Explaing some of the paradoxes associated with AP/OBE

[Astralzombie]

We are a community that is made up of people from different religious backgrounds, careers, nationalities, ages, varying degrees of AP/OBE experience, and none of us have identical skill sets. Yet we all come together to help each other to try and understand our non-physical journeys and what larger implications they may have.

However, a community that is diverse as ours is going to give statements that seem contradictory and almost impossible to reconcile for some members. But that couldn't be further from the truth. The majority of most misunderstandings can easily be remedied when we stop playing word games and push semantics aside. Many of us, myself included, sometimes take even slight criticisms as a personal affront. I'm not naive so I understand that this is sometimes the truth. But I believe that the majority of the misunderstandings stem from the fact that this communications medium, great as it is, suffers because we can't see the facial expressions and other physical cues that we have evolved to recognize in order to determine a persons true meaning. Emoticons help but some even view them as sarcasm *sigh*.

Now with that over with, I wanted to try and explain some of the most common paradoxes associated with this practice. There are too many to discuss them all but the following will address the most obvious.

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The most obvious paradox is, ''Why do people call it out of body experiences and then turn around and immediately say that the opposite is true and that we actually don't go anywhere''? There are several factors that perpetuate this belief. Terms and ideas such as ''exit techniques'' and even many methods encourage this belief which further reinforces the concept.  Some of these are the "rope climbing'', ''roll out'',  and the exercise of imagining a bar just above you that you can grab in order to lift yourself up, to name a few.

Don't misunderstand me as these techniques have helped untold thousands of people to achieve their first AP/OBE experience. They can remain beneficial for years as well but it can also hinder progress for some eventually.

So how does the idea that we aren't leaving our bodies have any merit? Well, it has much to do with the ideology that our bodies and this 'reality' that we are currently experiencing are just another illusion of physicality. Over seven billion people believe that we are living in a physical world so it is extremely stable and that makes it very hard to defy the 'laws' that govern them but it can be overcome occasionally. Tom Campbell says that strange anomalies can and do happen on the fringe. This just means that the 'system' can make changes for individuals or small groups but not for millions of people at once since there is far too much belief that this is a physical world and that is too much inertia to overcome.

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Is evil real? To understand this, we must define evil

From Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 2003 ed.:

evil¹1:adj., wicked 2: causing or threatening harm or distress.

evil² 1:noun, the fact of suffering wrongdoing, 2: a source of sorrow or distress.

No one can deny that these definitions certainly describe a tangible condition. If so, why so some of us deny it's existence? Well, actually we don't. The problem that I have it is that the meaning of the word and subsequently it's use has been corrupted. Evil is now used as if it is a stand-alone force of it's own. Ironically, all the belief in its force may very well serve to make this true but I feel safe for the time being that it is not.

I believe the real enemy is fear which is the father of hatred. Hatred is the most outward expression of
fear and internal suffering. Only love can conquer both. You can't fight fire with fire without burning each other, but I admit that it does sound cool in the gangster movie.

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We must conquer our fears in order to project. This is also incorrect. We only have to tame the fears that we know are keeping us from being successful. Projecting will assist you in further dispelling some of these fears while simultaneously raising others. We have fears that we aren't even aware of and these have a sure way of rearing their heads. But by now, you should be better at recognizing them for what they are and move past them with relative ease.

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There re many more paradoxes that are inheritant with this practice so please feel free to elaborate.