Help a Newbie out? :-)

[Yin]

Is there a way to describe the feeling you get when you use the third, "inner", eye, or is it different for everyone? Still a bit puzzled. 
Thank you.

you will know based on what you see, it is actually rather hard for me to explain.. yesterday when I was doing it it physically felt like there was a ring in my head being pushed forward against my forehead. I would not base it on the feeling however so much as what you see with it, at the beginning you will start to see flashes and swirls among all manner of other nonphysical artifacts, at this point you will be "noticing" and viewing with your third eye.

[SereneMelody]

you will know based on what you see, it is actually rather hard for me to explain.. yesterday when I was doing it it physically felt like there was a ring in my head being pushed forward against my forehead. I would not base it on the feeling however so much as what you see with it, at the beginning you will start to see flashes and swirls among all manner of other nonphysical artifacts, at this point you will be "noticing" and viewing with your third eye.

I can get into what I consider deep relaxation, but it isn't sleep paralysis, because I can snap out of it. Is there something I'm missing, or does it just take practice to bring awareness into the third (inner) eye? And I'm supposed to be trying to achieve sleep paralysis, correct?

Thanks for taking the time to reply. 

[Chris J.]

Once you are deep enough, your awareness should move into your head without you having to do anything. If you're going with phasing, just focus on noticing or your rundown or whatever it is you're doing and just let the experience flow. If you went with another method, focus on that method.

I don't see a good reason to work toward sleep paralysis. If you are asking about reaching Focus 10, Focus 10 is where your mind is focused less on your body and more on your mind, so you have less awareness of your body.

Also, if you don't mind my asking, what method did you go with?

[Yin]

I can get into what I consider deep relaxation, but it isn't sleep paralysis, because I can snap out of it. Is there something I'm missing, or does it just take practice to bring awareness into the third (inner) eye? And I'm supposed to be trying to achieve sleep paralysis, correct?

Thanks for taking the time to reply.  

You're confused, sleep paralysis is a biological function of the body during sleep, focus 10, mind awake/body asleep, is what is commonly known as a trance state, which simply means its a state of consciousness different than normal waking consciousness. You will be able to "snap" out of it, regardless of if you're in focus 35 or focus 3, depending on your will to do so. Your ability to move awareness into the region above your eyes in the center of your forehead is caused by the amount of brain tension you have. I suggest looking up the tiny hands method for clearing such tension, if you can not find it I will direct it to you. As far as focus 10 goes, think of it not so much that your body is relaxed but that your focal point of consciousness is elsewhere besides your physical body thus you are not aware of it. In focus 10 it will not be that your body feels relaxed, it will be as though it doesn't even exist.

[Chris J.]

In focus 10 it will not be that your body feels relaxed, it will be as though it doesn't even exist.

For some people. When I started out with phasing at the end of December and beginning of January, I lost awareness of my body at Focus 10, but now in Focus 10, I still have awareness of my body, but my senses of sight and smell (I assume taste also) are gone, but my senses of touch and hearing are only slightly reduced. Actually, even in Focus 12 I still have awareness of my body, but it is even less than in Focus 10.

[Yin]

For some people. When I started out with phasing at the end of December and beginning of January, I lost awareness of my body at Focus 10, but now in Focus 10, I still have awareness of my body, but my senses of sight and smell (I assume taste also) are gone, but my senses of touch and hearing are only slightly reduced. Actually, even in Focus 12 I still have awareness of my body, but it is even less than in Focus 10.

yes, there are variances to focus 10, I was just pointing to the opposite extremes to help establish an understanding between sleep paralysis and focus 10.
http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/welcome_to_permanent_astral_topics/focus_10_mind_awakebody_asleep-t24783.0.html, is one of the best posts describing focus 10 and its variances. I was going to get it, but, convo can never flow as you want it to its of course possible that you can have awareness of your body, overlays are fun like that.

[Chris J.]

Ah, I remember reading that post a while ago. It is very good at describing Focus 10.

[Yin]

Ah, I remember reading that post a while ago. It is very good at describing Focus 10.

Yeah, someone far more experienced than me, lol, additionally for Serene

[19:12] <yin> honestly,
[19:12] <yin> i dont even believe having a lack of awareness of the body is even necessary
[19:12] <yin> ITS actually i believe just a side effect
[19:12] <yin> of you not focusing on it
[19:12] <yin> and focusing on phasing into your mind
[19:13] <Chris_Johnston> Yep

[Chris J.]

I think Focus 10 is the very edge of the mind, and as you focus into Focus 12, you are focusing more on your mind, and less of your focus is on the physical, so you have less awareness of it. As you continue focusing deeper, you lose more and more awareness of the physical, and gain more awareness in other regions of consciousness. Eventually, if you keep doing this you could completely lose awareness of the physical.

