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If you're in a "lucid dream", you're already projecting.  There's no need to project "from" a lucid dream". 

There's also no 'extra added benefit' or bonus from having a conscious projection vs what you're already doing.  None at all. 
Anyone who tells you otherwise has massive ego issues and simply just want to feel special.

Yes, I'm aware of this (no small thanks to you reiterating this point  ). Maybe I'm just still using outdated or redundant language/terminology.

And while I believe that we are inherently multi-dimensional, multi-faceted beings, I generally don't consider it a 'projection' when I don't have full awareness at some stage.

Like I said, conscious projections aren't even on my to-do list. I like that with LD projections that all the preliminaries (trance etc) are out of the way- it suits my lazy self just fine!

But if the opportunity arises out of the blue, should I not exploit it?

Hi

I would say yes. What you call magnetic, I call it suction. What you want to do is create a pendulum swing with inside of the feeling of "magnet" or "suction". What you want to do is leave the bed, break the magnetic filed/suction. you do that by creating movement.

Hearing a seashell,wind.. ya that's all good. I get a rushing sound like that in my ears,head, and at the same time I also get vibes,or contrations, or just pressure..and its try to leave the body now time. I don't think you are missing opertunities.. I think you are getting opportunities.. now you just need to take the next step which is out and your panic thinking.

F Ya it is worth is pursuing.. sorry for the bad word. Just imagine a place where anything you do can't pshyically kill you. As long as you don't have a sudden heart attack in the real world while out of body.. you will always wake up in bed. You cant die.. I tried      so is that not motivation enuff to try and do it and what ever panics you, go check it out, you will always have another go check it out again time.P anic is a natural response. So go experiment..you will like it.Freedom.

Thanks for the advice.

The thing is I can project fine from lucid dreams and the fear's pretty much kept at bay so long as I keep moving.

And I do have a fondness for risky things - jumping out of buildings etc (in the NPR!).

But I ruled out conscious projections a while back because I'm a total wimp and I accept that. Its only been recently that these spontaneous chances have arisen and I don't want them to go to waste.

Is there much difference in the outcome projecting this way? Does it take a long time? Is it scary? lol. I just want to be prepared...

I guess I'll have to grow a pair and just get on with it, right?.

 Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I feel like I'm almost 'stuck' to the bed. It feels like a sort of magnetic pull especially around my head and I can't move. The air feels thick and heavy and I can hear a sound like if I was listening to a seashell - the wind, the sea, etc. I feel and hear the same sounds and sensations in False Awakenings. In those situations I would wrest myself up from my bed, the atmosphere would clear and I would continue my dream/projection without any fuss. What I do here is I keep my mind awake until I tire myself out eventually. It's a split-second decision to make before panic sets in.
 
It feels like I might be wasting a chance to finally have that elusive conscious projection. I can think clearly then and I actually consider this but my fear always gets the better of me in the end. Basically I'm asking how close I would be to a full-blown projection if I let it run it's course naturally i.e. what to expect and actually if it's worth pursuing in the first place. Also obviously what method to use once I've made the decision to go further. 

[In the physical mindset you'll search for your requirements, in the NP mindset you CREATE the requirement]

OK you appear to have found the distractions that play on your mind. Your quest is only in doing one thing even though there are other ways to achieve it. You don't think clearly enough to recognise them.
Afterwards when awake you then see the difference. Its that doh! moment.
I was tested on this exact thing long ago, it taught me to look at the 'posed inconvenience' from many angles. It also showed clearly that lateral thinking is worth it's weight in gold.
Looking at a featureless wall and wanting a door to escape, you can't break it using anything including dynamite, so you draw a door on the wall and it opens.
That sort of thinking works. In the physical mindset you'll search for your requirements, in the NP mindset you CREATE the requirement. It takes some learning, trust me on that one .
Remember who you are then solve the riddle. It wakes you from the distraction and enables you to see with your mind.

I guess I'm not 'creative' enough when non-physical. I have to work on keeping my mind fluid and open to all possibilities.

What occurred to me later was that I should've just left through a window - it's a common portal for me and I can control the outcome to some degree and there were loads to choose from. I've been focusing a lot on doors lately because it's a weak spot for me but yeah, I just got stuck in a loop.

Thanks for the advice. I'll have to bear that in mind next time.

Nice addition sheriffR.
You have added another thing based on the whole topic. That is things that recur. The noises certainly do and consistently too. Sights do too, these are far more complex. To fix these you awareness needs increasing a little. Not too much or you'll lose the trance.

How would I go about this? Maybe not try to read the words and let it play out?
I can't figure out how I could make an entry into a book. It could change if I wait it out though.
Hmm...

