Messages

hence

"Existence is suffering."
"The cause of suffering is desire."

Nirvana..... satori, etc... nothingness....

Basically the answer is not in existing, but rather in eternally nonexisting....

I do not know whether I would prefer to never be again after this life, to be nothing, but I know that I do not under any circumstances want to be human any more, this world sickens me, these people sicken me. They are largely good in a way, but they are so naive and ignorant, and so many of them are helpless slaves..... but we are all slaves sadly.

I just don't want this existence, I want something better, or nothing at all.. reincarnating as human in an uncertain future, perhaps in a third world country, terrifies me... reincarnating as something less than a human is that much worse.

I want to cease to be or to move on to being something better, frankly.

and I have no idea what to believe, so that complicates things too.

[very very odd]

i'm really lazy today (probably because i forced myself to lucid dream until 12) so i'm not reading these posts in their entirety, but I want to induce paralysis too.

What I found last night was I was close, I woudl jerk out of hypnagogics and get such a deep spasm that it felt like parlaysis was ALMOST there, I just need to be just a tiny bit deeper.

Now for me, when I work on this (i'll talk abuot my method at the end) I can only do it so much before I get uncomfortable, and then I move, and that makes me untired and I have to start over again, and it's about 5 times harder to get back... OR.... I just do it for so long with failures that my brain somehow thinks it got rested and doesn't want to go back anymore, either way, it's 5 times harder to go back after that (which is a good patience/focus builder I guess)

So here's the thing... last night I somehow succeeded, not right away, it was probably an hour and a half after I lied down in bed... and I drifted in/out of unconscious hypnagogics about oh, 12-15 times... 3 of them giving such violent jerks that I knew I was close, just needed to be a tiny bit deeper and it would have worked.

Of interest, is that I can prevent the jerks from happening, but by doing this, I do not fall deep enough to get into a trance. For example, I can tell when one is loosely coming, it is preceeded by rapid falling and detailed sounds and imagery... if I am focused I can stop that from happening, take a deep breath, and feel very very odd... sometimes it makes my heart hurt.... so.... this just does not take my anywhere at all though, I have to do more than that.

Now I'm not positive, but I think what I did eventually, was let myself get very deep to the point of when I came out I was too tired to think, and then I think I felt my "pulse" in my head, and just focused on that.

I really dont' remember what I did at all, all I know is I "woke up" into paralysis.

I do vaguely recall that my body felt very odd, I wasn't sure where it was, I knew I was in it, and it was in my room, but it felt "loose" in a way, and yet very attached in another way.... it's so hard, the memory is almost gone, words can't describe it but I can sort of remember the feeling.

Somehow, doing something with that feeling, it got me there... but the problem is I can get a similar feeling to it as before, and it won't do anything.

Here is what I am going to recommend to do, and am going to try (more or less) tomorrow to see if I can consciously enter paralysis without ever losing awareness.

1) Take a handful of deep breaths, get relaxed.... strecth the hell out of your muscles, especially legs (for me anyway) this might involve sitting up and doing weird yoga like poses, trying to put them behind your head.... legs are the hardest, but arms are important too.. just really strech out in a peaceful way, then lie back down.

2) get as comfortable as possible (if you ever feel like you need to open your eyes due to pressure that is fine, just close them after a little bit of "rest" on them)

3) sleep is caused by a chaotic feedback of unconscious thoughts, and the unconscious thoughts are always there, the problem lies in stimulating them. When you first achieve this (unnaturally) it will not make you tired, but it will make you jerk all the same, this is the most frustrating part, because since it doesn't tire you, it's hard to go back.

What I like to do best is I like to focus on something, such as my fan, it has weird reverberations that match my "head" somehow and make me feel tired, I focus on that.... now... I will have thoughts enter my head, and I will try and hear as many as I can, and repeat them as soon as possible... for example... say there is just one brief voice, and it's like "he ate the chicken" and it doesn't make you tired, well, if you don't pay attention to it you wont' get tired.... notice that thought and interact with it, repeat it, pay attention to it, even ask it a question.

**while you are doing this, you have to pay attention to all your other thoughts to, there is no way you can acknowladge each one, there are too many, but just realizing that many thoughts exist, and trying to focus on a few of them and repeating a few of them, it causes a tired sensation and they keep intensifying.

Pretty soon you'll lose consciousness briefly.

From there if you are some sort of lucky person you can enter a dream, or you can enter paralysis, for me, no matter what, I jerk awake.

4) so if you are jerking awake a lot and you keep trying to go back, you will hit a stage where images linger in your eyelids, this is an important stage, if you keep deepening too long aftre this, you will not be able to focus at all on anything..... so I advise you try to hold onto the images using any techniques necessary, in hopes of re-entry... if this fails.... let htem get about as vivid as they can before you feel like if you do it one more time you'll lose it, if you can get into a semi-dream that is ideal.. or if you can even get AWARE during a semi-dream, enough to try to stay inside, that's ideal too (from my experience I can't stay inside, my mind takes me out when I try to hold onto the ground or spin or rub my hands)...

but you've had detailed imagery, maybe even small dreams, and you know that soon the focus is going to be gone.....

