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This may sound odd, like I'm in la-la land, but I don't see anything as easy or difficult. Both are illusory concepts, or incomplete ones at best. Instead actions are either synchronized with my underlying intentions or in a state of disharmony. If you lie down to sleep, and you haven't finished your work for the day, sleeping is going to be "difficult" because your actions aren't harmonized with your intent - not because you lack the capacity to sleep, aren't skilled at sleeping, or lack knowledgeable experience, etc.

I once felt, "geez, I can't project whenever I want, I must really be dumb, for either not knowing how to do it or not knowing the intentions of my own soul." Well, that's silly. I had experienced natural projections before, and wouldn't accept the possibility of such a self-defeating caged existence.

We seem to have adopted a notion that if we let go our grasp of the localized reasoning part of ourselves, we'll instantly go crazy. Why, reasoning separates from animals, it makes us who we are, doesn't it? Well, then what separates us from computers? Instead of functioning with one consciousness, we divide it, assigning the rational mind as higher, guardian of knowledge, the ultimate decision maker, and so forth, so that the nonrational part of ourselves is lesser, inferior, uneducated and lost without the rational.

This idea, ultimately, that we are made up of two sides that are opposing and conflict with one another, is completely illusory. You are neither the rational mind nor are you an untamed animal. Your mind is not a computer that you use nor is your subconscious a beast to tame. You are a bold and fantastic hybrid of chaos and machine, unified together as a playful and creative god. You do not snap your fingers to complete a task, you entertain your way through it. It's a challenge which invigorates you. Learning the moves to complete it is like learning a dance.

An astral realm is an undiscovered country. Widen your scope, abandon your narrowness, and explore.

I know what I'm talking about, really.

I just don't know how to talk about it.

[always active, but more available to itself when senses are in abeyance or withdrawn, as in sleep, dreams, meditation, drowsiness, trance, or prayer]

Cube, I believe this desire many of you in this forum have, to be able to do it "whenever you want," contributes heavily to making it difficult. You're looking for a mechanism to apply to yourself, a set of rules to follow, or system of parts. This way of thinking is okay for manipulating objects in the physical world. But think of what you know of the spirit - it's purely unmechanized, follows no rules except the ones it creates, and cannot be subdivided into parts.

I once got into a very in-depth discussion with Anne Varnes about why our soul would choose to experience such limited and painful existence in the physical domain. She argued that there was no other way to experience limitless existence (nothing to compare it to), when I argued that it was some kind of cosmic mistake. We created all sorts of logical frameworks and got nowhere. Then she said, "well, we're doing a lot of human-level thinking," and I suddenly became aware of a different level of thought. That night, I had my first wake-induced experience. I didn't "want" to do it, I did it because that was the natural experience of my ego-less soul.

Deepak Chopra, in his theory of synchrodestiny, states that our "local mind" oftentimes clouds and warps the intent of the "nonlocal mind." When we align our limited local intent with the unlimited nonlocal intent, the illusion of difficulty is dispersed. Here is his list of comparisons between the local mind and the nonlocal mind.

Local mind
• ego mind
• individual mind
• individual consciousness
• conditioned consciousness
• linear
• operates within spacetime causality
• time-bound and limited
• rational
• conditioned in to habitual ways of thinking and behavior shaped by individual and collective experience
• separates
• inner dialogue: "This is me and mine."
• fear dominates
• requires energy
• needs approval
• interprets the "I" within the observer as different from the "I" in the observed
• thinks in cause and effect modalities
• algorythmic
• continuous
• conscious
• active when senses are active because sensory experience is local
• expresses itself through the voluntary nervous system and makes individual choices

Nonlocal mind
• spirit
• soul
• universal consciousness
• pure consciousness
• synchronistic
• operates outside spacetime causality
• timeless and infinite
• intuitive, creative
• unconditioned, infinitely corelated, infinitely creative
• unifies
• inner dialogue: "All this is me and mine."
• love dominates
• operates without energy
• immune to criticism and flattery
• knows it is the same "I" in the observer and the observed
• sees an acausal interconnectedness or interdependent co-arising
• nonalgorhythmic
• discontinuous
• supraconscious
• always active, but more available to itself when senses are in abeyance or withdrawn, as in sleep, dreams, meditation, drowsiness, trance, or prayer
• expresses itself through the autonomic and endocrine systems, and most importantly, through the synchronization of these systems and also through the synchronization of the particular and the universal, the microcosm and the macrocosm.