[Well what I usually do when I get lucid is I run away from whatever I'm doing as fast as I can and everything turns black and its like I'm hurtling through space. Eventually I get dropped into a new scene. So I should probably have done that?  To be honest I forgot about that option. ]

Did you really forget?
This is showing your self awareness isn't as high as it has been in previous experiences.
Perhaps this test took that memory away, you'd have no recall of this trick at all. When you pass the test, these lost memories suddenly appear again. You actually know they were removed too.

Definitely on the right track and doing fine.

It just didn't occur to me at all. Like I said, I've been focusing on the scene I awaken in and I guess I've gotten out of the habit. Also, I think I got a bit bogged down in looking for the door and it shrunk my mind a little.

 I'm not sure if this counts because I've never had a conscious projection but I thought I'd join in anyway.

When I'm sleepy there's one 'mini-dream' I nearly always have. I can only recall the last maybe couple of seconds of it before I snap out of it which I always do so again I don't know how helpful it is...

I see a newspaper (sometimes a book) and I hear a voice (sometimes my own) reading aloud. Its in English but the words are usually very random. For a split second I get some awareness and try to read the words myself. The page usually zooms in a little and I read. The words are still random and I think/say/ feel/express in some way that it doesn't make sense. Then I wake up. I was thinking that maybe I could use this in some way but it seems overly complicated.

So that's my little contribution to this thread.

You are on the right track and doing just fine.

What I see in this experience is not an indication of a problem or a blockage. This is an early test designed to help you develop your awareness in this new environment and how your mindset needs to adapt to a new way of looking at the Non-Physical.

It's not a wildly complicated realization that needs to be made here, but a fundamental one. You actually succeeded in the first part by recognizing and increasing your lucidity and turning the dream into a lucid projection. You had instinctively found your way into the NP. Your next challenge was to find your way out of the dream scenario so you started trying doors.

That would have worked in the Physical, why didn't it work in the NP? You even found some windows and could see outside, so you knew there was an outside.

What needed to change in your perspective on this situation?

Thanks for the reply. Well what I usually do when I get lucid is I run away from whatever I'm doing as fast as I can and everything turns black and its like I'm hurtling through space. Eventually I get dropped into a new scene. So I should probably have done that?  To be honest I forgot about that option. I guess i'm still thinking too physically, too three-dimensionally, y'know?

Also, lately I've preferred to explore the scene I've 'awakened' in rather than run to new one - its like a snapshot of my subconscious or something. And I could be wrong but it seems a little ungrateful of me to constantly be trying to get somewhere else rather than appreciate where I've found myself. I think the lines between the journey and he destination get a little blurred in the NP. Maybe I ought to go back to the old 'run and jump' method.. What do you think?

That's cruel EV lol.
Its a lesson in self realization, you're not the only one to have this lesson.
Your 'getting bored' is a clue where to start thinling.

How would you define 'Self-realization'?

Is it to realize one's latent potential and to manifest it into this reality?
or
is it more about breaking (self-imposed?) barriers between oneself and God/the Source? Some kind of transcendence?
Maybe neither or both?

And 'bored' was probably the wrong choice of word. I fancied a change of scenery - sunlight and fresh air mostly.

This was a test.

You were expected to have a realization about something.

Just giving you the answer would deprive you of the benefit of the lesson being offered, plus it would spoil the fun.

You will figure it out in time. Then the next lesson will be presented. I hear schoolbells ringing!

I know you're going to remain tight lipped as far as any specifics go but can you tell me if this a signpost on the way to greater personal growth or a symptom of some kind of blockage, some issue that needs to be resolved before I can progress? Am I on the right track, basically?

 
It started off with me being semi-lucid at a party. When I got lucid I left. I had a little fun whooshing around, upside down doing loop de loops and so on.. This was all on a stairwell. Anyway, I got bored of that and wanted to get out of the building. I found a door and tried to visualise the outside as I turned the handle and opened it. I ended up at another party. I left and tried more doors to the same result. I went down more flights of stairs (this was like an apartment block) and tried more doors and again another room full of people. I went in and found another door again the same. This went on for the whole dream - a room leading to another room leading to another. One time through some kind of trick I cant remember, I got outside but as soon as I started walking I was back indoors. In some of the rooms there were windows and I could see the outside clearly enough - mostly the sky but I just couldn't get out of there!

Through all of this I had this feeling that I was going to swallow my tongue in the physical and that maybe I should just wake up but I continued anyway. This was accompanied by a constant ache in my throat. When I finally awoke the ache was still there it soon subsided and I think I was grinding my teeth too.

This was also the most drawn out AP/LD I've had - I faded in and out a little but it was very faint. I suspect the throatache kept me grounded in a way. My movement and vision was good and I didn't lose my head despite it being a confusing experience.
So... what should I have done or what should I do next time a similar situation arises?  

