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ShaneTheThinker
This is very good, IMO.
I tried twice, quite awkwardly,to explain a similar understanding to Alex (up-thread).
If you sit down at a poker table in Las Vegas, you don't get to call out, "Black Jack" and take all of the chips off the table. You agreed to play poker. You bought in and agreed to the rules. You could play Black Jack, but you have to go sit at an appropriate table and agree to those rules. Stupid analogy perhaps, though I think that is how "reality" (including physical reality) works. It's a paradigm, a wave length, one of many, that your awareness can buy into. In buying in, it agrees to all of the rules - or, even if it doesn't totally, the "peer pressure" of the other awarenesses in that paradigm forces the agreement. This isn't something you can "think" your way into, or out of. Once you're thinking, you've already bought in, as thinking is a way of perceiving within the physical paradigm. The buy in is something much deeper; "will" - as you put it - or "intent". In the physical paradigm, we are not even aware of the focus of our will and how it supports/maintains the paradigm along with all of the other wills doing the same. It is truly "magic" that creates and binds the paradigm. The magic is created from the energy that is expended by all of the focused awarenesses. All my opinion, of course. Not preaching here.
Yet sometimes we can stop the paradigm. Sometimes our soul's will breaks through the magical force and our focus shifts. When that happens the familiar paradigm begins to collapse and new ones leak through. Meditation can accomplish this, as can psychedelics, fasting, repetitive activities, chanting and shocks to the physical construct of the body. Great love can do it too (and, I suppose, great hate as well). All of these things cause the thinking - the inner dialogue that tells us how what is possible and not - to quiet down. Sometimes just feeling good and being in a fine "personal groove" can get you there. "Can" get you there under the right circumstances. None of those are guaranteed to do it for everyone. The stars have to align. The gravitational pull created by all of that perceptual energy is tough to break through. The soul must have enough energy - or the event must be shocking enough to smash the focus thoroughly (e.g. "death"). Even in death, some souls remain attached to the physical paradigm enough to stick around and cause mischief and to see themselves as having a body, a house, a garden, etc.
I offer as evidence telekinesis (physical objects being moved by non-physical means, by spirits or by incarnate people), precognition and powerful synchronicities (= perfect timing and great meaning). Many sane intelligent people have experienced these events and have been most impressed by them. I know I have been. I have seen/experienced all three types of those events more than once and to my satisfaction that there was no "rational" explanation for them.
If those events are real - and I'm convinced they are - then the physical world must only be a construct. Yet the physical world seems so real and so ultimate. Again, that is because we are so familiar with the construct/paradigm and so trapped by the Magic that we are usually stuck in it until our soul energy is freed to focus on some other aspect of reality. The mind reels at impending death and the inner voice is silenced. The soul's energy is set free to re-focus where its predilections wish it to. The soul is not bound by beliefs or thoughts. Those are objects of the paradigm. The soul is what it is. This is very hard for a scientist to understand because the scientist thinks he can think through anything. Thinking is how he perceives (or he thinks it is). He will filter out anything that is not thought. He cannot understand that there are other ways of perceiving that are just as valid and effective. When you are having an OBE or NDE or psi you are not thinking! You are encountering information via a different means. I know this for sure and NDErs and others have tried to explain this over and over, and then give up leaving it at the statement that there are no words for what they experienced. Words are of the physical paradigm, just as thinking is. Spirits in after death communications also say this.
Getting back to NDEs and Dr. Greyson, I used to have OBEs. In fact, for a period of maybe a year/year and half, I could induce one at will and did a lot of experimenting; testing to see if I could "come back" with verifiable detailed evidence that could not have been obtained by normal means (including subconscious means). I satisfied myself that the OBEs were real perceptions of events beyond my physical and even temporal location. I also used to think that something had left my body and traveled to times and places. I no longer think that something left my body, though I am still convinced that the experiences were totally real. Why I did I change my mind about that? I no longer can induce OBEs at will. I very rarely have them anymore; maybe once every two or three years. When I do, now that I am older and more solid in character, the sensation is different, though the accuracy of the information is still spot on. Now I experience the event as if it is a visionary state. I am not aware of my physical body, but I no longer feel like my awareness is rising out of my physical body and traveling. It's more like I am immersed in a very clear vision with all kinds of understanding and perception capabilities that I don't normally have. IMO, the leaving the body perception is an interpretation. I mean, you are leaving the body in that your are leaving that entire paradigm, but it's a matter of focus of awareness on a new paradigm, not literally leaving as in a car pulling out of a garage.
I'm rambling again. There are no words for any of this. If you've been there, you know. Otherwise......
So true, brother! Thanks for sharing this kind of experience. It takes great courage!