I am always looking for new ways to bring different meditations into my daily practice. As a contemplative, the inner work is much more important than the outer work, so to speak. As a technopagan, I sometimes use technology to assist with these practices. Now, I have most of the meditation apps that everyone else has and I use them sometimes to a greater or lesser degree, but for the most part, they supplement my meditation practices by switching things up sometimes. I had the complete pleasure of finding an app called 'Lumenate' on the iPhone app store. I downloaded it and followed the instructions it gave me. Almost immediately, I had an extremely powerful experience. So, naturally, I want to tell you about it!
Lumenate is an app that provides a unique and effortless meditative experience using stroboscopic light sequences accompanied by music or sounds. It helps to induce altered states of consciousness, deepening and enhancing meditation practices. The app is extremely user-friendly and customizable, allowing me to choose the length of time for my meditation and select the sounds or music I want to accompany. The stroboscopic lights are timed perfectly with the music, creating a synesthesia that takes me deeper into my meditations. It truly feels like an upgraded version of using candles or incense during meditation.
Lumenate is a company that uses sensory entrainment to help people achieve better mental states. The technology flashes lights at certain frequencies in order to gently guide the brain into a desired state. Once the flashing is removed, the brain returns to its normal patterns. This technology can be used for a variety of reasons, such as improving focus, increasing creativity, or helping with sleep. By simply wearing headphones for a few minutes, individuals can experience noticeable improvements in their mental state without the use of medication or harmful substances. It is a safe and non-invasive way to enhance one's mental well-being.
My Lumenate Experience
From what I've researched, Lumenate is designed to provide one-of-a-kind experiences for each individual in a few different ways. The sessions provide a vehicle to explore you subconscious mind and your emotions. While this can sound scary, I can promise you that my experience was one of growth and healing.
My first meditation with Lumenate was the introductory experience that only lasts about 5 minutes. It told me that I should wear decent-quality headphones and turn the lights off -- the darker the better. It also told me about a few different ways to hold the phone, as you need to turn the phone around so that the camera flash is facing your eyes. They say that you can sit in a regular meditative position and hold the phone with your arms, but I find that too distracting. I am currently looking to grab a small tripod to mount my phone to for future sessions, but for my first session, I was lying on my side on the sofa, facing the back cushion. There, I propped the phone up against the cushion facing my face and the session began. And oh, did it begin!
I closed my eyes (as you have to do unless you want to be blinded by the strobe effect) and the music began softly. A voice came on the audio and explained a few very simple things about relaxing the eyes and that you can adjust the distance from the light pulses to your eyes to vary the intensity of the effect. Mine was pretty close to my face, so that may have influenced my experience. Then, the flashes began.
At first, my eyes adjusted to the flashes, and I slowly began to see faint white/gray spots, and they would be in a pattern. That pattern began to pulse in and out like a kaleidoscope. Then, various colors would come and go. Orange, blue... oh the prettiest blue I had ever seen in my life. It was the bright and deep blue that you would expect to see in a paradisical sky. This blue turned into a blue fractal, almost like a mosaic with oversized pieces, but they would move as if in a stop-motion video. Once this faded, the beautiful white light began to overtake my vision and would sway from the left to the right, almost like an oversized pendulum. From here, I began to travel through a bright tunnel toward an even brighter horizon, and this is where coherent images began to manifest. I saw people, or what I perceived to be people, along a golden-yellow dirt path next to a river, and a set of middle-eastern style buildings rising up from the horizon almost like a utopian city. With a flash, I saw a powerful explosion of white light as the edges of the explosion quickly slowed and melted down the area I could see. It was here that I had an extremely overwhelming sense of unity with the entire unified field of consciousness. I was everything, and everything was me.
Conclusion
Maybe you prefer traditional meditation. I still do, but there is something to be said about Lumenate and the experiences it creates. It is all subjective and is a great tool to use to inspire continued work with your subconscious mind and the contemplation of reality. As an endnote, I paid for the full subscription for Lumenate ($6 a month) and I am not being paid to review this app. This is my genuine experience and I believe that people need to be made aware of these incredible advancements in the area of consciousness science.
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