49 AP/LDs (they are one and the same, I think) for me this year!

  I'm excluding very brief but fully lucid experiences, semi-lucids and false awakenings. Practically all my APs come in clusters and so are counted as one long projection. If they happened at different points in the same day i.e. one in the morning then one in the evening, it's counted as two separate experiences.

The rest:
3 fully lucid but very brief
Couple of false awakenings
8 semi-lucids

So get out your dream recall diaries and join in!

I do agree that if you focused on nothing but the "terrible" parts of this reality and how some of us treat each other... it's a pretty terrible place.  No argument there.

But then, that's kind of missing the forest for the tress... because, there are a lot of really good people experiencing this reality right now and a lot of really beautiful things come out of this place.    Focus on those.  You don't have to turn a blind eye to the bad stuff... it's obviously always going to be there in some amount (sometimes it seems more than others), just focus more on the good.

Take this forum as a very small example of something good coming out of this "terrible" world.  
Then take YOURSELF as a very big example of something good coming out of this "terrible" world.  

I get what you are saying and do agree that that's the best and healthiest way to go about things. However my making peace with the world doesn't alleviate anyone elses suffering, does it? I actually consider it a luxury and a privilege to be able to even contemplate the misfortunes of others. Nothing I go through can ever really compare with the pain so many people carry inside and there's nothing I can do to remedy it either. It's that helplessness, that impotence that I'm grappling with right now, I guess.

[I think those dreams are to teach us how to be a hero. Or to show us that even tho we don't always do the right things, deep inside us there's someone who's ready to risk it's life in order to save another.If it's recurring to you as much as it is for me then this will push your consciousness about saving people even more.]

I have the same kind of dreams as you except I often see myself saving people who are about to die.
Like a week ago, I ended in a dream where someone had already killed another person, I had to follow him around and he took a passage around an hospital and was really aggressive around everyone so I kept following him.
Eventually he took some stairs down and as we go up I meet someone else, I stop following that person and I notice something strange from where I came from. I go back and notice that the basement in the hospital was getting completely flooded and that a girl right before that was drowning in the flood, I had to save her so I went back in the water and pulled her out and I proceeded to reanimate her.
Often I wake up before those moments really quick then go right back in the same dream I was because I noticed something was wrong about my dream.
I think those dreams are to teach us how to be a hero. Or to show us that even tho we don't always do the right things, deep inside us there's someone who's ready to risk it's life in order to save another.
If it's recurring to you as much as it is for me then this will push your consciousness about saving people even more.
I think those dreams are really good when they happen, I wake up in the morning and I feel great.
The other day I was next to a volcano and it was about to erupt, so I start running but for some reasons I have no idea what I'm doing.
I wake up and go back immediately to sleep. And for some reason, the dream has reset, so I started running as fast as I could, yelling at everyone around me that they have to run because the volcano was erupting.
It feels really rewarding.

I like that interpretation.

But these dreams aren't ever rewarding for me. They don't really have a conclusion and they either end while I'm juggling the kids or I'm running around with a morphing baby (kinda 'Alice'- like when I think about it!). Its farcical and frustrating. And I've never been lucid in one to alter or fix the situation. I know everyone has these kind of dreams but why that specific scenario? I can't figure out what my subconscious is trying to tell me. Before this year I didn't have these dreams but now they're quite frequent.

Thanks, though. I'll ponder over that - it could prove useful. 

Yes, you can "opt" out instead of reincarnating.

But can you opt out of 'being' full stop?

[We must ultimately do nothing and from nothing we feel everything and are everything and everywhere.Because everything comes from nothing.]

Here I have something for you from the Tao Te Ching.
(Yes I'm sorry, I always quote from this book because I don't see it as religion but I see it as "The Path" philosophically)
---
long quote
---

This is something that is part of the ultimate answer as to what we must do.
We must ultimately do nothing and from nothing we feel everything and are everything and everywhere.
Because everything comes from nothing.

That's partly what I'm getting at, that everything and nothing aren't dissimilar and that the only way you can truly be 'at one' with ... just, all of it, really is to move beyond 'consciousness' or 'awareness' as we know it presently into a less forced, more passive state and that that's maybe what we should strive for...

Lots of food for thought here. Will have to explore further. Thanks

[Maybe they will let you do nothing for a while... sort of like how at the airport they have those "prayer rooms" (what are they for... to pray you don't crash or something for good measure?); they can have a little bubble of nothing off to the side for you to nothing in for a while]

Hehe, I like that.

The opposite of most people, at least.

I guess the virtue is if there were nothing, it couldn't be worse than here, if being here is a bad experience for you.

Maybe they will let you do nothing for a while... sort of like how at the airport they have those "prayer rooms" (what are they for... to pray you don't crash or something for good measure?); they can have a little bubble of nothing off to the side for you to nothing in for a while 

That sounds about right to me! Where do I sign up?

It could be argued that those who say that they DEFINITELY do not want to come back... have the most reason to come back. 

