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RJA - 6 years to reply to a post - that has to be some sort of record! 

I have sky-dived too, and whilst I always thought I had absolutely no fear of heights, the sky-dive taught me otherwise. It was a tandem with an ex-SAS guy strapped to my back who did all the chute opening stuff.  But steppping out of a perfectly good plane at a height of 10,000 feet makes you "lose composure"!

AND I'mmmmmm back!  This time after 7-8 years!  Anyway, yes - I'm older now and my kid wants to skydive or hang glide (I did that for awhile in my 20s) but I've told her I wouldn't do it again - I don't like heights much now. I suppose if I didn't have a wife and kids I might, but I was never convinced that skydiving or hang gliding was particularly safe.

blaktatt,

Out of curiousity- once you are out of your body in the RTZ, if you're just standing there in your house - do you feel "alone" then?  Or does it feel like the "shadow" is still there with you?

Also - how do you decide where to go to and how do you go about trying to get there?  I suspect that most people, like me, even after getting out of my body can't choose to go somewhere and then go to exactly that place.   Typically, when I've gone from RTZ to somewhere else I've either just found myself there (I think via losing lucidy and suddenly not being in my house anymore) or else I go outside, look up at the night sky and just shoot upward - and then ultimately end up somewhere pretty unpredictable.

So, I don't think your experiences per se are different than most, but what sounds different is your feeling that you're not the one in control.  I've never felt that there was someone else controlling what happens to me.

I was going to say "ask for help" but given the f*&*d up voices you may want to be specific in who you want help from.  Usually I've just been able to roll out, but on one of my early projections it literally felt like someone "flipped" me lengthwise so that I spun upside down really fast - at which point I found myself on all fours on the floor beside the bed - did the trick.

Yes - DMT or other hallucinagenic drugs - although that's probably not the answer you were looking for.

ok - so my reply to that question is 6 years late...actually I was fine.  Once my chute opened it "woke me up" and I did what I was supposed to do and had a nice little ride and a good landing.  I just missed the first 5 seconds of it all.

It originated a few years ago as a place to be "created" in the Astral planes by the act of a lot of people focusing on it.  If you Google Astral Pulse Island and select images you'll see an image of an island with a pyramid, palm trees, dock, etc.  The idea is that when you project you try to go to that place, and then in theory you should meet others there who are also projecting there. 

Never been there myself, but good luck! : )

you say it didn't work, but over what duration of time did you do it.

I'd say experiment with techniques and expect that it might take several weeks or even months before your first one.

also, i'm no expert but it helps if you're focusing your mind on it during the day.  read these forums, read a book (I'd recommend Buhlman's Adventures Beyond the Body - some will say Astral Dynamics, but I think that is too technical for beginner's).  then try every night/morning.

also, if you can just get to the vibrational state, that will provide confirmation to you that you're on the right track - a motivator to keep going.

Yes.  years ago it took me a few weeks to have my first one and then they were easier. 

It took me a few weeks to get vibes for the first time - and the first time I got them they were HUGE, as in semi-truck driving through my body HUGE.  After that they were never that big again - someone out here hypothesized something about some sort of energy adjustment occurring causing the huge vibes the first time - could be.

It took me a few times getting the vibes before I figured out how to get out of my body and then that part was no problem.

Then it seemed like every few weeks I'd have a successful obe.

Then I quit for awhile and recently began trying again, but haven't been able to get vibes - although my efforts have not been diligent, I'll ramp up the mental energy I'm devoting to it during the day and be more disciplined in my approach and I'm confident that things will click again.

anyway - short answer, yes - it gets easier after the first time.

I'll try this simple technique.  a few years ago I was able to get out occasionally, but lately I've been trying again lately and no luck.  typically i fall asleep to easily, and whereas I used to wake up with vibes - not so anymore....not sure why.

Not to be too much of a skeptic, but as 2012 nears if anyone has property they'd like to sell at firesale prices, please contact me!

Shams,

It's interesting that you assert that we were all born Muslim and that there is only one true religion.  But in fact, Mohammed himself didn't even believe that.  He believed that he was a prophet to the Arabs in the same manner that other religions already had their own prophets.  As such he believed that Muslims, Christians and Jews in fact all worshipped the same God and that none of them had to be converted.  During his lifetime, when his people would gain a military victory over an area he would purposely have his soldiers NOT live amongst the peoples and NOT convert them to Islam.  Mohammed's form of Islam was a religious and social order that dictated how his people were to live together as a society.  He purposely did not attempt to convert non Arabs and was content to allow Jews to be Jews and Christians to be Christians.

