u/teijidasher69

Hey guys, this is going to be a long text. Apologies in advance. I started using the Gateway Tapes a few weeks ago and journalling my progress/impressions/feelings. I still can't help but wonder if I'm doing it right or if my impressions are being swayed by by subconscious mind to fit what I'm "expecting" from the tapes. I'd love to here what you guys think:

Wave I.

The narrator introduces the concept of hemispheric synchronization and tries to help the listener get used to it. From there, the listener is introduced to the concept of the “energy conversion box”. This is a mentally constructed box in which you place your worries or anxieties from your waking life. I found this mental exercise to be relatively comfortable and could actually feel my anxieties slipping away temporarily as I attempted to follow the narrator’s instructions. From here, the listener is guided into “Focus 10”, a state in which you are consciously awake while your body is “asleep”. The narrator guides you to “turn your body off” and focus on the energy inside of your mind. From here, you are taught to make an “energy balloon” to contain/control your natural energy.

I enjoyed these sessions a lot, though I had to repeat them a few times to get results. At first, I struggled to clear my mind sufficiently and as a result couldn’t quite enter the right mental state. However, on my third attempt at Focus 10, I believe I reached it. My limbs began to tingle slightly as my body “fell asleep”. From this point, I started to see visuals on the backs of my eyelids. I followed these visuals as they morphed and flowed. Eventually, I started to pick up on a rhythm in the movement of these visuals. As I tried to follow and track this rhythm, I could feel something begin to sync up. It felt as though the hemisync audio and visuals began to coalesce. From here, I entered a state where I could will myself to feel as though I were tilting and spinning inside my mind. This isn’t the best description, but that is how it felt.

I was intrigued by these tangible results and became encouraged that perhaps I could really change my perception or experience something new by following the instructions in the tapes. I decided to move on to the final track of Wave 1, which was the Focus 10 free flow. The beginning stages were basically the same, though I felt that I could enter the Focus 10 state quicker than before. I didn’t expect anything new to happen this time as there were no new instructions, but nonetheless I experienced something new. This time, upon succeeding in “turning off my body”, I was able to feel (or maybe channel?) an energy from somewhere in my lower body. The energy felt almost sexual in nature but not purely. It felt like the overlapping point in a Venn Diagram where “sexuality” and “energy/vitality” met. When I focused on this energy, I found it moving around my body. I wasn’t exactly sure what to make of this energy/feeling, so I tried to just let it linger and not force it or suppress it. I found myself growing more comfortable with it a few moments later. After letting this feeling settle, I found that it began to merge with the rhythmic movement/visuals that were occurring “in my head”. This is not the best description, but it felt a lot like this. The “sexual energy” started to merge with the normal Focus 10 sensation into something new.

When I finished this session, I was left with a lot of questions. The audio didn’t describe any such feelings, so I thought maybe I had done something wrong or maybe even skipped a level or two. I will keep an eye on this in the coming sessions and try to further understand this sensation and its potential purposes as I progress into the next stages.

Wave II

In Wave 2, the listener is taught a number of new skills. Most of these skills involve reaching a deeper focus level, which the narrator calls Focus 12. To access Focus 12, the listener must first enter the usual Focus 10 state. From Focus 10 (body asleep, mind awake), the listener is instructed to focus on expanding their consciousness outward beyond the limits of their physical body. The narrator instructs the listener to count from 10 to 12, focusing on expanding their consciousness outward intentionally. After learning focus twelve, Wave 2 goes on to introduce techniques such as presenting intentions or questions into the ether and soliciting a “response” or “answer”.

I found Wave 2 to be much more difficult than Wave 1. It is possible that I moved on too quickly, believing myself to have done well with the first wave. My first time trying to reach Focus 12, I was able to feel something that I thought could have been my consciousness expanding beyond my body initially. However, after the fact I couldn’t help but feel that I had just gone a bit deeper into Focus 10. Perhaps, I had just done Focus 10 properly for the first time. I didn’t feel too much of a difference from Focus 10. If anything, I think I may have sabotaged myself because I was “trying very hard” to enter the state that the narrator was describing.

