Astral projection or lucid dream?

[vipassana]

I wrote all of this down early in the morning of 07 Jul 2009 at 6:04 AM EST. I'm not sure if it was astral projection or a lucid dream. What occurred at the end makes this unclear. First off, I went to bed around 11:00 PM with the intention of having a lucid dream. I have been trying to astral project for 2 months with no success and have only had 1 lucid dream that I can remember before this one. It occurred approximately 6 weeks ago. My method for inducing whatever occurred this morning worked. I can get into that separately if anyone is interested. So I wake up at 4:00 AM and move to the other bed in my apartment because my wife is making some kind of snoring sound and won't stop. I've trained myself to wake up about this time every night to try to project anyway. So the next thing I do is tell myself that now would be a good time to have a lucid dream, so let's get it done. The next thing I remember (and this was all very vivid in my memory as I wrote it down) is that I am walking, or moving, with several hundred other people. My surroundings were unclear, but mostly white. I was not sure where I and these hundreds of other people were going. We ended up in a large classroom that looked like a typical large college classroom, complete with seating, desks, and chairs. The room was lit only by a slit in the ceiling through which shown a very bright white light that I knew to be "the light". This class I was in was to review our life on Earth. At the front of the classroom was a yellow school bus. It has something written about horses on its side and it also had, in big flashy silver letters, the word "detestable". The word detestable was either not supposed to be there or was there by mistake. When I pointed this out, everyone in the class laughed. It was like it was saying, "the detestable horses..." Everyone found this amusing. The next thing that happened was that someone passed out to the class what I was told to be "decals for our jackets". It was a flag, slightly larger than a piece of paper. I cannot remember the design, but it reminded me of the Jamaican flag. On the top of this flag were 5 small flags. The small flag the farthest on the right had a red and white design and said on very small letters "Raleigh, NC", which is my current place of residence. The four other flags each had their own separate colors and designs, but I could not make out the words. Each flag represented previous lives I have lived on Earth, so apparently this is my 5th go at it. I remember it felt like I knew these flags from somewhere, like I have seen them before. I apparently was not supposed to know where I have lived in past lives – at least that is my reasoning for not being able to read the text above the flags. At that point I flew out of my seat and down to the floor at the front of the class to concentrate on the flags. At that point I went from being in the class to a very brief period of blackness and then I found myself back in my body, but not completely. I hung out there for probably 30 seconds, half in and half out of my body, just because I could. This is what is confusing for me. This seems to have started out like a lucid dream, but ended with me returning to my body. Another strange this is that I was conscious and aware through this whole process, but so fascinated with everything, that it wasn't until the end, when I was on the classroom floor concentrating on the flags that I even thought to ask myself if I was dreaming. Everything was so real and vivid; it didn't occur to me until then that I might have been dreaming. There were no vibrations as I went back into my body, nor where there any vibrations at any point in this experience.
The whole process of how I believed I brought this experience on is fascinating in itself. I will tell that story separately if anyone is interested.

So was this AP or a lucid dream? I have no idea.

[Leilah]

Either way, I think it was a memory of something real, something you definitely experienced, whether it be an OBE or lucid dream (i tend to think they are in the same category anyway).

Interesting because last night I threw in the intention of having a conscious "OBE". I ended up having one but I must have forgotten that I asked for help, or didn't think I would get results that fast (even though usually this method of affirmations seems to work very often), so it was a bit startling when there were about 10 entities pulling me out, very business like, insisting that it be done even though initially I was quite startled by their presence.

What was your method to achieve this state?

Congrats to you though, it seems you have some interesting journeys ahead. And by the way, i felt no vibrations whatsoever last night either.

[vipassana]

It was the craziest thing. I was laying in bed just asking myself questions (thinking the questions, not actually verbalizing them) and finding that the answers were coming quickly. The thing about asking myself questions was that I don't know where the answers were coming from. I don't know if it was my subconscious or something else providing the answers. In my first lucid dream/obe about 6 weeks ago, I believe I met my spirit guides. I guess that is what they would be called. Anyway, I know this sounds a bit off the wall, but there were 3 of them. Two male and one female. I asked myself where the answers were coming from and the picture of one of my guides immediately came to my mind. As far as inducing the dream/obe, I had read earlier that day that if you want to induce a lucid dream to repeatedly ask yourself throughout the day if you are dreaming or if you are conscious. Apparently this trains your mind to ask this question while you are actually in a dream. I just did it a few times before I went to sleep and it worked, although like I said, it was all so vivid, I never thought to ask myself if I was in a dream, and when I finally did near the end, I felt like I had the same level of consciousness as I do while fully awake during the day. At any rate, these 2 dreams/obe's were great experiences. I tried again last night, but knew it was not going to happen, which of course it did not. The good thing is that I know there will be many, many more and they are going to get a lot more fascinating. I believe that my guides are easing me into all of this so to speak. Not too much all at once. I think there is more to be learned from this experience and then we'll move on to the next one.