It's so simple that it's hard to believe we're doing it

What plane did he work from? The mental plane? The etheric plane? Which focus level do you have to be in to contact a deceased person? Did he go out of body? Was what he did  actually lucid dreaming? Which Hemi-Sync cd will help me go where he went? Is it better to sit or lie down? What is the best method to go out of body?

These are all questions that might hit you as you read books like Bruce Moen's. We read all these amazing and detailed accounts of his experiences, and some of us begin to wonder how to get there ourselves.

And these are good questions if we want to put Bruce's experiences into a frame we already know and can relate to. They are less useful, however, when it comes to actually doing what he did.

The method

Luckily for us, Bruce was a very practical guy. As he wrote in his Afterlife Knowledge Guidebook: "As an engineer my training has been focused on looking for ways to make processes more efficient, less costly and less time consuming". Thus he created the simplest method to be able to teach people to do what he did. And this is where it gets tricky.

He used to say: "Learning to explore our afterlife is so easy that the hardest thing is to believe you are doing it".

And it really is easy. Actually, I can give you the method right here:

• Sit comfortably in a chair
• Take deep relaxing breaths
• Imagine bright energy coming from below and above run through you and around you
• Feel love
• Set an intention to visit with the person you want to contact
• Ask for a helper to come
• Ask the helper to take you to the person you're going to visit
• Talk to that person, and get some information that you can (hopefully) verify afterwards.

That's how simple it is. A short and boring version of how simple it is (if you come to a workshop - read here why you should - I'll make it a lot more fun and interesting, I promise!), but never the less: That's it.

But then here's the hard part: How do we know the contact we make is real??

And this is where us curious, read-a-lot-of-books-about-this-stuff, left brain types (typically) begin to complicate things. We try the method, but nah, it can't be that easy, and then we begin to look for the key in the state he was in. "Perhaps I need to get into the mental layer of my aura. Perhaps I need to be feeling love more strongly. Perhaps I need to be in this or that focus level. Perhaps I'm not relaxed enough. Perhaps it works better lying down. Perhaps I should call an archangel and not just a regular helper."

But those are all the wrong places to look for that key. The key is in the very last part of the method: Get some information that you can (hopefully) verify afterwards.

And this is where it gets vulnerable. It takes courage. And my guess (or my projection) is that this is why most of us give up and never really get past the doubt.

How to get verifiable information, and why it takes courage

Ask someone you know if you can have the name of a deceased person you didn't know, but that they knew well, contact this person and see if you can get a message for them and other information to verify your experience.

Most people (I'm guessing and suggesting you'll only ask people who won't think you're a nutcase) will probably say yes and give you the name of a parent, child, brother, sister, friend or grandparent.

So far so good.

Then you apply the method. You contact this person and get an impression of their surroundings, their looks, what they did in their physical life, how they died, and you ask them to show you or tell you something that might prove to the person who gave you their name that the contact was real.

And then comes the vulnerable part: To sit down with your friend and tell them what you perceived. And to risk being totally wrong. Not only because that friend might be hoping to get verification that their loved one lives on, and you don't want to disappoint them, but also because, unless you're the robust type with really high self-esteem, you'll probably feel like a failure.

Also, if nothing could be verified, then what? What if this happens the first 10 times you do it? How long can you keep it up before a piece of verifiable information comes along? And not just a small piece that you can rationalize away (as we often do after some time), but a big chunk that can't be dismissed?

(A note here that I'll write more about in another post and talk about in the workshop: Be aware that your friend who submitted the name, might not be very open to what you're relaying, for various reasons, and you may actually have a lot more hits than you think!)

Remember, Bruce struggled with this for years

Bruce was persistent, and he kept at it. If you've read his books, you'll know that we get well into book number 2 before he has that "voyage beyond doubt" that gave him certainty. It took him about 3 years:

"I’d been exploring human existence after “death” for three years or so. Many experiences in this arena had contained  information verifiable to some extent. But I had always had a feeling of skepticism and doubt, even in these verifiable experiences. Some part of me was holding out, refusing to fully accept my experience as real. That part of me denied the possibility that I could explore the Afterlife because it held to the belief there was no such thing. Call it a lack of confidence or just plain skepticism, at some level I’d always carried that doubt."
(Voyage Beyond Doubt, page 143)

Remember this as you move along on your own journey. It didn't come easily to him either. It may look like it when you read his books, but those are the accounts of years of training and afterthought.

We're all beginners at some point, so as with everything else in life: Don't compare yourself with someone who worked hard to be on the expert level, when you're only just moving into territory that's unknown to you. Keep at it, and most importantly: Keep an open mind.

The explorer's mind

Back to those questions I began with. I don't find it easy (either), but I'm trying to let go of what I think I already know about how things should or must be. At least when that "knowing" is actually a belief. Of course concepts are very useful when it comes to learning and understanding, but I try to remind myself once in a while that they can also block my own experience.

For example: What if I expect to see chakras in bright colors because I read a lot of books saying that we have these things, but I have yet to perceive them myself? That might make me think there's something I'm doing wrong. Perhaps I'll even get fixated on trying to see those chakras and thereby miss something even more interesting or important to me.

By trying (and failing) for years to go out of body because I've read in Robert Monroe's books that that's the way he explored, I might miss a method that's a lot easier to attain. Like Bruce's.

Do you see where I'm getting at?

It's not that I don't understand the need to, well, understand how something works, but I just want to point out that it's probably the least effective way to go about it.

What we really need to do is to get practical. Frightening as it may be to risk looking stupid, pretentious, amateurish or whatever shadow might be in the way of our getting down to business.

Now, let's gather our courage and go explore!