The Monroe Institute is located on a piece of rural farm land at the base of some of the oldest Mountains on Earth, the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. We share the land with other natural inhabitants of this earth and being nearer to the earth and its inhabitants has a way of grounding you. It is the perfect location for a gateway voyage retreat. No matter how far your journeys take you, you can always be called back by the subtle vibrations of home. Dr. Becky Carroll took this photo of while attending a Gateway Voyage this past year.

Richard Tilson was born in a small Ontario town near the Minnesota border and migrated west with his parents to the prairie town of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. He is a businessman and a farmer. As well as being involved in a channeling group, Rick enjoys leading EXCURSION workshops as time permits. His son, Adam, was born in Moose Jaw and is currently in the eleventh grade. An honor student, Adam likes computers and has a talent for understanding technological devices. He is attracted to a career in engineering but at this point his favorite class is law. Adam’s giving heart leads him to view everyone as a friend and activities like attending the GATEWAY VOYAGE® with his father nurture his reserved and philosophical nature.

I’m Adam Tilson and I live in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, and I’m sixteen years old. My Dad was always interested in meditation, consciousness expansion, and the Monroe system, but I never really was. He took several Monroe courses and then became a GATEWAY OUTREACH trainer. He had been putting on OUTREACH workshops for several years, when I decided that I should give it a try in May of 2003. I was a bit disappointed. I had assumed that if Hemi-Sync® was working you should have an immediate profound change. But my experiences were much subtler. As the tapes progressed, instead of making myself open to the subtle experiences I began to feel like I was having troubles. I became somewhat annoyed and that didn’t help at all. Finally, I realized that I should just let go and let whatever happened happen. Then I began seeing things that I knew were not just my imagination. That had been happening all along but I was too wrapped up in my expectations to notice.

My father and I always traveled every other February during my school’s winter break. This year he came up with the suggestion to go to TMI for a GATEWAY VOYAGE®. I wasn’t really sure because of how I’d felt about the workshop. In the end it must have been fate. I packed my bags and prepared for what turned out to be the ride of my life. I tried to enter the GATEWAY VOYAGE® with no expectations whatsoever and just let the experiences–no matter how unimportant seeming–come along. Near the end of the week I had met some amazing people but as far as the tape sessions, as much as I tried to have no expectations, they were still there. Fearing that this might be the workshop all over again, I kept an open mind. I’m sure glad that I did because, during one of the last tapes I experienced an amazing enlightening moment. I got the impression that the moment was waiting for me all along, and only showed up when I finally started to trust and enjoy the process. The GATEWAY VOYAGE® gave me a new outlook on my spirituality and a new outlook on life in general. I left it feeling completely fulfilled but at the same time wanting more. It was as if a whole lifetime had passed in that week, yet it was the fastest week of my life.

I’m Richard Tilson and I am honored to be Adam’s Dad. I’ve been interested in The Monroe Institute® since reading Robert A. Monroe’s first book Journeys Out of the Body in 1980. Finally in February of 1997, after seventeen years of intent, I made it down to Virginia for my first GATEWAY VOYAGE®. Next to having my kids this was the most wonderful experience I’d ever had. I’ve tried to take a course about once per year as a special gift to myself.

On one of my trips I discovered a course called TDAP (Trainer Development and Assessment Program). It teaches how to put on a weekend workshop using the Hemi-Sync® technology. So I took TDAP in June of 2000. TDAP graduates must put on two workshops with a mentor in order to become an accredited OUTREACH Facilitator.

I am always telling people that one of the most intimate, romantic things they can do with their partner is to go to The Monroe Institute® together. But, in my opinion the closest thing to unconditional love that most people encounter in this reality is their interaction with their kids. Going to TMI with your son or daughter is one of the fullest experiences that a parent can have. I was glad that Adam could not decide on a destination in February and was open to attending the GATEWAY VOYAGE®. He has a profoundly deep spiritual nature and a conscious understanding of reality that is definitely not mainstream. It was a pleasure to see how readily the warm and courteous, yet diverse, participants and trainers at our GATEWAY VOYAGE® accepted Adam–regardless of his youth. This kind of interaction with fellow participants makes the Monroe experience overwhelmingly enjoyable. I would often hear comments like “Oh I hope I can come here with my son or daughter one day.” Everyone seemed to enjoy Adam and I was thrilled to share the wonderment of The VOYAGE with him. Adam’s comment, “How can a week be so full and yet pass so quickly?” was true for me as well. Adam is hooked and wants to know when we’re going back again!

