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So last night I was reading about astral home space.  A (persistent or seemingly persistent) place that you create for yourself in the astral.  I thought this was a very neat concept and was wondering if any of you have created astral home spaces and what they look like.

Just curious 

I can't seem to reconcile this concept with my belief system.  I have always been of the belief that there is no higher sentient power.  This does not include the power of the universe as a whole, I mean that I believe that each individual is their own god, so to speak.  There are no outside forces that can make choices for you (fate) or punish or reward your bad or good behavior, respectively (karma). 

I kind of believe that everything a person experiences and is comes from within them. I mean I'm not saying people can't be influenced/inspired by outside forces, but I just don't believe in any decision-making power above one's own self. 

So what's the deal with astral/spirit guides?  Who are these people/entities?  Who elects them into power?  How do they know what is right for you?  The only way I can accept this concept as holding any ounce of validity is by assuming that a spirit guide is a part of your own (higher?) self.  I can totally see that working.  The mind just creates another "being" for you to interact with in order to make the concept of interacting with a consciousness separate from the one you are currently using, easier on your mind.  So technically it's a fragment of your own consciousness, made to look like another entity in order to ease the experience, since it is how we interact with people in the physical (it's familiar).

But as far as spirit/astral guides being another entity entirely separate from yourself that tries to teach you things and tell you how stuff goes... I just can't accept it.  I would be like "Excuse me... just exactly WHO the hell are you?"

Ok so like this morning, I woke up cause my fiance went to the restroom.  I laid awake in bed for a while then eventually drifted off to sleep.  Shortly after, I opened my eyes, then quickly though "No wait!  I could totally AP!"

As if by sheer will, I got the strongest vibes ever, then just started to will myself into a sitting position.  It was tough, kind of like I was surrounded by peanut butter instead of air.

When I was about halfway up, I was like "Some vision would be nice" then suddenly I saw the corner of the ceiling right in front of my face.  I kind of floated out of the bedroom and down the hall, where I tried to float through the ceiling there.  Nope.  Just kindof smashed my face up against it.  I floated on into the kitchen where I think I scared my cat.  I looked at the fridge where the noise came from and saw 3 of my cat in positions that seemed to follow it progressively as it might have been heading back down the hallway towards the bedroom.  Kind of like progressive snapshots of his movement.  I floated forward a bit more into the living room where I though "I should go visit someone!"  but I couldn't think of anyone to visit.  I felt my awareness start to blur between where I was in the living room and my body back in bed.

Then I woke up, heavily disappointed, but I was way too excited to try again and just got out of bed. 

But moments after, I started to wonder if it was just a dream.  It felt more real than anything I've ever felt in a dream, lucid or otherwise.  Maybe I just can't accept that this was really it?  IS IT REALLY THAT COOL?!?!?!

So I was trying this technique mentioned in this thread when something strange that has never happened before, happened.

Let me start off by describing the implements that I use to help with this technique.  I use a really soft squishy pillow rolled up under my neck to keep my head looking straight up at the ceiling. My legs are straight out, and I put another pillow over my abdomen to rest my hands on.  I like this position because despite its apparent tendency to induce nightmares, it's super relaxing and I can breath really easily.

So anyway, one night after preparing my position, I was laying in bed just letting my thoughts flow.  I was really relaxed and comfortable, but wide awake.  My body started to go numb and get heavy.  Not like paralysis, I knew that if I moved a body part, I could, and that it would stop being numb, just regular numbness.  My mind started to get more and more blank, however I never actually fell asleep or entered a trance (as far as I know) when I started to feel my fingertips rising up off the pillow.  I immediately focused my awareness on this strange feeling, and I was trying to push it further.  Eventually I got it to where my palms came up off the pillow.  Keep in mind I'm not talking about my actual physical hands, they were flat on the pillow.  

As soon as I lost my focus, I also lost the sensation of my fingertips floating.  So I regrouped my focus and concentrated on my hands. I could pull them up off the pillow by my fingertips by sheer will alone.  But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't lift any further than my wrist.  I tried to lift my forearms, but they wouldn't budge.  

