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I like these forums. I also like dicussing philosophy and lucid dreaming. Do any of you know of any more forums like this, were I can talk about this stuff even more?
Thanx.

I thnk there may be a huge psychological part to prying. It is a known fact that the subconciouse can affect the physical body, like when subjects are hypnotised and tild the will bleed only from one part of a wound, or than an ice cube i burning hot, and they get a blister from it.
When you pray, you are obviously doing it for reasons to help yourself, like get better from a seriouse illness. Is it not possible that your mind could pick up on that and put it into play, I think so.
And @ Peacfull Warrior, I dont mean to infringe on your beliefs, but if God created us in his image, than God would be far less perfect than a lot of us would like to think.

Cool. Thanx.

I'd go with what you were doing before, and concentrate on one aspect of the dream to stabilize it, like your hands or the ground. When you focus on something in a dream, not only are you concentrating on a dream object (which obviously means your dreaming anyway) but your tying up your senses in the dream, which can also prevent you from awakening.

Hey, never mind those religouse guys giving you that flack. Like Jeff_mash said, these guys seem to know a lot about something they dont have any experience with.
My advice to you is to be open minded if you get into this. Personally, I dont know wether its sleep paralysis or alternate relms or whatever, I just know its something we dont really get as a society yet and that it deserves exploring. I have yet to have one, but some day I plan to induce one from a lucid dream, which I'm getting better at.

I have a little saying that I go by. I'm all for Christ, but I'm anti Christian. Sorry if I'v offended anyone so far.
What I mean is, that Jesus was a smart dude. He saw that the workings of society needed to be changed, and he did it by carrying out acts that he knew would tick off the Jewish High preists. As far as I'm concered, he's no saviour, he was just a smat guy who saw the need for change.
Now heres is my problem. Jesus didn't sit up one day and say, "I'll start my own religion and call it Christianity!", it came hundreds of years later, with the writing of the bible. It began when people started to thinnk for themselves, and standing by the believes that Jesus held, this new though that the churches cant controll everything. That brings me to my problem. The churches have been doing the same thing that Jesus was trying to stop. The slaughtering of people on the assumption that they were witches, the wars that are going on in Northern Ireland and in the Middle East, and even those Child Abuse cases the Cathoilic Chirch is fighting today. All Because organized religion just doesn't work. It started off with the bast of intentions, but the churches had power, and power corrupts.
Now, another problem. I dont pretend to know that there is or isn't a god, but the Church presents a rather mean, stupid, angry god. A lot of you mentioned this before, but I think this is a rather unenlightend view to take.
I dont think any of us are intelligent or enlightened enough to comprehend the universe we live in, and I think we ought to stop guessing about a god and sort out the human race first. One of the biggest problems on this planet is organized religion.

Maybe a dream of this type would be worth interpreting. It may be that your telling yourself not to be so nervouse or uptight, like its the only way to get it across to your waking conciousness. I dont know. I would give it a shot though. It may improve some aspects of your waking life.

I dont see, how after awakeing after a dream as frightening as you've suggested,  you could forget it that easily. Many people forget dreams, but they usually havent woken up directly from them, and I dot know anyone whos ever forgotten a nightmare. I think if your looking for a solution to  apparently inexplicable phobias, you should look to your real past, and seek a more down to earth answer.
And I'd like to add, that no one yet understands fully the causes or mechanics of  OOBE's. It may be that you leave the body, or that it is mearly sleep paralysis or a REM based hallucination. We should seek to understand these experiences fully before blameing our fears on them.

A phobia like that doesn't have anything to do with whatever your afraid of living in or out of a certain distance of you. Phobias develope from traumatic events.
I once had a fear of violent wether, as I said in another thread. This didn't come from some astral plain or a past life, it was because I was living in an area of intense tornado activity every spring, and it was always being brought up, untill I couldn't take it any more. I was just a little kid, and that was some scary stuff back then.
Now assume I still had that fear now, were I live far away from this area. Would you attribute it to some weird past life experiences? I wouldn't.
You dont need to be exposed to a poisonous spider to fear them. You may just have seen a rather large harmless spider as an infant, or have been told to stay away from spiders because they are all dangerous.

Oops, I didn't meen N/A. I ment the other guy. The guy who thinks its all pointless. Darrenbeck. Thats the one. Sorry about the slip up.

-N/A

Which do you think is less boring?  Doing nothing your whole life, or doing something while your here. I think doing something would be a little less boring and a little more fun. I await your answer.

Thats cause the bedroom is usually where you wake up.

Sounds to me like you had a false awakening. They always feel realistic. You thought you had woken up. You knew you were awake, but the bed was ice. Ofcourse it would be confusing. But the answer is simple. Your not awake at all.
If you find yourself in this situation again, perform a few reality checks. False awakenings are cool things to induce lucid dreams from.

