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Hey again

Been away for a while.. life leads you in different directions.. I've been giving Astral stuff a miss for a while now just because of physical life stuff getting in the way and then getting married and all that stuff. The last couple of days I've felt a natural urge or push back in this direction and today I just happened to start reading through the Frank Kepple PDF again.

I had a lot of good experiences last year and hoping to conitnue to have more with a bit of catch up. I have a new perspective on things and hope to give it a fresh start.

One thing that, I think, helped me on my "outing" is that after realising I was in a dream, I thought to myself "Oh, I'm dreaming. That means I can try OBE." and before I even finished the thought I was "awake" in my mind but my body was still asleep (sleep paralysis). So the intent to give OBE a try was there. Also, once I reached that sleep paralysis, or MindAwakeBodyAsleep, state, I didn't waste any time trying to analyse or understand the feelings I was having. I saw the opprtunity and took it/used it immediately and without delay. I've read some literature that talks about the fact that even if you do nothing for only a few seconds, you can possibly lose the focus of the moment and fail in your attempt. So don't waste time trying to work out if you're in the state or not, just try to will yourself out of your body. As you experience the sensation more and more, you'll recognise the state in a heartbeat and will just go for it... it really is more about "allowing it to happen" than trying to force the experience.

Last night when I realised I was dreaming (ie. became lucid) it was my fiancee's face that I saw. It was like the scene shifted from the general dream and then suddenly she was standing in front of me and all I could see was her face. That's the point I realised I was dreaming.

Also, when I had finished my adventures and became aware of my physical body again, I noticed that we were holding each other's hand..

In regards the "balls of light", they looks like a small sphere of energy, pale yellow in colour with a halo of the same pale yellow light energy around them. The inner sphere would have been around the size of a soccer ball, with the halo having a radius about double that size.

Had 3 successful OBEs last night!!   The first, and subsequent experiences started when I became lucid in a dream I was having. The moment I realised I was in a dream, I immediately thought, "oh.. I'm dreaming. then that means I can..." and so I found myself in my physical bed, experiencing the sleep paralysis state. I recognised the state immediately and didn't waste anytime measuring or analysing the feelings. I just immediately used my intent to move away from my body.

I was laying on my side, so I was willing myself to move sideways in an upward direction. At first nothing really happened and I felt the same intense lock-jaw feeling I had a few weeks ago when this happened. I didn't get scared or worried, I understood what the feeling was. I just focused on aligning my jaw so it was less uncomfortable. It still felt like my jaws were clenched shut, just that it felt more aligned.

Then I tried to move sideways again and I was out!!! I didn't waste anytime in moving away from my body, just flew/floated out of my bedroom, through the walls and got 2 rooms away before I blacked out. I don't really remember a blacked out state as such, just that I was floating one moment then before I was back in bed there was a brief, indeterminate time before I was consciously aware again.

Still in the sleep paralysis state, I tried again. Went through the same aligning of the jaw because it was clenched so tight. If you can imagine what your jaw would be like if you were being electrocuted then that is what the clenched jaw feels like. So it's not just simply an inability to move my jaw but a clenched, uncomfortable feeling.

Anyway, I relaxed again and willed myself sideways and up again but this time I decided to float up. I could see as I went through the layers in the roof (I live on the top floor of my apartment block) but when I got out into the open I couldn't see anything anymore. I tried the "Awareness 100%" affirmation a couple of times; first just "softly" as if it was just a thought with no meaning or real intent and when that didn't do anything I put more force and intent behind it. Still no change in my ability to see, so after a few seconds I decided to "reset" and return to my body.

Fortunately I was still in the sleep paralysis state (yay!) and went through the same alignment stuff again. During each of these alignments, I did notice a kind of vibration but nothing like described in the literature. It was more like a bubbling feeling within some but not all parts of my body. I also noticed an extra sense of warmth in my body but particularly my hands and feet. The one thing that was a constant each time was the clenched jaw.