© 2003 by The Monroe Institute

Karl Boyken is a computer systems administrator for the University of Iowa. He has been attending residential programs at The Monroe Institute® for four years and is a Dolphin Energy Club member. Karl is also a hospice volunteer and a student of yoga.

Like many people who are drawn to The Monroe Institute, I’ve had several other-than-ordinary experiences over the years. I grew up in a small rural town in the midwestern United States, and there was nothing in that environment that helped me put those experiences into some kind of meaningful context. I hid these odd happenings, and as a result I felt other than normal, not a very good thing to be as a child in a small farming community. Long after I had left home, I continued to lock away a vital part of myself. The walls I built inside me were reflected outwardly in the distance I felt in my relationships with others.

The residential programs at The Monroe Institute have turned out to be the key that has released the magical part of me I had hidden for decades. I became interested in the Institute as a means to cultivate any remote viewing skills I might have. I was focused solely on how the programs could benefit me. What I didn’t realize was that this path that appeared to lead into myself would actually take me outward, demolishing not only the walls inside but those outside as well.

When I returned from my GATEWAY VOYAGE®, I saw the town where I live with new eyes. Everywhere I looked, there were opportunities to nurture the part of my life I’d locked away. Shaaron Honeycutt’s morning yoga sessions had left me thirsting for more. I was amazed to discover a yoga center just a block from work. I signed up for a class over my lunch hour. I’d become curious about energy healing. A bit further down the street was a massage school that offered Reiki attunements and courses in energy healing. I began registering for classes. I’d been working with dreams all of my life, but never face-to-face with others. I learned about some people who were doing dream work, and soon, we were sharing our dreams. Before long, I was part of a community of like-hearted people whom I’d never known existed.

GUIDELINES® took this a step further. As in all the programs I’ve been to, the tape exercises were wonderful. The most striking occurrence at GUIDELINES, however, involved another participant. While we were doing a paired intuitive questioning exercise, his inner self-helper (ISH) communicated very energetically with me. The energy of that encounter continued to work on me throughout the night. The program taught me that we are all guides for each other. Mirroring the community I’d discovered at home, I began to find another community among the participants in the programs. No matter how many people I know going into a program, I now make it a point to try to get to know everyone.

And that even includes the people who annoy me. I now know that my irritation is often telling me something important. I try to ask, what is it about myself that is trying to distance me from this person? The answer can be profound. At one program I realized that a couple of women really irked me. Sitting quietly with my discomfort, it dawned on me that my lifelong distrust of aspects of the archetypal Mother was being projected onto them. With that realization a lot of new ground for personal growth opened up for me.

The trainers at each program have always emphasized taking our program experiences back into daily life. My own experiences have shown me that any distance between myself and others is related to distance between aspects of myself. Any judgment about others that cuts me away from them will also cut me away from parts of myself. By serving others, I serve myself. I’ve tried to bring this lesson into my daily life, into my relationships with family and friends and with people I meet at work-especially at work. I’m a computer systems administrator, and the culture of systems administration is very dehumanizing. The language says it all: people are users, or more often, clueless users. Lately, I’ve been consciously trying to look at the people I help as human beings and to see my job as an act of service. The steps I’ve taken in that direction have helped me feel better about myself and the job I do.

Last February, I took one more step to bring Monroe home. I helped a friend, Jackie Phillips, coordinate a GATEWAY EXCURSION weekend with Bob and Marinda Holbrook. I was excited about sharing Monroe insights with my friends. As the program began, I was consciously struggling with a set of fears: “What if my friends don’t like the program? Will they still like me?” I felt exposed and vulnerable. It was great! I realized that this was another opportunity to tear down more of the walls within myself, and outside myself. My friends all loved the program, and I took another step toward living my life without boundaries.

I frequently think back to Joshua in a Box, the video we saw at the GATEWAY VOYAGE about a man living inside a box. I’d been doling my life out among a set of boxes. The Monroe Institute has helped me begin to toss out these boxes and live more openly, freely, and joyfully.

Hemi-Sync® is a registered trademark of Interstate Industries, Inc.

© 2004 by The Monroe Institute

I’m a writer. Teaching school is my “day job.” After dropping out in the tenth grade, I got my equivalency diploma, went on to college, and even made it through graduate school. But school has never been a joy. So it’s no surprise, I suppose, that it continues to be my challenge. As Swami Beyondananda once said, “Life is like photography; we develop through the negative.”