I bolded that statement because it's counterproductive to meditate by holding on to qualities of the local mind - unless you're awake and doing something. When you close your eyes to meditate, completely abandon any sense of cause and effect, feedback, approval, time, separation, energy, and even the notion that you're making an individual choice. If it doesn't feel completely natural, you're letting your sense of self-importance get in the way.

Edit: Astral Projection is not a step-by-step process, it's a creative process of intuition and whimsy. No wonder you're so bad at it, Cube Ahh.. pie in the sky tastes so good.

Making a physical sandwich with physical bread is undeniably simple. Making an astral sandwich with astral bread is even simpler.

Think of projecting as something you do at the astral level of your mind, not with your reasoning and intellect, which are really only usefull in the physical domain. Allow your awareness of this part of yourself to surface through silent meditation, and it will feel natural.

Don't try making an astral sandwich with physical bread.

Yes, I have had similar experiences, thelou. I go through a period of dream journaling, waking up 6, 7 or 8 times a night to write down the experiences. Eventually, it starts to feel like I don't even sleep, that I am simply observant of the molding and folding of consciousness. "Tiredness" is not the same, instead I feel the need to explore the depths of meditation.

This "insomnia" may be a result of "obsession," but I use those terms loosely because they aren't necessarily negative - if one can be awake in a constantly regenerative state with continual access to their dreams by having the nonlocal intelligence constantly occupying the mind, why not? I feel as though if I continue journaling I will reach the bi-local (or whatever you call it) state where the spirit is constantly observing the body. Chopra calls it "cosmic consciousness" because there are two qualities to your awareness, local and nonlocal.

I've never done it because - well, the existence is just so different. I'm torn between wanting to be normal and wanting to be transcendent, yet I feel those two concepts shouldn't be opposing. Shouldn't everyone be wanting this? Why isn't everyone trying to expand their awareness? Why am I looked at as weird or naive for talking about transcendence? Why is everyone going about their days like zombies and insist on protecting their sense of detachment from spirit? Why do they insist that believing in eternal love is for fools, or that it's impssible? Since I know they are as much of the universe as I, how could I know better than they? Maybe I am a fool? Maybe I am the zombie on road to detachment and insanity?

I see round things... curves.. something golden. People. Food. Someone saying, "no onions."

Honestly, I can't think of a less interesting spot. Why not something less culturally arbitrary, like a box on some guy's desk.

These worlds arise from the process of creativity, which is the nature of spirit.

That you feel the need to spread your narrowness is pitiable.

Not to discourage you, but you're going to find limited help in a forum. No one can diagnose a sleeping disorder online and, again, not to discourage your asking, but there are no quick and easy muscular relaxation techniques. Relaxation is cultivated through a sense of accomplishment and equilibrium with life, and that is learned through a process of trial and error.

Good luck.

A better use of those first five hours would be to, uh.. do something.

For instance, start on that website you were always thinking of creating. Or that artwork that constantly enters your mind. Cultivate a sense of impeccability, patience, and creativity. If you are afraid of "losing sleep," think of it as an experiment, but above all, trust your instincts. If you are tired and want to sleep, then sleep. Just as if you are hungry and want to eat, you should eat. Contemplate true sleepiness, as you would contemplate true hunger if you were on a diet.

Try not to "pay attention," you're not in school nor are your parents lecturing you. Instead, "experience," engross yourself into your senses.

Don't visualize anything, induce dreams for a while - they're not obe's, but if you're good at remembering them you can see when they started, how they started, and maybe even the chain of hypnagogic imagery through the threshold.

In my dreams I always pierce the sky to project, and fall downwards to awaken, leading me to believe that dreaming is "between" waking and projecting. I believe dreaming is a necessary stepping stone for us all into obe's. Become familiar with this step, and it'll be easier later to skip it. Good hunting.

