When many people begin exploring expanded states of awareness they are often plagued with self-doubt. That hasn’t been my problem.

My first out of body experience was so convincing and so consistent in detail that it pretty much removed doubt from mind. Since then I have operated under the principle that reality is the experience of the Self.

I know and trust my experiences as my experiences whether they occur in physical or nonphysical reality. If I’m alone at home and I spill coffee on the kitchen table I know it happened. I can clean up the mess and remove all the evidence, but I’ll still know it happened even if no else was there to confirm it. For me experiences in nonphysical reality possess a consistency of detail and context that feel as real as those in physical reality. Thus having a chat with a nonphysical spirit guide feels very similar to having a chat with a friend in a coffee shop. I don’t need my friend or my spirit guide to confirm my experiences. I know they’ve happened.

Still internal confirmation is different from external confirmation. What many people mean when they say “how do you know this is real?” is actually “how well do your experiences corroborate with external events that can be verified by others?”

The answer is: surprisingly well. Let me give you a few examples from across the years.

Finding Objects

During my first visit to the Monroe Institute in 2001 I lost my sunglasses, having set them down someplace and forgotten them. I decided to see if I could find them using a remote viewing technique. I lay down in the darkness of my room and sent my awareness beyond my body. As I was new to this, my awareness simply shot out of the building and into the parking lot. I found myself looking at the dashboard of a car. I could see it as clearly as if I was sitting in the passenger seat. I knew my sunglasses were not in this strange car, but I took the opportunity to look around. I noted details like the hairbrush on the dashboard, the ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts, and a tear in the leather upholstery. Then I decided to try to find my sunglasses.

I thought of them and my awareness sprang to them almost instantly, but I could see little else. I pulled back my vision and saw a smooth level polished surface. I immediately jumped to the conclusion that they were on table in the lunch room, and I made plans to visit there as soon as the exercise was over.

When I checked in the lunch room my glasses were not there. I was disappointed until I realized that the color of the tables was wrong. The surface I saw glasses lying on looked more like the tables in the lecture hall. I raced to the lecture hall and there were my glasses where I’d left them. Now you might dismiss this as merely retracing my steps in my mind. But after getting my glasses I walked through the parking lot. And there I saw a car that looked familiar to me. I peered in the window and saw the hairbrush, the overflowing ash tray, and the torn upholstery. Chills went through me as I realized I’d seen it in my mind less than 30 minutes before.

Seeing People in Other Places

Two years later at another workshop I tried the same remote viewing technique to check up on my family, who were more than 2000 miles away. I sent my awareness to find them, fully expecting them to be in the car headed to school. Instead I found them at home. I saw my wife sitting at our kitchen table reading a book and drinking tea. My oldest daughter sat on our sofa eating popcorn from a blue and yellow bowl, and my youngest lay prone on the floor with her knees up watching television. I observed them in real time and could identify details right down to which mug my wife was using and which TV show my kids were watching. When I phoned them later that day, they confirmed that school had been canceled due to a snowstorm so they’d stayed home having a quiet time. I had every detail right, down to the coffee mug, popcorn bowl, and TV show.

Scouting Locations

I’ve also used the same technique to correctly identify landmarks based solely on their longitude and latitude. For instance, in one exercise I was given the following coordinates 38°, 37’, 28.75” N, 90°, 11’, 05.83” W, which I correctly identified as the Saint Louis Arch. I also correctly identified 44°, 35’, 24.85” N, 104°, 42’, 53.92” W as Devil’s Tower National Monument, Wyoming. [Note for full disclosure: I didn’t save the records of the latitude and longitude numbers at the time, but I clearly recalled the targets and pulled their coordinates using Google Earth.]

This is nothing compared to the feats of some people who have correctly identified the locations of nuclear submarines in the oceans, but it was enough to give me confidence in my perceptual abilities.

Learning “Secrets” from Ghosts

Remote viewing is one thing but what about other types of expanded awareness, you might ask. I’ve had numerous confirmations in this regard too. I often do soul retrieval work with a partner who lives in Connecticut. I live in Colorado. We both start with the same basic information, usually only a name and perhaps the day that someone died or the name of the loved one asking for us to contact the person. From this information alone we bring back remarkably similar information including causes of death, the existence of wills, the location of unknown safety deposit boxes, nicknames and inside jokes, and lots of other details that are later verified by the living relatives. As most of this information is confidential I can’t share the exact details in this public forum.

Partnered Explorations

I also do partnered explorations of nonphysical reality with friends. In this case we agree on a particular destination in nonphysical reality and then go to visit it. Afterwards we write down notes about our experiences in our journals and then compare them. Time and again the matching details are so strikingly similar that the obvious conclusion is that the experiences are real.

Emotional Resonance

I admit that there is nothing quite like getting outside verification of the information I’ve received from nonphysical reality to boost my confidence. But almost as important is what I call emotional resonance. That is, accessing information or having a particular experience that creates a visceral reaction in my physical body. This deep body knowing can be even more convincing than a logical argument and a preponderance of evidence. In fact, the most meaningful experiences I’ve had (in physical or nonphysical reality) are those that vibrate most harmoniously with the core of my being. So I also use my emotional meter as a means of confirming that my experiences are real.

Releasing Doubt Opens You to New Experiences

Over the years I’ve found that doubt clouds my perception in nonphysical reality and fear can choke the experiences off all together. Fortunately, I’ve worked through many of the issues I’ve had concerning the reality of my experiences. And as I’ve done so, my perceptual experiences have increased dramatically.