My students are a lot like me. Every one of them has either voluntarily dropped out or been thrown out of a previous school. Their age’s range from sixteen to twenty-five. Almost all of the females have at least one child; almost all of the males have had run-ins with the criminal justice system. The alternative high school program that I work in is the last stop. If they don’t make it with me, they hit the streets and take their chances. It didn’t take long to realize that my education courses––“Blueprints for Thinking,” “Keys to Motivation,” “Patterns for Ideas,” and “Integrating the Curriculum”––weren’t doing me, or the students, much good. I needed something real, something that could change outlooks and modify self-destructive behavior patterns.

By that point in my life I had already run across the books of Robert Monroe and was listening to Hemi-Sync tapes because they made me feel better. So one day I took a boom box into my classroom and attached fifteen-foot wires to the speakers so they could be separated for stereo. I plunked in the Remembrance tape and synchronized the room. Then I nearly keeled over from what I saw: kids who couldn’t sit still for more than a minute were suddenly satisfied to sit, reading and writing, for hours. Even visiting administrators reported feeling euphoric for a few days afterwards. No doubt about it, this stuff worked!

So I’ve continued to build on this miraculous offering. And during the 1997-98 school year, while teaching in a literacy program at the Harlem YWCA, I tried to re-create the total TMI experience for the students with my feeble technology––that is, the same boom box with the extra-long speaker wires. As the students arrived they were greeted by Robert Monroe’s voice on the Morning Exercise tape. “Good morning,” it begins, “and it is a good morning.”

As the Morning Exercise played, I handed out paper and asked them to write down whatever was on their minds. Then I showed them a large bucket labeled “Energy Conversion Box,” and asked them to drop the papers inside when they were done. After they had converted their energy, I asked them to copy an affirmation I had written on the board. “I am more than my physical body” didn’t quite cover our situation. So I used sources like Seth Speaks and Conversations with God. The affirmations usually sparked lengthy discussions about what they meant and how they applied to daily living. I supplemented their reading list with metaphysical books such a Betty Eadie’s Embraced by the Light and other accounts of near-death experiences, out-of-body travels, and remote viewing. Hemi-Sync played nearly nonstop throughout the day. I’d mix up Concentration, Remembrance, various METAMUSIC selections and on occasion, some Mozart and Gregorian chants. Sometimes I’d light a stick of incense, burn a candle, or charm the students by tracing their energy fields with divining rods.

By the end of the year, the students were reading and enjoying it. Some of the kids even took extra books home. Even more amazing, they read them, returned them, and asked for more. I had to make a supply run to Barnes and Noble because they went through books so much faster than I had anticipated. Please understand that just carrying a book around is a symbol of weakness for most of them.

In large part, these kids experience life like combat soldiers: long stretches of mind-numbing boredom punctuated by moments of extreme terror. They don’t go to workshops or lectures or get massages. They don’t know who the Dalai Lama is, and they don’t care. However, I have discovered that nearly all of them have had experiences of the nonphysical world that they do not understand. Once they gather that I’m almost as wildly abnormal as they feel, they begin to confide in me. A student tells me that an Indian, whom no one else can see or hear, lives in her house and beats on a drum. What can this mean? A student writes to me that she can see the future before it happens and wonders is this ability good or bad? And a student describes these weird dreams in which he’s walking around while his body is still asleep in bed. What does this mean?

Any “normal” teacher would probably refer them to a school psychologist. If they would not accept the unreality of their experiences, they’d be shipped off somewhere and given strong medication. Their track records of violent and maladaptive behavior can justify all sorts of malevolent therapeutic approaches. Physical reality is harsh; nonphysical reality is confusing. So what do they do? Sadly, they kill each other. And even more sadly, the killing has spread to places like Springfield, Oregon, and Fayetteville, Tennessee. Why do children kill each other? What are they trying to say? Do they have a message for us? Perhaps great souls are coming through these young ones, asking us to rediscover basic truths, to search for the intelligence of the Diving Plan unfolding in and around us. There are two ways to view such kids. One is as the “thug” image they project. The other requires softening your gaze until you see not the thug but the thug’s halo.

Me and my class full of thugs. But I know who they really are. I sit up front and watch them as those binaural beats masked by sounds of surf enter our ears. Students stretch in rows before me like sweet melons. Mouths move soundlessly as they orchestrate thought. The in-and-out of each breath flexes in rhythm with the surf. We’ve all slipped inside a tube of deep, round silence. And here is where I begin to fall in love. Is this not the essence of our mission, which is joy and the satisfaction of fulfilling the unfolding plan?