I have had similar experiences, Manix. My guide has never spoken a word, not "friendly" by any means, but the experiences are powerful, and her "point" is well communicated, just by her appearance.

Through my experiences I've come to understand that guides ideally keep interaction or interference with your life to a minimum, because you learn far greater things on your own and mustn't be robbed of growth to independence, self-reliance, and love.

This "jolt" is a reaffirmation of waking-self-identification. Upon experiencing all sorts of weird and bizarred imagery, the logical part of you that you're holding on for the ride not only says, "what was that? where am I?" but also "what am I?" because the self is in flux, and the antecedent of "I" is quickly reconciled as the one lying in bed trying to fall asleep...

Instead, reconcile the "I" as your energy body or dream self, or whatever you like to call it. This where dream recall and dream journals come in handy, for if you know your dream body well enough you should have no trouble identifying it as the "you" who is experiencing the strange hypnagogic imagery.

[Edit: Yes, this where most give up for fear of experiencing true madness and/or schizophrenia, (i.e., split from rationality) and, yes, you will feel as though you are quite mad for a brief period, and yes, you will be frightened. Sorry, just had to add that friendly disclaimer ]

I saw a psychological therapist in college after I went to a career counselor to find out what I wanted to do with my life. There just wasn't anything in society I wanted to do - and yet I felt I could do anything. My career counselor suggested emotional counseling.

I was very open with my therapist (it would be useless not to) and wanted to hear a professional opinion on issues affecting human consciousness - lucid dreams, astral projection, etc. The more I kept a dream journal I felt mental "noise" while I was awake - an indecipherable cloud of thoughts that made it difficult to concentrate. Understandable, I thought, I was expanding my consciousness and this was difficult to deal with. It just happened that I also I felt like I was experiencing an onslaught from an entity in my dreams - the "external" feeling was clear, and in waking life I encountered what felt like an uncanny amount of bad luck, and entertained the possibility that my bad dreams were connected.

I wasn't doing very well in school. I did enough just to get by, and I was considering withdrawal because there was nothing I wanted to do - why waste my parents' money. I told my therapist I considered suicide out of the fact that I simply didn't like life - I didn't like the people, I didn't like the system, I didn't like the way things worked - and that I felt this way since the 4th grade. For me, choosing death was an emotionless matter of opinion - an opinion I wanted people close to me to accept as my own and understand. Understandably, this hurt my ability to form personal relationships. An anxiety surfaced out of the observation that I was someone out of place in a world I didn't belong in.

I was pushed antipsychotic drugs and antidepressents by a psychiatrist after meeting with him once. Always open-minded, I accepted and figured drugs could possibly help clear my mind, which would allow me to find my place in life and society. I was not told they were for schizophrenics, or that there was anything wrong with me, in fact - just that they might help.

The antidepressants did nothing but make me incredibly thirsty, so they increased the dosage twice, which increased the side effects. They gave me others which did they same. On top of this were the antipsychotics - which were dreadful.

Absolutely horrible creations of mad science. I was knocked unconscious when I took them and didn't dream, sleeping 12 hours, missing classes. My will was weakened and lost capacity to think. I said they were awful and weren't working, and they said I had to adjust to them. They increased the dosage. I'm a patient person - I stuck through 10 years straight of wanting to die, but chose to give life time.

Eventually the drugs "cleared" my mind, alright. I had the soul of a robot. All thought was a single track. I could do homework perfectly with no distractions. No daydreaming. No night dreaming either, but lots of sleep. Fun with my girlfriend was something of the past. Any sort of creative thought was out of the question. It just wasn't a viable option to be imaginative, odd as that may seem. Having the "will" to do something sounded like a meaningless concept - I had no will, only action.

Once I recognized what was going on, I immediately stopped the drugs and appointments, if not for being treated like a lab rat. Saying I would learn to live as a free thinking human being or die trying, my loving and patient girlfriend was upset.

To make a long story short, I found out that what I needed to learn was love. I never had very good teachers - (my parents worried and fought, love was not something they knew instinctively). I pushed my girlfriend away telling her she deserved a better lover, a selfless and mature lover, but that I would devote my life to learning how to love like that and come back to her when I was ready.