I would suggest that our ego has "scope" and is only meant to exist while we maintain a physical existence here on Earth.  In that context, then, yes we could measure it on a spectrum and observe that egos in the middle tend to be neither doormats, nor tyrants (although I suspect that in the grand scheme of things doormats and tyrants have a purpose).

I'm guessing that my current ego, "Rob", came into existence when I took on a physical existence here, and that if things work out right, then I'll shed this ego at some point after my physical body dies. But I'm pretty sure I wasn't "Rob" before being born into this lifetime, and if I've had past lives I certainly wasn't "Rob" during those.  And so, most if not all of the things that I associate with my ego, will lose their meaning for me after physical death.

I guess to me, an ego is like a coat that I put on during my physical lifetime and it serves a purpose by providing a framework for my experiences here.  In that sense it's not "good" or "bad" and certainly not "evil".   Consequently, the concept of annihilating my ego during my physical lifetime has never made much sense to me.  Yet, at some point after death, I believe that I'll give up the old coat that I wore while on Earth.

The bigger question for me then is who exactly am I when I stop being Rob?  I guess the likely possibility is that when I give up the ego of "Rob" that I revert back to ANOTHER ego and that eventually I will also shed that ego. 

So perhaps ultimate enlightenment then, is the process of my shedding one ego after another until there is nothing left to shed.  At that point Buddhist annihilation has occurred and I am at one with the universe (pardon the cliche) in such a way that I don't even exist anymore.

The idea of not existing anymore might seem a bit distressing at this point to "Rob", but actually when it occurs it will just be that last ego finally acknowledging that it never had an objective existence to begin with, but rather that it (and all egos) are nothing more than passing thoughts in the mind of God.

Anyway, that's my .02

I have to take exception to this notion- I think that mystics have 'oneness experiences' and teach that we are all interconnected and 'of the same energy' and that separateness is just illusion- But religious traditions usually do the complete opposite- establish that this separation is actual fact and that only by following x, y or z dogma this separation can be overcome...

Yes, exoteric forms of most religions are highly dogmatic.  I should have been more specific and said that within most religious traditions there is an esoteric form or branch (Kabbalah, Sufiism, Esoteric Christianity, etc.) that regards doctrine and dogma merely as symbolic representations of something at a higher spiritual level that can't be properly described in words, and that these esoteric traditions tend to embrace some form of banishing the individual ego (akin to buddhist annihilation) as the path to enlightenment.   

jc87,

I'm curious how long it takes for you to get the vibrations, since that's my problem.  Once I get the vibrations I typically don't have trouble getting out of my body, but it seems like I can be in the ol' mind awake/body asleep state for an hour but no vibes - arrgg.

Anyway, the first two or three times that I got vibrations I also wasn't successful in actually getting out of my body. In retrospect I get the feeling that from some *energy* standpoint I wasn't ready and that when I was it finally happened.  And since I got out the first time I haven't had any troubles getting out once I get to that vibrational state.  I think it took me just a few weeks to get to that vibrational state and then probably another three or four weeks, during which I got the vibes again two or three times - before I actually was successful at getting out.

If you find that you can't get out, what you may want to do is just focus on raising one or both of your astral arms and seeing them through your closed eyelids.  Then try with your feet.  you may also want to send some thoughts out there into the universe indicating that you would like some help.  on either my 1st or 2nd successful obe, in retrospect, I think someone helped me.  I was horizontal in bed and had vibrations and suddenly it felt as if someone spun my body 180 degrees and instantly I was out of my body and on my hands and knees beside the bed.

Good luck.

I don't normally "try" to have lucid dreams but it seems like I'll have them 5 or 6 times per year as a residual effect of having worked at having them in the past.

I also normally don't listen to music while going to sleep, but over the last week I've started to listen to meditation type stuff through my MP3 player (so it doesn't keep my wife awake) while falling to sleep.

So last night before falling to sleep I listened to a meditation cd (Baird Hersey - Waking the Cobra) before drifting off to sleep and had a lucid dream.  I just downloaded this CD yesterday so it was the first time I'd listened to it, so I figure I'll try it again for the next few nights and see what happens - was actually wanting to see if meditation music while falling asleep would increase frequency of AP.

