Frightening childhood experience

[Birm]

Hi mustang,

After you confront the unknown a hundred times, it's no longer as frightening.

Keep trying...

Good Luck,
.
.

[Flummox]

Hello!

In one of the radio-interviews posted here, someone calls in and mentions an entity with a "monkey appereance". And I think Robert Bruce says that those are fairly common... Check it out. Great interviews by the way.

http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=3346

Cheers! /Flummox

[cinnabardk]

I would recommend the "Core Image Cleansing Technique" described on page 219 of Robert Bruce's "Practical Psychic Self-Defense". The technique is also described in the article "Basic Psychic Countermeasures" (http://www.astralpulse.com/articles/robert/articles_31.htm). It has helped me deal with negative entity attachments in the past. (Such entities can attach themselves to trauma memories)

Another method would be:
"DIRECT ASTRAL PROJECTION:
Projecting directly into the astral or making the shift into the astral shortly after the exit, or any high-level projection method, bypasses the real time zone. This takes a projector directly into higher levels, thereby avoiding any and all types of astral wildlife which cannot exist in the higher and more positive levels of the astral planes. The real time zone and low astral sub-planes are the only dimensional areas where projectors will ever encounter any type of astral wildlife or negative entity." (from: http://www.astralpulse.com/articles/robert/articles_43.htm)

The first couple of times I projected, I was scared by such entities too. I was a child then, and they succeded in keeping me from AP'ing, but now I have learned to overcome my fears, the hard way. Facing what  I am afraid of works for me. Sometimes it requires some work though.
Anyway, the freedom I experience in high-level projections more than make up for what may lurk in the dark.

[mustang]

Thanks everybody for your responses, much appreciated.
cinnabardk, I will definitely make use of the info you provide.

Thanks again.

[mustang]

When I was about 5 or 6 years of age, in bed one night I noticed the darkness of my room had a quality to it that it never seemed to possess before, it seemed to be made up of various constantly moving tiny bubble things. Some time later, I don't remember how much later, what I took to be a terrible nightmare began. A chattering disembodied monkey's head gnashing its teeth, looking ferocious and carnivorous not a foot away from my pillow...also a clown 'dancing' in front of me, but a clown that frightened me in a way that only supposedly comical things can, a clown out of a Stephen King novel. There were also some shadows on the bedroom curtains of various figures, but I have forgotten what of. I eventually must have fallen asleep but when I woke up in the morning and the light of the sun was shining into my bedroom, I noticed that a thickish white mist was there in a part of my room (I do not remember if I had noticed the mist in my room before), although it slowly dissipated.

I just assumed that what I had experienced was a nightmare, a bad dream, albeit unlike any I had ever experienced or remember having experienced, and more vivid and real than anything I could have imagined. It did not occur to my very young self that throughout this experience I did not sleep at all, but was very much awake. I remember burying my head in the pillow, trying to get away from the monkey head, and every time I looked up, much to my fright, it was still there. In other words I was not at all asleep during this entire experience.

But this obvious fact, and therefore the fact that it could not have been a bad dream in the classic meaning of the term, did not occur to me. I guess my young mind had to avoid cognitive dissonance anyway it could, and as is often the case when avoiding mental dissonance, I overlooked the obvious. Namely the fact that I was awake throughout the entire horrifying experience and so naturally it could not have been a nightmare in the usual meaning of the word.  

Needless to say this experience had a lasting effect on me. I couldn't go to sleep with the lights off for about a year after that. Note that I could not have heard about or known about what Bruce calls astral 'wildlife' at such an age and certainly not from my parents who had no real interest in such things.

It was only in my mid 20s that thinking back on the incident I realised that it could not have been a nightmare by the usual understanding of the term, because I realised certainly that I had been awake as a young boy when I perceived what I did. It took 20 years to overcome the cognitive dissonance regarding that experience of mine which never repeated itself.

It was only when I read Astral Dynamics, that my jaw dropped at Bruce's mention of astral 'wildlife'. He was so spot on in describing what I had witnessed as a child, but never understood before. Despite having read a considerable amount on astral travel I had never come across a mention of astral 'wildlife' as Bruce describes them. Here at last was an explanation of what I had witnessed in my bedroom more than a quarter of a century before.

However a very real problem remains, even though I am now a man in my 30s, that 5 year old boy is still very much with me. So when it comes to attempts to astral project I always shrink back at the last moment, recalling that frightening experience all those years ago. And so needless to say I have not ever succeeded in any attempt at OOBE, my childhood experience continues to haunt me in this respect. Basically I am scared stiff. Talk about OOBE techniques is meaningless because that is not where the problem lies. So how can I overcome the trauma of that long ago unwitting and inadvertent Astral Sight? Any advice?