The Side Quest I Didn’t See Coming

From insomnia to intuitive downloads. What happened when I tried the Monroe Institute’s Gateway Tapes.

Sometimes, life takes an unexpected turn. And sometimes, a simple journal prompt spirals into a full-blown young adult novel, which then pulls you into a real-life experiment with psychic abilities.

So bear with me. This one’s a little different.

I started this Substack account back in May as a way to get more comfortable publishing my writing to an audience bigger than my friend group. In March, I wrote a piece of writing that started as a journal prompt, but I wrote it as fiction and that piece took hold of me. It turned into something much more than a journal prompt. I'm now 9 chapters and 20,000 words deep into a young adult novel I never planned to write. But I’m going with it because one of my wishes for 2025 was to 'Get Published,' and this unexpected novel feels like a powerful step towards that.

Where is my writing taking me?

My novel is about a teenager who has the gift of psychic abilities, and we follow her along with the process of deepening her abilities to a point where she can use them to rescue a friend. Her friend also has psychic abilities, but hers weren't natural; instead, they were developed through an unidentified government program.

I’ve always been interested in learning about what our minds are capable of, and have had past experiences with premonitions as well as street light interference. Several years ago, I heard about the Gateway Project—yes, the one funded by the CIA back in the 1980s. I started following people on social media who were listening to the tapes and documenting their experiences.

I tried listening to them too, but at the time I was deep in the thick of raising young kids, and uninterrupted time was a fantasy. I let it go… until now.

But back to my book, as I started developing this supporting character who was part of a program to learn psychic abilities, I realized it was time to go back to Robert Monroe's tapes and immerse myself in them. Especially how clinically sterile the tapes sounded compared to the woo that usually surrounds psychics and seers.

About a month ago, I finally dove into the tapes for 'research,' and to my surprise, the shifts began almost immediately.

• Deeper sleep at night, which for an insomniac is shocking and so welcome.

• The ability to relax quicker.

• Intensely vivid dreams with the ability to remember them.

• Learning to visualize as someone who has had aphantasia all her life.

• Learning to let go of deep seated limiting beliefs and seeing relationships change for the better.

These are only the things I can pull from the top of my head of the changes I’ve noticed in the past month since I didn’t think to start documenting my process before today. As I've seen the real-time benefits of the tapes, learning them has become a higher priority. But I also noticed my focus on the writing itself had begun to waver. Today, it hit me: why not merge the two? Why not make this whole journey part of the story?

After spending several days last week listening to the “Release and Recharge” tape, I found the Monroe Institute’s manual online and have decided I’d like to start back at the beginning, making sure I am doing them right. So today I started on tape one with Orientation while making sure to document what feelings come up, and then write a weekly post here discussing what I’m learning, the sensations, dreams, synchronicities, and how it all feels. All in the name of research, of course!

So, consider this your official invitation to ride along on a little side quest with me. Hopefully my content here won’t be solely Gateway themed, but right now that’s where my mind is, so we will see what comes of it. And soon enough, we will be back to my regular programming of nostalgia and healing, with hopefully some fiction sprinkled in… because fiction holds my writer’s heart.