Anyway, the lucid dream - or what I remember of it - was fairly short.  I was showing my 11-year-old daughter the inside of the house where I grew up.  In the dream my Mom still lived there, but after exploring several rooms it occured to us that the house was entirely empty and not lived in - no furniture, etc.  When I was showing my daughter the closet where there is access to the attic it it occurred to me that I was dreaming (the "Aha!" realization - I've noticed that my childhood house shows up occasionally in my dreams and I've made a note to watch for that as an indication that I'm dreaming, and it apparently worked).

So, I turned and mentioned to my daughter - the mood between us seemed lighthearted and funny and I said, "Don't you think it's kind of strange that this house is completely empty?  Do you know why that is?" She didn't and I explained to her that we were dreaming and proved it to her by putting my arm through a wall.  I had her try it too and then I asked what else she wanted to do (this being as far as I knew her first lucid dream and all) - did she want to float up and out of the house?  did she want to fly somewhere, etc?  But she was a little reluctant - and that's the last I remember of the dream.

It's funny that I realized I was dreaming, but wasn't lucid enough to key into the fact that it wasn't *really* my daughter, but rather just a character in my dream.

Quite strange and interesting!

It should be noted, that although the voice "didn't exactly sound nice", what it was it seemed to be doing what you asked - helping you out of your body!

I read once where someone theorized that troubles getting out for the first time may mean that somehow we are not "ready" yet.  Not sure if that's true or not, but from all that I've read I definitely get the impression that in order to successfully get out and stay out there is some sort of mechanism in us (energetic, I'm guessing) that needs to be tuned up or put in order.

The first couple of times that I got to the vibrational state I couldn't get out of my body, but now (although I don't have OBEs very often) if I get to that vibrational state I have no trouble seperating.  So I think you strange experience is just part of the process of getting everything working.  Keep at it and one of these times you'll be able to stay out longer and after that I'm guessing it won't be an issue anymore.

Good luck.

I'm not an expert, but if we're talking about garden variety out-of-body experience (as opposed to projecting from within a lucid dream, phasing, etc.) my take is that there are several basic steps in the process and there are techniques for each step.  The steps, in general are: 1) relaxing body and mind, 2) getting into a light trance or mind awake / body asleep state, 3) Getting into vibrational state, and then 4) Exiting or seperating from your body.

If I were you I'd make a big, long list of the various techniques you've read and then get straight in your mind which of the steps that particular technique is for.

For me, what I've found to be the best techniques for each of the above steps are:

1 - relaxing mind and body - (Note that you can skip this step if you've just awakened in the middle of the night or in the morning) But if you're going to bed at night, then when laying down to go to bed begin breathing 4 seconds in / 3 seconds out.  While breathing move through your muscle groups / body parts one at a time (feet, calves, thighs, etc.), tightening them and then releasing them.  Do this a couple times through and don't forget your face - stretch your face around to release the muscle tension there.  If you need to itch or scratch or change positions, do it during this process. 

If you're the sort of person who has thoughts from the day racing around in your mind, then as you breathe replay the events of your day in your mind, starting with the most recent and working backwards.  Don't get worked up over anything just focus on your breathing as you do it and replay your day backward in your mind with the purpose of forgetting / releasing all concerns over each event.

2 - Getting into a light trance state - Once you're relaxed, lay perfectly still, try not to think about anything and just wait.  It takes time for your body to fall asleep.  The point here is to not have your brain fall asleep at the same time.  you may wish to focus on your 3rd eye or listen for the ringing inside your ears, or even focus on your breathing.  But - don't let your mind go all manic with thinking, analyzing, trying, expecting.  Remember that your goal here is to not fall asleep, but you want your mind to be on the edge of sleep - not a lot of activity.  Just passively take in whatever your see/hear in your head without reacting to it.

you'll know your body is asleep when you mostly can't feel it (you'll generally be aware of your breathing).  your body may feel like lead.  if you were to try barely to open your eyes you'd feel resistance as if your eyelids were glued shut - but you might not want to try that in case you succeed and set yourself back.

although aware that you are awake, your thoughts should be a bit dreamlike as if you are on the edge of sleep.  you may have found yourself dreaming a bit during the process.

3) Bringing on the vibes.  This is where I traditionally have trouble.  There are a gazillion techniques I've read regarding this stage of the process and they generally involve either creating the sensation of rising or falling, or else imagining your astral body moving away from your physical.  The one that has worked best for me is repeatedly imagining the sensation of my body falling through the bed and then slowly rising up again as I breath.   

Once you start feeling tingling or buzzing or vibrations, don't rush it.  Stay relaxed and imagine the sensation building and moving through your entire body.

