Liminals
Over the past several months of this year I’ve noticed a peculiar “mini-experience” that has been going on at very specific states, or rather in-between states. The experience itself is simple but difficult to explain and very confusing to illustrate. Of course it’s difficult and confusing, when has anything been not slippery as all heck when discussing consciousness.
Prior to jumping into the story and introducing the new category, the day itself went as normal as ever. I had a rather enjoyable and calm meditation, even if I was a bit tired toward the end of it. I was able to hit my ideal state, or close to it, as I felt mild vibrations throughout the body but ultimately felt too weak to amplify.
Lucid Dream
I took the hint and ended my exit attempts, as I couldn’t keep focus like I was able to initially. As usual, I set my intention for a lucid dream with the purpose of using that as an exit. This technique, if you can call it that, works very well but with one caveat: you have to remember your ultimate intention when the lucid dream spins up. As you can imagine, remembering something when moving between states is tricky and, in my experience, really depends on your energy heading into the whole thing.
The lucid dream began in my parents’ house. I came to consciousness as I was standing directly in the center of my old room. Luckily, I didn’t need much convincing of what was going on and instantly recognized the situation. What followed next was not planned. I jumped into the air and began flying as quickly as possible.
Because I was tired, I forgot what I came here to do, and instead the only thought I had was: “Well, just like with OBE, the goal in lucid dreams is to get going and get busy or it tends to end very quickly.” Maybe this is some sort of “muscle memory” at this point, but it did derail what my subconscious set up for me: it dropped me off in a bedroom, there was a bed there, all I had to do was lay down on it like past exits into an OBE from lucid dreams.
Nevertheless, the train had left the station, and now I was wildly hell-bent on flying… anywhere. There was an odd thing that began to occur as I jumped into the air and started to take off toward the window with the intention of getting out. As soon as I got close to the window and through it with just my head poking out, I was looped back to the back of the room.
I shot back toward the window again and was “reset” to where I started, in the exact same way. I’m rather stubborn, so I began to shift my intent to fly faster and farther up, hoping to break out, but all that ended up doing was making me glitch and loop over and over again.
“How strange,” I thought while standing in the middle of the room. The struggle was finally over, and the “simulation” began dissolving around me along with my avatar. Nothing was strange about this, everything happened exactly as my intent willed it. I wanted a lucid dream to use as an exit for an OBE, as I’ve done before, and I got exactly that. But I was too tired to remember that there are two steps to this process. I kept being “reset” and not allowed to leave the room because all I had to do was lay down in the bed that was in that very same room. The subconscious mind did exactly as instructed and even dealt with my half-awake and stubborn self, putting me back where I needed to be despite my best efforts to sabotage myself.
Clearly, everyone had enough, and it was time to terminate the situation. Upon my exit, I had the familiar experience of seeing a wild three-dimensional object doing impossible things. Over time, these objects have begun to appear to me as three-dimensional shadows of four-dimensional objects. At least that’s the “feeling” I get about them.
The object today was mostly iridescent and blue in color. It shimmered and twisted, undulating, vibrating, with a mix of ribbons and disks. One of the ribbons shoved its way to the outer center and changed to orange and gold as it glowed and vibrated inward. This time, the object, in fantastical motion, began at a relatively large portion of my field of view against a black void backdrop. As it twisted and moved, it shrank to my bottom right.
This time, I was able to “zoom in” and focus on it until it disappeared. I used to think I came to waking consciousness after these little demonstrations, but I now strongly believe that they bleed into my already local and physical state. The object or objects will appear immediately, allowing me to focus instantly and just wait and hold it as long as possible before removing my mask or opening my eyes.
Introducing Liminals
As I mentioned before, these occurrences are not new, but their meaning is difficult to understand. The immediate impression that has stayed with me this entire time is that something is trying to grab my attention in that very specific transitional window.
Allow me to share what I speculate all of this is. The setting is the precise moment after a lucid or projected experience, when perception detaches from the narrative and yet doesn’t quite collapse back to waking. It’s like a liminal residue, perhaps flashes of archetypal, symbolic, or purely energetic content that appear to have their own brief life before dissolving.
The range of imagery so far has included:
- A bright red-capped mushroom with a toothy grin.
- A fairy-like form.
- A goofy-looking figure with a wide, and yet again, toothy grin.
- The many island-like windows or portals scattered about and moving through my field of view, showing glimpses into bright and cheerful landscapes.
- The unreadable inscription of some message appearing as if it is being written by an invisible hand, words burning into a dark field in front of me.
- The triple-three written by yet another invisible hand with the same burning-into-the-backdrop effect, accompanied by puffs of smoke.
- A tesseract glowing neon green with crystals growing out of its fast-paced geometric movement.
- The coiled energy sphere in constant motion and vibration, raising higher and higher in intensity.
There’s a recurring pattern of self-organizing symbolic intelligence. They’re not part of the journey or the environment of a “space,” but more like echoes or artifacts of translation, forms that consciousness produces as it reconstitutes itself. The possible meanings include transitional imagery seen at the boundary between non-physical and physical awareness, the psyche’s way of “compressing” large, non-linear experience into single symbolic flashes as it re-anchors to waking consciousness, and the visual equivalent of interference patterns between two states of mind.
I decided to name these objects “Liminals”.