This third time I willed myself sideways and up again, then proceeded to fly out the window. I was very aware and while I was over a river, it was not the same river that is outside my window in physical plane. At that point, I remembered the energising techniques of rubbing my hands together at the same time as looking at them in detail. this increased my visual awareness profoundly and I felt stable. I started to fly around the river, just above it. I found it harder than I was expecting to keep myself level or at a specific height of my choice. I thought to myself, "looks like I will need to practice this a bit." and so I continued to fly around a while, trying to go up a little and then down a little etc

After a while, which seemed to be a few minutes, I suddenly had the thought to contact my, or one of my, "guides". First I stated my desire and then I restated it using the "I deeply desire..." wording and put some additional desire and intent behind it. For no apparent reason I chose to stop flying forward and turn around. As I did this, I saw a glowing ball of yellow light flying towards me. As it reached me, I guess I got a bit excited and started to bombard the ball of light with questions. One question I remember asking was "how can I do this again?" because I hadn't been having any.luck until this random occurrence. I must have lost my focus at that point, possibly due to my excitement, and this time I could feel the scene fading rather than it being a sudden black out. As I was fading, I noticed another pale yellow ball of light that must have been there at the same time though I hadn't noticed it till that point.

Once back in my body, I no longer felt the sleep paralysis but tried to induce it manually, unfortunately without success. As I became more aware of my physical surroundings, I noticed that I was holding my fiancée's hand. Then I also noticed I need to pay a visit to the toilet and at that point surmised that perhaps the reason I had lost focus was more to do with that than getting too excited.

All in all, three very enjoyable and satisfying experiences. I just wish I could achieve these states more directly and not have to rely on becoming lucid in a dream.

There's two ways I do the "mental rundown".

1. See yourself from 3rd person, like in a dream. This method is useful if you want to visualise yourself doing things.

2. Focus on an object or objects within the scene from 1st person. Allow the scene to build around those objects but remain focused on those objects. You could imagine a scene with a small river running merrily through nothingness, then allow the scene to naturally build around it, filling in the details but all the while concentrating on the river.

Not sure what happened but now I can freely access the forums.. *shrug*

I tried to go there (at work) but got some odd warning from my company's network thing:

"This Websense category is filtered: Potentially Damaging Content. Sites in this category may pose a security threat to network resources or private information, and are blocked by your organization."

Not sure why that would be.. you can maybe send a message to Websense at suggest@websense.com and ask them to re-evaluate the website. Try and get them to not categorise it as social networking though.. that would be a pain in the rear for me as well..

I guess it's similar in concept to "Forced Sleep" techniques but I guess it's best described as attuning your perception to the same feelings and perceptions as when you were in that dream. When we are in the dream state, all of this non-physical 'stuff' feels and is so natural and second-nature etc etc.. When we are trying to wrestle with the ability to transition (or phase) to a state of non-physical awareness, it seems all but impossible to get into that "can do anything" frame of mind that comes so readily in the dreamstate.

So I assume this technique attempts to bridge the gap by using a memory of a dream to recall feelings and thoughts that are already in a state of non-physical.

BWGen (short for Brain Wave Generator) is a free, open-source binaural beat generator. I also have edenBeats on Android phone for quick setup beats.. but BWGen is the one to create more complex, changing-over-time style beat files. It works for me.. and a few others here.. it's more about enhancing and/or inducing the trance rather than forcing anything to happen though. The purpose of Binaural Beats is two-fold, as I understand it.

Firstly, your ear can not hear frequencies as low as, say 4Hz for example, so in order to achieve a perception of 4Hz you create a frequency in a perceivable range such as 100Hz in one ear and plus or minus 4Hz in the other ear (either 96Hz or 104Hz). The brain then automatically creates a beat at 4Hz.. I won't try to explain how it does it.. I have a vague idea and I've read the literature but I am no expert.

Secondly, is the theory of "Hemi Sync" as termed by The Monroe Institute, whereby the generation of this binaural beat actually synchronises the left and right hemispheres creating a "full brain" state of utilisation.

Anyway.. give it a go but make sure you definitely use stereo headphones otherwise it won't work.

No significance really, not in the way you mean. It is significant/relevant to you in that it is what you see when you close your eyes.. heheh.. it's your own personal set of imagery.. Maybe later when you can sort the trash from the treasure on your own, after many months/years of practise, you might be able to find the true significance of it.. but for now.. don't read much into it..

You will be there, at least your conscious will. Your physical body is a vessel that aides you here in the physical world. Your conscious can be wherever you wish it to be. 

