LDs are not OBEs

[Jilt]

Actually, I focus my physical eyes AND my awareness at the third eye. Here's a little more on how it's traditionally done from an online source:

"Concentrate on the middle of your forehead around the area which is a few centimeters above the middle of your eyes.

Keep your eyes closed and draw both of your eyes towards this center point of 3rd eye. I  mean just look upwards with your eyes closed . Focus your closed eyes at  20-25 degrees above just at the center of the forehead (at the place of third eye.) Now slowly at about two-second interval, start counting in your mind backward from one hundred to one (that is 100,99,98,97....and so on). As you do it, keep your eyes centered towards the third eye."

For more go to: http://www.meditationiseasy.com/mCorner/techniques/trataka.htm

[Jarrod]

Try this Jarrod.

Take your thumb and press it on the spot where you think your third eye location is.
Remember and memorize the sensation where it happens.

Then, remove your thumb and try to duplicate that feeling without it there.
That will be you focusing your "vision" at your third eye.  

It has nothing to do with your physical eyes.  

Robert Bruce's awareness targeting technique.  Over the past several months I've worked my way up to a full body circuit, though I still don't include the arms.  I have to go slow to feel the energy and along my spine I only feel it sometimes.  When I get to my forehead I brush my point of tactile awareness up and down over where I think the third eye is and I can feel the sensation pretty well.  So you focus on a static point of tactile awareness as a means to keep you lucid for phasing?  Does it actually make a difference where the point of focus is?  I'm not really sure how the third eye chakra correlates to CNPEs.

[Ssergiu]

I have been following this thread and I agree with Summerlander. I have had a few OOBEs. Some of them because of my lucid dreams. I cannot lucid dream. Whenever I do it (not too much into lucid dreaming though), I get in Sleep paralysis because I feel I do not have enough space (to think) in the dream and I need to wake up. I usually wake up in SP and then just "get out". I also believe the separation in OOBEs is just an illusion. Once you are in SP, you are already out, or as obe4u says, in the phase.

I know they seem to be totally different, but the only thing that makes it this different is the level of awareness. The awarer you are the better the dream/OBE gets. Hasn't it ever happened to you to have a very controlled dream but you still could not call it a lucid dream because you did not know you were dreaming? Well, if you had noticed it was a dream and kept asking questions you'd have waken up OR entered SP. You can have OOBEs which later become dreams or you can have dreams which later turn into OOBEs.

[Summerlander]

You can have OOBEs which later become dreams or you can have dreams which later turn into OOBEs.

Bingo, Ssergiu!

[Jilt]

So you focus on a static point of tactile awareness as a means to keep you lucid for phasing?  Does it actually make a difference where the point of focus is?  I'm not really sure how the third eye chakra correlates to CNPEs.

For me it's not critical to look up at the third eye area with my physical eyes but to steadily focus on a point forward in the blackness when I feel myself starting to go to sleep. That keeps me awake enough (but not too awake) and works like a charm every time. I also try to put all my awareness in the center of my head which is another old meditation technique but it really does work and adds to the stability/lucidity.

If you want to experience an OOBE rather than a WILD (same thing in my book), I add the rope climbing technique (my favorite) or if I'm lazy, I gently lift my hand just a little under a sheet and when I don't feel the sheet I know my astral hand is free and I'm ready to completely lift out.

I have a WILD/OOBE nearly every morning using these techniques and the more you have, the easier it becomes. Enjoy.

[Pauli2]

I cannot lucid dream. Whenever I do it (not too much into lucid dreaming though), I get in Sleep paralysis because I feel I do not have enough space (to think) in the dream and I need to wake up.

Could u please define Sleep Paralysis (SP), because I've had very different success with OBE from SP. I've never gone from LD to SP.

What is SP to you? How does it appear to you? Please, describe your SP state.

[Ssergiu]

In my first Sleep paralysis experience I could feel the inability and the desire to move. I just could not move at all as my body is paralyzed. I also used to feel "overcrowded" just like I did not have enough space in my body. - This is what SP feels/ used to feel to me. It should be pretty similar to everyone.

Now, I hardly feel that inability and desire to move. When I enter SP, I just literally start with the vibrations. However, I know my body is paralyzed and in SP, but it just does not feel as it used to. I just feel vibrations in my entire body or sometimes just in my head.