5) do conscious breath awareness, focus on your body, and feel a pulse somewhere, I recommend in the head near the third eye.....

what happens after that I can only speculate... but your body is on the borderilne so close to being there, you just have to stay with it... somehow, and the pulse sounds like it might work, like, it's a precursor to full blown vibrations, but it doesn't work unless you are close to sleeping.

So anyway...

I have another method rather than the listening method, which is easier, but not as effective, and it is to make a mantra out of something that doesn't make sense (you listen to your thoughts for a word that doesn't make sense and repeat it) and you do it until you get tired, and then you do it some more until it stops making you tired, then you listen for another word and use it instead.

and well there are plenty of other ways too, the goal is just to turn your conscious mind almost off, so you can hear your unconscious mind and let it sweep you away.


an alternative method: do everything I just said, but when you feel like you are abuot to lose control, try and stop the falling sensation before it starts, for as long as you can, while feeling the pulse..... maybe i have just been stopping the falling too early.

edit: one last thing, if you don't have sleeping problems and you keep jerking awake and faliing to enter paralysis too much, it can be beneficial to just let yourself all asleep, you've been trying to project for so long that you might just trigger lucidity in a dream or wake up into parlaysis sometime in the near future.

i can't let it make me fall asleep though, it's weird...

quote:My point is that , things happen strangely while OBE.. somewhere in that projection I remember giving up on leaving my body and just messing with the paralysis state... I was visualizing my self walking up the sides of the walls of my room and I got all the feelings you would get if you actually did it im sure.. even when I went upside down and walked on the ceiling. (the whole stomache feeling).

Sounds like you were interacting with hypnagogic stuff... I had that happen with roller coasters once, I made my own up while I was simultaneously feeling them but sitll aware of my body.

It's kind of like remote viewing I guess.. it's way better than lucid dreaming in dreams it's hard to get roller coasters to feel real, for some reason.

I have a whole elaborate theory on that though, what with the memory part of your brain being inactive during REM, while being very active during NREM (which is when I think hypnagogics happen)

I don't believe in spirit guides, I've asked for them several times and they are always clearly fake... they could be there.

I don't believe in an RTZ, though I don't disbelieve in it... I'd love to be able to fly around MY REAL TOWN, but my town isn't real, it doesn't matter if I went through the hassle of OBEing or just had an LD, my TOWN IS NOT REAL.... I mean just the other day I could see the city from my high school and flew to it, it must have only been like 300 feet away. The flying experience was unusually real and fun though, but yeah anyway.... what breakneck astral speeds? I can't get myself going more than what feels like about 20 mph.

What I've found is though LD/OBE seem largely the same, there seem to be a few minor differences.

For example if I exit with HEAVY VIBRATIONS, I seem more prone to involutnarily moving places.... and I found last night that this is related to what I think, I thought of the window and somehow moved toward it, was pulled toward it, and when I tried to move my "body" it felt deformed and I was very disoriented......

Some will say it's due to the energy body not being properly developed, I don't know. Sometimes I also feel like I'm looking through two pairs of eyes at once and they are constantly fighting each other for control. This happens the most when I'm floating around my room and suddenly become aware.

What I can attest to is that MY BODY HAS NEVER EVER BEEN IN MY ROOM, only at times my mind tries to trick me, but I'm wearing other clothes.

and that MY ROOM HAS NEVER LOOKED 100% RIGHT except for a few rare times where I was too disoriented to explore and was only out a second.

What I believe, is that different stages of sleep or trance produce different results. I am open to spirits and paranormal stuff, though skeptical at this time (i believe in shared dreams though, I think)

For example
hypnagogics + heavy vibrations = astral projection (or "phasing")

heavy vibrations + paralysis = the sort of "Robert Bruce" OBE with weird bodily abnormalities and visional problems. Perhaps this leads to real time projections.... i have little experience with this state but I found hypnagogics to be IMPOSSIBLE (almost) to induce last night, but then again I was scared and sort of unfocused, I tried to ride a roller coaster to take me into a lucid dream, I didn't much want to OBE, but I couldn't get it to stay very solid at all, then I floated out just by loosely thinking of floating out.

light vibrations + paralysis = anything...  you are light enough to have hypnagogics if you want them and use them to enter a dream, or you can try and deepen the vibrations for something more "serious" or you can just get up and be in an LD like environment.