To expand on this.. you are actually "there" all the time ("will be there" implies that you are here now and then at some future point in time, you will be somewhere else). Just that your awareness is primarily focused on the physical body and physical sensory perception when you are fully conscious. Meditation and AP/OBE practise is a means to allow your body and all of its physical senses to "switch off" while you still remain fully conscious.

Normally when your body 'goes to sleep' and your senses "switch off", your conscious minds switches off too because there is no sensory input. Then after some time it begins to 'dream' and so on. You essentially need to reach that same point but in a fully conscious state. As you get better at staying conscious, not to mention your mind and body growing accustomed to doing this, the process will begin to become easier and quicker as well as more consistent.

Only continual and regular practise, like with anything, will see you through.

That "dot".. focus on that.. ignore the bodies and other things moving in toward the dot. Notice they are there but remain focused on the dot.. when the images clear, keep focusing on the dot.. If the dot disappears keep focusing where the dot was.. in fact even when the dot is there, try to focus just beyond the dot by a few inches or even a foot beyond it. Use the dot as a point of reference to "gaze" at and allow everything else to happen without even thinking about them.

As others have suggested, I think you simply need to remain in the trance a bit longer.. you should use your intent affirmations before you reach this state. So when you reach that point of calmness that you said made you feel like you were ready to begin.. that is what I call my launching point, or starting point. (e.g. of intent affirmation: "I am greater than my physical body and because of this I deeply desire to understand, use and experience my greater energy and greater energy systems beyond my physical form." or something liek that.. I forget the full Monroe Institute affirmation.. it's a long one and hard to remember unless you repeat it a bunch of times.. but it's more about intent than it is about saying words in your head).

I was reading through one of Robert Monroes books and he was saying that the longer he spent getting used to the astral, the less his form took on a human shape.. he stresses that you are still most definitely "you" but that after a while there becomes no need to have a mirror image of your body and that, he implies, it was only there to make you feel comfortable and be able to relate to what you were sensing/perceiving/experiencing.

So.. 'getting your astral body back' seems to be contrary to the natural evolution.. when you think about it, it makes more sense to be a cloud of mist or a ball of light/energy than it does to have an astral representation of your "physical" body... you're not in the physical realm of existance/awareness anymore, so why should you have a physical-looking body? Only reason is, as mentioned above, to give yourself a little assurance/security that you are still "you".

Just announcing my engagement with my girlfriend hehhehhhe

I am so excited (and nervous) that I am telling everyone! hahahaha

Been way too long since I was into all that "stuff".. but couldn't you just generate a thoughtform body in whatever likeness you would prefer and then after projecting as a "cloud", you could slip into the body and take control of it? It's your thoughtform that you have created.. like a shell, empty and waiting for you to go inside and take control. You'd still be essentially the "mist" or "smoke" but you would fill up the shell with your mist like a bubble or balloon filled with smoke.. then control the thoughtform body shell as you would the physical body shell.

Here's a detailed account of a phasing attempt I made 2 nights ago:

http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/welcome_to_out_of_body_experiences/emptiness_ater_attempts-t35449.0.html;msg294348#msg294348

There's a few other posts in that thread that may be able to answer some of the same questions you have here.

Well I certainly didn't get a full phase but yes, I would consider it to be successful though. It was the first time I've really been able to properly passively observe the other scene. There was an experience I had a few days back where I was having an odd sensory experience that I remained passive to but nothing like this with scenery etc. I can readily see how that through all this practise, things are slowly becoming easier and easier to do. I still have a ways to go yet, though I am open to being surprised.. hehe, however it is experiences like above that keep me aware that it is possible and that motivates me to try again and again.

What matters is not what others think it means but what you think it means. There's no right or wrong. Symbology is fine for things that you have witnessed AFTER you have researched symbology but using symbology to define subjective experiences BEFORE you are even aware of those symbols may provide inaccurate definitions and meanings.

Your "self" is delivering a message to you in a way you will be able to understand if you explore the concepts and ideas delivered in the dream. Just like some people use different words that mean the same thing, other people use other words. It's still the same meaning at a base level but for both people there are deeper meanings behind the words they are using.

