The Monroe Institute

January 25, 2012

TMI Backstories — Karen Malik

Karen Malik, Flame Keeper

The Long View is shared by many. Collectively it is The Monroe Institute story. We are fortunate to have books and recordings of Bob Monroe, but there are dozens of backstories, living archives rich in the history of TMI, waiting to be told.

This is part of Karen Malik’s long view. Chances are you know her — chances are Karen’s skill and commitment contributed directly to a life altering event you experienced during a TMI program. She is loved by Monroe participants for good reason.

It's the mid-1970s. The "human potential movement" is in full swing in California's Bay Area and Karen Malik is at the heart of it.

Karen had been studying with a channeled nonphysical entity for five or six years at that time, and was just completing a year of "functional silence," when her friend Chris Lenz asked her to help him put together some workshops for a guy named Robert Monroe, whom he had met through the California Institute of Integral Studies. Karen said, "sure, as long as I don't have to talk to anyone." As it turned out, the chef was a no-show and Karen ended up cooking for the 30 participants.

It wasn't until a month later at Feathered Pipe Ranch in Montana that Karen encountered Bob in the flesh. The first ten-day version of the M-5000 program (now called the Gateway Voyage) was about to take place. On arrival at Feathered Pipe, Bob handed Chris a stack of program tapes — including the new Elation Series. Karen was there to monitor the forty to sixty participants as they lay everywhere on the floor for ten days listening to Hemi-Sync®.

Karen remembers that Bob looked depressed. As Bob's friend, Joe (author, Joseph Chilton Pearce) said of him during that time, "He has a tiger by the tale and he doesn't know what to do with it."

Notwithstanding the toll Bob's perplexity about his out-of-body explorations seemed to be taking on him, participants of M-5000 were experiencing powerful, life-changing events -- breakthroughs. "They were popping off all over the place," Karen recollects.

At the end of the program, Bob asked Chris to move to Whistlefield, his property in Virginia, to work closely with him in the lab. Bob then asked Karen to develop the West Coast. She said yes.

Karen organized weekend workshops. Bob and Nancy "Scooter" Honeycutt, his step-daughter, co-trainer, and “right-hand ‘man,’” as Bob called her, would fly out to train the programs. Karen became a trainer herself through the sink-or-swim method when Bob, who was scheduled to train a program alone, called at the last minute saying he wasn't coming — that Karen would have to train it herself. From then on Karen trained all of the West Coast programs she set up.

Meanwhile, Bob purchased 800 acres in Nelson County, Virginia, and sold Whistlefield to bankroll the construction of the new Monroe Institute facilities. Karen and Chris teamed up again to train the first week-long program held in the Center. It was July, 1979. Participants were coming in while the Center construction was still in progress. Karen remembers assisting George Durette, the facilities and farm manager, to lay the kitchen floor when someone yelled, "They're coming with their suitcases!" George and Karen looked at each other in shock, dropped what they were doing, and ran upstairs to tack down the carpet at the front door.

Chris and Karen pitched in, literally resoldering some of the wiring because half of the building didn't have sound in the CHEC units. Karen stayed for months in the Center as it was being completed, lending a hand during non-program weeks. All hands were on deck as The Institute entered this new phase. “We now had our own center.”

The rest, as they say, is history. Karen has facilitated thousands of participants' journeys deep into self, into other realities, into transformation. What keeps her doing this work with TMI? "I see the tremendously meaningful results experienced by the majority of people coming through programs. It works, this tool of consciousness."

At some point Karen realized she had fulfilled her contract at the Soul level. She chose to continue. The Institute's work had become a large part of her own life's work. "Where else could I find this? To be able to hold space for the level of work done at TMI has required me to continue my own personal development on all levels. It's phenomenal -- a gift -- to me. I consider it an honor to do this work."

And how would she describe Bob Monroe? "He was a man ahead of his time, a visionary ... complex, vulnerable, curious, with an allegiance to his inner guidance that drove his life. He was conflicted about his path but driven by it. He followed through with what he was asked to do by his guidance. One thing I really respected about Bob was that he wouldn't let people put him on a pedestal or in the role of a guru."

Quick Links to learn more:

• "Scooter" - M-5000 - early days
• history of research at TMI
• Bob Monroe

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