My Journey with the Inner Light & Sound

Jens was in his early twenties when he asked himself the big questions: “What more am I, if anything?” and “Is there really an existence before and after life on this planet?” Shortly after, he found a meditation that started him on a journey of self discovery and beyond.

He says it is possible for us to know our vast and undying inner nature, that is inseparable because it is one thing everywhere, by meditating with the Light and Sound. This powerful and beautiful inner energy is supported by love and, is enabling people around the world to realise this for themselves.

He now helps people in receiving access to the inner Light and Sound, believing that this really is the age for more people discovering their true human and spiritual nature.

Transcript

Music Welcome to Follow the River on SoundArt Radio online at soundartradio.

Org.

Uk and 102.

5 FM locally.

Your hosts tonight are Jerry Granshaw and me,

Sue Minns.

Now awakening is an internal process that can arise slowly or come in a flash of knowing.

No one's going to do it for us.

We must arrive at its door by ourselves but there are many among us who have made the journey and are offering to shine some light on the path.

So in our monthly programs we invite someone to come and talk about their spiritual journey and the guest who's with us tonight here in the studio is Jens Upton and for the next hour we'll be exploring together topics that relate to our true nature.

Jens is a light and sound meditation teacher who was in his early 20s when he asked himself these big questions.

What more am I if anything and is there really an existence before and after life on this planet?

Shortly after Jens found a meditation that started him on a journey of self-discovery that was beyond anything his imagination could conceive.

At the time he was working in temporary office jobs and preparing for university he began dedicating much of his spare time to meditating with inner light and sound learning all he could from experienced teachers of this practice.

Many of us seek to find our life's purpose.

Jens believes he discovered a very significant one.

In 2005 after many insights and experiences during meditation he received a massive change of awareness referred to by some as enlightenment.

Jens believes that this is the age for many people to discover this state of awareness which is our true human and spiritual nature.

He says we all can potentially know our vast and undying inner nature by meditating with the light and sound and now in his role as a teacher he's helping others to find the way.

So welcome Jens.

No small task.

So what you do sounds absolutely amazing.

We'd love to know more about your personal journey to enlightenment Jens.

So maybe you can tell us how it began.

How it began?

Many many years ago as you've said in my early 20s I decided I needed to discover the practice of meditation for myself because I wanted to realize what more there is to me and more clearly what I am and maybe what I am not.

I'd already become a little bit let's say disillusioned as we do in our teens and early 20s about all this this the transitory nature of thoughts and feelings and and sensations and I was very much involved with the usual things that teenagers and 20-somethings are involved with.

You're going out you're going out three four nights of the week you've got lots of friends you're going out drinking you're doing all these different things and this was in a time as well where you also had the rave culture was in bloom so there was there was lots of different changes but underpinning all this there was also this question that kept on arising.

It used to be every few years and sometimes it would be a little bit more frequently which is there has to be more there has to be more to life and there was nothing I should add about my life that I should be dissatisfied about at all you know it was absolutely fine but there was that in the question and in those days of course we didn't have the proliferation of information that we have access to with the internet so it was a case if you went to talks you spoke with people you went to bookstores or the library to find out.

I went to a bookstore I decided I'm going to find out what meditation is.