4) Exiting - Again, there are tons of techniques for this that involve either floating or imagining or pulling yourself out.  What works best for me is plain old fashioned sitting up and and then swinging my legs over the side of the bed and standing up.  The first time or two it helped to actually just lift my astral hands up and look at them.  I think you somehow have to "learn" how to get out and after the first time or two this step is easier.

Anyway - that's my .02 and I suspect that the key to the whole thing has nothing to with which particular technique you use but rather getting to that exact state where your body is asleep and your brain is just on the edge of sleep.

Note also that although I didn't discuss preparation, during the day your should be thinking about projecting.  Read, do affirmations or whatever.  It seems to program the subconscious mind somehow with your intention.

I don't think this is what you're talking about, but many religious traditions teach that ultimately everything in the Universe is one and that there is no such thing as "seperateness".  Thus our individual egos or "spirits" are actually just an illusion, a byproduct of not having full understanding or of having forgot the truth.  And thus, spiritual growth entails slowly letting go of our ego little by little as we become more enlightened, until at some point the illusion of having an individual ego or spirit is completely overcome. 

So, from that perspective, it's not so much a matter of our spirit/ego/consciousness fading out of existence but rather us remembering that they never existed to begin with.

in one of my earliest projections, I had the sensation that my whole body spun really fast lengthwise as if someone had given me a really fast spin - and the next thing I knew I was out of my body and on my hands and knees on the carpet on my wife's side of the bed.  Since then however, I've typically just rolled out of my body or sat up and stepped out.

So maybe there was just someone out there who noticed we needed a little help!

Personally, I believe that our dreams and astral experiences have symbolic meaning that is pertinent to our own lives and spiritual development, but aren't visions for mankind in general or messages to all of humanity.  So I believe that this experience of yours is really a symbolic message for you regarding your spiritual journey, rather than a warning to all humanity regarding the way we treat our planet (there's a good book on dream analysis called "Inner Work" by Robert Johnson).

As for the environmental content - I don't think we give the Earth enough credit.  It has a tremendous ability to heal.   Sure, we're polluters and we've overpopulated the Earth.  But the end result of that is that a lot of us humans may die and we will eventually come to a better understanding of what population levels and what lifestyles are sustainable on this Earth.  But, make no mistake, even if every last human dies, the Earth will heal and continue on without us just fine.  So, I would suggest that our "worries" over the Earth are just projections of our fears and worry over what's going to happen to us humans if we screw up our environment.

Also, I believe that my physical life here on Earth is just a tiny chapter in a long spiritual existence that began long before I was born into a physical body here on EArth and will continue long after my physical body has died.  And so, while physical death may not be pleasant, I've come to terms with the fact that I am going to experience it sooner or later.  So, whether it happens in 2012 or fifty years from now, I'm not particularly concerned.  Don't get me wrong - I do believe we need to live in balance with nature, but I also believe that there is a bigger picture and a larger plan way beyond our physical existence here.


 

Neat experience!  I'm guessing the experience wasn't in RTZ.

What type of Gnostic group is it that you mention and how did you find such a thing and would there be one in my area (North of Seattle a bit)?

Interesting - but I don't have answers, sorry.

A technique that I've used for getting places is - once out of body - to go out on my deck off my bedroom, look up at the night sky and then, like superman, just shoot upward into the sky.  This results in me speeding through a kind of tunnel through the stars and then getting plopped out somewhere.

As for the fear, i'm guessing it was just the normal fear of the unknown.  If you did this ten more times i'm sure you wouldn't be afraid going through that tunnel anymore.

As others have said - sleep paralysis or "Awareness of Sleep Paralysis" (do a google search on it or ASP).  Essentially, during sleep your body becomes paralyzed so that you don't thrash around, sleepwalk, etc.  But if your brain wakes up, but your body doesn't and is still paralyzed - then in your confused state you become afraid.  Perhaps the ghosts or other figures were in a dream you were having or perhaps they are real beings that in your altered state you are aware of.

For some reason - probably fear I guess - many, many people who experience this awareness of sleep paralysis report "dark figures" scaring them, holding them down, etc.

Throughout my life I've had some similar experiences - having a scary dream and then awakening from it but being unable to move or speak and feeling as if something *evil* is oppressing me.

However, those experiences have been few and far between, and in the many times I've projected I've never encountered anything scary or evil.

Not sure how you can solve your problem however, but I suspect that in your waking life if you overcome the fear of these experiences, then eventually when they occur you will have the self control to overcome the fear while they are happening.