Few things change overnight. I can tell you that by the end of the year reading scores had improved. More importantly, however, a sense of connection had developed. A connection to each other and a connection to something even larger than that. These young ones are demanding connection and communion with a most impassioned appeal. What shall our offering be?

Hemi-Sync® is a registered trademark of Interstate Industries, Inc.

© 1999 by The Monroe Institute

Crêt-Bérard–in an old Swiss dialect this means the shepherd’s hill. Passage takes place each year at a retreat center in this lovely spot, atop a gently rolling slope with the snow-crested Alps in the background.

In 1997 for the first time, nineteen French-speaking Passage grads gathered at Crêt-Bérard for a Gateway Refresher Weekend, called “Retrouvailles” in French. To compensate for the lack of CHEC units, we used a sound system equipped with an FM stereo radio antenna. Participants tuned their own radio-Walkmans into our radio station on which the tapes were played. This enabled them to rendezvous with Focus 15 and 21 in the intimacy of their own rooms or while lying in the grass under a tree.

None of the participants were expecting the great surprise that Sylvestre Gorniak and I had in store for them. And we, the trainers, did not expect the types of experiences our surprise triggered for the group! Among the concepts Bob Monroe used to share at his evening talks with TMI program participants were, “Expanded consciousness is a natural state of mind,” “You control your experience,” and “Go and find out for yourself.” These formed the conceptual basis for the weekend’s program, and putting these concepts into action worked beautifully.

A natural state of mind. It began here. Since most of the participants chose to listen to the taped exercises outdoors, Mother Nature was very much a part of the weekend. People reported immense joy about this connection with nature, and comments about communication with natural elements were common. Some participants were able to fly with falcons, identify with trees, flowers, and grass, and commune with foxes.

You control your experience. Participants had the choice to stay with the process with which they were familiar, or to participate in the exercises with others. They decided individually or in small groups on a clear intention for their Focus 15 and 21 exercises. For those who chose to experiment with a group target, speaking to other members of their small group while in Focus 15 or 21 was part of the novel experience. They appreciated the flexibility of this opportunity, and each one made an individual choice that was comfortable for him or her.

One group of four formed the intention to target the home of one of them– an old castle. They planned their joint (ad)venture while walking around in the garden of Crêt-Bérard wearing their headphones. Throughout the experiment they remained in the Focus levels suggested on the tape, and all four were able to describe the castle in great detail. They were also able to “see” one another while moving around in the castle. This group also encountered some “past life souls” and were able to help one another in those interactions. During the debriefing after this experiment, Sylvestre’s and my prior attendance at the Institute’s Lifeline graduate program (I’ve taken Lifeline twice, and Sylvestre three times) was especially helpful in explaining how to use retrieval procedures and deal with such encounters.

As the weekend proceeded, we offered our participants further opportunities to repeat the out-of-doors exercises with the same options. Most of them accepted with excitement and had more joyful and rewarding experiences. The foursome mentioned above, for example, revisited the castle, reported mass retrievals, and then moved as a group to another time/space dimension for more fun.

Go and find out for yourself. I can assure you, the group did! Another Retrouvailles weekend is scheduled for the summer of 1998. It will take place at the same location, with the same sound system, but not the same program. Sylvestre and I are cooking up new surprises in the Swiss Alps for our French-speaking Gateway Voyage graduates.

Pablo Arango, born in New York of South American parents, lives in Switzerland. In 1992, he came to the Institute for the first time, knowing only that he could have an OOBE and relieve his back pain. He stayed in his body but the pain left. Meanwhile, he discovered many other things . . . and is a regular participant in the various TMI seminars. He co-trains the French-speaking Gateway in Switzerland with Sylvestre Gorniak. Pablo is a connoisseur of the TMI coffee and brownies. Sylvestre Gorniak, TMI residential program trainer, began giving Passage (the French name for Gateway Voyage) in Canada in 1994 and in Europe in 1995. He has been conducting Gateway Refresher Weekends in French since 1996.

© 1998 by The Monroe Institute

The crystal, the labyrinth, the bell, and the tower all sold me on The Monroe Institute-and I’m so glad they did.

Not that I wasn’t already convinced that the Monroe experience afforded the world a much-needed means of initiating into vaster, deeper realms of consciousness. Not that I hadn’t packed up lock, stock, and barrel and moved from Maine to Virginia precisely to make Monroe’s teacher training a focus. But the closer I got, the more apprehensive I became.