So here is how I'd put them in order from lightest to deepest.

light vibrations + paralysis, this happens easiest in the early morning and often times the paralysis is totally bypassed and you pop right back into your dream... this seems sleep exclusive and seems like you couldn't do it during the day.

unaware hypnagogics - these can lead to mini conscious dreams which are hard to stay in, but if you persist you end up in a long normal dream but you are prone to lucidity, or you can sometimes pop into HEAVY paralysis, or hypangogic paralysis... this is a napping state or a trying to fall asleep state, it's what i get when i meditate and is very hard to hold onto.

aware hypnagogics - can be while awake and not paralyzed, but they quickly take you into paralysis upon focusing... thse usually happen after you've been sleeping.

aware hypnagogics + heavy vibrations, tend to happen unexpectedly when you suddenly regain consciousness having been "asleep" for a while, but not too long, it seems to be before REM, could be deep theta.

heavy/normal vibrations, no hypnagogics - seems to be about as deep as you can take it,and seems to happen easiest on accident, it seems to be best for trying to do "real time" stuff... waking up from it tends to make you feel rested, rather than still groggy.

now the aware hypnagogics + heavy vibrations are by far the HEAVIEST vibrations I've ever felt, whether that is a coincidence or not I don't know.... but my heart chakra did feel to be open.

I dont' remember much of last nights OBE so I can't recall how heavy the vibrations were... I think my heart chakra may have been a bit active.

i don't think my body was vibrating after it was over...

So that is what you'd call the astral.... then...

What about if I'm swirilng around in some sort of dark green void with all these eyes all over, hearing music I'm familiar with? I've done that a lot and it just seems like hypnagogic hallucinations, except I'm inside them.

I'm not sure how that would be any different than this, though this felt different due to the tunnel, but.....

You guys define the astral by these kinds of experiences then? To me most of these colorful voids don't seem real, this one sort of did yeah, but I don't know......

I wanted to talk to him!

So if there are different parts of the astral where was this? What was it? The whole astral/rtz etc things kind of confuse me.. (not that i've been to the rtz, I'm not sure it exists, but I need to experiment a lot more... I want it to exist)

All I know was it was cool but I could see how my mind made it up in a way, but it felt kind of real. I was wondering if it's a normal experience and stuff....

If I can go back more I can find out for myself I guess, but yeah anyway, I'm still pretty confused on this whole subject.

aside from the hotel story (which was cool) how do you guys that think you have guides or guardian angels, etc, TELL that they are REAL and not just creations of your minds?

i can ask for a guide and tinkerbell will appear, and i can tell by the nonsense she tells me that she isn't real..

(okay this really happened, she showed me a picture of "Clementine" from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and I thought it would be a good idea to try and reinact the movie, only it was rather boring to do)

great post!

so which state is the normal state of "paralysis"

I've never been able to find an acceptable answer... REM is said to be in beta-alpha, which boggles me since I mean, I'M IN BETA RIGHT NOW ! So.... I've heard paralysis is delta... I've heard it's theta... I've heard alpha is near paralysis...

But I can't quite get consistent answers....

REM = paralysis, there may in fact be paralysis in other states though, maybe just simply tuning consciousness away from the body creates a paralysis to keep yourself from acting out what you are doing, and you do not have to be in a traditional REM, I do not know...

So anyway.... do you know a lot about neurology ? Does staying in a dream for too long (longer than your body wants) deplete seratonin? Is that depletion not immediately made up for in light sleep following lucid activity? Does OBEing etc cause seratonin depletion?

Does taking a "catnap" where you waver in/out consciousness a lot then feel sort of semi "rested" and getting up replenish your seratonin supply? Does it make things worse?

Hmm..... so many questions I have.....

did it feel like your eardrum was throbbing?

I get that when I lie on my sides (or sometimes back) and use energy through the ears.

I've never gotten it while OBEing before though, but I do sometimes get a ringing in my head/ears when suddenly brought into paralysis.

stop doing it and check your pulse, the heart chakra feels much different than the actual heart beat...

sometimes when i try to enter a trance my heartbeat gets high and kind of hurts...

and i check my pulse so I know it's real too...

I don't know what to say except that REM is stressful on the body and elevated heart rate is to be expected, so...  it could be normal. Do what you think you should do, if you feel like continuing and you aren't too worried if you happen to die (i really highly doubt this unless you have heart problems) then go on, if you are worried, then stop and try to confirm whether you were really feeling your heart.

My first few projections my throat was pulsating and I thought I was choking to death and once I thought I had a nosebleed that I was about to inhale and choke on... so hallucinations are normal, but you should be able to tell after doing it a few times whether it is real or not.

As for the REM thing some people will say you don't project in REM, and I disagree, it's the only way I can project, and REM itself denotes physical paralysis which is necessary (for me) to leave in the first place.

quote:Originally posted by thelou

Thanks holy reality,

when you make your three points spin, what direction are they spinning?

It is up to them, I start it one way and hope to keep it going. They all have to be going the same way for me though to get the right effect so far. It doesn't matter if they change but if they do it breaks the concentration.

quote:It is hard for me to visualize because if you imaging that you were a little tiny person standing in you mind and you look at your right ear for example the spinning could be clock wise, but if you looked at the same spinning from outside your head it would be counter clock wise.  