[Pauli2]

Ok, thanks. I just wake up in SP, so I've never felt any vibrations in SP. I don't have any urge to move either.

[Jarrod]

I've never experienced sleep paralysis.  I've had all kinds of vibrations and strange sensations and some spontaneous projections, but I've never not been able to move my body if I wanted to.  I can tell when it's entering sleep mode; all the functions switch over to automatic and I'm not as aware of my body in general, but I can snap out at a moment's notice and get up quickly.

[Ssergiu]

Ok, thanks. I just wake up in SP, so I've never felt any vibrations in SP. I don't have any urge to move either.

Good! Try to project from there. You are already out.

[Pauli2]

Good! Try to project from there. You are already out.

I've done so only 2, perhaps 3 times, but lost lucidity fast. I have also had SP when I've tried and failed to exit, so SP is no guarantee for OBE, at least not for me.

[Ssergiu]

Xanth once gave me a very good advice. Ask yourself questions. Who you are, what you are doing etc. It will improve your lucidity.
Also, try to experience more SP's after you attempt to separate. I think I had 10 SP's before I said I wanted to separate. After you feel you have gotten the hang of it, then you can go and separate. 

[Pauli2]

hehe, my SPs are not controlled, and comes very randomly and with quite some time apart.

But I'm working on it.

---


One interesting thing. I'm reading Sylvan Muldoon's Astral Projection book from 1929. He got
so deep into SP that he couldn't even open his eyes. I've always been able to open my eyes
and move them around, while in SP. The rest of me is paralyzed, though.

Perhaps there exists different kinds of SP?

[Stookie_]

Maybe it isn't your physical eyes you're moving around. When I "see" while still in my physical body, it feels like my eyes are wide open when they aren't. There's been more than a few times where I opened them to prove to myself they were closed.

[Ssergiu]

There are not different kinds of SP. There are different perceptions of SP. 
Maybe you actually opened your "astral" eyes and you never knew.

[Szaxx]

Hi,
I read that book in the early seventies.
Understand it, its good info. At that time you said nothing to anyone about AP. It was my bible.  Practice makes perfect. If you just think 'one day it'll happen' it will, sooner than you know. Stop trying too hard, its a totally different concept of movement to being awake. Its simply controlled by your thoughts. Accept it will happen, and it will.
When it happens move from your physical body at least 40 feet. Its much easier this way. You'll understand this soon.
Everyones helping you and you're so close.
Best of luck.

[Pauli2]

Interestingly enough Robert Peterson also thinks that LDs are different from OBEs:

http://www.robertpeterson.org/obe-vs-lucid.html

Which means that three of the great authors are on the same line; Buhlman, Waggoner & Peterson.
Pay special attention to Peterson's arguments below his table chart. For example his observation
on astral sex.

[blis]

OBE's contain real people. LD's dont.

I could say more but I've said it all before.

[Astral316]

I would shred this guy's comparison chart but the Dean Walker guy further down the page said everything I would've. The bit where you aren't in REM sleep if you OBE is interesting though... if this is verified it's the only clear difference between the two.

[Rudolph]

The chart comparison is instructive. The observations are mostly consistent with my experience.

From what I am seeing on various forums, it seems that there are a LOT of OBEers who can consciously project but then their experience almost instantly degrades into an LD.

It seems like some are trying to say that all who walk around with their eyes open are awake. But 'awake' is obviously a general term applied to a wide variety of states of awareness.

LDs are not the same as a conscious OBE.

[Astral316]

From what I am seeing on various forums, it seems that there are a LOT of OBEers who can consciously project but then their experience almost instantly degrades into an LD.

Almost instantly degrades? That's a nifty way of getting around the fact that "LD characteristics" are prevalent in a lot of OBE experiences.

It seems like some are trying to say that all who walk around with their eyes open are awake. But 'awake' is obviously a general term applied to a wide variety of states of awareness.

All the more reason to not divide a wide variety of states into two flimsy categories that fail to have one exclusive characteristic among them.

[blis]

I fall into the category of those who's RTZ projections turn into LD's. Took me the best part of a year to figure out what was happening. I used to just assume that the RTZ was a very unstable place. I cant stay in it long enough to do anything intersesting. I can stay in the astral for much longer though.

I agree with the flimsy categories comment though. Sometimes I'm not sure which journal to put my experieces in.