You see, I have a confession to make-I’m one of those wives who never would have come to TMI, nay, never would have heard of Robert Monroe, if it hadn’t been for my husband, Chris. And I’m not alone in this: in the March 2002 GATEWAY, three other women admitted they’d been swept along into the program by the jet stream of their husbands’ enthusiasm. Like a compact car coasting behind a semi, I’d listened for years as Chris quoted from one deeply treasured Monroe book after another. And this from a man with a natural penchant for consciousness studies, having pursued them since spending a youthful decade in an ashram as a monk.

I, on the other hand, am cut from a more sensual, intuitive mold. When I decided to become a therapist, it had to be an art therapist, so all those phobias, complexes and thwarted talents could be painted, molded, and carved into tangible form. When seeking an advanced degree with a spiritual bent, it had to be in culture and spirituality; then I could get my butt in the hut with native peoples expounding wisdom teachings that require monkey fur and feathers, drums and rattles, breath, and sweat. ­And yet, having since conducted cross-cultural workshops nationally and internationally, I noticed that the participants were mostly women. I had to bandy about some scientific theories-the latest quantum findings, for example-in order to make the men really comfortable. Something was missing, and I became more and more convinced that that something had been wonderfully honed and polished by TMI. I just knew that while there were countless men who wouldn’t consider launching onto a shamanic voyage, they’d be just fine donning earphones and cruising off to all and sundry Focus levels.

It was exactly that-the numbered Foci-that caused my resistance. After journeying with indigenous peoples to the Temple of the Moon, the Cave of Lost Children, the Land of the Dead, etc., my mind seized up at the prospect of Focus 10, 12, 15, 21, etc. I had fears of disappearing into an abstract realm, my poor body left behind in some cold techno unit while the more integrated GATEWAY participants shuffled down to lunch. Instead of embracing greater consciousness, my mind would be ravaged by an inhospitable stratosphere into an invisible chaos of shredded feathers . . .

How wrong I was, thank goodness. And thank whoever it was who placed all those mini- constellations on the ceiling of my cozy and comfy (not cold and anesthetic) chamber.

Once accepted into the program, and having moved to Charlottesville, Chris and I were eager to obtain a sneak preview of the site. After driving through the comforting, ancient, rolling hills, we were magnetically drawn by the labyrinth, the crystal, the bell, and the tower of TMI. Since strong Jungian training had marinated me in the richness of archetypal imagery, I seized upon these beautiful elements to anchor future voyages.

It still wasn’t feeling easy, as can be said of any true initiatory enterprise. Gazing at the tower, which was mysteriously inspired by the architecture of Robert Monroe’s ancestral family’s landholdings, I let all my apprehension flood me. The traditional, patriarchal impact (not a great legacy in my past) was somewhat mitigated by the knowledge that Robert’s daughter, Laurie, had assumed the Institute’s presidency. While her father’s presence suffused the atmosphere, I was curious: what of his spirit endured and what was evolving, now that his daughter was at the helm?

Who of us is not strongly some father’s daughter or some father’s son, when it comes to Western cultural identity? And how would filtering all that acculturation through the lens of Monroe’s simple dictum, “I am more than my physical body,” play out? After all, the realms of consciousness he explored and mapped out were usually jealously guarded by theological and psychological schools of thought, schools in which I’d earned graduate degrees.

As I pondered this, what came to mind was the medieval legend of St. Barbara, a father- daughter tale of a dark cast. What was this, myth surfacing at TMI? I was beginning to appreciate that the austerity of Monroe’s teaching was not a debilitating, enervating framework, but provided a tabula rasa upon which each individual’s process could stand clear. In the tale, Barbara’s mother is absent, having died years before. Her father is a formidable warrior who, when off on campaigns, locks his daughter in a tower. The man is powerful, successful, but of a brutish stripe, controlling, and a pagan.

Nonetheless, the daughter benefits in some regards from being locked up in the tower. The panoramic view of her father’s property is magnificent and his tales of military strategy afford her a rare education in leadership. Once, during his absence, Barbara grows ill with ennui and sends a message down via a basket to her servants, requesting a doctor. A passing monk proclaims himself a “doctor of the soul” and is admitted into the tower. Once there, he converts Barbara to Christianity, carving out three windows in the tower to admit the light of the Holy Trinity.

When the father returns, he’s incensed at the turn of events and tosses his daughter from the tower, presumably to her death. Miraculously, and with the buffering mercy of Mother Nature, Barbara survives, escapes into the forest, is rescued by an up-and-coming young king whom she marries, and . . . ? You guessed it. They live happily ever after, even welcoming Barbara’s chastened father as a guest to their prospering court. The medieval woodcuts illustrating this legend are usually of two types: those depicting Barbara languishing in her father’s glorious tower, and those showing her as a queen, caressing a small tower in her lap and smiling a Mona Lisa smile. It doesn’t take a Freudian to see the phallic implications. She either serves her father’s power or dies; once “dead” to the old paradigm, she is free to enjoy her husband’s power or, as Jungians would see it, to shine from the light of her own inner spirit.

