Astral Travel in Pennsylvania : The World Tree

“Gil-something” told me to take a weekend trip.
The destination Gyu chose through his special version of Googling—“Gyu-googling”—was Pennsylvania.
It was about a two-hour drive from the house where we were living in New York at the time.

While deciding where to stay, I started feeling guilty.
We just went to Los Angeles last month. Is it really okay to be traveling every month like this? It’s not like we’re rich.
But somehow, I felt that this was important. I couldn’t stop worrying about money, but for now, I decided to trust the intuition telling me, This matters.

We left for our weekend trip. The place Gyu chose was a house in front of a small lake in Pennsylvania.

We could see the water through the windows.

There was a small dock in the yard. We took a boat out from there and went fishing.

By this point, even I started to notice.

Water.

Maybe water was important.

Maybe Gyu wasn’t choosing places by the water simply because I liked looking at it.
Maybe water itself was something I needed.

I had no idea why.

Anyway, the whole family went out onto the lake in a boat!
Of course, all three children were thrilled. They were still small back then, so the lake was just the right size—not too big.

We spent plenty of time playing on the boat, then had a barbecue on the patio for dinner.

Sitting there and looking out over the lake was wonderful, but toward evening, the wind began to grow stronger.
The trees started rustling loudly.

I have something like a fear of wind.
Strong wind scares me. The sound of leaves shaking in the wind scares me. It makes me want to run inside.
I told everyone, “Mom needs a little break,” went into the house, and lay down on the bed.

As I was sprawled out on the bed, I suddenly remembered.

Maybe I should practice astral travel.

The thought came to me out of nowhere, so I decided to try it.

I called Gyu and asked him to cut every unnecessary energy cord connected to me.
Then I said, “I’m going to try grounding. Help me.”

I slowly began to breathe out. The exhale went on for a long, long time.

My hands and feet began to tingle.

This tingling feels like the first time something inside me went somewhere else while I was in the bath…
Ahhh, I’m getting all spaced out…

Oh.
I had left my body.

Where was I supposed to go?
Up, maybe?

There was Gyu—Michael—above me.
Gyu was up there.
I took his hand, and we flew through space.

So astral travel lets you fly through space… This is incredible…

Then we arrived in front of a tree standing in the universe.

A huge tree.

Could this possibly be the famous World Tree?

It was enormous.
Far too enormous.

The trunk was right in front of me. I looked to the right, then to the left.
I couldn’t see either edge of it. It just kept going, like an endlessly long wall.

What is this?

I had heard that the World Tree was huge—I had read that online—but still…
If I couldn’t even see the edges of the trunk, was it the size of a town? A city?
Maybe even bigger?
It was frightening.
It was so big that it scared me.

“There is no need to be afraid.”

Someone said that.
I didn’t know who.

Then the wind suddenly blew with a loud rush. My body floated upward, and I was wrapped in the leaves of the tree.
It was like a capsule hotel made of leaves. Soft and comfortable.

It rocked whenever the wind blew, but I didn’t feel even slightly afraid of falling.
I couldn’t even imagine a trunk that thick ever breaking.

A branch above me lowered itself and covered me with leaves like a blanket.
It was warm.
Being rocked by the wind felt good.

I felt as though I rested inside the World Tree capsule hotel for a very long time.

When I finally sat up, feeling completely refreshed, the capsule hotel moved all the way down to the bottom of the tree and let me out.

Gyu was standing beneath the tree, smiling.

We went home together.

I returned to my body, sat up on the bed, and stared blankly for a while.

What?

Was that… astral travel?

What is going on? What kind of system is this?

How did it know I was afraid of wind?

Or maybe it didn’t “know”?

I don’t understand how any of this works!

And the World Tree!

Well, I still didn’t know whether it was actually the World Tree.
But it was huge. It felt amazing. It was incredible.

I had never dreamed that astral travel could take me somewhere like that.
Astral travel was an unbelievably deep world.

When I stepped back onto the patio, a cute little moon was hanging among clouds painted by the sunset.

Later that night, I could see stars above the patio.
Below them, countless fireflies were glowing.

The wind was still blowing.

But it didn’t scare me as much anymore.