I'm ready. She's with someone else. Don't see psychiatrists. Learn love. And, if you can, don't learn it by losing it. Please don't.

Please don't.

How on earth did I post in this thread? Sorry - it was meant for this one (http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=10949&SearchTerms=hospital) which I found in a search.

Maybe I really am nuts. [xx(]

Sorry for resurrecting this thread, but I just have to confirm the title.

Please don't go to a psychiatrist if you're interested in OBE's. The best thing you can do is learn how to love, and practice loving and patience. That's the most important thing.

Mental health practitioners mean well, but by principle they're forcibly ignorant - the therapist/patient relationship means that one person's mind needs to be changed, and it's not the therapist's. It's their job to be closed-minded listeners.

Skipping a great deal of details - when I was a freshman in college, a psychiatrist and a therapist lead me to believe I was schizophrenically depressed, and put me on a cocktail of medication. In a word, they were deathly dreadful. Believing I was worthless in every way, I pushed away the girl I loved, for more than a year - she wouldn't leave because she loved me, but time gave way and she left, especially when I told her I would no longer take medication, but learn whatever it was I needed on my own.

I found all I needed to do was to learn how to love. I went back to my ex-girlfriend as I started to get my life back together, but she had found someone else. It's been a year, I get A's and B's, I lost 40 lbs, and I look and feel great. I know how to love with all my heart, and I know patience - but the girl I love with all my heart is gone. She won't talk to me, and her friends won't either.

There isn't anything wrong with you than can't be cured by love. Please, do not go to psychiatrists. Love is a learning process, but they are not teachers. You are, with your life around you, and you're very good at it.

"Rest" is a surprisingly relative term, we take for granted that we know what we mean when we use it to mean deep sleep, dreamless sleep, REM sleep, light sleep, meditation, relaxation, reprieve, and even recreation. With so many different kinds, we seem to be pretty good at it.

The deepest rest, death, is an absence from sensual awareness - no sights, no sounds, no smells, no tastes, no touch. We may interpret the afterlife using imagery and symbolism, but it is unlikely the way we would experience it after death. Our brainwave activity gets pretty close to death in the 5 - 20 minutes of delta sleep. Ask yourself - are there any experiences you can imagine that involve no senses?

Accept that you are capable of experiencing without the senses to interpret. It involves a different kind of memory, a different kind of thought, no words, no symbols, beyond the scope of anything you could ever discuss in a forum -

Targa you're a genius. You helped me to comprehend the infinity and timlessness of time when I told myself to imagine whatever it was you weren't describing.

I will live in peace forever. And I always have!

Karma is focused on actions, especially committing sins and having to pay for them. The same principle has been spoken of by many a motivational speaker, though, with regards to thoughts and attitudes. Disciplined creative visualization has given some the power to manifest whatever they want in this world, but also the unfortunate things they don't want which they dwell on and give too much energy. The universe is magnetic, like attracts like... all that jazz.

I'll use karma to illustrate my question:

Say that I am a new soul with no karmic history - and some part of the universe (another soul maybe) inflicts pain on me. Would I not naturally follow karmic prinicple and make the universe reap the pain it has sown onto me? We say that we "reap" suffering in our ordinary life sometimes because it's what we've previously sown, but there's another side. Does the universe not sow upon us?

If so, then why does it appear to sow life upon us, and reap death from us (grimly)?

Much of karma is spoken of universely, but seems only narrowly applied to individual persons.

-

Wait. Nevermind. I figured it out once I stopped trying to put it into words. So much of a forum's purpose is to become obsolete. Thanks.

Have you ever noticed that wherever you see nature, you see curves, squiggles and jagged edges. And wherever you see man, you see his attempt to make order and sense of nature, by reshaping it into symetrical square buildings, parallel streets, and princess cut diamond rings.

Sure, we see the famous spiral in seashells and other plantlife, and nature no doubt has a sense of design, but mathematics is a product of the human intellect. It did not exist before minds were able to conceptualize it, and it will not exist after minds that are able to conceptualize it no longer exist. Math, in a way, is very much like a system of government. Democracy may exist in practice and in thought, but if intelligent life doesn't exist to practice and think of it, does it exist?