After this first attempt, I postulated that my “trying hard” was likely making it more difficult to reach Focus 10. For this reason, I went back to Wave 1 to try to get more confident with reaching Focus 10. I did this about five times. I was able to get to the point where I could reach Focus 10 without audio, just practicing silently on my sofa. I decided that I was confident enough to return to Wave 2 and did so. In my second attempt at Focus 12, I was far more relaxed. I was able to let go a bit more, feeling confident that I would have no issues getting into Focus 10. I think this made all the difference for me as when I was instructed to count from 10 to 12 to reach focus 12, I felt a much more pronounced difference.

Again, the distinction between Focus 10 and 12 seems to be a bit nebulous, so I am still not sure if I was able to do it properly, but I feel like I was at least close. This second attempt, I could feel “the blackness behind my eyelids” feeling more distant. The blackness that I was staring at while reaching Focus 10 felt to phase forward in three dimensional space. That is to say, the two dimensional blackness seemed to push into a three dimensional blackness that felt deeper than that of Focus 10. As instructed, I tried to “explore” this new feeling with my consciousness, trying to “reach out” into it and “touch” it. I then tried to expand this consciousness bubble even more, attempting to channel the energy from my lower spine upwards. In this deeper state, the effects of this felt far more pronounced. I could feel the energy growing and climbing upwards. It slowly would grow and slink upwards, but then I would quickly feel overwhelmed and it would sink down again. At this point, the tape instructed me to return to Focus 10 and then to wake up. I felt that I needed more time to explore this new feeling so I did the tape again later the same day.

I reached Focus 10 and then 12 in the same way as the previous time. If anything, I felt I could reach Focus 12 quicker than before. I tried once again experimenting with the energy in my spine. I tried to channel it upwards, this time very slowly. I discovered that if I channeled the energy upwards in rhythmic waves, almost synching with the hemisync audio, that I could give it a kind of momentum. I then tried to relax myself and take it slow, allowing the energy to travel up slowly. Finally, the energy reached “my head”. At this point, I felt something new. I felt a tingling, almost electric vibration radiating down my body. It changed from a focused “laser” of energy into a cascading waveform that began to permeate the interior of my energy balloon. I became overwhelmed and could hardly hold on to the feeling. The feeling seemed to drag me deeper into the Focus 12 state. I could feel my physical body begin to shake as once again, I was “trying too hard” to harness this feeling. I tried to silence my mind and just let it happen, whatever “it” was. The energy morphed into what I can best describe as tendrils, making roots down my body. The energy anchored me into place. I don’t know what the meaning of this feeling was, but I couldn’t help but feel that it meant I was tuning my consciousness into a new frequency.

In terms of visuals, I didn’t experience too much. I would see dancing phospenes morphing into geometrical shapes here and there, but I also can see these in a normal state of consciousness. As for “manifesting” or patterning, the questions I always brought to ask during my Focus 12 sessions was, “What am I?” accompanied by, “What are human beings?”. This question may have been too lofty, but it is the question I hold deepest in my being. I felt that to present a more trivial question would betray my true intentionality. I did not hear any voices and I did not see any kind of revelation. However, I did end my sessions with something that almost felt like an intuition. It’s hard to say if this answer was answered by my subconscious mind or by something else, but this is the thought that sprouted in my mind after my sessions:

“There is no such thing as complicated or simple. There is only existence at certain levels. Building computers, space rockets, and city infrastructure is not inherently complicated. It is considered complicated due to the very nature of our human minds. In the same way, walking and breathing feel intuitive or simple. This also is purely a result of its relative simplicity given our existence in human bodies. Putting out a fire feels impossible, or ‘complicated’ if you are gasoline. In the same way, it feels ‘simple’ if you are water.”

This isn’t a true answer to my question, nor am I sure if it was something I already knew or not. However, the nature of this thought coming into my mind was interesting.

Overall, finishing Wave 2 left me with more questions than answers. I wasn’t sure if I was doing it correctly, didn’t know if the “spinal energy” thing I was doing was counter-productive or not, and didn’t feel confident enough to move on to Wave 3. I think I will practice Wave 2 (especially the later parts about patterning and intentionality) for a bit before moving on.

This is as far as I've gotten so far. Sorry for the long text, but I'd love to here what others think!

Cheers!

Publish book first or straight to movie?

Diary of Gateway Tapes Experience