Messages

That does sound like the start of focus 12 to me, your head had just separated.

Here's a link:
http://home.actlab.utexas.edu/~jmorris/docs/focus.html

BTW in that link it says focus 10 is "brain awake, body asleep." That is incorrect, it is mind awake, body asleep. The brain is part of the body, your mind is independent of your body.

When you can get it to turn a full circle you can rule out that it was a little imbalanced to start with. I've turned aluminum foil around on a pin several times but only like 1/4 turn, and then it falls back. I'm never quite sure if it's me or just air currents because it doesn't go the whole way.

The real difference between an OBE and a lucid dream is whether you're fully aware of how you got there and if your dream personality matches your physical world personality. If your awareness of yourself is identical to what it is in the physical world, then it's an OBE.

For instance if you separate from your body with complete awareness of your own identity, yet have no astral sight then it's still an OBE. The only thing that matters is your self-awareness. It really has very little to do with how vivid the colors are or if you are able to feel textures and so forth with complete realism.

If you're only aware that you're in a dream/projection, but you aren't fully aware of the process of how you got there or what your name is, then it's a lucid dream.

[Stillwater]

Stillwater,
You're welcome, please post about your sucesses and especially any troubles you have with doing this!


Kazbadan,
The meditation you describe sounds a pretty heavy, I doubt I'm ready for it right now but maybe one of these days I'll be balanced enough to do it.

Your questions:
1- What is the focus 10? Describe the state please.

Major Tom just posted an excellent summary of this at http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=13644


2- Isnt that state used to have obes too? if you dont habe body, maybe the next step it´s easy. I think that it is tthat state that Robert Bruce refers (maybe not specifically).

"Focus 10" is Monroe's terminology for the body asleep, mind awake state which is the first step (usually) for having an OBE. Some people can actually project while their body is fully active, I am not one of these people.


3- Is that state the same think like when you have sleep paralysis? I mean, if you try to move your body, you will feel it paralised, unable to move it.

Yes, I think that sleep paralysis is an initial stage of focus 10, and probably you have to go a little deeper than that in order to actually project.


LordoftheBunnies,
it got worse until it was quite excruciating, and then the feeling of heaviness set in.

Yes, that's exactly the feeling. It is almost painful trying to ignore it, I am personally glad it's intense because that makes it impossible to miss.


Someone should make a list of the different levels experienced in focus 10 so they know what would be the best point to try projecting from.



I've been working on seeing if I can separate out the different stages, it seems like this is the earliest, there's another where you're in the process of separating out your limbs and body, then finally you're out.

There are probably substages to all those as well, and I'm looking for good consistent ways to mmove between them. If anyone has ideas on this please post them!


fire,

will moveing youre eyes effect anything
because when u are dreaming dont youre eyes move

It's not very important if you're eyes are moving but it is important that you don't consciously move them. They may start doing things on their own and that's ok, but if you shift your consciousness to them and move them, there's a good chance that you'll also raise your brain frequencies up out out the hypnagogic range and lose whatever imagery you've got going.

At least that's been my experience, however it's also probably true that if you're very skilled at controling your brain frequencies that you can learn to move your muscles consciously while keeping yourself in a trance.

I think doing dream incubation or using some sort of MILD does make having a projection a lot more likely. When I use the timer, I set the volume really REALLY loud so it definitely wakes me up.

I close my window so it doesn't wake up my neighbors. My experience has been that it's critical to be completely awake at the start of each interval so that you're totally coherent for the projection attempt.

[Attachment:]

Here are two wave files that you can use to make a 10 minute beeper CD. Put the beep at the start of the CD so you can test the volume easily. Then add silence in 5 minute units afterward. Burn the CD and set it to repeat the whole CD.


Attachment: beep.zip 115068 bytes



Attachment: 5minuteSilence.zip 9729 bytes


Another thing you could do is use a sleeping pad by your computer. Some people specifically move to a new location to do OBEs because their bodies haven't been programmed to fall asleep at that location. If you have an OBE-only location your body supposedly will eventually pick up on that.

[Seven]

Seven,

quote:
Earlier I lay down, ignored the urge to move (had to swallow though), felt my body falling asleep 3 times,

Did you get the wave of heaviness come over you 3 times?

quote:
Should I have tried a technique (never had any results from climbing rope) or waited longer?

Not necessarily, it's a lot better to stop and examine what happened and then try to figure out a way to get back there consistently than it is to go charging off in a projection each time [].

Can you tell us more about exactly what you did you get to that state and if you saw or heard anything other than the flash? Did you feel any vibes?



Mgkeeper,

quote:
i felt if i opened my eyes it would be in the way and id be blind, so i didnt dare

It sounds like you're in sleep paralysis, which is an excellent state to project from. You should try opening your eyes, you'll probably be seeing the astral version of your room.

Astral sight tends to magnify qualities of things so if you have a nice and clean bedroom then you'll maybe see a nicely snazzed up room.

