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Like berserk said, its mostly a process. Over time each of the seemingly endless little problems will fade away. Its like learning to do anything, like a sport. Each maneuver or facet of the sport you slowly learn to perfect with practice until it becomes subconscious and you don't even have to try.

But even with that being said, here's some things to try that helped me. First the fear thing.. The more you *think* about the fear, whether thinking about being afraid or thinking about NOT being afraid, just thinking about it will increase it. But the best way to overcome it is always to confront it. You will eventually, there's no way around it. I recommend spending a few hours lieing in bed with *pitch blackness* and your eyes open. Watch the darkness, meditate with your eyes open in the darkness.. your fear will come and go come and go and as you learn that it is completely internal you will get over it. As for the clearing your mind thing, I find the easiest thing to do is kind of mentally point and aknowledge every topic that your mind wants to think about at the time.. maybe job, money, love life.. and get specific too, pet sick, carpet dirty maybe? grab ahold of those thoughts in one big ball and mentally decide "not right now" then make the ball poof.

Hope that helps.

Here's an easy solution for you. OBE/AstralProjection are nothing more than dreaming. Sometimes people dream about other people (!). When you think about someone alot, or think about a topic alot, those things manifest themselves (!). Granted, we seem to all be connected not only to each other but to all of existance in a way we will never fully understand - which brings about unexplainable coincidences and seemingly psychic-related events.

That's as simple as it gets really. Most here might not agree with me, but I can safely assure you the cause of all this is you've absorbed too many fantastical ideas on the mind/body topic and your mind has run away with them.

My sincere advice is to put away all the theories/opinions and potential fears you may have on the topic and start from the basics of daily meditation and dream journalling. Once the experiences start you can explore things first hand, objectively, and build your knowledge base from that.

Your dreams/experiences are trying to teach you. Right now they could be telling you WHY you should pay attention. "Use it or lose it" comes to mind (as referring to wisdom, which is what owls commonly represent).

As silly and ridiculous as the post was, what its saying does hold some legitimacy.

The problem is you may not like the answers to alot of your questions, including who is your soul mate =)

Here's my experience on it. Personally, I don't believe I've ever left my body. Many many times in these "experiences" I've been faced with situations that make it seem as though I'm having an OBE but a little subjective observation will make it obvious this is not the case. I don't personally believe in OBE at least not in the sense of going around the real physical world and viewing real events etc.. What CAN and often DOES happen is your mind will recreate real life areas and you can't tell the difference.. most people are predisposed to believing these illusions when people tell them these experiences are OBEs.

So what do I think is happening? They're all dreams. By dreams I simply mean your mind is creating the reality. Your physical body, at least all minus the brain, has zero relevance to the *completely real* reality you'll experience. The only true question remains is mind separate from the brain.

Astral Projection / Dreams, lucid or not, are capable of being as real as the "real" world we know while awake. The only thing is we generally don't fully realize this until we experience them in that lucid state (having full self-awareness). To say that this is all in our heads is to say that each human brain is capable of creating a reality equal to the universe itself. This alone is proof enough for me that this is most definately something metaphysical.

You just kind of know.. when you're truly awake you know it without a doubt whereas when you're dreaming sometimes you don't know. I can at least say I've never heard of anyone being unable to tell and ACTUALLY rolling out of the bed accidentally.

Ya there's two paths to take here. The first is getting into the reality checks seriously hardcore.. The second path is to try and have lucid dreams without reality checks. And by that I mean after you already wake up in the morning to try and fall back into a dream consciously. You have to immediately try to do it upon waking. Ideally before you toss/turn or move any body parts and before you get too awake. Just relax your body and mind relax and feel yourself falling. You'll likely get vibrations, possibly sleep paralysis, and all you have to do is roll off your bed.

My guess is you were already in an OBE and just didn't realize it.

Here's the real reason this is all a lie. If moving physical world objects while in OBE (which is really just a lucid dream, stop deluding yourselves) were possible you could just head on down to the National Archives in Washington D.C. and move the Declaration of Independence out of its place. A few plays at this would set up such an outroar that OBE travel would instantly gain world wide eyes.

However, since its all a lie.... ya.

