The Day I Rolled Out of My Body
Shawn asleep on a couch while a glowing, translucent version of himself stands nearby, representing his out-of-body experience.
For years, I was fascinated by the idea of astral travel.
And for years, absolutely nothing happened.
I tried.
I read about it.
I thought about it.
I wanted to experience it.
Nothing.
Apparently, whatever part of me was supposed to leave my body had no interest in cooperating.
If you are not familiar with the term, astral travel is often used to describe an experience where someone feels as though their awareness or consciousness has separated from their physical body.
Some people interpret these experiences spiritually.
Others believe they can happen during unusual sleep states.
I am not going to try to settle that argument here.
I can only tell you what happened to me.
And strangely enough, after years of trying to make it happen, it happened when I was not trying at all.
I had always been afraid of death
Long before this happened, death bothered me.
Not just dying.
The bigger question.
What happens to me afterward?
What if there is nothing?
That possibility scared me.
But another possibility bothered me too.
What if something did continue, but I was no longer really me?
Would I suddenly become some strange ethereal version of myself?
Would I still think like Shawn?
Would I recognize myself?
Despite all my interest in paranormal things and the unknown, those questions stayed with me.
Then one afternoon during my recovery, I decided to take a nap.
Nothing spiritual about it.
No meditation.
No candles.
No special technique.
I was tired.
I laid down on the couch and fell asleep.
Then I rolled off the couch
At first, I remember it feeling like a dream.
I rolled off the couch.
Except I didn't hit the floor.
The next thing I knew, I was standing about five feet away from the couch.
And I could see myself sleeping on it.
That will get your attention.
There I was.
On the couch.
And there I was.
Standing across the room looking at myself.
The experience did not last long.
I did not fly across the universe.
I did not visit another dimension.
Nobody handed me the secrets of existence.
Before long, I was back in my body.
And my first profound spiritual thought was basically:
What the hell just happened?
The strangest part wasn't seeing my body
You would think seeing yourself asleep from across the room would be the part that stayed with me most.
It wasn't.
The strangest thing was how completely normal I felt.
I was still me.
Same awareness.
Same personality.
Same guy trying to figure out what was happening.
I did not suddenly become some completely different spiritual being.
And that mattered to me.
Because one of the fears I had carried about death was that if consciousness continued, maybe I would somehow stop being myself.
That experience did not prove what happens when we die.
I cannot honestly tell you that it did.
But it changed something in me.
For the first time, I had an experience where my sense of self did not seem completely tied to looking through my physical eyes.
Whether that was literally consciousness outside the body, an unusual sleep experience, or something we do not fully understand, I cannot say with certainty.
But I know what it felt like.
I was still Shawn.
And oddly enough, that was comforting.
Sometimes the mystery is allowed to stay a mystery
One of the things I have learned over the years is that we are often uncomfortable saying:
I don't know.
We want everything placed neatly into a category.
Real or imaginary.
Spiritual or neurological.
Possible or impossible.
Sometimes I think we rush to explain experiences before we have enough information to explain them.
I spent years trying to have an out-of-body experience and could not.
Then one afternoon, while taking an ordinary nap, something happened that felt immediate and completely unexpected.
I still find that fascinating.
It also fits a theme that has followed me through much of my life.
I have always been curious about what we cannot immediately see.
That curiosity eventually took me into paranormal investigating.
Later, it became part of what drew me toward energy work and the subconscious.
Not because I believe every strange experience automatically proves something supernatural.
But because I have experienced enough things I could not immediately explain to remain open to the possibility that we do not understand everything yet.
And I am comfortable there.
Curious.
Open.
But not pretending I know more than I do.
What I took from it
The experience was brief.
There were no dramatic revelations.
But it answered one very personal question for me.
If what I experienced was consciousness existing outside my physical body, I did not become someone else.
I was still me.
That is interesting to me for another reason.
I spent much of my younger life trying to become different versions of myself.
Tougher.
Cooler.
Harder.
Someone other people would accept.
Someone who could survive whatever was happening.
And one of the strangest experiences of my life left me with a very simple realization.
Underneath the body, the image, the roles, and all the characters I had spent years trying to play...
there was still me.
I cannot tell you exactly what happened that afternoon.
I cannot tell you whether it proves anything about life after death.
And I am not asking you to believe my interpretation of it.
I can only tell you what I experienced.
I spent years trying to leave my body.
Nothing happened.
Then I took a nap and apparently rolled right out of myself.
And of everything I could have discovered standing five feet away from my sleeping body, the thing that stayed with me most was this:
I was still Shawn.
Same consciousness.
Same personality.
Same person wondering what the hell was going on.
Strangely enough, that was enough.
-Shawn