I took a yoga book out which had some instructions on simple breath meditation and it was very no-nonsense it was case if you sit down you focus on your breathing you sit cross-legged on the floor so I thought okay I'll give that a go and I probably lasted about a minute so but I persevered slowly I persevered with this and it did feel like you know it was like real persevering and then suddenly I managed to get up to five minutes in quite a short space of time which was a massive achievement for me back in those days I should add and then I started to notice that there was something different inside while I was meditating so I would have placed my attention more either to the sensation of the breath on the tips of the nostrils as instructed via the book or I just place my attention upon my inner awareness and where my inner awareness at first might be just the identity of okay I'm in this body I feel the limits of the body and it's a gray wall in front of me as I close my eyes a gray screen suddenly things will start to change there will be more of a spatial awareness on the inside and sometimes quite dramatically and all I had done at that point was just sit concentrate and be as quiet as I could and I noticed I was actually becoming quieter during these periods and I will use the word transforming for some of these short meditates because I did come out feeling very different in a very positive way I was often quite sort of uplifted by this sense of quiet and sometimes quite refreshed after this I decided okay I'm going to pursue this further and at the time I was involved with very much into the physical culture side of things I was exercising I was involved with a couple of martial arts I was going weight training at the gym I was involved with all that one of the guys I used to train with he said to me we were chatting one day and I think I asked him I said listen I overheard you talking about yoga do you know any place that just does meditation I don't want anything else I just want a meditation teacher and he said yeah funny enough I've just seen an advert for a place he goes I have no idea what they're about they're calling themselves light and sound meditation but I don't know what the lighting sounds actually referring to so I said is there a number and he goes yeah I've got the number here he wrote out the number this was before mobile phones I trotted off home gave them a call and the person I spoke to said come down let's have a chat so I went down to somebody's house which they also used as their little center for teaching meditation in preparation for what turned out to be the receiving of this inner light and sound energy so I went down there and and this this meeting was the first instance of somebody who I felt may have been able to address address that very burning issue what is it about the existence what is it about my existence is there life before and after life on this planet and is it a constant this was something that has started to bug me which through topics academic topics or science programs on tv these sort of things weren't really addressing and by the way at that point I mean my academic inquiries into things was very limited you know I didn't go to university until a little bit shortly after this period where I studied psychology however going back to this meeting I spoke to a lady there and she began to describe to me what the light and sound meditation was about its purpose and what I could do to know that purpose for myself I thought great this is what I like and there seemed to be less dogma around it there was no suggestion that you had to adopt any particular requirements at first though they did start to say okay hey no drugs no alcohol you know be vegetarian which I willingly adopted actually and I just found it absolutely fascinating what they were saying about this line sound fascinating but almost fantastical it was it didn't fit into any belief system I had or any literature I'd come across at that time and yet I had this resounding feeling inside me that I had to pursue it even if logically critically thinking I could I could tear what was being set apart because there was no evidence for it in in life at that point but just that feeling and I decided at that point as a 23 year old to go for it to go for it I thought I'll just have to find out and if and if it's a blag in any way or if it's a delusion on the part then I can walk away from it could I ask you Jens what was it they were saying that you were having a problem with it was it wasn't so I suppose it was a bit of a problem it was almost like a rejoicing yes this could be it but also the counter argument was how can it be how can it be that simple how can it be that simple what they were saying was they would give access to an inner energy you could meditate with this would act almost as a guide for you to discover changes of awareness inside that will reveal to you more of what you are until ultimately you can come to a point where you realize an awareness is just one thing everywhere and it was it was almost that simple and said that simply my recollection might be a bit hazy obviously it's like 20 said 24 years ago but it was something as simple as that and and for me this was just yeah okay okay they also said the light and sound is presented differently for each person okay it's a very real inner energy but they said each person it would be presented to they will perceive this light and sound and they will feel this light and sound in a way that can only ever be relevant to them okay and it does require a person's ability to be able to sit and meditate and there was a couple of things that were meant by that the ability to focus or in the words of these days be mindful during meditation before you notice you're distracted you bring your attention back to the thing you originally meditating upon or with and the second thing was to almost have an openness and ability to be during meditation undefended yeah and this is these are the classic examples that you'll read through all styles of meditation that just that ability to not hold on to the awareness of what you think you are but allow whatever it is to just unfold naturally so what is presented to you more and more will be what is naturally part of you what has always been there but was often hidden by the movements of thinking and feeling and activities of various sorts and it's a very very profound thing i didn't realize how profound and moving it was until i actually received access to the energy myself and i can honestly say straight away i was i saw a light in a way i'd not seen it before i heard and felt sound in a way i'd never heard it before on the inside during meditation and also something me it was just like something clicked into place and i used that metaphor very specifically because it literally was a case