[Volgerle]

All the more reason to not divide a wide variety of states into two flimsy categories that fail to have one exclusive characteristic among them.

I can absolutely agree. And even if we do the category thing, let's not forget that these categories are NOT discrete separate units but that there is a contiuum.
As regards the criteria to determine on which point in the contiuum I was on, I, personally, (at least as I saw it a few months ago), I have a matrix or x/y-chart where I put only 2 criteria on one axis (or row and column) each :

lucidity and privacy

Look at it this way (hey, and mind that it's an analogy guys, don't take it too literally):

In a dream you're sitting self-absorbed (non-lucid) in your own room busy with yourself and your projections. You are not really aware of your surroundings (room), just busy with your thought forms.
In a lucid dream you are still in your "private" thought form projection area, but you run around in the house using all rooms, and you are aware of your surroundings (rooms, house) as you are (more lucid), but let's not forget that lucidity also takes place in up- and down-swings on a continuum (not discrete steps) - well, at least for me.
In an OBE or AP, however, you leave your house and access the public area, sometimes you go "farther out" leave the city, country, planet, etc (means: different and/or "higher" planes / focus levels).

So the diagram/matrix with two measurements puts the 3 categories the following way:
dream high on privacy and low on lucidity,
lucid dream middle to high on lucidity and middle on privacy,
AP high (or sometimes only middle?) on lucidity and low on privacy

As said, they are on a chart / matrix table without discrete steps. It's a flow.

OBE's contain real people. LD's dont.

Well, from my experience I cannot agree anymore to this (I still would have done so some time ago). I get the feeling and came to the conclusion recently, if you open yourself to the possibilites of dream programming, group/shared dream experiments and dream telepathy, that more happens in "normal" (non-lucid) dreams, than you one think (in mainstream view). This means that you can have 'visitors' (or be a visitor) in your "room" / in dreams as well as lucid dreams (your "house").

I have the impression that in my dreams within the last year or so I also met some 'real' people that can well be distinguished from those shady 'life-less' dream characters I normally 'interact' with.

So, to stick to my analogy: It is possible that people enter your "house" (lucid dream) or even "room" (dream) and vice versa (I have entered the dream world of others, too, as it seems).

All of this is, of course a personal obeservation and it can of course be true in my case. If you are convinced that in dreams and what you define as lucid dreams you do not meet 'real' people then it might indeed be this way, I cannot judge, but how can we know for sure anyway about this?

So for me, as a consequence, I came to drop the 'privacy/public access' category entirely now. Thus I do the same approach as Kurt Leland does in his books: it is all adventures in consciousness (I call them lucidventures or lucadventures) with differing degrees (on a continuum!) of lucidty, which has to do with one's own personal learning of skills, abilities and sense development.

just my 2.5 cents.

[Astral316]

So for me, as a consequence, I came to drop the 'privacy/public access' category entirely now. Thus I do the same approach as Kurt Leland does in his books: it is all adventures in consciousness (I call them lucidventures or lucadventures) with differing degrees (on a continuum!) of lucidty, which has to do with one's own personal learning of skills, abilities and sense development.

I've doubted the privacy/public category for a long time (why I've never cared for Frank's F2/F3.) The concept is a meshing of two different thought processes that contradict each other at their core... isolated subconscious of psychology vs. collective conscious of metaphysics. I believe the illusion of privacy exists because we gravitate towards the familiar in the physical while in the non-physical... etheric plane, parallel worlds where you're with friends/family/familiar locations, personal memories, etc. Obviously someone who doesn't have your memory of Event X won't experience Event X in a dream/OBE. But it's not because they can't, it's because they have no mental attachment and therefore no viable pathway.

When it comes to AP/OBE vs. LD... I could accept them as part of a continuum of 'level of awareness' where LD is lukewarm and AP/OBE is boiling hot. I could accept them as different ways to get waking awareness into the non-physical (LD= comes after entry into non-physical, AP/OBE= comes before entry into non-physical.) But I can't accept them as experiences that are different on a metaphysical level.

[blis]

I like your way of looking at it Volgerie.

We may actually agree on the dream point. Most of my "dream" experiences I wouldnt actually call dreams. They seem to fall between categories. I would have called them dreams a few years ago but now I can recognise when scenarios are coming from a guide.

I guess I've just got a narrower definition of the word dream than most. We've got the word so I figure we might as well use it for a specific thing.