Only through self examination can you find the true meaning of your own subjective experiences. They are yours and yours alone. For example the fact you mentioned the fence being bamboo as compared to a white picket fence.. for you there is some reason that it appeared like that. What emotions and feelings do you get when you think of a fence like that.. they will be, most likely, different feelings than I would have about the same thing. It's still the same thing.. a bamboo fence but what does it mean to you on a deeper level is something only you can answer.

Don't over-analyse, generally the first thing that you think of is the correct meaning. That is the whole point of your "self" delivering the message to you in that way. If you were going to get the "wrong" meaning with "that" item or whatever being presented, then your "self" wouldn't have presented it to you in the first place. It shows you what you need to know in the form you will be able to understand it (provided you examine it beyond face-value).

Here's what I got from using the stream/river scene, including detailed account of what I did up to that point, in my experiments last night:

Started off normally with eyes closed, laying down in bed making sure I was warm but not too hot (I've had enough failed attempts because my feet, or other extremity, were cold to make a point of doing this now) I put on Xanth's 4Hz beat/100Hz frequency recording on my MP3 player and started my breathing exercises.

My breathing exercises are VERY simple these days: I breath in deeply but slowly through my nose, hold for a second or two and then as I breathe out, I make a point of feeling my whole body relaxing and releasing tension. It's like each out breath is performed simply by allowing the breath to flow out, by allowing my muscles to relax. Each time I exhale, using this method, I immediately feel a calming and relaxing feeling from my feet, through my legs all the way up to my head. I only need to do this about 4 or 5 times. There's no visualisation other than thinking of my feet and legs during this exercise. That's enough to get me settled usually.

As I lay there, my eye might get itchy, or my ear, or where ever.. it's better to scratch those itches than to try and ignore them because while they are there, a part of your focus will be on them.. they are distracting. Moving for a brief moment is less of a detriment than allowing the itch to go on for a long time. Anyway, so I sort out any itches or physical feelings of discomfort and if there were a lot of itches, like there was for me last night, I will do a couple more breaths after I have sorted them out.

So now I am laying there, looking at the back of my eyelids, completely calm, relaxed but obviously still not in a "body asleep" mode yet. I imagine/think about my hand in front of my face about one foot away and focus on that point. I don't actually use my physical hand, just that I find it easier to focus on an external point if I imagine a part of myself extending to that point to begin with.

Anyway, I lay there.. gazing into the "blackness" (as per my other posts in other threads, it's not really black.. but more like a cloud of energy) and just keep listing to the binaural beats, enjoying the increasing relaxation and affirming to myself that "I deep desire to experience an out of body experience" or something along those lines. Basically just a setting of my intention, to make it clear what I am doing all this for etc etc

After a few minutes I notice a shift in awareness, it's just a subtle movement in my perception, hard to explain but it's easily detected when it happens. It's like my body suddenly goes from being calm and relaxed to being ULTRA RELAXED. Now I have come to recognise this as my starting point, so I begin to visualise the stream scene.

It's important, for me at least, to not attempt to visualise the entire scene in one go. First I will start with just the river/stream; what is the colour of the water, is it a slow of fast running stream, is it deep, is it wide or narrow. Then I start to expand on the river, moving outwards; what is the bank of the river like.. is it rocky, pebbles, muddy, grass; is there rocks or rapids in the water, if I can see the bottom of the river then what is on the bottom of the river? Is it sand, is it rocky, are there fish in there etc Now I move further away to the shores of the river; is the grass short, tall, patchy.. are there trees, bushes, flowers. What about a bridge across the river...

Essentially the only thing you want to be concentrating on is the river itself but looking at it from an angle, from a reasonable distance so that you can see around it a little. Still standing or laying on the side of the river. As you gaze at the river, don't think those things above.. just notice what is in and around the river. Don't force there to be grass, don't actually think "Is it wide, is it narrow, is it deep, is it shallow".. don't analyse it intellectually.. just notice whether it is one thing or another. The scene should build by itself as you widen your awareness of the area. Again, keep your focus on the actual running water itself, allowing the rest of the scene to remain in your peripheral. You should be gazing beyond all those things and focusing on the river.