of something just went this was absolutely the right thing to do well done so it was slightly congratulatory you know it was like oh thank you thank you and from that point on it was a real from a from a personality point of view it was quite a process of discovery because i was only in my 20s so i had lots of i still had lots of ideas and desires and everything else and and because of the sort of person i was i had to sort of resolve some of those issues so i was very much well now i'm a meditator i'll be meditating like this and other things were put over here and so i had to learn this sort of ability to balance aspects of my life but this light and sound is it's not dependent on thought it's not dependent on emotion it's the person who's required to put those in the appropriate place that when they sit to meditate they're able to be with this inner energy and then remarkable things may well happen okay there's no guarantees everybody's different i never found meditation that easy to do because my struggle was learning to let go of expectation a lot of the time and sometimes during those early years of meditating it really was quite a challenge to let go of expectations in discovering the subtleties within as well as having regular moments of being shown some absolutely wonderful insights and realizations which themselves were quite transforming they were so powerful they were actually transforming of me as an individual because there was no way i could not look at myself from the world differently as a result could i ask you a question about this jens i think a lot of people don't or most of us don't realize that you can change through meditation and through the light and sound meditation you're talking about but part of that seems to be that you can actually open as an individual you can overcome aspects of your personality you can as your awareness grows that real changes are made so as well as being on a spiritual journey it's almost like people's lives can be improved is that how you see it i think i think that has to be presented very cautiously simply because the light and sound from from my experience is really a tool for realizing a spiritual being okay which is in harmony with our human being it really is there for you to know a fuller part a full human being because of this insight so the spiritual aspect what i say about that let me qualify the word first of all spirituality to me is that which is beyond the common perceptions of the mind and the body in the physical universe okay the common perceptions of and it certainly was for me okay at the same time with this light and sound energy i could only know that for myself as a person because it was intimately connected to those parts of me that had to sit focus on the inside and allow my my attention to be on the awareness so i could notice more of what was inside and feel more what was inside until the point where my awareness was no longer the same as it had been when i'd started and all in my experience it was and it still is it's a case of i'm given so much during meditation and there is something that says you know you realize certain things or you do this during meditation the only doing that really takes place is that determination and that you can call it a dedication to actually bother to sit down and be quiet and sit in your own presence in the first place and from there something else happens on the inside something else happens on the inside and what i started to discover as well or what i was shown that to receive the light and sound energy was partly to be aware of this other energy which is the same energy for everybody should they wish to receive it and know it for themselves but also to begin to connect with an intelligence which is that energy and the different aspects of that intelligence so you can start to create possibly more harmony in your life to find your common sense of applying that energy into your life as well as having both feet in the real world okay going back to what you were saying about how people can maybe change parts of the personality or overcome things i think a lot of it is is not so much about overcoming aspects of our personality or rejecting anything a lot of it's accepting being able to identify what if anything needs to change so you can feel as a person an improvement in your life okay these are very much um maybe secondary things to that initial impulse to meditate with the light and sound it is i would say it is is not primarily a personal development tool okay you have to organize your thoughts and your feelings your emotions in a particular way to get those things done to improve aspects of your life okay with this meditation it is there to reveal to you more fully what you are on the inside okay and that will potentially show you much more than the physical world and the physical body has possibly ever done before okay i'm have to generalize at this point because there's seven billion people on this planet and i do not know what everybody's experienced you know and i also do think that there are there are people and there will be quite a few meditators who will experience different types of light and sound on the inside what tends to differentiate the people i've met who fall into that category compared to the people i've met who've received light and sound is that they haven't necessarily followed it through to its potential conclusion which is to know that there is just one existence everywhere and it's the same for everybody and there's no there's no separation in there there's there's there's no argument in there and it's absolute perfect in a home and it's very very difficult to describe it's very very difficult to be actually convey the uh the enormity of this but it is vast it's undying and it's limitless and you can potentially know this for yourselves some people even say that this is a purpose if not the purpose for being alive on this planet at any time at any time okay and i say that with both feet on the ground in reality you know why why um yes is it light and sound is it is is sound used yeah um it's because the energy that you're giving access to is usually demonstrated on the inside in that way so people will um anecdotally report they've seen light of a type usually that they've not noticed before okay or not been aware of before and not maybe felt before okay they will also describe light as having um you how do you say there's like an intelligence to it so it's not like the light you get from the bulb there okay it's almost like there's an intelligence to the different aspects of this light and how a person perceives that light and in what way and when will change over time okay with the sound it's a sound it's a similar thing the sound is um a very um how to say in a way it's almost like it's a different intelligence compared to the light but