You can experience eternal nothingness right now... meditate towards it. 

But why come back at all? The world is a terrible place.

People are either in pain, causing pain or both. We're constantly contributing indirectly to the suffering of others too. Not forgetting destroying the environment and the appalling treatment of animals.

Why can't we just rest in peace?

And what's so significant about planet Earth or the human experience anyway that multiple attempts need to be made at 'getting it right' down here when the absolute, eternal truths generally seem to be intangible and not connected solely to our physical shell? Unless we can reincarnate on other planets or dimensions...

Because we *ARE* the system. 

Its hard sometimes to reconcile spiritual/philosophical beliefs or ideals with the reality of the world as it stands...

I guess I've just got to try harder.

 
I'm in the middle of an AP/LD drought and I've tried for the last month or so to sleep with an amethyst under my pillow. I'd had it for a few years and I cleansed it in cold water and did a bit of visualisation. Anyway, it didn't really work. One and a half unpleasant APs and I can barely remember my dreams. Also I can't get to sleep most nights despite being tired. Last night I stopped and hopefully I'll regain my skills. Good luck.

As long as there is this "us" vs "them" mentality... then things will never get better.

This goes back to what I was saying above... you need to change YOURSELF.  You need to change how YOU view the world... YOUR perspective.
You'll never change how someone else views things.

Personally, to me... there's only "humanity".  If someone does something bad, it's because that individual did something bad... there are good and bad people in every culture, with every coloured skin.
Your ACTIONS speak much louder to me than any physical characteristic of your body. 

Remember... in the end... YOU ARE NOT YOUR BODY.  Once a critical mass of people on this planet understand this concept, you'll begin to see massive changes occur in how we treat each other. 
Until then, you can only change yourself.

Look, I totally agree with you but why can't it be 'us' (that is humanity) versus a system that has discriminated and oppressed a hell of a lot of people worldwide since colonial times? I sound a bit heavy duty but I think we need to stand up for marginalised people and when some folk are still convinced that there isn't a even a problem or that the victims are to blame for these situation (thanks a lot mainstream media) sometimes sadly we need to shout louder.

And sure, change has to come from within but I think a balance needs to be struck between introspection and activism. I hope you see where I'm coming from.

I think chiefly the rioters themselves are to blame, but no small part of the blame falls on media and "leader" figures who have chosen to focus on a senseless tragedy, and build it into a racial case where none existed. People like Al Sharpton and Eric holder to me bear not the smallest part of the responsibility for the destruction, because they know the effect of labeling this a racial hate crime, and calling for special reactions. They knew this would be the result, yet still chose to attach inflammatory dimensions to the happening. Folks like that are the true racists I feel. The call for action on a case which has not been judged is also a very poor show for an attorney general; the court system aspires to be blind. I believe these men actually authored racial tensions in a place where they didn't previously exist, and that is also damaging to the harmony of society.

Of course its racial. White privilege/supremacy is the reality of the world we live in : unseen by those benefit from it even unwittingly. Try being a young black (or indeed Muslim) male in this day and age ~ why even risk setting foot outside?

Also, reverse racism is a total fallacy. Its brought up only to deflect from actual racism, the systematic kind.

And I've no time for the likes of Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson etc.Those guys are unquestionably bought and paid for.

 
To be honest I think its easy to be high-minded when you're not in the firing line. Black Americans built that country with their bare hands (through no choice of their own) and in 2014 they're still getting gunned down like animals. Its an absolute disgrace! Of course rioting isn't going to solve anything but lets not act like this shooting was an isolated incident. People can only take so much. Got zero sympathy for pigs. Why act like they shouldn't be held to a higher standard? Its your taxes that's paying their salaries. There's too much victim-blaming  going around for my liking (not necessarily here).

That being said, I still think there is a deeper agenda at play. Agent provocateurs abound and the military's ready and waiting on the sidelines...

When I was nominally an atheist the lack of an afterlife was a great source of comfort to me.

Is there still the choice to opt out of existence once and for all? I mean after death.

And no, I'm not suicidal...

Maybe its ego-driven:an unhealthy attachment to my physical being that, this life has to be the only one or something. Still eternal nothingness sounds rather wonderful.

This has been the recurring theme in my dreams this year. I keep finding kids in mild peril like crawling on stairways, on slopes or landscapes that start sloping once I'm there etc. Generally they're unattended and unaware of any danger. Sometimes there's two or more and I'm trying to carry them all. Another slightly less common scenario is that they are crying and I'm trying to comfort them. In both cases as I hold them they usually shrink and sometimes they speak. These dreams are quite frantic and awkward.

Can anyone interpret this for me?  Its been my most common dream for most of the year and it's gotta signify something, right? The sites I've looked up have been too vague, too general and I'm not especially intuitive by nature. Thanks.