Fear, like so many of you before me have said, helps to keep us alive. Dont let it controll you in situaltions when you know you have nothing to fear.
I used to have a fear of violent weather. This was born out of me being right all the time. After a paranoid sit in my room, a Tornado somewhere would follow, or a violent storm. I dont know where this ability came from, and I havent been in a situaltion like that for almost 8 years now. I'm 16 now.
I'm sort of glad, and I was young, but I had nothing to be afraid of, and this phobia lead to me having few friends, missing school and becoming quite antisocial.
Eventually I saught to learn about my fear, and I never let it controll me again.
Dont let your ever fear even begin to take controll of you. Its one of the worst things that can happen to you.

Heres the way I see it.
If we got here naturally, not put here by any creator, than our purpose here is for us to decide. we havent been given a meaning to seek, we must seek our own meaning.
If we were put here by god or a creator, than we should have a purpose right? Right, but do you think we'll discover it in a mere 100 or less years on this planet, no.  If there is an afterlife, I would think we would find out there, but we'd be dead, so it wouldn't do me or any one else much good, would it.
I tend to go with the former on this one.

@Silverslider.

Hypnosis and self hypnosis are quite different. I think of self hypnosis kind of like meditation.
Hypnosis involves the individual greatly, the hypnotist just serves as a guide. You cant do anything you really dont want to do either, for all you curiouse people looking into hypnosis. There is a part of the mind called the Critical Faculty, a mental device which sets our limitations, defines reality, that sort of thing. In a hypnotic trance, this is inactive, thats why people can be talked into doing those crazy things, but as soon as the hypnotist steps over the line, the critical faculty comes into play.
Here is an example. I was on tour with my band, sitting in a hotel room without much to do. I had told my friend the drummer, about hypnosis, and he wanted to try it. He was curious and wanted to be hypnotised. As a result, I had him half asleep in about ten minutes. By the time I was finnished,  I had  made him walk around the hotel in a daze, loose touch with reality, forget what he looks like in a mirror, and I had almost no resistance from him.
On the walk past a guitar player in the same band aked what was wrong with him. I told him that I had hypnotized him. He wanted to try it, but was very set on not letting me take control. I tried to make him forget the names of everyone in the band, but he only got about three names mixed up. It was because he didn't want to surrender to the controll of the hypnotist (me) that it didn't work. Thats my theory anyway.

I'm a skeptical kind of person, and I love discussions like this.
I've read things like, "I know God exists because he and I have talked." or "I have felt his presence." Far be it for me to dispute this with you guys, who obviously believe this very deeply, but no one, no matter how much they think they do, understands the workings of the world or the universe around us to know wether they have been in contact with god, if such a being even exists. You dont know that what you felt was the presence of a God, that just seems to be the general feeling of beings on this planet. The reason why, I beleive, is because we hear of this idea of a God from the moment we hear the words of the language we speak for the first time. It is almost programmed into us. Naturally, this is what you would think something like a presence of this type is. Maybe someone of another religion or race may feel that that feeling would be something else?
My feelings on this matter are simple. Believe whatever you want, but as much as we like to think so, we dont know for sure, and no one has the right  to tell another group of people that this is the way it is or it isn't, like so many religions have done througout the centuries. I wont tell another person I know that God doesn't exist, because I really dont know for sure. I may beleive he doesn't, but I dont have the right to preach that to people, just the same as someone cant tell me he does exist.  They dont know, they have only been told he does.

Thats weird. As a matter of fact I've had dreams where reality checks didn't work. Luckily, I knew I was dreaming anyway, for the last thing I remembered was performing the MILD technique in my bed.
If other reality checks fail, try rembering back as far as you can. If you cant recall anything beyond a certain point, or the last thing you remember is falling asleep, then your probably dreaming.

I am not prone to false awakenings. If I'm shooting for a lucid dream and I find myself in my bedroom after spinning or something, I try to remember to perform a couple reality checks.

I'v had numerouse dreams where I recall or remember something in the dream which never really happened. I'v even gone so far as to make false mamory a dream sign. Whenever I figure I've remembered something the wrong way, like if I'm talking about it and someone says "Wait, thats not what happened." ,  I perform a reality test.

I would set a goal. That way you know that you want to do something, which means you must participate in the dream. This mindset may help you in not being stuck in a 3rd person perspective for the entire dream.

I'm not sure that undergoing an OBE really means you have left your body. I've always been skeptical about that one. I plan, in the near future, to unduce and OBE from a lucid dream and perform a few reality checks, to see whats goin down.