I see what you mean but I don't visualize unless I need EXTRA control, if you read this websites training section there is a N.E.W. energy ways thing, which describes how to do energy work, you will be able to feel energy inside yourself very quickly (i wonder if it's actually just blood flow?) and you simply move it or spin it in one direction (which is what i have problems with, it is all wavy and won't stay in the same place position and movement for very logn).

I only visualize if I cannot get the 3 to synch, then I kind of imagine there are these three little "sticks" coming out of third eye and the two ears, and they are all connected, and that they are all facing one way, say to the left, then I start spinning the three connections around my head, and it helps me feel them all spin in sync, but it's hard to do.

It's easier to just hope that you can naturally get it going on accident and then hold on to it... and it seems easiest when you are in a lowered brainwaves state, like, not quite drowsy, but close.

quote:
So what are the three points spinning from the view point of  the center of your head?

as I said it doesn't matter, I think this time from  MY point of view, being inside my head, looking forward through my eyes, they were going clockwise... looking at me from being in front of me, counter.

quote:
Also when you saw the color, what color was it?  I am doing some research on the different colors that people see.  I would like to find out if there is any common colors.  Perhaps I might accidently find a new way of going out visualizing specific colors.

I really don't remember any more, it took a while to remember that I just saw a color, but I think it was kind of the color of this guy
[][][][]

quote:
About your tone, I get it in my left ear, exactly as you described it.  Only once in a while in my right.  Never thought about moving it to my third eye.  

Why do people get it in their left ear? This bothers me.... I read something about ear implants once..... and well, doesn't anyone get it more in their right ear than left? I get it most in my left because my fan is to the right of me and dulls down the noise in my right one, but if I lay on top of my right ear I hear the ringing it in just as equally.

quote:
The head pressure.... after I downloaded the Brain Wave Generator, and found a sound effective for me, I had the same head pressure for several days.  Somewhere? I read that the brain literally builds a neural connection between the right and left hemispheres of the brain when people learn to OBE and that my head pressure was a result of that happening.  After the head pressure went away, I felt absolutely normal.  (Well as normal for me, in my un-normal personality). [][][]

Thanks,

thelou

that's interesting... I'm not sure what new neural pathways I'd be creating the past few days, it seems more like my sinuses, which have clogged up... and like my third eye getting too much energy in it. But I don't know how to block energy from it and send it away if it starts hurting, all I can really do is focus on something else.

"These two types are turn to F22-LD and etheric OBE respectively, while your method leads into heavy and instable etheric projections. "

So are you saying there are ways to make sure of WHERE you project into? How do you project into the physical?

[there is no way for me to consciously enter hypnagogic images]

"After doing that maybe 10 times I find Phasing a snap.

Regards Mustardseed"

See now this isn't possible for me (and i've been doing it for well over half a year) what happens is that I start falling asleep, I lose focus, people talking or images get strong (providing I get deep enough) and I am instantly jerked awake MYOCLONIC JERK and for a few moments I cannot do anything, there are no images, I cannot imagine images, becuase of the adrenaline, it takes over certain mind functions, all I can do is be clearheaded, then if I try to see imagery again I just fall asleep again.

It doesn't matter how much it happens, (more than 12 some times) I JUST CANNOT ENTER IT.

No matter what I do, not talking, not getting up for a few moments, not erratically breathing... not mantras.... music is a bit of a help but then the music keeps waking me up.

nothing works...

today I was trying to not ever fall into hypnagogia but instead just kind of clear my head and i imagined some guy running down this huge tower, and i started to get very small vibrations but then couldn't get back to that again.

So ... who knows.

What I do know is I'm getting rightly ticked off about all of this.

there is no way for me to consciously enter hypnagogic images as soon as they come i am unconscious.

[they just simply aren't paying enough attention to their thoughts, and aren't realizing that they are happening]

quote:Originally posted by cube

A good trick you can do whenever you've got a few seconds is to do a heartbeat counting mindblank. First start off by doing a solid mindblank for 3 heartbeats, forming a picture of each number in your mind with no other thoughts entering in.

If you have a thought you didn't plan to have, start the count over again. Work your way up to higher and higher numbers. After you get to about 30 or so you can pretty much go forever.

I don't want to get in to the full depth of my theories, but I firmly believe it is near, if not totally, impossible to keep the mind blank. What I believe, is simply, that you are turning your attention, in the case of this excercise, ALL OF IT, onto the counting, this does not mean, under any circumstances, that the mind is not still active, that is is REALLY quiet, it just means, that you are not hearing the unconscious dribble, because you are very intent on not paying attention, and you aren't listening for it.

I believe that we constantly have voices, images, etc, running through our unconscious mind, and that we are just normally filtering them, but when we try to quiet the conscious mind (which is totally possible) the unconscious then turns on, and we start to fall asleep, or for the lucky ones, into a trance.