When you're paralysed, relax and do deep breaths until you separate. For me and several others on the forum, if I'm in 100% paralysis and I do deep breaths it makes me exit every time.

Can you give us any other hints about how you're slipping into sleep while staying conscious? Is this something you can do every night?

[Swallowing]

Swallowing
I guess I have had the swallowing thing a little bit. It only happens when I am laying on my back. I think that there's some part in your throat that relaxes back into your throat and causes a gag reflex?

I have a feeling this can be fixed by putting your head at the right angle. When I lay on my back I use a hand towel behind my head folded twice so there are four thicknesses of fabric under the back of my head. I don't normally get the swallowing thing so it could be that I get that when I don't use the towel so my head is just a little bit too far back.

Actually, I have never really found a good reason to lay on my back to meditate and recently I've mostly been laying on my stomach/side as if I'm sleeping. It's easier for me to relax in that position.

Also, when I lay on my back with my hands at my sides, sometimes my hands will flop all by themselves on to my stomach and wake me up. I don't know why that happens but it never happens when I'm on my side, so I'm kind of giving up on laying on my back.

I doubt that swallowing is an 'are you sleeping?' signal from the body because it's not something that you can really ignore. If you're choking then you pretty much have to do something about it.



Twitching
Here's a page on it that seems to agree with other references on the net about twitching:

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_090.html

When I look back at the times when I had an extreme twitch event, like when I felt like I was falling out of bed, or when I fell asleep in class and it felt like I was falling, it seems like it felt a lot like I was on the edge of sleep but not quite. I was wavering back and forth because I wasn't relaxed or comfortable and my body got confused about where parts of my body were and panicked trying to keep things synched.

I think twitching is mostly that you're not relaxed enough ahead of time. Like Nay says it could also be from an energy imbalance. Ether way I think you should do stretches first to even things out.

I almost always do toe touching, splits, stretch my arms against the wall and use that foot massager before laying down for a meditation in the afternoon.



Focus 10
Focus 10 is what Bob Monroe labeled the state when your body is asleep and your mind is awake. I'm pretty sure that there are actually many 'grades' of Focus 10, and just because you've put your body to sleep doesn't mean you're ready to project.

There are a lot of techniques for exiting once you're in Focus 10, but the problem is that if you're just barely in F10 and you try a technique that involves moving your body you'll probably move both your etheric and physical bodies a bit and wind up waking up.

My personal exit method is to focus on the force of gravity to press me into my bed and out of my body. This way I never have to move anything and if I'm not quite in F10 I don't ruin it. If I am in F10 then it's no problem to move by thinking about pressure so you just slide right out.

quote:
Do you think my energy-workouts will impede anything towards a possible AP/OBE?

No, they shouldn't hurt at all.

quote:
If I resist the urge to switch positions, is that when the vibrations come, like during or after Focus 10?

For me the vibes sometimes fade in lightly before the switch positions urge comes, but it may be different for you. I'm still exploring this boundary so I'm really interested in what you and everyone else finds about it.


Mental state
I agree with upstream in that your mental state and stillness is just as important as staying physically still. It seems like with me my mind is either blank or I have some kind of daydream imagery going on in the background when the vibes and switch urge comes.

However, it never happens if I am consciously thinking about one thing or another, at the very most I have a conceptualization going that's pretty innocuous.

On twitching, you might try to do some stretching before laying down. I also like to use one of these to relax my feet:

http://www.shapeupshop.com/fitness/recovery/massage_peanut.htm

It's just a theory but maybe the twitching is because parts of you are relaxing all at once, so if you pre-relax them you won't twitch? Please let me know if that works for you, I'm interested in seeing what the solution is to the twitching problem.


It could be a similar thing with the swallowing, maybe try to drink some water first and give yourself a deep neck massage or gargle to stimulate the back of your throat.

quote:
What to do now?

Hmm, I guess you do nothing! As far as I can tell laying still is really the only thing to do the whole time and if you're conscious while your body goes through the process of falling asleep then you'll feel when it's over and then you can do your normal focus 10 stuff.

I'm going to try printing out a picture of the API, shine a flashlight on it, then try walking into it in a projection:

http://www.astralpulse.com/locale/

I haven't had a full projection lately, just a lot of wake/sleep boundary type experimentation so maybe I'm due to have a controlled OBE soon and I can try this.

There's also this guy who reportedly can send a projector on to higher planes:
http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/LucidCrossroads/gatekeeper.htm

That is very interesting about the stabilizing clock displays, why is it do you think that they eventually stabilize instead of continually fluxuating?

RB talks about walking into photos during a projection in order to teleport there. That would be an RTZ->RTZ teleportation.

Do you think that if someone made a picture of their impressions of somewhere in the higher astral planes you could just print out the picture and walk into it in order to have an RTZ->Higher plane teleportation?

upstream,
I will certainly try that next time I have the chance. So far I haven't had much luck with teleporting with very much control or creating places but I'll make a point of stopping in the middle of an OBE and teleporting back and doing that trick.

lateralus897,
Even if it doesn't work for you (*especially* if it doesn't work for you) please let me know what happens to you so I can figure out ways to improve it.

