Topics

[Do you live in the SF bay area? Do you want to hang out with like-minded explorers, sharing and benefiting from everyone's experiences?]

Do you live in the SF bay area? Do you want to hang out with like-minded explorers, sharing and benefiting from everyone's experiences?

I'm part of a meetup group for OBEs / lucid dreams that is looking for a few more explorers to join us who live in the area.

The next meetup is this Saturday afternoon, and we've been doing it every other Saturday. There's no agenda. We just have fun talking about recent experiences, techniques, and other metaphysical stuff.

Meetup link:
http://bit.ly/2cLe8NG

I've suspected for a while that when I wake at night and adjust my sleeping position it sometimes involves no physical movement and I'm projecting NP.

Last night I finally confirmed that something is going on there by catching myself twice while waking, standing up instead of rolling over. Both times I was non physical. Maybe the usual rolling over part is physical but standing up is a large enough movement that I move separately from my sluggish physical body and cause a NP projection.

On the first occurrence last night my physical eyes may have been open, as has happened like this a few times, as I stood up feeling the living room rug under me as I took a few steps without my visual view changing perspective. I ignored it and gave myself a moment to adjust, standing there. I felt something in my hand and dropped it, but then I thought maybe it was something that would prove useful shortly and that I had in my hand for a reason (), so I snatched it back up. I considered how I might blink and activate my NP vision without becoming too aware of my physical eyes. I blinked carefully but it didn't work. Finally I was happy to see a scene open up around me, as it meant my NP vision was activating. I began to lose awareness as I went into dream mode, running around finding big elephant like creatures but not any humans.

I woke again and stood up again NP, the same as before, with my physical vision seemingly activated as before. This time, however, I became aware of my breath and my awareness went physical.

So overall I'm happy that I confirmed what I suspected about it being a NP opportunity. Hopefully I will keep remembering to try standing up when I wake.

I'm a little unsure about how to avoid slipping into idiot dream mode. I'm so enthused about something happening that I dive right into it instead of... I don't know, just staying still and observing its meaning or stopping to ask for guidance or something.

I've been reading Monroe's books. With the way I am, I knew that reading about it every day would quickly cause me to have and remember some experiences.

Last night I started off in a lucid dream, looked around the room, and I sensed that it was just a dream. So I did a brief movement of some sort, kind of like what you do to wake up, but with the intention of going somewhere real out of body instead of waking. I didn't want to push it too hard or I felt like I would wake up, so I did it carefully. The environment became uncertain, but then it went back to the same as it was before, or similar. I figured I'd explore a bit if my choice was between that and waking, so I did and lost control of my consciousness or whatever you call that when you get caught up in the dream.

So, a few options I can think of to get out of the dream and to somewhere more significant -

- Fly up and leave the planet, with the theory that the dream is an actual "place" in the Earth system in the sense that it's a fictional place I'm creating in the same plane as others, and I can simply leave it by travelling up
- Abort the dream by dismissing the environment altogether and do a sort of moving or backing off (as I did last night) repeatedly until I find myself some other place acceptable
- Asking for someone to assist me out of there
- Wake up and try again, because I'm not going to get anywhere once I'm in a dream

One thing I think is helping is being constantly aware and conscious of sensations, sounds and images and not just konking out to sleep. I frequently wake up at night, and I would bet there have been tons of times I wasn't physically awake but I simply continued to dream of myself lying there sleeping. It makes me think of the dazed people in the inner rings Monroe talks about who are just standing there unaware. Monroe wrote about having continual consciousness rather than going to sleep and waking up out of body. When I had a questionable experience several months ago, it happened right after I laid down.

So I've wondered about why we forget dreams, but what about the other way around - Why do we forget the state of our physical reality?

Sometimes I'll wake up and can't remember where the heck I am until I look around and it all comes back to me. Ah yes, I live here, and I've been sleeping here most nights for the last few years. Or I won't have a clue what day of the week it is or how long I've been asleep, until in a moment I realize I had only taken a 30 min nap or so in the middle of the day.

Or like a couple days ago I become alert in an OBE and kind of thrashed around on my bed feeling REALLY groggy, found the edge of my mattress to make sure I knew where I was, propped myself up, and looked up at the TV i left on, that had some idiot on a news station. I don't remember what came next, but when I physically woke I was actually on the floor where I had laid down, the TV wasn't on, I was nowhere near my bed, and it looked nothing like the TV setup in my dream. I forgot virtually everything except that I had been listening to someone while lying down, but it was a Tom Campbell talk on my computer, which I switched off before falling asleep.

