Messages

My experiences with Focus 3 have made me see how truly fascinating Focus 1 is.

Everything in the physical seems so much more vivid when I look at it now.

My cat makes it hard to AP in the mornings, because she's all over me trying to get me up after my husband wakes up and goes about his day. In fact, I anticipated her so strongly once that I terminated just after separating, nervous that my cat would be jumping on me at any moment. And when I came to, there she was about to jump on my bed.

She'll sleep on the bed for hours during the day after we've gotten up. I want to reach over and pet her when I see her there but I find myself worrying that I might interfere with her projecting. I wouldn't know either way if that's what she's doing.

"I don't have a problem! I can stop anytime!"

Thanks for the welcome everyone.

I am Iseke, nice to meet you all.

Experiencing and developing AP is an amazing opportunity, and I want to learn/share as much as I can. I'm very much a beginner, just learning to control conscious awareness of my astral experiences, and this is where I find myself on my journey to discovering more about it.

I have a comment, and it's really not from a buddhist viewpoint (or even from an eastern viewpoint, since I'm a westener)- and that is that even though when you are starting it is definitely healthy to talk about your experiences, so that you can compare them and share (after all, there is nothing like talking about something 'new' or 'weird' and finding someone who knows what you are talking about- sharing and all that.
But there comes a time where you realize that when you mean to share and help, sometimes people make assumptions about you- and I'm not talking about people thinking you're full of yourself or a braggart, or even crazy- the danger is when people start to think you're something special and want you to guide them- this is something that happens at times and makes me uncomfortable- and I see how it doesn't make certain others uncomfortable- they preen and so on, and this makes me not want to talk or share when something 'sublime' happens.
I think that sometimes religions and cults start out with someone having an experience, and others trying to have them by doing what the 'first' person did- and when they look to learn from that person, they elevate the person and sometimes think that it's something 'in them', and not the experience itself that's important.

This is why I always say- yes, talk about it, share it, and when you can teach it, but don't make it about the discipline, make it about the ability for anyone to have experiences that are significant to them.

That's why I dislike the words 'enlightenment' and 'progress', and I only use them when there are no other words to describe what I'm trying to convey.

So, that's it, I guess.
________

Thank you for this post.

I'm at the point in my own self-discovery where I have come to accept the reality of mystical experiences, having moved past my own doubts and struggles to find a belief system that made sense to me. But my experiences have been so unexpected and so interesting in light of the paradigm and cultural upbringing I've grown up with that I find myself desperate to talk about them. I always hesitate, though, not sure if talking about them would be somehow disrespectful to the experiences I'm having or the people who have helped me along the way. I think your post answered the struggle I was having deep down.

I remember reading the testimonies of an experienced dowser who shared the events she experienced when she first started. It was easy for her to get caught up in the role of "hero" for the souls that came to her needing assistance through her dowsing, and after awhile she found herself being led in the wrong direction by misguided souls taking advantage of her inexperience. I read her story as I was learning to dowse myself, and it has always stuck with me in remembering to keep myself humble and to never assume that I'm impervious to being misguided. Even in a short period the things I thought I understood in one way are then offered to me in another way, and I realize that any advice I may have given prior to that new understanding was likely to be incomplete or even wrong. The best I can do is offer my own experiences to let others know they are possible.

I think the biggest danger is not only when people start to look to you for guidance, but when you assume the role of "hero" for them--whether you mean to or not. In other words, when you find yourself taken in the role of guide so much that you are no longer guiding the person to their own truth but to your own. You become the false prophet, feeding off of their need for you. Then you are no longer in service of the light and are in service of yourself instead.

Talking about my experiences is hard, because the more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.