But this is pretty much just repeating what was said in that IRC log. This is just longer.

[Yin]

i thought I would just put this out there because its such a brilliant post in reference to the tiny hands method and the chakras that assist in phasing-

Reason is you still have a little way to go. 15 months is not a long time to be practising conscious-exit obe.

I'm unsure of your terminology as I'm not into doing any kind of meditation or trance energy work. Thus have no idea what you mean. But there is one stage I do very much recognise where you say you see image flashes. That sounds to me you are seeing what I term "stray energy".

At the stage where your collective sense of conscious awareness is plugging into the part of your brain that interfaces with the Astral, you can see flashes of all kinds of shapes and/ior images. Or, with me, sometimes, rather than seeing anything, I can sense a feeling like as if there was someone standing behind me in the Physical; or mabe I just see shadows, or hear pops and bangs, or whatever.

Sometimes I sense very little and just drift through this stage easily and swiftly, and sometimes I might spend a few minutes watching, and/or listening to a combination of any or all of these things.

It can be a frustrating stage to be at because, at first, many times you see a flash of something and the Physical eyes will try to look, or the Physical ears will try to hear. Worst case that will bring you out of it completely, so there is no choice but to begin again. Or it can keep you on the border line thus prevent you from "passing through" and plug into the Astral proper.

I'd say it is 99.9% certain you still have tension at the front of your brain that is preventing your progress. This is something I have been looking into, over the past few months, in order to try and discover what Monroe was going on about when he talks about "phasing in" to the Astral (Ref: Far Journeys and Ultimate Journey).

I discovered that the BIG barrier to allowing your sense of consciousness to plug into the Astral (or "phase in" as Monroe puts it) is physical tension at the front part of the brain. That is to say, around the eye area and up behind the forehead. Well, strictly speaking, it wasn't me who discovered it entirely. I was given the idea by an Astral guide.

It was something I never thought of before. Years ago, I discovered that relaxing from the head downwards was way, way more effective than relaxing from the feet upwards. But it never
occured to me to think about think about tension in the structure of the brain itself.

What I have also discovered is that tension in the body (of course, provided you have no injuries or other physical problems) is *directly* caused by tension in the brain. Such that, releasing brain-based tension can cause some amazing and immediate effects in the physical body.

For instance, once I was practising seeking out any brain tension. I'd first gotten to the stage where I was relaxed to the point where normally I'd have around 15 to 20 minutes more work in deepening the relaxation state and I'd be at the point of sensing "stray energy".

I imagine the part of the brain that holds the tension is like a squashy rubber ball that has gone a little hard. I think of these tiny hands gently manipulating and massaging this ball and, as I do so, the ball softens and parts. So, on this occasion, I was allowing my sense of conscious awareness to drift upwards to plug into the Astral, as per usual, and perceived the normal sense of resistance.

What I would normally do, at this stage, is imagine I was "looking out" from a point on my forehead that was situated between and just a little up from my physical eyes. Eventually, I would lose all physical-body feeling and begin seeing stray energy. But instead of doing that, I was practising trying to reach the part of my brain that was "resisting" the drifting upwards movement of my sense of conscious awareness.

This was about my tenth attempt, over about 3 weeks or so, and I was trying to reach a point of my brain that seemed about 2 inches behind and 1 inch below my physical eyes. So there I was, imagining this part of the brain as a squashy rubber ball that was gradually softening to the point where the two halves would part. This would form a pathway in order to allow my sense of conscious awareness to continue drifting upwards.

It was a tricky thing to do. Sometimes it felt like I'd got it spot on, and other times I simply wasn't sure. However, on this occasion, after about 5 minutes of massaging, suddenly all sensation of my physical body simply went away. And instantly, I thought, "Wow!"

It was rather surprising and quite an amazing feeling having the Physical literally switch-off. I mean, it was exactly like when you switch off a light at night, and the room instantly goes from light to dark.

I lay there for about 5 minutes, in this state, chuckling to myself realising I had discovered something significant. Not only that, I had truly (and finally!) discovered what Monroe means by "mind awake, body asleep". My mind was incredibly bright and alert, but I had absolutely no feeling of a physical body whatsoever. Not even an inkling, absolutely zilch.

In fact, I imagined that if I had gotten into that same state just accidentally, without knowing anything about obe, etc., it would have been very scary to say the least. Because, even when I thought about moving, it was a case of moving what? There was no sensation of anything physical.

So now when I come to project, I found that there is no need for me to even think about relaxing the physical-body at all. I simply lie back and think of forming a pathway through the brain that leads to the part that connects with the Astral.