Usually its when you feel you have gained some piece of knowledge that makes you seem as though you finally get the big picture so to speak (or at least you think you've locked in one more puzzle piece towards the solution)  and this newfound enlightenment is usually accompanied by a feeling of losing a mass burden that has been hanging over your life. I would say the first time this happens is your real spiritual awakening. However, alot of people constantly undergo this re-awakened experience as they discover something new and constantly revamp their idea of the big picture. Real enlightenment (I think) is in realizing that you know nothing and then being ok with it.

I hate to be the party pooper here but you're definately not going to find real evidence of this qbeac. People who make such claims either lie or are delusional. I would recommend sticking to your original OBE validation tests.

Ya it may be harsh to say this, but its true. This is definately one of those "flying saucer" type phenomenons. Even though I say this, I'm right at the top of the list of people who want to be proven wrong. I BEG someone to prove me wrong, though I still highly doubt it will happen.

So much confusion on this thread. From reading Abraham's posts as well as most others offering serious debate I think you guys actually agree to alot more than you realize. First of all God is just a title. God as a sentient being, would not have a name for himself. Assuming God is even aware of himself, which is just as likely as not likely, (hard to explain, but I could basically see it as complete outward focus of attention, creating and knowing only the creation itself) he likely does not have a name for himself. Assuming he does in fact know all (all that is all of existance as has been created from him) he is likely intelligent and wise beyond our comprehension. Or perhaps we who are created in his image so says the bible, so we could be just as capable of his intelligence/wisdom... we also have the ability of creation (dreams? not to mention the idea that we mold our own reality either individually or collectively). Even in that theory if we are pieces of God and he is the top of the pyramid so to speak he would collectively have our minds and thus LIKELY be much superior in knowing and wisdom. Regardless of which theory you arrive at, in your theory you must agree that God is not petty enough to care about things as silly as human practices involving religion, what name they worship God under, etc.. In fact I HIGHLY doubt God has created all that is in order to be worshipped or praised. Some would argue that regardless of whether he wanted us to, he deserves it? Perhaps, but I imagine if that were the case he'd much rather us just live our lives that he has given us- would that not be praise enough. On the virgins topic I think that's simply meant as an example of Heaven not necessarily meant to be taken literally. As is much of each religious book. Ultimately they are written by human men (and women =p), and that in itself guarantees flaws. They are useful to put us on that road towards meeting/understanding God but I think the true road lies in self-discovery and not in following those books word for word. Use your mind, the greatest gift God has given you. Search for him within YOU, and not within a book. There you'll find all the answers you need. Question everything that is outside of yourself- which is the entire world.

Sadly I can't write nearly nearly nearly as much as I would like to on this subject. I already forgot 3/4 of what I was planning to write before I started my post. And I apologize for the lack of paragraphs.

(Btw, these are just some of the many possible ideas/scenarios and do not represent what I personally believe on the topic.)

Why.

That's the funny thing about getting angry. You get angry at someone because you feel they've done something wrong (in this case flaming people) and your anger is justified because they are the wrongdoer and you are in the right. Then you take that anger and flame him right back. What does that make you? Yep, a hypocrite.

Moral of the story, no need to be harsh and throw insults around.

My take on it is all experiences are the same thing. That is to say, they're all X. Not out of body experiences, not dreams (because people think of dreams as existing only in your head), just X. Whether X is a product of your physical brain or not I cannot say. During X we CAN have influence that seems supernatural ie the existance of physical world objects and locations. But my experience has been that these cases are not the ACTUAL real objects/locations existing in the physical world but simply copies of them. So what it proves is simply extra sensory perception, not the existance of OBEing.

So, call it want you want. I go ahead and call them all dreams as its more realistic in my mind than saying you're leaving your body to float around the physical world (OBE). Just recognize that for me "dreams" is a label and not necessarily a definition.

This is all just my opinion.

[expectations]

The one thing I've learned is explanations are meaningless. 99.9% of people on this subject who claim to know what's going on don't have anymore clue than a newcomer.

So while it seems natural to want to create explanations for what's going on, I recommend avoiding it as it only deters you from being more perceptive to the details and hidden messages of it all. The more you learn, the more you'll realize you know nothing. Explanations create tendancies to try and manipulate your experiences to fit the rule system you've hypothesized, and they also affect your expectations when you're actually having an experience which play a heavy role on everything that happens.

