kinda' weird...

[blaktatt]

I was out of body the other morning (2am'ish)... and in my bedroom (RTZ, I reckon').
I always hear and read about looking at your hands to clarify your vision and surroundings... so I tried it (had never done that before).
My arms were Black --- I am Black, but this was like pitch-black, like a shadow.... and my hands were big black spiders... when I would wriggle my fingers, the legs of the spider were wriggling --- my hand was a spider.  I thought to myself... alright dude, you're tripping... ask to see something good, and it changed to a bear (I know, what the hell?)... and then it changed back to a spider.  I looked away and as I did, I noticed it dissolving into nothing as I was looking away.  From there I floated throught my window to the outdoors and began flying around.
I guess, from what I've researched that I was in the RTZ where you kind of control how things appear based on your feelings... I guess.
How does anyone else gravitate to a higher plane from there?

[Lionheart]

 I have had shadow vision, I call it before. I used the mental message "clarity now" to overcome this. If that didn't work, I immediately came back to physical and started all over again. It seems to me that by constantly focusing on what was happening with your hands, that you were destroying your ability to focus inside yourself. Which is what you really do need to do to project or phase. Seeing this shadow vision is just another one of these really unique experiences that come along with conscious Astral Travel. Last week I was shown something unique in my Travels to aid my early focus. It was from the movie Inception, that I had watched last year. It was the part of Leonardo using the spinning top to see if he was in the physical realm or not. My twist on this, is now to just focus on the top itself spinning for 10 mins or so, it's incredibly hard to do, but then the top starts changing into new scenes. Alot of it having to do with dancing, which I don't do alot of, lol. I see Ballet, Figure Skating Dancers, all kinds. Then I just let it take me away. I notice more and more that it is becoming easier and easier now to refine new methods of reaching the Astral even faster. Hopefully this helps you on your journeys!

[astraladdict]

I
My arms were Black --- I am Black

Sorry but, i laughed hard to that one xD You saw those hands cause of your mindset before you projected. Either conscious or self conscious ( The mind set ) I usually stay in a higher plane, but i go down to the lower at times to have some fun, or to work. The first couple of times i projected, i would look at my hands. It looked like my physical hands only it was kind of see through, completely white, and on the inside i saw my energy flowing around as if it were my vains.

~astraladdict

[Boom]

I personally think its probably not a good idea to look at yourself whilst OBE/Astral Projecting.  The reason for this, is that you will start thinking "my body" and as such you could easilly throw yourself back to the physical.

Try not to worry about what you look like when projecting. As technically you don't look like anything. Just perhaps keep an assumption that you look exactly the same, but dont look at yourself to clarify this.