We’ve been talking recently about strange dreams and visions people encounter in the work – especially when they’re just starting out. As I explained in my last two posts on “Opening Pandora’s Box,” the more we can learn from the emotions these experiences are inviting us to explore and understand, the more we can change – and, therefore, the deeper we can go into the unknown. And the deeper we go into the unknown, the closer we get to the mystical.

As we practice spending time in theta brain waves, and practice being comfortable in the unknown, our dreams and visions will evolve. They’ll become more lucid. In lucid dreams, we’re more conscious; more awake. We can see rich detail. This dream world often seems more real than the world we live in during our waking hours.

In these states, our brain is producing the neurochemistry that allows us to have more lucid moments. We’re becoming conscious in our subconscious mind. The experience we’re having is an inner vision that feels profoundly real.

Now we’re in the land of the mystical. But to enter the elevated state we encounter in the quantum field, we have to move beyond the “lower” levels of lucid dreams – the mundane; the unpleasant; the sometimes fear-inducing or even truly horrifying ones. These sorts of highly detailed dreams are just the first frequency we experience above matter – but they aren’t the transcendent experience we associate with the mystical.

Feel the Feelings First

What so many of us ask at this stage of the work is: How? How do we get there? How do we ascend into those upper realms? This is something I refer to as “chasing the mystical.” We want that experience. We seek it. We try to get closer to it.

But when we try to have a mystical experience, it seems even more elusive than before. That’s because “trying” implies separation. “Trying” is something we do in the outer, 3-D world of matter influencing matter. We think we need to get something, or do something, outside ourselves in order to experience a feeling inside. Because, when we experience an event in the 3-D world, the information our brain receives from our senses produces a chemical signature called an emotion.

But truly, in the quantum, it’s feeling the emotion first that creates the experience we seek.

And when we aspire to ascend to those higher realms – in the 5-D world of the quantum; in the unknown – when we’re seeking the mystical, we eventually learn that trying to find it isn’t what gets us there. Feeling is what gets us there.

And not just any feeling; it’s the elevated emotions we’re trying to cultivate. Love. Awe. Wonder. Freedom. Joy. Caring. Gratitude. They open the door.

A “Recipe for the Mystical”

So, if we have to feel the feeling before the experience, and we can't try to have the experience before the feeling, then the only solution is what I sometimes call a “recipe for the mystical” – to be tired and happy; curious and playful; relaxed and open. These are the states that allow us to feel our way in.

At an earlier stage of evolution in this work, I, too, pursued the mystical. But whenever I tried, months would go by without the experience I sought. I would have a long, dry spell – because I was waiting for the experience to happen to have the feeling.

Then, in my meditations – as well as when I was awake in my day – I would constantly analyze myself, thinking there was something wrong with me. But then I realized that feeling like I’d failed, or becoming saddened by my lack of success, is not the attitude or emotional state of the mystic.

And over time, I discovered that if I was tired and happy; if I was curious and full of wonder; if I wasn't rigid or structured – but instead loose and playful; if I didn't let my fatigue pull me into the deep sleep of delta brainwaves, but I was just pausing and playing … that place of lucidity, where I was relaxed and awake, tended to be the state that led me to the door.

And once I figured that out, I could let go and surrender. I wasn’t preoccupied with trying to have the experience – because I felt like I already had the experience. And I wasn't trying to control the outcome – because controlling the outcome would mean I was trying to predict it. And that would be the known.

But the only way to encounter the mystical is through the realm of unlimited universes that exists beyond the limited world of our senses. The mystical, then, is the unknown.

I’ll talk more about that in Part II.


To practice feeling the emotions of a new experience before it happens, try Dr Joe’s new meditation, “Love the Life You Love” – just released this week.

To read Dr Joe’s blog series on “Opening Pandora’s Box,” click here for Part I and click here for Part II.