Ok so for me last night, as I got to the point where I started to notice trees I became aware of a lighted, patterned area to the lower-left of my "visual" perception. Again, it's important to just keep focusing on your focal point (in this case, the river). I've noticed that this other "thing" is there, I acknowledge it without thinking about it or focusing on it. The "thing" becomes a little clearer now and my awareness slowly but surely shifts away from the river. I'm not consciously doing this, I'm just allowing the new scene/thing to take over. Even during this transition, I make a point to keep my focus on the river and rather than the new scene fading away, it actually becomes more and more focused and real.

At some point, I can't really say when, the new scene became the main point of focus. Up until that point it was just a splish-splosh of light and dark; very much like looking up in a forest and looking at the canopy of branches and leaves. You can see the light from the sky but there are dark bits where teh leaves and branches are. When the scene became clearer, I noticed that I was looking through a bamboo forest. I was very close to one of the bamboo stalks and kind of peering around it.

Where the river scene was a vague, imaginary place. The bamboo forest was more real but still of a dream-like quality. It was at this point that I had this strange sensation of being passively aware but at the same time looking through this scene as if I was there. It wasn't OoBE or fully phased.. I knew that for sure but it was like I was pushing myself to the side as something was coming past. Like when you are walking in a crowded place, your focus is on your destination and there are people going every which way but you just weave yourself, automatically, through the crowd without focusing on any of them. It's VERY hard for me to explain this part of the experience, what I was feeling, in any great detail as it was something I've not really experienced before.

So after this scene was presenting itself to me, I remained in a passive state and then I noticed yet another scene forming to the lower-left of my "vision". This one was moving, like going through a corridor with no discernable ceiling. So not quite a tunnel but the same idea. It was moving quite quickly and seemed to be more of the same light and dark stuff but in a different set of colours than before. At this point things started to become confused and I'm not really sure what happened but the new scene started to fade and my awareness of the bamboo forest started to become less real also. I tried, maybe too hard, to recover and follow into the tunnel/corridor as I felt that it might be a way to get to a full phased state.

In the end though, I ended up back to my fully relaxed calm state and even though I tried to go back to the river scene I didn't get anything further than that. I sat in a awareness state or just listening to the binaural beats, gazing into the nothingness for a while longer and then I started to get an itchy nose and called it. All done and said, the experience lasted approximately 25 minutes based on the amount of time that had transpired on the MP3 player.

Sorry this is so long.. I just wanted to go through the whole process in as much detail as possible to possible help others trying to figure this out.

Yer.. all the people I've known who had the procedure done are glad they did, no regrets at all. They love being free of their glasses for the first time in their lives, since the people I know have (like me) had glasses since they were kids... for me though, I have somehing wrong with my retina in my left eye.. so even if I had the procedure done, I'd still have limited vision in my left eye.. so I guess that is clouding my view (no pun intended) of the matter further..

Yer.. maybe it's also dependant on the different type of Lasik and what procedure needs to be done etc.. Dunno.. I thought you could basically walk in, walk out and that was it.. I know in the past it wasn't that easy but I thought it had been improved.. still, I am way too wary of it myself.. glasses suck.. even contact lens have their downsides... but I'd much rather not put my eyes at risk, even though the risk is low, with surgery.

When you do make sure you have a minder.  Afterwards you need to 'not' do certain things, like look down-for a certain amount of time.  You'd be surprised about how many times you drop things and have to leave them there until someone else picks them up for you.
My mom had the surgery in one eye first, recovered a week and then had the second one- and told me she'd wished she had both done at the same time, to avoid two weeks of not looking down.

You can't look down for a whole week? I've never heard of that one.

Par-Lu Wynew

Yer.. as the others have said, it sounds like you are trying to force the process. With everything I have read and learned about OoBE's, it's something that you need to "allow" to happen. It seems like you may have also got a bit excited and/or begun to analyse what was happening. Both of these reactions can stop an OoBE attempt in its tracks.

Your goal is to OoBE.. that's the main goal.. but like so many other things you should set milestones to reach along the way and take meaning from these milestones. For example when learning music, you can't hope to play like Joe Satriani (or your favourite artist) from the first day or even the first year. You need to practise, day after day, week after week. Along the way to being "great" though there are many moments where you realise how far you have come from that first day you picked up the instrument for the first time. Take satisfaction from these moments, enjoy them and get as much out of them before moving on towards the next milestone.