Like Barbara of the legend, any son or daughter of this culture arrives at Monroe’s tower preformed by any number of indoctrinations. We arrive with what the philosopher Heidegger called a sense of “thrownness,” which may or may not war with a sense of authenticity. But one thing is sure: greater authenticity is offered here.

It’s easy to imagine the simple assertion “I am more than my physical body” striking with the clarity of a lightning bolt into Byzantine systems of belief, or perhaps reinforcing the worthy ones but from the inside out. I wondered what of my past would be enhanced by the Hemi-Sync experience and what would, well, sink. After mindfully walking the labyrinth and gratefully embracing the crystal, I was ready to find out. Having now completed the Gateway program and eager to continue training, I have experienced two towers at The Monroe Institute: the literal tower of glass at The Nancy Penn Center, and the one emerging within as I open myself to the different Focus levels, bless ’em in their abstract purity.

Using the chakra system as metaphor (a metaphor used more commonly in Laurie Monroe’s time than in Robert’s) we can understand ourselves as rainbows of energy, from the red at the root of our torsos to the purple at the crown of our heads. In our current popular culture, the emphasis is on the lower three chakras: physical grounding (root), sensual pleasure (abdomen), and personal power (solar plexus). Seldom are we encouraged to penetrate the threshold of the heart chakra into the deeper, vaster realms of the throat (communication), the third eye (resolution of duality), and crown (spirituality). For those who have fostered mainly the first three chakras, the Monroe experience grows you, doubles your height, knocks you out of any limiting towers of prefabricated systems and hands you your own tower, just the right size, to ponder with a Mona Lisa smile of inscrutable pleasure. Or, if you prefer, the wisdom of the “hemi-Sphinx.”

The plethora of waking dreams that revealed themselves to me during the GATEWAY program sometimes showed congruity with my previous, shamanic voyaging and at other times decidedly challenged and reconstituted my orientation to date. I was grateful for the afternoon outings, which allowed me to rewalk the labyrinth, itself a cross-section of the chakra system, taking me from the physical outer bark to the spiritual inner core, igniting the mental, emotional, and mystical properties along the way. Being circular, it invokes the archetypal sense of wholeness, a balancing of above and below, yin and yang, and left and right hemispheres. The huge crystal at TMI also grounded my navigations, even as it aspired to rare heights. In Jungian-speak, stones and crystals are symbolic of the enduring Soul, and it is that crystal which gave me a comforting promise of transformation.

Our first visit to TMI took place during a mild November afternoon, when an uncanny amber light bathed the hills. Somehow the setting sun cast my shadow into the surface of the stone, but shallowly, leaving the crystalline depths still shining, like the sun at my back. For a person such as myself, who has been scapegoated with the shadow of my natal family, and has helped carry the dark side of numerous clients into the realm of transformation, this experience with the crystal was so relieving. I pledged that upon launching onto the Monroe training, I would begin to live more boldly from my own inner light and not feel obliged to continue taking on others’ shadows.

And then there’s the bell on the veranda of the Penn center, where so many Monroe grads gather out-of-body for reunions. Having not yet attained that level of astral-facility, I’m happy to think of the bell the way the Tibetans lamas do-as the instrument which sounds out the music associated with the heart chakra. Between the height of the tower and the ground of the labyrinth rings out the yearning of our hearts to have our souls (the crystal) kneaded into enduring form. The yin and the yang, the heights and the depths, the skillfully honed Hemi-Sync tapes mold us into a more soulful balance. And so it is. The journey continues. My husband and I, while long interested in TMI, felt an urgent mandate to come there after the twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed on 9/11. Although I’d learned psycho-pomp, death-walking skills from shamans, I could only confidently help individuals I’d known cross over after dying. But Chris knew from reading Bruce Moen’s books on Lifeline training that we could learn to help victims of such a tragedy, and who knew if more of such was not in store? And so we’ve shifted our consciousness from the twin towers of NYC to the twin towers of TMI- the outer tower of glass and the inner tower of illumination. As a mentor of mine once averred, “Faith is fidelity to the insights you’ve gained.” TMI programs can afford you a wealth of insights, if you’re game to take the leap from your old structures of consciousness!