Maybe you can shut the subconscious up, and keep the conscious shut up, I don't know... frankly I don't think hardly anyone REALLY thinks nothing, rather, they just simply aren't paying enough attention to their thoughts, and aren't realizing that they are happening

I mean, the mind isn't silent when we sleep, but we often in reflection perceive it as that way, when rather, we actually go through a huge storm of thinking and problem solving, etc, sure, when you get into a DEEP sleep it's close to dead, that is an exception, but most people they just don't even realize they have so many thoughts in their heads, because they have very selective attention.

By counting that might be all they hear, is themselves counting, they might not notice all the "underwater" thoughts that are swirling around.

I do.....

I don't think you can turn them off, I think you can just not pay attention to them. This means, sadly, that you have to put your entire being into extreme strain in trying to stay focused on the task at hand, and to not let go of it, not let it become automatic, let it constantly be in the present....

How long can you hold an image before it goes away and the unconscious changes it to something else? You can hold the desire to hold it there for a damn long time, but how long can you hold the image itself? Me? 5 seconds or so...... then it mutates, my mind gets bored with it...

I don't think you can really ever stop this stuff from happening, you can just get very good at focusing...... and you can, totally, shut the conscious mind off, by simply not thinking, and listening to the voices, looking at the images.... having a mantra loop automatically until it doesn't feel like you are even saying it anymore.

But... turning the unconscious off? To me that seems a huge feat, if even possible.... I'm in my infancy still but just to be hearing the ucnonscious mind for me implies complete lack of consciousness, so that it may permeate into my head at listenable levels.

Meaning I can't interact with it.


------------------
Okay then..... so basically, counting and restarting whenever you have a thought, that just ultimately paves the way for you to start falling into unconscious thought, from my experience, it shuts your NORMAL mind up and turns on the voices even more until you lose track into hypnagogics and evetually become startled back "awake" into "focus".

If anyone who does counting techniques thinks otherwise, please elaborate... this is my experience and it's frustrating, how are you to focus when you have no conscious mind anymore? (or the one you have seems to be largely frozen and incapacitated)

quote:Originally posted by Patrik

holy reality,

Thank you for your reply, you have a lot of interesting ideas. Most of them I have tried, but not in the manner and intensity that you describe. This problem of mine is getting more and more annoying. I had no such problems when starting out, I can get quite deep and lower my brain waves, but just not activate my subconcious.

I appreciate your reply, and will do some serious practise with them, thanks.

Well, what do you mean by lower your brainwaves? If you get them low enough you should drift into paralysis (and i really have no idea what frequency this is, REM paralysis is said to occur during beta, which just... confuses me to no end, like, how do you meditate into something you are already into by default? Do you have to go to delta then all the way back up to beta?)

But.... at any rate, I have the exact opposite, I can't shut the subconscious up, it takes control of me and my hypnagogic images, and it is SO DISORIENTING..... "blah blah b lah blah " BAM you're awake... blah blah blah blah BAM you're awake.... "DAMN YOU SUBCONSCIOUS, LET ME FOCUS......." blah blah blah blah BAM you're awwake....

I mean... EVEN WHEN I'M REALLY TIRED ... I can't even get to sleep..... I'm sure I've somehow in getting close to hypnagogics, conditioned myself to associate them with losing control, I need reprogramming or something... I don't know.

It's horrible, I've been trying to do this for months, it gets to where I can choose from being too alert, or being not alert enough, if I try and ride the fine line down into conscious sleep, it just doesn't work.

I've tried rope, visualizations, mantras, etc when I get close to falling back in, too, about the only option I have left is to tape record myself saying "go deeper, do not exit, you are in control, constantly deeper" or something like that and loop it over and over.

Which might not be a bad idea.

so....

do you have nay tips on how to simply visualize ?

For example, I visualize, say, a white truck, I "see" it but yet I don't see it, it's there, but it isn't... it has no form, it is as if it is a ghost in my mind... it is transparent.

Only when I LOSE COMPLETE AND TOTAL CONTROL OF MY MIND AND START FALLING ASLEEP does the imagination take solid form, as if seeing it with my eyes.

And that really is a paradox, because how can I see it if I'm barely conscious? I don't know... I just get vague memories of what I had seen.

So... I also find, for example, viewing the truck, unless I animate the truck, I can only "hold" it in my "minds eye" (transparent, fuzzy...) for say, 10 seconds.... after that, it changes, abnormalities appear, or my mind completely kills the image and eventually it puts something new in to replace it.

So do I have the "skills" to do these kinds of OBE visualizations ? About the only stuff I can do requires like, constant changing, as if I had ADD, like imagining some sort of lines spining around everywhere inside my head, and like, I don't know, just keeping something in motion.... I've found it doesn't really disconnect me from my body since it's so NOT VIVID and detached, I can't see it inside my eyes as if it were real.

Nor can I stay awake when it starts becoming real.... not even if I'm sitting up.