Why would I forget all that? It's interesting to think about what that means. Maybe we get so separated from our physical body that we lose our connection to there where so many memories are physically stored exclusively? That sure is bad data management, no backups, unless there either is a backup somewhere or it's best to lose most of it on death.

What kind of sleep pattern do you find results in more OBEs?

Seth suggested sleeping only 4 hours a night, and a nap later. Not specifically for OBEs, but for reducing the sense of separation between the waking and sleeping state.

I tried doing 4-5 hours for a while, and not surprisingly as I felt a little sleepy I was able to shift away quickly, if only fleetingly. But it was kind of hard to keep up the dedication to feeling sleepy all the time, especially in the morning when I would hop on the computer and get to work. I'm going to work on 4 again and see if I can will myself to get up. Otherwise I keep sleeping for a total of 6-7 hours at the most, fitfully, but still with a more "refreshed" feeling... But my understanding is that solid refreshed feeling isn't really a good thing if my goal is to interact with the non physical more.

People have written other places about a high pitched ringing sound they hear sometimes. I can bring it on in a few seconds by looking for it. It eventually goes away if i ignore it. But I haven't really found a use for it. Any suggestions on what use it might be for helping me with anything at all? I don't know what. I mean, maybe it's something, so I don't want to just ignore it if there's some kind of potential there. Or has anyone concluded that it's just some kind of background frequency picked up by our physical ears that has nothing to do with anything spiritual?

First off, I like the idea of the dream journals in the Dreams forum, but what I think would be cool is more of an OBE journal where dreams are not emphasized, and it's more about the nature of my experiences meditating and exploring consciousness and how I do it. Should I just start an OBE journal thread here? Am I even in the right forum? I'm confused about the difference between the first three forums - OBE, AP experiences, and astral consciousness.

I think what I've been doing lately is touching the edges of phasing. I'll sit or lie down and eventually get some vivid imagery, but as soon as it appears I move my eyes around to look at it, like I want to examine it from a physical perspective, and in that movement I snap back to physical awareness and lose the image. Or I'll reject the image because I think it's physical and my intent was to see NON physical images, so I get confused as it happens, thinking I accidentally opened my eyes, and as I try to re-close my eyes I snap back to physical.

When doing that, sometimes I'll see people I don't recognize. Like yesterday I saw a beautiful woman who was just standing among other people, behind someone else, and I've forgotten everything about that scene except how beautiful she was and sort of what she looked like. I wonder if these are people we really knew in some other life?

Yesterday I was concentrating on my breath quite comfortably, and when I finally got up and became physically aware I realized that I had been hearing a sort of white noise "after-breath" after each out-breath, and that it had been much louder than my physical breath. This kind of thing has happened many times, but usually it startles me awake and I wonder who's breathing in my ear. One time I did remain in the state for a while listening with curiosity to the double out-breath.

I also will hear other noises that startle me awake, and it happens so much during the night that it has to be mostly non-physical because my neighborhood is totally quiet at night if I'm awake doing something.

So I'm trying to find ways to reassure myself of these images and noises and not jump away as soon as they happen.

I'm also working on going "deeper" as a matter of habit in my daily life when I have a moment. Maybe towards Focus 3 or 10, I don't know. I'm glad I'm doing it. I notice things. I have had precognition quite a bit, but usually I disregard it automatically, like I have programmed myself to throw it in the trash every time. So I think this is helping me stay focused in the place where those thoughts happen and take them more seriously so I can act on them.

I can't remember the last time I had one. I was just trying to meditate a bit before sleeping. As I drifted off I heard my breath loudly, startling me awake. I closed my eyes again and then quickly I was gone.

In the dream I started off where my physical body was, floating up to the ceiling and then back down. I was physically on my side looking out towards my patio, with my eyes open, but mentally I was standing there trying to make it to my patio, so I had a hard time trying to rotate my view so I could orient myself better. Finally I realized I wasn't going to be able to rotate my physical eyes' view, so I blinked, closed my physical eyes, and opened my dream eyes. That worked good, and I continued on outside.

I hung and dropped down from my patio to the street, and once down I was unsure whether it was still a dream because it felt real. So I jumped and found myself floating easily back up to my patio, which was my confirmation because of the way I had floated to the ceiling a moment earlier.

