’ experience happened around 2-3 am and was very short-lived. As I laid in bed, I try to convince myself that it didn’t happen. “It could only have been a dream,” I told myself. In the end, it was undeniable to me that my experience was far more than a mere dream.
As I pondered over what had happened, the night quickly passed, and the morning light shines through my window. As it grew brighter and brighter, it eventually startles me—another incomprehensible event; it had only felt as though an hour had passed since my experience in the void.
This was the start of my journey into the unknown. Later that morning, I began my research on the internet, but I could hardly put into words what had happened to me, and my vocabulary was limited as to the keywords to use. Eventually, I discovered websites on lucid dreaming—a state where one becomes fully conscious while dreaming and may even be able to exercise control over the whole dream environment. It was another thing I could have never imagined to be possible.
This was just the beginning of my journey into the astral. The next event was when I began using newly learned techniques to induce lucid dreams. It will be the topic of my next post: My First Night of Lucid Dreams.