I know some might consider me "crazy" but

"Next, if you've stayed with me this far. Here is where it gets interesting. The other night I was just lying in bed meditating, when suddenly 9 or so voices starting talking inside my head. There were men and women, some were stronger than others, some were distinct some were little more than a feeling that they were there and trying to communicate. These I am sure were not my own thoughts. They felt foreign and I just tried to keep myself quit and hone in on at least one individual, but I found it too hard to block out all the other voices. This is one of the very few times in my life that I can recall having an experience like this. It wasn't really scary, I had no fear of these voices but I found it too complicated or difficult to figure out what they were saying or wanted etc and I eventually passed out solving nothing. So if you have any answers, suggestions, or thoughts I would love to hear them. Thanks for trying to be enlightened."

That sounds absolutely normal to me... just like, hypnagogic hallucinations... today I was trying to NAP and I CANNOT F******ING FALL ASLEEP !!! like always, and into hypnagogics I saw some girl, and like, some blue, and pink, don't remember it too well, but she was talking to another girl... something about "Ginger" maybe, I don't know, I remembered it a little it then,  but not at all now (i'm never conscious during these things)

So I was like "Ginger who?" and they were like "Ginger who?" and it echoed and got loud and I snapped 'awake' ..... but yeah... I wish I could stay conscious during this stuff so I could watch it, manipulate it, communicate with it.

Now this is where I sound crazier but I believe you can see into the future, or hear phone conversations, things like that, while in the borderline awake/asleep state, NOT while LD, not while AP, but specifically this fragile half asleep state seems suited for it specifically to me... becuase I remember one morning I was slowly waking up, and i heard my mom talking to the cleaning lady, she was telling her that I was staying home, or something.... and I also found out from the convo that she was in fact coming over today on my day off....

Well now, I didn't think much of it when I got up, but then, my mom told me the exact thing just a few minutes later, I do not know whether they were talking on the phone SO EARLY IN THE MORNING.... that doesn't make much sense, and it seemed to me while hearing them talk, that she was at the door... so it could've been a glimpse at a phonecall made recently in the past, or... who knows.

The point was that it was true, it was very literal, to the point, as if it were not generated by my unconscious.

So......

yeah, if you get voices while meditating or sleeping, that is totally normal, though supposedly hearing voices converse with each other is a sign of schizophrenia.

quote:Originally posted by Nagual
That's some very short/extreme events/exceptions...  Do you really need to do RCs while fully awake?  While you were writing this post by example?

No, of course not, but every now and then I do them anyway for the sake of habit... it somewhat helps in being more lucid.

quote:
I don't think that is the norm.

Since when is norm interesting anyway, though?

quote:Originally posted by Kazbadan

Sometimes i would like to know how to not dream! I have so many dreams by night, that i get tired! i awakw with my mind very very tried by the morning! And if i dont have many dreams in a night, at least i have some few (2-3) that are very long, that seems to last for hours (althought i have no real idea for the time that it takes).

It is said that everybody has dreams, the problem is that they dont remember it. I remember because i am always awaking up in the middle of night.

At nght, before go sleep, i always drink a cup of milk with some cereals (like korn flakes). Maybe this is relevant, at least i heard something related to dreams and eating before sleep (the problem is: i think i readed this is a romance book!).

having lots of sugar/chocolate is said to give you weird dreams/nightmares... I can't really say whether this is true or not, sometimes I seem to notice a connection, sometimes not.

Milk is supposed to help you sleep though as far as I've heard.

But yeah I have the same problems as you... sometimes I'd kill to just lay down at 10 and all of a sudden it's 9 a.m. (or whenever I want to get up) and I'm REFRESHED and felt like I spent an eternity resting or something.

Alcohol has that effect I guess... but DAMMIT IN THE USA IT'S COOL TO TELL EVERYONE WHAT THEY CAN AND CAN'T PUT IN THEIR BODIES..... if you can force me to die in your wars, you can let me drink.

My parents aren't the cool parents that buy their kids booze and let them smoke the herb either....

using alcohol to induce sleep isn't good for you anyway, but I just felt like expressing my distate with the government, like I tend to do sometimes.

Telling yourself "I won't dream, or if I do, it won't be lucid and it'll be a happy dream" sometimes seems to work... I still wake up on average once per hour, usually after every REM cycle ends...

quote:Originally posted by Nagual

Another reality check trick:  You don't need tricks.  If you wonder if you are dreaming or not; you are dreaming!  While you are awake, you don't need to check at all.  So if you do doubt, it is a dream....

That's not true, I constantly wonder whether I'm dreaming or not when I wake up from a bizarre dream or false awakening or episode of sleep paralysis.

Often times I eventually find out that I was, and that if I had done a reality check I could have had some lucidity (a majority of my dreams involve me sleeping!)

But I also feel like I'm dreaming often throughout the day, a general disconnection from things.... for "normal" people that might hold true.

as for not needing RCs, they are ALWAYS essential due to combating false awakenings, but you know, I've gotten to where often times I'll just know I'm dreaming in the middle of a dream with an actual plot, it's the ones where I vividly feel myself lying my bed (or any bed) that I need to RC for right now.