it has a different power a different emphasis to it okay and maybe more of a an inner transformative quality to it but again i can only talk about my experience of that and i'm not going to go into too much detail about i'm really cautious not to the reason being when i began some people would give you detail about things and i'd be lapping it up i'd want to know wow wow wow and some people are honestly um some people have the most incredible insights and experiences during meditation you know it's almost like a drop of a hat absolutely phenomenal uh and what as a consequence of that i sat down expecting you know i just have to close my eyes sit down relax chill out close my eyes and and it wasn't quite like that for me it was for some people but for quite a few others it was not like that yeah you actually had to put the effort in of meditating actually learning to focus to place your attention in an appropriate way and have that openness that relaxed openness is this what you learned at that place that your friend yes yeah yeah so they that was taught there yeah yes so what sort of people teach are they they're not religious obviously it's got nothing to do with religion or no no no i never said no it hasn't actually no no no it's you can be from any background any profession and people were and there was there was no requirement to be of any particular faith or belief system and sometimes people's belief systems and you know they can get in the way like they can of anything yeah you know um so you know i could decide to play football but i might have a massive background in rugby and i'm kind of like football bit of a wussies game so i'll probably be less inclined to do it and i've been encouraged in a way to do that sort of thing and sometimes it can be that way with meditation so people will invest time in a particular type of meditation will give a value to what they've gained from it or they might not feel they've gained a lot from certain types of meditation but they'll give value to the time they've put in and they'll have a belief system that maybe meditation should either be easy or hard or somewhere in between so it's not prescriptive at all then in other words it's your own direct experience of this yeah would you say it's in a universal field that uh that you tap into somehow you connect with always downloaded or your awareness becomes it was very much i would say a universal thing to the point where it is way beyond anything in the physical universe is one i would and i say that very categorically from my own experience from my own experience on the inside okay where you realize there is your awarenesses of being that is way beyond way beyond that um i just don't want to go into too much detail about it you see because it's so very tempting to do so you can't define it obviously and to be honest it'd be very difficult for me to do so i could i could throw in lots of adjectives lots of florid descriptive terms um and it that would not be genuinely me coming across to you now no that's more value that you've just said exactly and um i will say there are with the light and sound meditation has always been um i was always taught and it certainly proved correct with my realizations of three landmark experiences or realizations okay the first one is you become aware of a lot once you receive it you become aware of the light and sound as it is presented to you okay and remember that ability to put down expectations or at least recognize them and allow them to be there so that energy can be presented to you the second landmark experience was to know an existence beyond time okay beyond birth and death and that is very concrete experience okay that will be a very concrete or ideally it should be a very concrete experience okay that's one part that sounds very fantastical and it did to me originally but when i realized that or when i was given that realization it was astounding and it was after i can't remember a number of years of meditation and i had that realization which to be honest was it was a culmination of one of many leading up to that which were which were just fascinating and profound and then in some ways quite life-changing but this in particular was the first instance i've had a real sense of sort of permanence that i would call home in the inside okay that was not subject to anything out here because i was no longer aware of anything out there and yet i was aware partly at one point of still being connected to my body and to my thoughts but they were no longer just me they were connected to but not just me okay and between that aspect of me as the personality with thoughts and feelings and all those cool things and this being on the inside was was a fascinating journey in itself full of wondrous wondrous things all i can say is i did not navigate that place between me and that state of being i was given or shown those things very very very clearly who showed them to you this is sorry i should say this is all during meditation by the way so there was no one who came along and went oh yens here you go you know this is what's in the box today ha ha there you go it was not like that so is it something that you would think that people might find scary or that they'd be out of control no no there was there was nothing i found there was nothing scary about that okay there was nothing scary about that and it was actually one of the most as a consequence after is one of the most joyful uplifting experiences i you know i'd had really and there'd been quite a number during meditation by the way prior to that and this is alongside those instances in meditation where you actually feel just very very chilled out very relaxed very focused where your boundaries your normal boundaries of self your identity with the i am that identity can can go a lot of the time as well and that's a very reassuring relaxing pleasure to have that you're not confined by the i i am we are those identities the other thing all i would say is there is some sort of intelligence on the inside it had no label but somewhere in my terms my awareness was shown more than what it ever was or had been up to that point okay it was just fascinating do you think these times are going to encourage more people to explore in this way is it do you think it's getting easier for people to to access this inner light and sound now i think so and once again i think with with the wonders of the internet and i think we can we can access that information to find out who does what and when and where so there are many different resources there are other light and sound meditation groups out there i've only followed a particular inner light and sound that has worked for me i cannot compare it to other light and sound systems or any other meditation systems i do now yes yeah yeah wonderful yeah it is actually it is it's great