On a slightly different note, my wife used to have frequent dreams in which sinister characters were chasing her.  They were very fearful dreams and she had them quite frequently - at least once a month, probably - and over a long period of time - decades.  I began suggesting to her that she needed to confront the sinister characters in her dreams rather than run from them.  At first the approach seemed ridiculous to her since she had no belief that she could in any way consciously affect what occurred in her dreams.  However, eventually during one of those dreams, instead of running away she turned around and plunged a knife into her persuer's belly and then grabbing it with both hands yanked it upward.  To this day she says it was the most "real" or visceral dream she's ever had.  And from that day forward (it's probably been 10+ years now) she's NEVER had another one of those dreams.

I suspect she didn't have to attack the figure in her dream.  It probably would have worked just as well to turn around and tell it she wasn't afraid and ask it why it was chasing her.  I suspect that these recurring "bad guys" in her dreams were symbolic representations of some type of issue or hangup that she needed to overcome and confronting it in her dreams instead of running away was part of the process of overcoming the issue.  Whether the issue was a physical real-life issue, or perhaps something on a more psychological/spiritual level I don't know.

But, I would suspect that for you something similar will hold true.  If you - in your waking life - can resolve to confront these figures rather than allowing them to scare you, then I believe that eventually you will do just that during one of your experiences.  And once you've done it I believe the scary experiences will stop.

Good luck.

Sounds like an OBE where you weren't particularly lucid, and because you weren't lucid you just fell out of your body and then your brain/consciousness just went back to sleep.  In his book, "Adventures Beyond the Body", William Buhlman suggests that when you first get out of your body you should state emphatically to yourself soemthing like "Awareness now!"  or "Focus now!" several times to increase how lucid you are.

Well, the buzzing and vibrating are evidence that your consciousness has shifted so that you are ready to leave your body - but haven't left it yet.  When you feel those vibrations or buzzing, calmly focus on them and imagine them getting stronger and moving up and down your body - then do one of a variety of techniques to seperate your astral body from your physical body.  What works for me is rolling sideways out of my physical body, or else sitting up and then stepping out of my body.

As for the train driving though your house - those were especially strong vibrations.  When I first starting trying Astral Projection, the first time I got vibrations were like that - the impression I got was of a semi-truck driving through my body!  For some reason, after that I never experienced anything that strong again.  That first time I wasn't able to seperate from my body, but in later attempts I got more moderate vibrations and was able to seperate.  is it possible to get vibes that are too strong?

As for buzzing, - every once in a while I'll have a dream that involves buzzing of some sort.  In reality these are vibrations that I have somehow incorporated into my dream and now if I get them I try to wake up and seperate from my body.  For example, once I had a dream where there were a bunch of bees buzzing around my head and neck and in the dream I was trying to get away from them.  I woke up and in that place between dreaming and being awake I finally realized that the buzzing was in fact vibrations all around the back of my head and neck - but they were fading and that time I wasn't able to capitalize on them.

As for the guy in the mirror, not sure, but presumably you were in a state where you had astral vision, but hadn't seperated from your body.

As for ghosts, I don't really believe in ghosts per se.  But rather I'm sure that sentient beings exist in all manner of forms but we are typically unaware of their existence because our senses and/or vibrational state is not atuned to theirs.  So, in that sense, reports of people seeing ghosts are merely instances where the person was able to tune in to something that was already there.  Imagine a radio - there are a lot of stations broadcasting in a city, but a radio only gets one of them at a time.  and moving the tuning dial causes the radio to move between stations and then pick up another.  By moving the radio dial you are causing the electrical components in the radio receiver to filter out only radio waves that meet a very specific criteria (freqency) and to pass those on through the other radio components to the speaker. 

So, our consciousness is like that.  Our normal waking consciousness delivers to us, through our physical senses, only certain types of energy that fit very narrow and specific specifications.  And we then experience that energy as sight, sound, etc.  Nevertheless, we are awash in all kinds of energy that we are normally completely oblivious to.  But, when we enter into altered states of consciousness either through meditation, dreams, drugs or OBEs, etc.  we are essentially turning our radio tuner to pick up different forms of energy.  And when we pick up these types of energy that we aren't as familiar with, the rest of the components in our radio (brain, soul, ...) interpret it and present it to our consciousness in one form or another - ghosts, UFOs, feelings, angels, beings, visual patterns, voices, sounds, etc.

anyway, that's my .02

Good luck.