But it kind of helps to make sure you can fly before you jump out a window!

umm.... anyway the goal of the RC is to TRY to convince yourself you ARE dreaming during the day... for example once in a while I'll read about RCs, or one will enter my head, and reluctantly I'll do one for the sake of keeping a loose habit up... when I do, I usually do the nose and the clock check (looking at it 3-4 times, seeing if the time changes)..... now when I do the clock check I deliberately say a different time in my head, in hopes that it will change to that time even though I "know" that I'm not dreaming during the day.

If you do the RC trying to get things to change, halfway expecting them to, it makes them more successful in dream.

One problem I have with the clock RC is that sometimes the time will just keep incrememnting by one each time I check... that CAN be hard to notice since you aren't always of the best judgement while dreaming.

[do not believe them]

i'd like to mention something very important that i forgot...

if she seeks the help of some sort of medical professional (and i'd recommend a sleep center over a psychologist myself, since hallucinations can be caused by sleep problems, and it'd be easier to try and see if those exist than if psych problems exist) DO NOT LET HER TAKE ANTI-PSYCHOTICS OR ANTI-DEPRESSANTS...

those should be absolute last resort measures if her life is in danger... there are ALWAYS better solutions... I mean... if you are gonna turn to drugs you'd might as well just smoke pot or something, not that that will help with depression though, but it can be a lot more effective at reducing anxiety (unless you are the paranoid type of pothead) than any damn anxiety pill that has shown to cause people ot become suicidal and CANNOT be stopped taking without severe withdrawal effects.

Prescription medicine should be an absolute last resort, and chances are a psychiatrist would want to pin it on her immediately after just talking to her once, and might try to convince her she needs it and it'll make her better.

do not believe them they will overmedicate anyone who says anything.

There are only a select few that probably really NEED these pills but they'll stick you on them if you've just been sad a small bit over a while (like say something bad happened to you) and it's not a problem of chemical imbalance/depression.

As for anti-psychotics I'm not familar with taking them, other then I was once prescribed low dosages to help me sleep, which didn't do anything, but....

You don't need to go screwing around with your brain chemistry unless all else fails and you are in severe danger.

It's easier to will yourself out of depression than it is to drug yourself with that stuff and hoping for it to magically make all your problems better.

I'm not saying she's depressed either, but those guys will want to put you on meds for just about any reason.....

I cannot express enough how horrible anti-depressants are and how much they screw you up, and how sucky quitting them is... most people never quit.

I did....

Skeptical side:
Maybe she should go to a sleep center?

There could be something significantly wrong with her sleep cycles, hence making her prone to "hallucinations" during the day... you know what it's like not getting good sleep and freaking out over little things, etc... feeling like people are watching you.

She could have some sort of REM disorder or something causing her to scratch herself in her sleep.... or maybe it could be going on in NREM too.. I don't know.

I don't see why she can't break free, it's all an issue of confidence, she needs to realize that SHE needs to make it go away, not someon else, and until that happens it WILL NOT STOP.....

I went through something kind of sort of akin to this, and it got better by not exposing myself to stories of demons, and by confronting what was going on, figuring it out.... in fact taking the figure, subduing it (with violence) then acknowladging its existence... even telling it I loved it a few times.

I haven't seen it in a long time since then.... but there used to be where I'd be in SP and I'd know I could get out and get free, but it would be holding me down, and it was just the FEAR and uncertainty that made it to where I couldn't break free... once I turned that fear into anger and realized I had to take it on and get rid of it, it was effortless to break free of it's 'control' and give it a good beating.

But if it's a creation of her violence won't solve much, just make her feel in control, what's important is talking to it, trying to understand how it could be a part of you, where it is coming from and why, telling it to leave you alone, or to tell you why it is bothering you..... even loving it.... trying to set it free.

Also for feeling the presence on the bed, I'm sure she has conditioned herself to associate sleep with that "presence" so therefore whenever she looks at the bed she can be prone to feeling it there.

Spiritual side:
Maybe her house is haunted.... ? Having so many bad experiences in the bed and in her room could rack up "negative energy" and so she should try some sort of energy clearing thing..... visualizing white light filling the room (especially while lucid if possible) opening windows now and then... etc.

(that didn't do anything at all for me, just a placebo)


I think when people with really repressed issues (we all have them) get adept at lucidity they tend to encounter things like this a lot worse than they normally would, because they finally have the IDEAL environment to confront and deal with their fears, they are actually interacting with their subconscious so it is finally free to directly try to talk to you and say "hey, something is wrong!"

That's just my theory anyway. I still have really screwed up dreams (lucid ones too, usually) from time to time.

Phong i can't enter dreams

because i can't fall asleep........ i may be tired during the day, but even when i just want to nap... i really can't (one exception, like 2-3 months ago, where i had a dream, then a LD, then an OBE) but that's about it....

