below, i will post two log entries in the hope of determining if the experience was a partial OBE, and also to discover a plausible explanation as to the connection between the two events. both events were rather strange and don't completely fit any category -especially when taken together. i apologize if the staff has to move this thread.
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02/17/2010
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after praying for friends/family i say my mantra. when i get to the part where i say 'i reject all fear' i feel what i perceive to be a 'finger' poke me just above my left temple! i snapped my eyes open and whipped my head around to the spot where the prankster should be standing, only to see nothing next to my bed.
NOTES:
on this particular occasion, as i recited the mantra i made a very strong effort to truly believe i would not fear anything i.e 'in life' or 'OOB.' after the initial shock of it i began smiling and thought to myself 'OK, you got me, good one.' i was still a bit nervous, but i was eased by the feeling that it was just a harmless prank, and that the prankster might very well be my sub-conscious or higher-self. whom ever it was I'm sure they had a good laugh at it.
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in my notes i alluded to -but didn't elaborate on- the fact that bob monroe had a few
somewhat similar experiences that were perpetrated by his future etheric-self (only later did he discover this). likewise, my immediate thought was that 'I' was my own prankster.
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02/20/2010
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after 'waking' from a dream in which i neglected to avoid a fist-fight, i began pondering why i didn't make more of an effort to defuse the dream-world situation. as i laid there very drowsy in the dark of my room i felt a poke on top of my head! i thought 'who is in my room and why did they do that,' and during that tiny span of time that it took to determine there was no one else in the room, i felt the poke again. with my right hand i reached above my head to feel how close i was to the head-board of my bed, when my hand was grasped by another! initially alarming, the hand was warm and soft, and clasped more gently as i ceased resisting its grip on me. its fingers began to probe around on my fingers and hand, so i did the same, i don't know why, it was sort of automatic. my attention shifted as i felt the same probe-like examination being performed on my left hand that lay at my side. i then realized my left hand was in-turn probing around on my right hand. but how could this be! my right hand was clearly above my head, yet it was being fondled by my left hand that lay aside my body, and vice versa! it was like having two sets of arms simultaneously. i became very excited as i knew something neat was happening and i knew my next move should be to attempt my first full OBE (i had previous experiences that, in my view, were very exciting, but i never fully exited my physical body).
i began to focus on floating upward, and my room -from full darkness- began to brighten and come into focus. i saw the tiles of my ceiling in their grid pattern but they were very rough but shiny looking, just as if they had been dipped in baby oil. there were also draping snarls of larger-than-usual Christmas-style lights hanging down 2-3 feet from the ceiling. resembling a large dreadlock of tangled light strings, all with white bulbs and thick white cords. the fixtures were gold and about 1/3 of the bulbs were missing. white beads on white string were also in the tangled mix. i could see my entire ceiling as it was very bright. this tangle of lights, in a swag formation, was fuzzy and out of focus for a moment until i concentrated more, then they became crystal-clear, but they were quickly shifting a few inches from right to left, just as if you were to hold your index finger out at arms length and view it with only your left eye open, then close it and look with your right eye. if you repeat this a few times you will understand how i saw it, flickering back and fourth. the view quickly stabilized and the left/right shifting stopped. i then gave effort to floating upward and the ceiling approached slowly. i was up there closer to the lights, examining the details of it all, but then sparks began arching from a spot where the lights were attached to the ceiling and though i concentrated harder the scene morphed back into the ordinary, plainness of my darkened room.
NOTES:
when i woke from the fighting dream i felt awake and conscious, but pretty half-in/half-out. however, i became very lucid once i felt the poke.
i thought the poke on my head was from my brother or my mom, but why would they be doing that in the middle of the night.
had i not been poked on the head 3 nights earlier i might have panicked more.
the initial jolt of having my hand grabbed was not nearly as severe as the fear I'd create for myself in 'imagining' such an incident. the odd thing is i have imagined a similar scenario and i now realize such fear is unwarranted. it's as if my higher-self showed me that entertaining 'fear' is worse than the thing you are afraid of.
robert monroe's first book 'journeys out of body' explained how he had a somewhat similar experience when he woke up lying on his side to 'someone' tightly snuggled up behind him. he felt whiskers against his cheek and heavy breathing in his ear. this 'someone' was also sexually aroused! looking in the mirror that morning he noticed the stubble on his face. the next night -after shaving- the same 'someone' was back again, clean-shaven this time. mr. someone never appeared again after this realization. i think monroe's mysterious stranger, and my mysterious prankster from three nights earlier -as well as my 'extra set of arms'- are the same thing: the etheric body.
the experience of viewing the lights and approaching the ceiling contained an obscure discomfort more intense that the shock of having my hand grabbed. in contrast to the beauty and brightness of the lights, i can't pinpoint what this fear was, perhaps it might be due to the initial 'death-like' feeling of leaving ones body -or so i've heard. in 1959 western culture, robert monroe -and doubtlessly countless others who experience chronic spontaneous OBEs- didn't have the benefit of literature explaining what OBEs are. therefore they have my sympathies; with no instruction manual or road map, OBEs could be a scary thing. after all, the one unwavering similarity shared by OBEs, intense Buddhist meditation, DMT/ayahuasca trips is that you experience death of the body to get there. obviously an NDE is the epitome of experiencing the other side, but all these techniques share overriding similarities.
i am a C-5 quadriplegic. i always sleep on my back. my fingers and hands don't work and my arms don't operate much better. i am unable to lift my arms above my head, easily, as during this event. physically, my hands weren't on my stomach/mid-section, where my hands could touch each other, they were laying strait on either side of me, as always when i sleep. and my fingers don't work at all.
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everything above can be taken as 'literal'... at this point in my experiential evolution i view my consciousness level in the first log entry as being 100% and the second log entry as being very close to that level; i can't say i was 100% lucid, but that's only because it's very hard to experience something of that sort and not feel surreal, or even 'buzzed'! it's just so alien

hopefully someone can help me identify exactly what happened. and if anyone has read anything similar, i would be grateful if you could post links or info about it.
thanks for reading.