Somewhat discouraged, I decided to try and see if I could willfully induce vibes from this state.   Nothing.  Just a night of weird floaty hands, then sleep.

So what's the deal, in your opinion?  What would you call the ability to lift parts of your (non-physical) body by will, but only to a certain extent?  What do you think the mental state I was in was all about?  This is about the closest I've ever come to having any conscious astral experience that I can clearly remember, so this is huge for me.

[SPOILER ALERT: If you have not watched the movie Insidious and don't want the plot spoiled for you, stop reading!]

SPOILER ALERT:  If you have not watched the movie Insidious and don't want the plot spoiled for you, stop reading!

So last night I watched the movie Insidious.  It started off great!  I was all like "Woah, man this is creepy, I like it!"

Then this like mystic lady comes over and tells the parents of the main character boy that he is in fact not in a coma, but is stuck in an OBE.  She goes on to explain that he is a very gifted APer and has been projecting and "traveling" all his life.

So at this point I start to think "If he's so gifted, can he not just *think* his way back?"

Anyway, she continues to explain that the astral realm is just chock full of evil entities, and that one of these evil entities is keeping the boy away from his body, in an area she calls "The Further" (lol), because the longer he stays projected, the closer the evil entity gets to being able to take over his body.

I started to get angry.  Evil entities can't keep you "away" from your body!  You NEVER LEAVE IT!  Astral projection is not a trip through 3 dimensional space during which you travel long distances away from your physical body, it's just a shift in awareness!  Your AWARENESS can go anywhere, but it's not actually LEAVING anything!

So I was like "Man this is why ignorant people look at APers like we're some kind of cult of devil worshippers or something."

Later in the movie, the mystic lady and the main character boy's father's mother (confusing) reveal to the boy's father that HE used to have the same problem too when he was a kid.  He was such a gifted projector that he too had some evil entity trying to take over his body. "But we suppressed your abilities and hid it from you so you would be safe!"  Then, not 5 minutes later they are all like "Now you have to AP to go save your son!"  

Ok, the man is like 40-something and his abilities to project have been suppressed since he was like 8, you can't honestly expect him to just project as if by will can you?  

YOU CAN!  CAUSE HE DOES!  /facepalm

Then he goes to the "astral realm" which I concluded must have been the RTZ because the only difference between the physical realm and this astral realm was the greenish haze and overt fogginess.  So dude is running around in the astral looking for his son by PHYSICAL MEANS, i.e. walking around, screaming and looking with his physical eyes.  To further accentuate the use of his physical eyes in the astral realm, he carries a LANTERN.  

Then he finds his son chained in a dungeon where he breaks the shackles with his bare hands (the son couldn't do that?) and he CARRIES his son (more with the physical tendencies) back out to their house.  Because in this movie, you actually have to plant your astral body back into your physical body in order to re-enter.  Then somehow, while dude and his son were out and about, evil astral entities somehow BECAME PHYSICAL and were in the physical realm crawling and drooling after the other people in the house!

So if you're ready for a very cheesy/corny/campy/borderline offensive/b-movie take on AP, treat yourself to Insidious.

Just adding some emphasis to the Spoiler part.  LOL  ~Xanth

So for the past week or so, I've been having a pretty serious little problem.  I go to sleep like I normally would, not attempting anything special, just sleep.  I wake up several times within the first 2 hours of falling asleep so I prefer to use those periods for attempts/exercises/etc. But here is what happens (in the real-time space of about 1 second):  I am sleeping > I wake up just enough to be consciously aware but not actually being fully awake > realize that I'm in the perfect mental state to try something > realize I can't breathe/haven't been breathing > Experience a sensation like I'm suffocating/drowning > become violently afraid of impending death > wake wide-the-f*-up > am sorely disappointed by another missed opportunity, also panting heavily.

My question is if anyone else experiences vivid feelings of suffocation or drowning when balancing between wake and sleep, and if anyone has any thoughts or ideas on how I can better understand whats happening and correct it?

I just started reading Astral Dynamics last night and Robert Bruce mentioned something along the lines of the physical body experiencing elevated heart rates and other physical symptoms while attempting conscious projection.  That's all fine and well, except that MY physical symptoms result in my subconscious preparing to fight for it's (my?) life, thereby ruining my progress.