I get all of the above things as well when meditating. But that's it.

"He went to the moon"

And apparently he then instantly died. Oh whoops, story ends..

Well lkjewr, as I've never successfully had an OBE during meditation I can only tell you what I try. And that is I lay down on my back, relax my body a little bit, let it get comfortable and light feeling. I then either try exiting by clearing my mind as best I can and letting the feeling of my body fade away -OR- I try to phase straight into the OBE through visualization of scenes. By visualization I mean creating a scene in my head and following it through trying to immerse all my senses within it and trying not to notice my physical body at all. Either I do this or I try the 'noticing' exercise where I watch my blank mind fill randomly with images and just notice and discard each image until they get stronger and more vivid.
(EDIT, sorry I answered the wrong question)

Above is what I try when I meditate. All my successful exits however are in the morning. The one you specifically asked is when I relax into sleep paralysis. There's not much to say there because it is like 5% technique and 95% conditions. When you're in the right condition, or the right mental state I should say (not too awake but justttt awake enough) I simply clear my mind and feel my body relaxing/falling a bit and voosh, I'm instantly put into sleep paralysis. I experience heavy vibrations, and I simply roll out of my bed with my mental senses (mental aka imagined senses, as opposed to your physical body doing it). As soon as I roll out I'm in a full blown OBE.

I used to have problems falling asleep until I started meditating. Now when I want to fall asleep I simply "let go". Letting go is kind of like releasing my care of what is happening. The problem is I can't fake it, or to be more clear I can't let go when my TRUE intention is to remain conscious as I cross the sleep/awake border. I have to truely want to let go, and want nothing more than to give in to sleep, in order to be able to do it. Its an all or nothing deal. It seems impossible to cross the border consciously, no matter how much you focus on keeping your mind still and focused. You must be letting go to cross the border, and then hopefully you 'realize yourself' as soon as you've crossed. It seems plausible as a theory but I don't know if I can unwire my mind the way it is currently. I won't give up hope though.

A good way to confront your general fear of the unknown which this really is, is to spend a few nights meditating in pitch blackness with your eyes open. Also try the same thing standing up... This really brings out that irrational fear of the unknown and lets you stand against it. After doing this several times you will finally start to at the very least gain some rational control over your emotion and/or develop a guard against fear completely.

[anything]

/sigh to all the people who think physical-reality validation tests during OBE prove anything at all...

What it proves is nothing more than that extra-sensory perception exists which most anyone will already admit to. I am not saying OBEs are all in the brain- in fact I believe exactly the opposite. However, these tests do not prove by any full-proof means that an OBE is real or fake or anything inbetween as you would perceive it.

It could be said the proof you're looking for does not exist, and yet we each feel that our personal experiences (whatever they may be) have lent us the proof we need to validate our personal beliefs (whatever those may be as well). The truth is there will never be solid proof, there will always be cracks that ask "but what if?" There are only possibilities, and our faith towards choosing from them.

1 in 2 mornings I wake up, I luckily remember to try and have OBEs before I'm "too" awake. There are a multitude of methods I can go about getting there (phasing / relax into sleep paralysis + roll out / and others). Lets just say I'm very experienced at all the sensations / mental states / techniques / etc that go with it and its very easy to have 4-5+ projections in one morning.

However still a year and a half into this I cannot pull myself into an OBE from meditation- that is to say being awake and deciding to meditate and try to OBE. I can get the feeling of my body very light and floaty, I can get spinning sensations, etc etc. But my mind just won't let go it seems. I can't seem to find out what the secret is to bypassing this 'wall' that separates point a, as deep as I can go in meditation, from point b, that only barely awake state I'm in after waking that is SO easy to project from.

I've thought about going the mental exhaustion route. Any suggestions?

My sincere advice, and I believe so strongly in it that I will guarantee it will make 'them' go away forever.

Stop thinking about them. If you think about them anyway, tell yourself they're not real and also make them into a joke. Stop being afraid. Believe you cannot be hurt, and that they and anything else cannot do anything to bother you. Be strong, be unafraid, be confident, and be light-hearted. If you're faced with them anyway, simply calm yourself completely and be at peace- in doing so they will be effectively neutralized.