it's great yeah so what about the the perennial questions about what happens after death and and what about reincarnation being a past life therapist myself i'm very interested what a karma and all of that what yeah yeah how does reincarnation i've no idea about because of no direct experience of that um i have done limited uh past life regressions and there's been apps i cannot say with any degree of surety whether that was my imagination or if that was some sort of genuine insight into things so it was it was very different from the sort of insights and realizations i have during meditation um which are much more clear well defined absolutely definite reincarnation may well exist in some form i know very little about it is your experience i was it's common obviously not it's unique to everyone and because you can't explain it it's beyond words sure but but the training that you did or your experience does it kind of match up without going into details obviously with the others that you know in your oh yes yes i mean just as a just as a human being there is a sense of um replication if you like okay so anecdotally people will say yes i had a very similar realization okay they may describe certain things about it differently but there will be the clear yeah i've recognized there's a there's a light and sound or a feeling of that and some people see very little light or hear very little sound but they still have the major realizations that go along with it okay so i'd mentioned earlier just going i have to backtrack a little bit now what i've been describing to you about the inner being that is beyond birth death time those things that's only the second stage if you like or the second major landmark there's a third and what appears to be the final one where i cautiously use the word and an ultimate um you could say a state of being because it is just one thing everywhere so it is absolutely boundless absolutely boundless and that is something else completely something else completely there is there is the realization that you as one thing absolutely everywhere there is nowhere you are not and all those other senses of limitless being that you've had prior you'll eventually realize they are they are limited until there was this realization there is there is no edges to anything there is no direction to anything it is absolutely perfect it is just you and yet there's no you as an individual sense of identity an individual as compared to anything else it is just absolutely one thing everywhere and it's beautiful and perfect absolutely as it is and that is that is that is huge and profound okay i call it i say it's ultimate because there is afterwards you realize there was there was literally nowhere where it was not so as that being on the inside there is literally nowhere that is not and it's incredible it's so difficult to describe it's so difficult to describe the closest the the closest i can get to as i'm talking to you is also just to have the to put a part of me um it's like in a in a listening or in a feeling where even though i'm talking with you there's a part i have to not identify so much with the words or your reactions to what i'm saying but also just get that that boundless feeling that's not limited by these things and to have that sort of sense of cooperation there it's a beautiful thing um yeah very fortunate i feel it it sounds quite amazing i mean i wonder which part of us if i can use that phrase decides to have an embodied experience in the density of matter what would why would we leave why would our conscious awareness or how i run out of words sorry sure leave that place where it's like that and come in here where it's such a struggle with the opposites and the polarizations and now we're in this mess sure sure why tiny little question a tiny little question intellectually i've never been satisfied with any answers i've got from that um i've never been sign it intellectually and bearing in mind i recognize fully the limits of the intellect and the intellect can be a really useful thing in convincing you to do certain things and maybe not do certain other things to make choices but i caution against its its use to the extent where it denies you opportunities to discover more more than what the intellect is so it's a great servant but sometimes a terrible master i think it's the old is an old quote or statement about the use of the intellect or the mind or critical thinking at the same time as i said earlier you have to apply a certain amount of common sense why are we here i think it's for every individual to identify what is their purpose to find the purpose to go with the feeling that allows them to create the most appropriate things in the life and what they give value to will be what the particular purpose is okay and sometimes it takes a good deal of experiment and exploration to get there sounds to me like the story of the prodigal son he has to leave home go down into all the flesh pots and everything and then what a wonderful reunion much more important than all those who stayed at home yeah so perhaps it perhaps that's something like that yeah yeah and there are lots of theories about a lot of it may be based around reincarnation or incarnation on this planet at this time okay i may have certain insights into it and i may have also certain beliefs about this and it doesn't necessarily coincide with with others belief systems or insights about this particular thing at the end of the day i think here i am when i open my eyes and i get up in the morning and have a cup of coffee and mooch around the kitchen this is partly what i'm aware of right now and i have to find my practical purpose in the world at this time and that's what i'm doing and take what i have each day through meditation and what i can recognize even now in the waking moments when i listen on the inside and feel on the inside i have to create that harmony between two sometimes people use the word alignment align these inner realizations these this inner knowing with your outer activity and i think yes that's genuinely very important just because it feels good it feels good yeah and that in some way may provoke what you were talking about earlier and the insights and maybe the practices of shifting those parts of your of your personality to maybe improve some parts of your life yeah but there are lots of other tools out there for those sorts of things um we were almost running out of time sadly this is really so interesting um now there'll be people listening who may be interested and how easy is it for them to sort of find out about it and you know how easy is it for them to kind of get involved and learn this meditation so can you just give us some kind of practical well it's really easy to do and there's two main places i tend to hang out in and one is check out my website which is www.