Hello, Astral Pulse!

**** NOTE:  This is a very long post so I don't expect that anyone should read it through, and of course I don't expect anyone to come along and answer all of my problems!  I would just like some input from some of you more enlightened people Since this is my first post here I thought that the introductory forum was the best place to put it, however it does contain a lot of stuff other than introduction so if it needs to be moved I won't be offended ****

I stumbled upon this forum a few nights ago on my phone while laying in bed.  I've been lurking ever since, but decided it was time to dive in and soak up some of your guys' infinite knowledge first hand. 

When I was about 13 or 14, I discovered astral projection and other psychical phenomena and was completely stricken with utter amazement.  The only thing I could think about for months, even years was the unhindered ability to explore, have questions answered, learn, grow, etc.  I did all the research into the matter that I could, and practiced all the techniques I could find with an almost obsessive attitude. Never an ounce of luck.

Then 2 things happened:

One night, I 'dreamed' I was floating just above the rooftop of the house I grew up in.  I was holding my cat in my arms.  I though "This is it!  I'm free!  I can go anywhere now..."  I looked over to a distant part of the city from my ethereal perch and though "I should go visit my boyfriend!"  Then I suddenly dropped my cat and watched in horror as it fell to the Earth.  When it hit the street, I woke up.

On a separate occasion, I fell soundly asleep one night with the thought of astral travel vaguely lingering in the back of my mind.  At some point in the night, I woke up and when I opened my eyes, I found that the ceiling of my bedroom was no further than 3 to 4 inches in front of my face and a sick, heavy feeling of suspension.  I immediately felt nauseated and afraid and started to reach back for my bed.  With the force of 100 car wrecks, I was slammed back into bed and extreme nausea overtook me.  I scrambled out of my room and down the hall, diving towards the toilet in just enough time to vomit rather heavily into it.

After that, it seems that no amount of practice, exercise, research or any of that does any good.  I eventually gave up and only recently rekindled my desperate amazement with the astral.  I feel absolutely no fear when I practice, just extreme excitement and curiosity.  But still it seems that no amount of anything yields any results. 

I have been using a tricky method to explore the states between awake and asleep by tapping my finger while I fall asleep.  I suddenly realize that I am not tapping my finger anymore, and it's weird because that realization comes to me before the realization hat I have fallen asleep and woken back up.  It's as if my mind resumes focus on the activity I've tasked myself with rather than paying attention to the sleep states.  I use this small window of time to begin deep, engulfing visualizations in an effort to entertain my imagination while my body falls back asleep (while tapping my finger), but it seems that my powers of visualization are compromised.  I can only imagine things very vaguely, and my mind is very aggressive about ending my visualizations.  I find that the more detail I am able to muster, the harder it becomes to maintain, and that my mind will just black out and make it VERY difficult for me to return to the visualization.  The only way I am able to delay the breaking of my visualizations is to touch something, but even then it's only a matter of time before I black out and have to work very hard to get it back.

A few nights ago, I imagined myself wandering outside my house near where my car and truck are parked.  It was more vivid than I am used to (perhaps because of the location's close proximity to my physical location?), but still it kept fading a way.  I found that if I placed my hands on my car, I could maintain the visualization for longer, so I proceeded to wander around outside while keeping my hands firmly planted on my car, and only moving away from my car when I had something else to touch.  The visualization was completely uninfluenced by my creativity, and everything I saw out there was exactly as it would have been if I had physically walked outside and looked around.

I am also very sexually supercharged, and find that the visualizations that I can create in the greatest detail and hold for the longest are very strongly sexual in nature.

I guess I could go on typing for days but these things that I have presented here hold my most immediate curiosity.  I guess a part of me knows that I should take a step back and try other things like energy exercises, thought control, etc before trying to all out "leave" my body, but I just haven't the slightest idea where to start.

But the main thing I hope any reader takes away from this long and cumbersome post is that I'm Pharoah, and I'm very glad to meet you all and look forward to an enlightening experience here at AP!

<3