I was intrigued by this in junior high and throughout much of high school - what most attractive people had in common was a central comfort with themselves and their environment. I tested this hypothesis and allowed myself first and foremost with myself and everything I interacted with. Sure enough, I was popular, made people laugh, and dated the girls I wanted to date.

It was eerie.

So eerie, in fact, I stopped for fear that I was being "too comfortable" with the world, becoming self-deluted, and an object of jealousy. Yes... I now have issues.. and fully regret ever making such a nonsensical judgement.

A very lovely program was just released by NOVA and PBS a few months ago called "The Elegant Universe," based on the book about string theory by Brian Greene. The entire 3-hour series is viewable online, with extra interviews and articles. One of them is on imagining extra dimensions.

Chakras are subconscious interpretations of bodily processes. Now, that description is quite vague, as subtle bodily processes below the normal level of consciousness may include every microscopic reaction from pheremones to radio waves - even further into the submicroscopic - and, yes, even further into the quantum.

Is it so hard to believe our consciousness has evolved into focusing awareness of energy around vital parts of our body, and centers of gravity? I say chakras are not doctrines that require belief, insofar as the subconscious does not require belief.

No, I have been wondering about this myself.

I've had an incredible number of vivid dream, astral, and obe experiences - I suppose I should consider myself lucky at the young age of 20, but I tell people it's more about remembering them then trying to have them in the first place.

I haven't done or seen everything, but, I have done and seen enough to know the unending frontier of consciousness - and that leaves me at a standstill. Where do I go from here? My dreams and experiences have been quite bland... even the occasional nightmarish disturbance is met with a "been there done that" lack of surprise. "Ah, so I'm in another wasteland of hate, despair, and pain, am I? And who are you? Is that so. I bet you're fascinating, living here instead of on Earth and all that. My subconscious is filthy, you say? Oh yes, I really must clean it every now and then."

The fantastic fantasies are equally something ignoble. "What a fantastic city! Beautiful sunlit waterfalls! The vibrance and color! The perfect harmony of its government and its people, to live here is something miraculous! Oh, hello, how are you? Yes, I'm visiting. No I'm sorry I can't stay long - you see I'm going to wake up soon, nothing I can do about it. Yes, I'm one of those, "temporals," is that what you call them?"

Yes, there are other realms. Higher states of existence where one can enhance their psychic, psychokinetic abilities, etc. One might even learn to win the lottery! [:O]

In order, they are messily redundant, overwhelmingly impudent, and psychogenically diluting.

-

Wait! I've found it! Love. Give back to universe, Phong, with all your God-given talents. Do you not know that love is the most precious thing we have? We are forever connected to its undending benevolence and we can become love itself and send it throughout the cosmos!

Tried it. Sorry to burst everyone's bubble, but some people just seem to like pain, lonliness, and violence. No matter how much you love them, they will tell you that if you "really" loved them, you would leave them alone. Oh, so is that the message of love?

Perhaps, in my experiences of love, I have not given them enough time. After all, I am "only" 20, with what feels like lifetimes of experience.

Time, then. Love is patient in the eyes of suffering. True love is timeless, and infinitely patient.

Time, then. I suppose that's why I came to Earth, and am not an astral entity, frolicking in an alien wilderness. I came here to learn lessons that couldn't be learned there.



Why did you come here?

Guardian angels do not protect you from harm. They are not there to make choices for you, support you, or ease the suffering of life.

They guard your freedom. With divine unbreakable power they allow you to learn from life uninterrupted. They are "formally detached" so you are not interrupted by them either.

To support you or positively intervene in your affairs is to give you reason to love them. This would withhold you from an important lesson. To learn love without reason, action without support, is to learn divinity. This they must let you do for yourself.

And you may do so whenever you choose.

There should be a rule against calling people psychotic in this forum. Although deeply amusing, in a kettle-said-to-the-pot kind of way, self-respecting individuals will find no reason to post.

And to say that, frankly, is the only reason why I posted in this forum at all.