Mary Trainor-Brigham has developed a private practice of one-on-one and group work called “Spa for the Soul,” which specializes in helping people recognize and facilitate initiatory passages in their lives. At present, she and her husband, Chris Brigham, are discussing with Laurie Monroe the possibility of offering the Spa as a weekend program at the Roberts Mountain Retreat. The program would be for those who want a psycho-spiritual tune-up; in effect, their tires would be rotated so they’re operating out of Hemi-Synchronization when the rubber hits the road, whether in Focus 1, 10, 27, or beyond!

Hemi-Sync® is a registered trademark of Interstate Industries, Inc.

© 2001 by The Monroe Institute

In the course of her eighty-six years in Earth-school, Jacquelyn Phillips has pursued a variety of professions. Commercial art was her first career. She was a riveter for Douglas Aircraft and later a draftsman for the Women’s Army Corps during World War II. After the war, Jackie married and raised a family, then worked as a real estate broker and agent. In recent years she has attended the GATEWAY VOYAGE®, GUIDELINES®, LIFELINE, EXPLORATION 27®, and MC2, and participated in the Dolphin Energy Club. She is certified at the highest level as a Healing Touch Practitioner. Before moving to Iowa City in 2001, she was the founding director of the Center for Healing Intervention (CHI), which opened in 1997. It was the first integrative medicine center on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. Now she is bringing that same missionary spirit to Iowa City and is coordinating training for other Healing Touch practitioners as well as bringing TMI to Iowa in the form of an EXCURSION workshop led by OUTREACH Trainers Robert and Marinda Holbrook.

When Laurie Monroe sent a notice that The Monroe Institute® was offering a significant tuition reduction for both a returnee and for a friend attending the GATEWAY VOYAGE, I was intrigued. What would it be like to take this introductory program a second time? Would it be like going to kindergarten again? Or might it reopen channels that seemed to have been clogged of late, sort of like a rotor-rooter? Determined to go, I invited four friends I thought might be interested in exploring altered states of consciousness. Two accepted the challenge to attend.

Participants included the usual exciting mix of people from all over the United States, and also from India, Australia, and the Netherlands. We were twenty-three voyagers led by two brilliant trainers, Penny Holmes and John Kortum.

This definitely was not kindergarten. For me, this second GATEWAY VOYAGE was every bit as powerful as any of the TMI programs I have been privileged to attend. It did, indeed, restore my ability to meditate, my ability to “see beyond” the ordinary. While listening to tapes in my CHEC unit, I witnessed some awe inspiring scenes: wild horses leaping chasms, a mountain pool wherein swam a dolphin, puzzling over how he could have come from the ocean to a mountain pool. At one time I saw a large eye closing slowly in a wink and later white puffy clouds superimposed over a starry, cobalt blue, midnight sky. It was exciting to contemplate the message of these visions.

Before we began our journeys at The Monroe Institute, we had been asked to refrain from conducting business or sending or receiving telephone messages except in emergencies. The day before The VOYAGE ended, Ross, a farmer from Australia, received an emergency telephone message from his wife. Their only source of water, a large cistern, was empty. There were no clouds in the sky presaging rain; there was no wind to power the windmill. What should she do? We decided that our group could concentrate on manifesting wind. We formed a circle and sang three powerful rounds of OM. The next morning at breakfast, Ross reported that his wife had called again. A wind had come up, the windmill had pumped water from a deep aquifer, and the cistern was three-quarters full. Coincidence?

Having “volunteered” to write about this new Bring-a-friend Gateway Voyage, I decided to ask fellow participants to send me an account of their own experiences if they felt so inclined. Here are a few of their responses:

Jayne recollected the program this way: It was all astounding to just relax for six days and be with like-minded people, to have all decisions made for me. I didn’t even have to decide what to eat, not to mention cook. The feeling of joy and love amongst our group was so special. I am definitely not a groupie or workshop junkie, yet I felt so relaxed and comfortable. It was as if I found myself there. It all went by too quickly.

Alice said: The highlight of my experience at The Monroe Institute is to really appreciate, on a very deep level, that indeed I am much more than my physical body. And how this has translated on the emotional level is that it has allowed me to shed my “emotional baggage,” thereby liberating me from the self-doubt associated with it. The experience has instilled in me more confidence to pursue more of my “dreams,” because I also realize that my dreams are on a level of consciousness truly reflecting my soul’s longings and soul’s attitudes.

