Early Travels into the Light - ***** Recommended

Introduction

One of the major difficulties encountered by seekers of the inner 'way' occurs in the realm of experience. Essentially, book knowledge and intellectual understandings only carry us so far. It's the experience that can actually catapult us. How do you gain experience when you have no experience? It’s like applying for your first job, which somewhat illogically requires experience to get your first job. Then of course there’s the issue that the experiences themselves can be psychological sand traps due to their subjective influences.

Thomas Cleary, in the Introduction to his translation of The Secret of the Golden Flower, sheds insight on the process involved in deeper experiences into the Light, or Awareness, or the Golden Flower.

"The essential practice of the golden flower requires no apparatus, no philosophical or religious dogma, no special paraphernalia or ritual. It is practiced in the course of daily life. It is near at hand, being in the mind itself, yet it involves no imagery or thought. It is remote only in the sense that it is a use of attention generally unfamiliar to the mind habituated to imagination and thinking."

In the following passage, my brother, Scott Walter, has been able to recount his early experiences of breaking through these mind barriers. Over time he introduced a set of navigational tools and methods designed to assist others in overcoming similar barriers. Below, he takes us back to some of his early, personal experiences.

I compare Scott’s early, foraging experiences to people like Robert Monroe, whose own early attempts to codify what was happening to him were arduous. In Monroe’s case, he began as an adult, unlike my brother who began as a child. Monroe persisted until he developed methods that could be repeated. My brother has also developed repeatable methods, but while Monroe’s methods were focused on out-of-body experiences and brain hemi-sync, Scott Walter’s research has delved significantly deeper and broader than Monroe’s studies.

Scott’s inquisitiveness begins with his early experiences. What makes this small introduction unique is the capturing - in writing - of insights into some of the the early ‘how-tos’ of repeatable inner journey experiences.

Early Observations, BY SCOTT WALTER

Let’s take a look at a momentary type of event that would catch my eye so frequently that I’ve often turned it into a longer lasting form that I could study.

For as long back in this life as I can remember, I have found myself captivated when looking at people. My mother would constantly correct me saying, “Don’t stare”. But even with her admonitions I would simply engage in peripheral vision. When I looked at people with this focused stare, I saw things that opened the multi-dimensional door for me in a myriad of ways. I could do this without thinking and yet I’d become lost in thoughts I could not describe.

I can attribute it in part to those early life examples where I saw beings in the stars. But when I was engaged in staring I didn’t see stars; I saw a form of glow, or sometimes a characterization. Or I felt a familiarity, a remembering. Other times it was a magnetic pull, sometimes a repulsion, yet always involving an intrigue that kept me affixed.

My mind might wander during these events and my teacher’s often noted ‘day dreaming’ on my report cards. I felt somehow connected to other planes that were inexplicably revealing themselves in ways I could not express. From time to time I decided to talk about it, but no words would come forth. While I did manage to have great fun with my siblings, any real explanation of its significance was unavailable. These days, there is much I can detail about these staring events and I will cover just a few.

Sometimes, I would see the person like a character in a play, or even cartoon-like in appearance. Some would show hidden thoughts, and sometimes I would see events and people from their past. I could sometimes hear them thinking or people talking from the other side. Their inner bodily functions might surface… nerves, organs, blood coursing through vessels, injuries.

These images and audible signals were sporadic and I had no control over what came through nor over how long I could sustain it. But, there was still a constant sense occurring and it intrigued me even more than the various ways that these examples might suggest.

Often, I would be quiet, involved in watching or listening, while at other times I became impatient and short-fused regarding all these things going on around me. I found that my own voice remained at a distance from these more inner senses. This caused my frustration to grow, and I was at a loss to explain why. 

If I were to convey to someone that I felt or saw something, the meaning would tend to be reduced to something more convenient, something easier to understand or explain. Over time and over many years, I had untold thousands of these experiences. I finally arrived at a decision to focus these skills and senses on tracking the nature of these things to their source. I knew it would be easy to get distracted because they played out in many different forms, lasting only until I lost hold on them. Understanding this, I decided to track down a more generalized type that was easier for me to see.

Along the way, over many years and various episodes, I noticed there was a common feature that attracted me and that when it was lacking I felt awkwardly uncomfortable. It was a glow that I seemed to be attracted to. It might be a dime sized spot on someone or something, or it could be a fabric, or a color hue, or a feature such as a hand, or perhaps an eye, or maybe the tone in a voice. I decided to really focus on the points that seemed to glow more, and to track those down as best I could to their source.

As I practiced, I kept my senses focused on an ever-opening of the pathway leading to where these things were reflecting and projecting, the things that seemed to be more illuminated.

Some of the methods I used offered me a better way to connect while others led me out and disconnected. With practice, I chose the ones that took me further in and I found that as I trimmed my methodology, I was able to go further. As I went further, my understandings became far easier to access and maintain. I continued my practice in the present moment discovering that I had to further open my own mind to include dimensions that were showing or revealing themselves, but that I would normally disregard.

For example, I found myself encountering various forms of light and differing states of being. I was studying and even at times sequestered off somewhere. But even when studying alone or reading, I was looking into the moment by going in through one of those points that had been magnetically calling me for years. I found that the more I accepted that it was a form of light, the more of its dimensionality was revealed and the more its pathway into other dimensions was opened.

After a long period of study and practice, I was able to sustain the pathway and the signal far more effectively. I found myself passing through energy fields and past lives. I felt the intrinsic and also the separation in highly amplified ways. I felt both at one and alone at the same times and in magnifications hard to describe.

Imagine how a small sense of beauty can lead one into their own relationship with light and eternity itself. Do we give ourselves to seeing and feeling and hearing those traits in those we see and hear and touch? Do we have the sense to sense it? To follow it? Or to deny it and hide from it? Do we choose natural beauty or some dressed up, artificial facsimile?

What I followed was simple light shining from within. It was not an external form or source. It was as simple as following its value but as complex as our relationships to doing that. The harder parts involved my willingness to realize it was our relationship to light that I was sensing.

Scott Walter, Sensei

© 2022 by Great River Institute

Excerpt Used with Permission