A few times I felt myself losing the dream and my eyes opening, so I focused on relaxing, keeping my physical eyes closed, and visualizing what was around me instead of trying to hold onto anything in particular, and that worked good too.

Funny part - At one point in the dream I was walking through a breezeway at the condo I used to live at, with lots of neighbors hanging out everywhere, and I had to pee, so knowing it wasn't real I went ahead and peed my pants (luckily I didn't physically do it), and I felt a thrill in how it seemed real but knowing it wasn't. But people were glancing at my big wet spot, and I started getting a little uneasy as I considered that maybe they were real projections of those people, like they would have the memory of this when they woke up, so I kind of lost my grounding of reality at that point. It's hard not to when things look so real. Even if I had done the jump test I would have been like, "Yeah but why do they look so real??"

I woke up and had only been asleep for maybe 30 minutes. It felt surreal as I stood up and walked around not even feeling like I had been asleep.

I didn't used to get it, but lately when I'm listening to one of the Gateway CDs or getting to focus 10 on my own, after long enough like 20 mins I get that strong anxious feeling like I HAVE to move. I try to let the feeling go, but it just hangs on and it turns into a matter of willing myself to continue for longer until finally I can't stand it any longer and I have to jerk my whole body violently. Then it still doesn't help and as soon as I'm still again the feeling comes back. The feeling is intense enough that I can't get deep into the meditation and it's all I can do to just keep myself from moving for another second, then another second, until I start trembling and gasping for air, hoping the extra air will somehow help, or as if I'm being starved of oxygen despite the fact that I'm breathing.

Any help?

I don't drink caffeine, and my sugar and starch intake is pretty low. I exercise almost every day. But it might be an emotional issue.

On a sort of related note, I also tend to stop breathing often until I'm gasping for air, and it interrupts my process. I start visualizing or doing whatever, and I have a heck of a time remembering to continue to breathe. Like I can't walk and chew gum at the same time.

Hello!

I have meditated on and off for years without much progress and am currently working on the Gateway Experience CDs. I'm also reading The Nature of Personal Reality, by Seth.

My whole life I've had issues with being overwhelmed when I'm around too many people at once, and I'm starting to believe it has to do with receiving more data than I know how to handle. I sense things like what someone is about to say, who is at the other end when the phone rings, accidents that are about to happen, someone having a baby on the way, etc. Or when I'm alone in a secluded or wilderness area I sense when someone else is approaching, and maybe what kind of person it is. When I'm in a crowd the different sounds of voices are overwhelming, and I think it isn't just their voices but emotions from them too, because even in silence it feels noisy.

Anyway, I'm working on being more conscious of anything and everything I can think to "look" for so that it isn't all just noise and I can identify and handle things with more elegance and be able to function better and be able to think. And I think learning to meditate better will help too by learning to be more focused and notice things better without my own mind producing noise too.

And now that I think about it, I think I've met other people with this issue. That would be neat if I could develop enough to be able to help other people make sense of it and be more in control and not feel like there's something wrong with them.

So that's the gist of it. That's where I'm at right now. Happy to be here!

I'm using the Gateway Experience CD set. I'm on Wave 1: Discovery. I got the original CDs, so I have the manuals, but the manual linked from here is more complete. Anyway, neither one totally answers my question.

What are some good ways of knowing when I'm in Focus 10?

I can pretty quickly get to a point where I'm comfortable, still, and most of my body has a sort of soft, soothing vibration, the way my body feels when I'm having a lucid dream and can check for that soft vibration from my body to be able to tell if it's a dream or I'm awake in physical reality (I had gotten the idea to check for that feeling on my own, because it's just something I noticed). Is that a sign of Focus 10, or something else?

That vibration comes and goes as perhaps I lose focus or whatever, slipping back towards Focus 1 (wide awake). And then occasionally I'll feel like I slip somewhere else and lose all sensation for a moment, but it comes back as soon as it faded, and my memory of how I got there is gone. Is that what they call "clicking out"? I'm under the impression that no time passes when I do it, but I have no way of knowing.

One reason I'm unsure about whether I'm in Focus 10 is while I do have a change in awareness I could also at any time instantly jump back to Focus 1, open my eyes, and stand up without feeling disoriented. The whole thing about how I have to wiggle my right finger or focus on the number 1 to bring myself back seems unnecessary for wherever I'm at.