At the moment, I just have a inkling of where it is, and it's like I have to clear the tension each time. But each time I do, it gets just a fraction easier. In the sense that it feels like any kind of human learning process. For example, learning to play an instrument. Practise regularly and each week you make a little more progress; because the act of repeating the same actions, over and over, forms permanent pathways in the brain that control the precisely timed muscle movements.

My theory is, the more this pathway to the part of the brain that connects with the Astral is consciously formed and trodden, the more permanent and defined it becomes. And that's what I think Monroe had developed.

All he had to do was to "think" about the Astral and instantly he would connect with it. In exactly the same way as if you have a friend you telephone regularly. All you have to do is think of that friend and their telephone number instantly comes in mind.

This is me again... not Frank~ Here is another post which I can relate to, since imagination resides within the mind it was helpful for me to zoom in on this point and drift my sense of conscious awareness up by using imagery, this is also what popular techniques such as the rope method seek to do. They provide a means to focus upon this fixed point. I'm not so masterful so I can't just shoot it up there as others do. Like I said, "You don't need to believe in energy centers so long as you direct concentrated thought along the path of your third eye chakra to stimulate it which is generally associated with a feeling of drifting upwards." I however like to know what I am sending it to, and sending it to the third eye chakra further drifting it upwards to the crown chakra is easier for me rather than just letting it drift upward and through your head. I think I may have confused some people reading when I said associate with a thought of drifting upwards.. I hope that should clear things up a bit more. Basically, your third eye is what allows you to see into the astral, and your crown chakra is what allows you to actually "phase", or "step in" to what you're seeing.

Successful conscious-exit projection relies on being able to bring yourself to the point where your sense of conscious awareness is focused on a particular place in your mind: which then triggers the projection-reflex. The thought occurs to me that if you are spending hours having your mind flitting here and there, trying all kinds of things, then that isn't going to be of help. But spending two hours a day (say) quietly relaxing, steadily teaching yourself to focus your thoughts and practising allowing your focal point of awareness to rise to that certain place in your mind which triggers the projection reflex. Such would be very beneficial

http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/welcome_to_out_of_body_experiences/i_dont_get_it-t1141.0.html;msg6820#msg6820
http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/welcome_to_out_of_body_experiences/can_you_try_too_much-t1644.0.html;msg10369#msg10369

[Naykid]

Can you add a link to that?  I just love referencing things, makes it all nice and neat.

And can I ask, why did you put the text in blue and red?  Not normal for your posts, just seemed...oddly, deliberate.

[Yin]

sorry, I updated it with links, I didn't really intend for it to be so complicated.. as I just wanted to point out a method for clearing brain tension, lol. I only used red and blue to differentiate between me and Frank because for some reason I didn't feel like putting in the effort to quote it at the time, can't really say I had any conscious motives behind my color choice.

[Yin]

ok, so I tried the tiny hands method last night, and I'm starting to believe that this brain tension isn't wholly physical. Reason I say this is that as I was doing it.. depending on the spot in the brain it would be difficult to imagine the hands massaging it, but once I got them going after the ball dissipated the tension would also, it was as though the ball actually was the tension, and not simply a useful imagery, maybe it's just a really good imagery tool though After that, with my eyes rolled back I kept trying to drift my sense of conscious awareness up to the region and make it my focal point of consciousness. After about 2 minutes I started feeling pulsations in the top of my brain and all of a sudden I felt like I was traveling to no where at 10,000 mph then suddenly stopped, and I could tell I initiated a state change, then it was hello astral swirlies good bye physical. I felt the experiment was successful.. so I stopped there and made mental notes. Will experiment more later.

[Naykid]

Oh,yin, I thought you were taking a cheap shot at MS and his channeling God thread.

But the links is always a good thing. 

[Chris J.]

After about 2 minutes I started feeling pulsations in the top of my brain and all of a sudden I felt like I was traveling to no where at 10,000 mph then suddenly stopped, and I could tell I initiated a state change, then it was hello astral swirlies good bye physical.

I know that feeling all too well. I used to describe it as slamming full speed into a wall without any pain.

[Yin]

Oh,yin, I thought you were taking a cheap shot at MS and his channeling God thread.

But the links is always a good thing.  

Cheap shot? not at all, If only my care for what others have to say that I'm not so interested in could be so great that it would be taken to such an extent on another thread. It's simply that If I were to be into organized religion then I would be Buddhist, thus, I'd be channeling Buddha, for I'd not believe in "god". Or are you saying If I was Buddhist I'd be incapable of channeling Buddha?  I will say that I am coming to find the introduction of other deities besides god even on a forum such as this is rather dismissive implying a favoritism that this forum should lack. Apparently if I were to make a channeling Buddha thread it'd be scorned upon.. so that idea is definitely shot down. However this is not the place to discuss other threads, so, I'm sorry if I have offended you and your friend Mustard Seed as you seem to have taken a defensive attitude towards what I said creating a misguided opinion of me. If you wish to talk further than feel free to pm.