This last contribution is from Barb: The night before our Gateway group would disband, Penny said, “The trouble with you guys is that you think you are normal.” We all laughed. I laughed pretty hard myself. After all, I had just watched Welcome Back Norman. It took me a little under forty-eight hours to get “Normanized”. Grocery lines were always at a standstill and I was always in a hurry. Other drivers were too slow, too stupid. Instead of thinking about Focus™ 21 and the way each of us is bound to the other in the folds of a loving universe, I found myself thinking the word moron a lot.

Then came Jacquelyn’s request. I thought I might read through the journal I kept while at TMI and find a section I could draw from. Each entry was like an old photograph. Focus Levels and other worlds seemed more like a recent dream, fogged over from days of forgetting.

Then I remembered the hamsters. During one TMI exercise, Ross and I worked as a pair. Ross had given me his psychic answer to my unvoiced question regarding whether or not to get a new pet for my daughter. My daughter had been begging to get a miniature pig or a hamster. Ross, not knowing my question, envisioned some “furry round things behind black stripes.” We now are the proud owners of not one, but two hamsters.

As my week at TMI progressed, I remember feeling awed at the loveliness emerging in each person. It was as if all things superimposed and untrue began to fall away, revealing more and more of the true beings of love that we are. The gift I treasure most is the memory of watching each person’s face unfold, more beautiful than the day before, until at last we were no longer twenty-five social presentations of people, but instead one exquisite jewel with twenty-five radiant facets.

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© 2004 by The Monroe Institute

The Gateway program at TMI is nothing like doing the home tapes. It is a uniquely growing experience all by itself. Though the home tapes are beneficial for quieting the mind and relaxing, they cannot compare to the intensity and personal growth of going through the Gateway Voyage at TMI. After much thought and careful reflection, I have broken down Gateway into five components. These components are powerful by themselves and contribute to the total experience. In addition, their synergy is really what makes Gateway so special. No one component is more important than the others, nor can they really be separated. They are as follows.

1. The Setting.
Being in the Blue Ridge Mountains among the beauty, peacefulness, harmony, and quiet was incredible. Not only were we in this grand environment with nature’s sounds all around us, but being isolated from the rest of the world helped me focus on myself and not the “out there.” The lush greenness was especially healing. There was also the architectural beauty of the Center itself, making me feel like I was home. The design of the CHEC units was perfectly thought out and nothing I have at home could reproduce that environment.
2. Being Taken Care of.
I have never felt so inconspicuously taken care of in my life! It was wonderful! Every little detail was handled, and the program was so well organized, it ran without a glitch. There was never a worry about what we were doing next or where we had to be–everything from meals to when to go to the bathroom. Not only did this help me to focus on why I was at TMI, but it was very nurturing. I also feel that TMI didn’t skimp on anything.
3. The Group.
I am so grateful to have experienced this part of the program. In some ways, it was the hardest part of the program, and it was also the most rewarding and moving. I’ve never been with a group of people before who have changed so much in six days, who I’ve learned so many lessons from, and who I’ve learned to love so much. All that group energy coming together increased the energy exponentially, making it that much easier to go to different levels of consciousness.
4. The Transcendence.
This was so transforming and so personal for me. I experienced things that I never came close to experiencing in doing the home tapes. Messages came to me easily and clearly. The expansion of my consciousness showed such a different and bigger perception of life, death, and reality, that it’s a perception I hope to keep with me always.
5. The Trainers.
Our trainers were John Cahill and Ann Martin. They were the glue and the catalysts of the group at the same time. In the nuts-and-bolts scheme of things, they kept everything on schedule, taking care of the many details involved in moving twenty-four people to where they needed to be. I’m speaking in the physical world, of course. On other levels, they were subtle and effective guides into ourselves and other worlds. And when some group members went through emotional crises, Ann and John really showed their skills in gently guiding the person through the crisis and to a better place. It was always comforting knowing they were there. Not only did they help deepen the whole experience of GATEWAY, they showed us how to have a lot of fun doing it.

All five components build on each other and interconnect like a spider’s web. Break one strand and the whole web is weaker. But together, you’ve got one helluva design.

As for my life after Gateway, it’s changed in many ways. I am a much happier person, much more at peace with myself, and have a different perspective on everything. Both NJ and I continue to use the tapes and skills we have learned to go to the different Focuses. I continue to use the tools of problem solving and one-month patterning, as well as many of the other exercises.

The Institute is a magical place. I love that TMI keeps a low profile because I always want it to be accessible and unspoiled. I also believe that whoever is meant to discover TMI will find it. Thank you for helping to make my experience at TMI such a special one. I will be back!