Lightwavemeditation.

Com you can email me through there there's also my direct email which is yens at lightwavemeditation.

Com there is another site and it's an app which is downloadable to ios apple and android it's called the insight timer meditation app the reason i mention this there are many many different groups on there there's big worldwide communities of meditators on there it's a fantastic resource i have a light and sound meditation group on there which i post to quite regularly that's another way of contacting me okay what i would suggest though is for for immediacy go to the website or send me an email and then we can set up contact we can be talking via phone via skype via whatsapp or telegram um all these different devices and that'll be fine if the person's genuinely interested in receiving access to this light and sound what we would do by the way it's all free of charge i should add as well we we find there's no good reason to charge people for the light and sound meditation so what we'd do we'd organize with them a suitable time to sit down and meditate sometimes we do group meditate so groups of people can receive access to this energy sometimes it's individual there is also a period of preparation depending on the person's ability to actually meditate yeah and we also like to find out what is it really that people want what have you understood by this because i want people to get the most benefit from this so really they need to find out is it is it something they really want you know and if it is cool we can go with it okay um thanks jens can you just repeat just the website again yeah it's light light wave meditation.

Com or one word light wave meditation.

Com thanks um and what we'll do um we will post to facebook tomorrow along with the recording of this show we'll post how you can get in contact with jens um so jens thanks so much um for being our guest tonight and for being such an interesting um person to talk to us um and um now over to sue to finish with a lovely poem well the fascinating thing is i brought this piece of paper and it's got the poem that i thought i wanted to read at the bottom but actually all three of these are totally relevant to what you've said so i'm going to choose one of them and of course it's by rumy so let me read this to you hear from the heart wordless mysteries understand what cannot be understood in man's stone dark heart there burns a fire that burns all veils to their root and foundation when the veils are burned away the heart will understand completely ancient love will unfold ever fresh forms in the heart of the spirit in the core of the heart

Reviews

It's important to note that even a beginner's unfocused reaching towards light and sound is life-altering and holds more mystery and wonder than that which physicality can provide. Thank you for this simplified way to talk about even a billionth of the experience. ~*💛*~

Really interesting and refreshing to hear someone speak of their meditative journey so openly and tangibly- thank you 🙏🙋‍♀️

Fascinating. Much value for me personally. Very lucky to have met this charming guy in Canterbury a few weeks back 💛

So interesting. I look forward to exploring this more fully. Thank you.

Inspirational, I have to experience this meditation. Thank you Jens.

Interesting enough to pursue further. Thank you.

Really interesting. My thanks

Will continue to research this light @ sound technique. ..Thanks for sharing..
Best Chris