I've tried to just NAP since then and I can't get to sleep.

I have the same myoclonic jerk problems as if I were trying to awarely drift into sleep.

here's something odd that just happened to me with electricity while trying to meditate into trance


First of all, I'd like to describe something that just happened to me, probably about 20-35 minutes ago.

I was wavering in and out of consciousness, and when I came back to, rather forcefully, there was a BRIGHT white explosion above my head... like electricity... it was very small and concentrated and make a loud crackling pop....

This was then followed by a sense of general heaviness/drowsiness... and sinking..... I thought "i must be entering paralysis" and I felt a black presence to the left of my head..... I say "felt" but in some kind of way, I actually saw it, as if seeing it through my peripheral vision, through my closed eyelids, as if it were in the physical, not inside my head.

The electric explosion felt the same way.... I kept thinking "was that real? It can't be..... you don't have a light above your head?..... was it the light on the fan? How? The light on the fan isn't on!!!"

It was very trippy, kind of a bit scary... but I never actually entered paralysis.

Towards the end of my session I came to with feelings and sounds of electricity in my ears..... the best way for to describe it is the track (-)ions on Ænima.... it sounded a lot like that, just way more quiet.... there was a small elecrtical feeling in them, not too noticeable, but it would occasionally "pop" back and forth.

So anyway, I thought that was pretty cool.. I don't know what exactly it means.....

it's really quite simple (and hard) to get there.. all you have to do is listen.

But first in order to listen, you have to turn your CONSCIOUS mind off.... how do you do that?

Here's what I've found.

during the middle of the day
->lie down, turn a fan on, listen to it, take the first thought to enter your head..... repeat it over and over until a new one enters your head, repeat that one over and over, etc.... now of course, you will in time notice that dozens of thoughts are coming (you aren't trying to silence them, just notice them) and you can only choose a few random ones at a time to repeat....... this will eventually turn your unconscious mind on and the thoughts should start having sounds to them.

->alternatively... just use one mantra over and over, perhaps 54321, 54321.

->just LISTEN to the fan, try as hard as you can to only listen to the fan.... after you can't do that anymore, try as hard as you can to listen to your thoughts, but not engage them or create them... and couple that with the noise of the fan.

This works best if I'm tried, but restless, sore, cannot get back to sleep.
->open your eyes, stare at something, think as loudly and quickly and coherently as possible, try your hardest to string together assocation after association such as (i'm bored, this won't work, man i'm tire,d i'll be there soon, keep going.... blah blah blah) it produces gaps in thought and falling asleep sensations follow.


You enter the hypnagogic state by no longer paying attention to the conscious mind, paradoxically shutting it off, making conscious hypnagogic entry near impossible (as far as i've been able to tell).... and there are a huge number of ways to do this, but simply doing some sort of repetetive mantra that doesn't have any meaning to you while trying to pay attention and acknowladge any thoughts that pop up, works best...

It might go something like you are listening at first, and then when you start repeating a thought to occupy the surface mind, you hear a barrage of unconscious thoughts pop up, and you try and focus on a few, and then conciously acknowladge that they exist, and perhaps choose one of them to replace the previous thought that you were repeating.

This helps you get intune with the unconscious mind, and when you get deep enough you can just naturally listen without having to do much focusing.... until you start falling asleep.

I hope this helps in some way.. these are all my own observations from trying to figure out what exactly produces the falling sensation and the sudden loss of coherent conscious attention.

[I]

i'm not sure why you think i'm worried about being hurt or killed, the other day when that guy said that HE actually did stuff with the cup of water, and people saw him, well that made me wonder if he was doing it, then what is to keep him from killing someone, or himself, if he's actually physically manifested somewhere?

I know that I don't physically manifest at all... so I don't care.....

I'm sure a bit afraid of the unknown like anyone else but I project enough at night to have a familiarity to it... so no, it isn't fear.

I guess maybe just remember that I have a body might enough to set this into motion though... I try to imagine that I am somewhere else, but THAT IS SO HARD.... it really is.

I can't really visualize in my head, now, it's better than it used to be and is improving some, but for the most part I can't do it..... and when I do, I see myself from the 3rd person... it's so hard to try and get a hypnagogic image going that I am conscious during...

If i do it's not that hard to hold onto it and enter it, not at all...... but that seems like a huge bother.

I'd rather just pay attention to my body and feel it shut down, like I do in sleep paralysis during the night sometimes.

I'd like to hear your counting method.

does it happen when you try to consciously project?

or have you not tried that?

I usually can't even make it into a semi-dream... usually just hearing a voice or a sound is enough to make it happen.

It sucks because I know when I go deep enough I get paralyzed, if I could just seize that and stay conscious during it, I could project... but I can't.. I lose control of my mind....

So I don't know... I managed to hold onto an image for a few seconds the other day, got deep enough that the jolt out still had a floating image there... so I could be making progress... if I can get deep enough that the jolt out leaves me in paralysis, I'm there.