AntiGravity,
I have a feeling you'll have better success with this in the morning, maybe wake up a half hour early (not the full two hours) and try to immediately fall alseep again and watch how it happens. It's harder to stay alert at night than it is in the morning, so it might be better to try it then.


gravy,
I get the leg twitch thing too, and so far I haven't found a very good way to deal with it. My leg only twitches a little bit so usually I just ignore it and forget about it after a few seconds. It could be that you just have to get used to it happening so that when it happens it doesn't bother you very much.

I have noticed that the leg twitch thing seems to happen more often when I do a conceptualization of myself walking around, so lately I have been doing conceptualizations where I'm more like a legless point in space flying around looking at things.

A while ago I had an OBE that was very real so I got up and went over to a mirror to do some reality checks. I willed my finger to stretch out and go through the mirror.

When my finger tip penetrated the mirror it felt tingly and the room went darker, like the corners of the mirror were black but there was a sphere of light centered around my chest (or maybe my forehead) that had suddenly become just a little smaller than the size of the mirror when I touched it.

I think what happened was the mirror equalized the energy on both sides of it, so it sent half my energy to the other side and made my lightball smaller.

Here's a question for you, have you ever seen a blue screen pop up before your eyes while in the astral? It's like a TV screen that's the same color as a Windows BSOD or a TV diagnostic screen.

It seems that you can use it to acesses other information, for instance you can bring up a map of and area on it, select part of the map and teleport there.

I hope that this works for you guys!

One thing you should know is that it's very easy for the mind the fall asleep doing this, which is why I recommend using a self-repeating timer to keep your mind awake. It's like a safety net.

Here's the timer URL:
http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/uploaded/cube/timer.zip

I was able to get this to work this morning without using a timer, but I just tried it in the afternoon and I had a false awakening instead. I was laying here and after a while I realised I was seeing hypnagogic imagery of a person walking I think in my left eye. I opened my eyes and the imagery overlayed on the physical scene, it made it look like I was projecting a movie film of the person walking on my arm.

When I started to try to understand what was happening I woke up for real. So pretty much if your mind does fall asleep before you get the 'reposition' signal from the body, then you've missed the opportinuty to test it.

Using that timer HTML page I posted to beep at you every 10 minutes will keep you coherent. As long as the sound doesn't shock you the beep won't wake up your body, only your mind.

Please let me know how it turns out!

Upstream,
By coherency I mean alertness and awareness of what's going on. I want to try your lay-back-in body trick but I haven't gotten to the point where I can become aware of my physical body in order to lay back down in it. Every time I OBE and look at my bed it's empty. Should I just lay down there and just up anyway?

Also, what does LL stand for?

You could try turning on all the lights in your room then use a blindfold when you go to project.

Kazbadan,
I see how that wording can be confusing. By "when the timer goes off" I mean when the timer beeps and wakes you up. In English, when a timer "goes off" it actually means when it turns on!! [] I'd never noticed that quirk in English before.


LOB,
"I'm wondering, when you get up 2 hours early might it be a good idea to stay in bed and just go ahead and set the alarm for 5 minutes? I know you'd be less alert, but it seems like getting up to eat only made me to awake, even though it was early."

If you are able to go back to sleep immediately when you wake, and you're not so hungry that it keeps you awake, then just go straight into the routine. However if you find that you can't get to sleep, then you should stay up for a bit while until you're tired enough to sleep again.



mactombs,
"The first 5 minutes I was awake for, the rest I never heard."

Make sure the alarm you use is loud enough to wake you up without fail. You want to be totally awake each time so that you're coherent enough to have an OBE.

My first incarnation of the HTML timer had a fatal flaw in that the sound it played was a nice and pleasant fairly low pitched tone. It was loud but it never woke me up. After 4 days of it not waking me up I made the current version which uses an annoying high pitch and does the job for sure.

Very interesting, you actually experienced leaving your body using this without first phasing into a lucid dream. It is good to hear that you had success with it!

You may try raising the volume so that it wakes you up more to give you more coherency. Ideally you should wake your mind up and have a new LD or OBE each time the timer goes off.

In your opinion, what's the difference between an OBE and a lucid dream? At this point it seems to me that it's how aware of who you are. It doesn't seem to matter so much the level of realism or if you actually experience leaving the body (since you could also phase out), but mostly it only matters whether your dream personality matches your waking personality and you know exactly how you got there and know everything you know while awake.

You should read this:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1571741011/104-2104024-6427928?v=glance

It's got a few chapters on Heaven/Hell type realms.

Hi upstream, if you try this let me know how it goes!

If the guy's is such a creep why does she want so badly to work for him? Surely there must be SOMEONE else in the world that will hire her and then the whole problem will be water under the bridge for you.

Here's a method that may work better for you:

http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=13576

This is probably just a troll but I'll bite just once.

You ought to try the projection techniques for yourself before you around go pooping in everyone else's milkshakes.