I know that feeling all too well. I used to describe it as slamming full speed into a wall without any pain.

thanks for validating my experiences to myself, sorry I couldn't talk to you on irc today, and yes the feeling definitely was like "slamming" against nothing as it felt like wind was being blown against and through me.

[Naykid]

   Not defensive or offended at all, I was genuinely curious.. it did seem timely.   Then I read you comment on the channeling thread. A tad rude, don't you think?  You can pm me, if you have any questions. 

[Yin]

 Not defensive or offended at all, I was genuinely curious.. it did seem timely.   Then I read you comment on the channeling thread. A tad rude, don't you think?  You can pm me, if you have any questions.  

done, how can you say it wasn't defensive and didn't offend you when you say you found it to be rude? but, whatever, I pm'd.

[Naykid]

done, how can you say it wasn't defensive and didn't offend you when you say you found it to be rude? but, whatever, I pm'd.

I can find you rude, arrogant, or passive aggressive, without being offended.  I promise. 

[Yin]

I can find you rude, arrogant, or passive aggressive, without being offended.  I promise.  

'twould be in my nature if so, but it is not harmful regardless, tis generally healthy, unless the one who replies back is so close minded that it spirals downward into a degrading mess of nothingness to which there is no point in even partaking in discussion anymore. I would say you'd have to be offended for it to be rude, but, definitions do tend to differ.

[Chris J.]

So....


Is there anything else we can help you with?

[SereneMelody]

So....


Is there anything else we can help you with?

Read the whole page of the link you sent yesterday, but I'm only now replying. I'm pretty sure I was already in the focus 10 area, but from what I'd heard, I thought the goal was to aim for sleep paralysis. Never mind that then.

I practiced projecting again this morning, and I was wondering what the next steps are, besides practice...? I'll describe it here. A lot of my body senses faded away, but I could still slightly feel my physical body. There's a part thats a bit hard to describe though; I seemed to be thinking intensely, or having thoughts, but it seemed to go by a bit fast, or something like that, because I forgot just about everything I was focusing on.     
I was disrupted there, because I had to get up for school, but I'm confident if I had kept going I would have gone deeper. I was starting to get into the mind awake/body asleep phase.

I have a few questions; these might be the last ones

1) At what point do you project (OBE)? Somewhere deep in focus 10... correct?
2) Although I was starting to get deeper into it, I didn't feel even a slight tingle, or anything like that. How can you tell when you're supposed to project?

Sorry for my newbie ways, lol. I hope I'm not the only one who was/is stuck in such a low stage.

Thanks. 

[Chris J.]

I practiced projecting again this morning, and I was wondering what the next steps are, besides practice...? I'll describe it here. A lot of my body senses faded away, but I could still slightly feel my physical body. There's a part thats a bit hard to describe though; I seemed to be thinking intensely, or having thoughts, but it seemed to go by a bit fast, or something like that, because I forgot just about everything I was focusing on.     
I was disrupted there, because I had to get up for school, but I'm confident if I had kept going I would have gone deeper. I was starting to get into the mind awake/body asleep phase.

Yeah, that sounds like Focus 10. In Focus 10 I usually feel more awake and aware than normal.

I have a few questions; these might be the last ones

1) At what point do you project (OBE)? Somewhere deep in focus 10... correct?

If you're going with the phasing approach, you just wait until you hit Focus 21. From there, you would focus on where you want to go or what you want to do.

2) Although I was starting to get deeper into it, I didn't feel even a slight tingle, or anything like that. How can you tell when you're supposed to project?

If you're going with the phasing approach, the idea is to let it happen rather than force it to happen. Just go with the flow. Eventually you will phase into Focus 12, then (a big maybe (I say this because I've read some people just zip through it) Focus 15, and eventually Focus 21.

Also, I would just like to say there is a very fine line between allowing it to happen and forcing it to happen, as I keep discovering over and over again.

[SereneMelody]

Your answers helped a lot, thanks. 

So I shouldn't really try projecting until I'm familiar with the higher levels...? And I should just let it happen.

[Chris J.]

In my opinion, once you've reached Focus 10, you have already phased into the very outer edge of your mind, so you're already projecting. Just go with the flow and see where it takes you. Eventually you should end up deeper in your mind in Focus 12, then eventually you'll start finding yourself in Focus 21, from which you can go wherever you want.

Also, don't be surprised if you have problems with falling asleep early on.