This is my first post here. I've lurked for a few days and figured when the time was right I would contribute. Well, today the time is right. I want to share an experience that I just had. I'm not prepared to refer to this as an OBE, but I'm also not completely prepared to simply call it a dream.
A tiny bit of history about me before I get into the experience: I keep a daily dream journal. I've had many lucid dreams over the years--beautiful, wonderful, liberating lucid dreams. I've always leaned toward the spiritual/metaphysical but I've kept a healthy perspective of personal skepticism to help guide me. I meditate and practice relaxation techniques regularly. As a child I dealt with sleep terrors and conscience awareness of sleep paralysis. Now in my early 30's I recently began experimenting with attempts to leave my body. I've read Adventures Beyond the Body by William Buhlman, and I'm almost through reading Robert A. Monroe's Journeys Out of the Body (there are three other books from various authors, including Bruce, that I plan to read soon).
Sorry for the length of this post, but now I'll get to the meat of it:
I decided to lay down a couple hours after I awoke this morning. I did this for the purpose of practicing OBE techniques. I was on my back, in a very comfortable position, and I began deep relaxation techniques. Soon I was in the familiar hypnogogic state and saw visions inside my eyelids. I paid the visions no mind and continued to focus on the blackness. My awareness of my body started to fade, as though I was becoming numb, and I began to say an affirmation, "I will retain clarity and awareness when I separate. I am out-of-body." (I've made it to this point--and possibly a bit beyond--several times in the past.) Then I remembered that Monroe said that you could mentally pull the vibrations into your head from the space above you--and that's what I did. They felt clunky and loud in the beginning, then I focused on the idea on sending them throughout my body. Then I guided the vibrations to become faster and finer...more like a buzzing. I decided to test things a little. I stretched out my arms to my sides and eventually my right hand felt something. It was the door jam, which was about 6 feet away from me.
This is where it seems really odd. I still couldn't see anything. I wanted to look and see if I was really touching the door jam. When I tried to look it seemed like I was doing so with my physical eyes. It was a struggle to open my lids, and they kept fluttering and obscuring my vision. And while things looked strange, my arm didn't look stretched and long. When I stopped worrying about my vision I continued to "feel" the empty doorway. I could make out the intricacies of it with my hand. The vibrations became louder and 'clunkier' again and I felt drawn into my physical body more. I stayed calm an guided them to become faster and finer again. I willed myself to float off the bed, and I could feel myself rising. When I tried to verify this with my vision, I had the same problems with poor, fluttering vision. The vibrations seemed more violent and again I was drawn to my body. Again I corrected the vibrations. This time I mentally requested that I "become my higher self" that I see my "spiritual essence (or "soul"). I felt like I rose high from the bed and started to have very odd visions. I could see what looked like distorted images of cartoony animals...each animal glowed with a different color (and the colors seemed to correspond to chakra colors.)
This time when the vibrations drew me back to my body, I decided I needed to get up and examine my physical environment (really give that door jam a good look, etc.) But while I thought I was doing that, instead it wasn't real. I was dreaming it. In fact, from there I began a series of vivid and surreal dreams (far to lengthy to summarize here.)
Okay, here's my dilemma. Did any of this happen? Or was it all part of a vivid dream? I remember having the feeling of "I'm doing it! I'm really doing it!" while it was happening, but with the segue to dreams I can't be sure any of it was real. It felt real, but the skeptic in me won't say absolutely that it was real. Part of me thinks that this was an intense dream brought on by my having just read about Monroe's separation techniques prior to lying down.
Thanks for reading all of this. I'd love to hear any thoughts you may have about it.
Namaste,
Reemy
A tiny bit of history about me before I get into the experience: I keep a daily dream journal. I've had many lucid dreams over the years--beautiful, wonderful, liberating lucid dreams. I've always leaned toward the spiritual/metaphysical but I've kept a healthy perspective of personal skepticism to help guide me. I meditate and practice relaxation techniques regularly. As a child I dealt with sleep terrors and conscience awareness of sleep paralysis. Now in my early 30's I recently began experimenting with attempts to leave my body. I've read Adventures Beyond the Body by William Buhlman, and I'm almost through reading Robert A. Monroe's Journeys Out of the Body (there are three other books from various authors, including Bruce, that I plan to read soon).
Sorry for the length of this post, but now I'll get to the meat of it:
I decided to lay down a couple hours after I awoke this morning. I did this for the purpose of practicing OBE techniques. I was on my back, in a very comfortable position, and I began deep relaxation techniques. Soon I was in the familiar hypnogogic state and saw visions inside my eyelids. I paid the visions no mind and continued to focus on the blackness. My awareness of my body started to fade, as though I was becoming numb, and I began to say an affirmation, "I will retain clarity and awareness when I separate. I am out-of-body." (I've made it to this point--and possibly a bit beyond--several times in the past.) Then I remembered that Monroe said that you could mentally pull the vibrations into your head from the space above you--and that's what I did. They felt clunky and loud in the beginning, then I focused on the idea on sending them throughout my body. Then I guided the vibrations to become faster and finer...more like a buzzing. I decided to test things a little. I stretched out my arms to my sides and eventually my right hand felt something. It was the door jam, which was about 6 feet away from me.
This is where it seems really odd. I still couldn't see anything. I wanted to look and see if I was really touching the door jam. When I tried to look it seemed like I was doing so with my physical eyes. It was a struggle to open my lids, and they kept fluttering and obscuring my vision. And while things looked strange, my arm didn't look stretched and long. When I stopped worrying about my vision I continued to "feel" the empty doorway. I could make out the intricacies of it with my hand. The vibrations became louder and 'clunkier' again and I felt drawn into my physical body more. I stayed calm an guided them to become faster and finer again. I willed myself to float off the bed, and I could feel myself rising. When I tried to verify this with my vision, I had the same problems with poor, fluttering vision. The vibrations seemed more violent and again I was drawn to my body. Again I corrected the vibrations. This time I mentally requested that I "become my higher self" that I see my "spiritual essence (or "soul"). I felt like I rose high from the bed and started to have very odd visions. I could see what looked like distorted images of cartoony animals...each animal glowed with a different color (and the colors seemed to correspond to chakra colors.)
This time when the vibrations drew me back to my body, I decided I needed to get up and examine my physical environment (really give that door jam a good look, etc.) But while I thought I was doing that, instead it wasn't real. I was dreaming it. In fact, from there I began a series of vivid and surreal dreams (far to lengthy to summarize here.)
Okay, here's my dilemma. Did any of this happen? Or was it all part of a vivid dream? I remember having the feeling of "I'm doing it! I'm really doing it!" while it was happening, but with the segue to dreams I can't be sure any of it was real. It felt real, but the skeptic in me won't say absolutely that it was real. Part of me thinks that this was an intense dream brought on by my having just read about Monroe's separation techniques prior to lying down.
Thanks for reading all of this. I'd love to hear any thoughts you may have about it.
Namaste,
Reemy
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It's all good because my brain can use the break.
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