The aluminum extension ladder to lucidity

[RJA]

I'm new to OBEs (3 in last 2 months).  Last night I spent 45 minutes in a mind-awake/body-asleep type of state and experienced a variety of internal sensations and thought for sure that I would OBE, but the vibrations never came, so I let it go.  A few hours later I woke up and decided to try again.

While trying I drifted off to sleep and saw an aluminum extension ladder going from an inner courtyard/entry way up to the second floor of a building.  I was "under" the ladder and I could see three numbers spaced across one of the lower rungs of the ladder. The # on the left was a "5" and I knew that this meant that I could have an OBE by walking up the ladder, but the number on the right was a "2" and because it was lower than the other number this somehow indicated to me that while I *could* OBE the "conditions weren't right". (At the time I knew what the middle number meant, but I can't remember now)  Anyway, I was a bit disappointed but figured that if the conditions weren't right I wouldn't do it.  But then the right hand number morphed into a "6" and I remember thinking, "Okay, - that's good enough for me!".

I went around to the front of the ladder and climbed up. While I climbed I tried to figure out whether I was out of my body and at some point I concluded, "yes, I'm out - it worked".  (In retrospect I think this was a lucid dream and not an OBE since I don't remember seperating from my body). When I reached the top of the ladder I was on a flat surface in total darkness.  I demanded "clarity now!" and "awareness now!" (tip from William Buhlman books) several times until I could see.  I was in what appeared to be a large vacant office space - no partitions.

I saw a woman who looked like an office worker sort of moving towards me, but she was flashing on and off kind of like a strobe light effect - I was a little wary of her since I'm new to this.  I began walking toward the other end of the floor.  At one point a middle-aged woman kind of "got in my face" and I tried asking her who she was and what she represented, but I had a lot of difficulty getting the words out (as if my voice was paralyzed).  When I got to the end of the floor I looked out the windows onto the street below.  There was a secretary type woman at a desk and another woman with a baby came out of a nearby office, apparently casually interested in what I was doing there.

Suddenly I remembered that I had put a playing card in my family room for OBE verification purposes and I got really excited about taking a look at it.  I kind of ran/skipped back to the other end of the floor, passing a middle-aged, balding businessman in a suit on the way.  I came to a bank of elevators and took one down to the ground floor and went out onto the sidewalk.  Never mind that I didn't know where I was or how to get to my family room.  It was kind of wet/drizzly out and in retrospect I think the location was the mid-Wilshire area of Los Angeles.  I remember being confident that I was going to find the card and objectively verify the OBE, but was also a little concerned that the experience might not last long enough.  As I started walking down the street I awoke back in my body.

Nothing particular remarkable about the contents of the experience except that I thought the ladder mechanism was an interesting was to obtain lucidity.