Okay so now your body is fully relaxed, and your mind is fully awake. Now what?

[akakaaykay]

I've always reached this point where I knew my whole body is super relaxed, semi-paralysed, but somehow, this is the best I could get. I can never get my body to sleep, no matter how hard my mind 'screams' at it to do so, and no matter how much I tried not to move. So here's a problem, I will be lying on the bed like a log, thinking, 'Am I going to lie like this for the whole night? This's not getting anywhere.'

These are a few reasons that I feel might be the causes of hindering my progress.

1. While lying down, saliva in my mouth keeps forming and I had to get them swallowed periodically.

2. My breathing; it is not really constant, sometimes when I feel that my mind is gaining a bit of awareness, my breathing tends to become irregular.

3. I feel that my mind is too awake. I was like thinking, in order to be sub-conscious, my mind should not be at the conscious level.


Okay so people! I need your help! Review my 3 points and see if they are important, and how to overcome them if they are. And if there are other points that should be important, by all means add them in. Thank you in advance!

[Chris J.]

Don't scream at your body to go to sleep. Just focus entirely on watching the blackness or whatever it is you're doing. Get rid of all of your thoughts about your body, go with whatever happens, and let your body do whatever it wants to do.

[EscapeVelocity]

Hi akakaaykay,

my experience tells me that you are still, not deep enough into the trance state. I struggled with this for literally, 20 years, on and off. At some point, you just have to "let go", and see if that takes you somewhere... the worst case being, you just fall asleep.

But keep in mind, all the time, you are slowly programming and reorganizing your beliefs on a subconscious level...and a certain amount of that is probably necessary to take place.

Another technique to try is the WBTB, Wake Back To Bed method. Set your alarm for 2 or 3 hours after you have gone to sleep, get up and putter around for 15 to 45 minutes and then try entering into trance. Maybe this will give you different results; it worked wonders for me.

Keep trying, the results are worth the effort! EV

[akakaaykay]

Haha alright, this just means that I have not gained enough experience of being in trance states. What about the 3 points that I mentioned in the first post? The problem of saliva forming, breathing patterns and being too conscious?

[Chris J.]

In my opinion, the problem isn't that you don't have enough experience with being in trance, it's that you are thinking about your body, and this will keep you from shifting your focus away from your body.

[Jarrod]

I don't think you should worry about being too conscious.  Your problems are coming from thinking too much.  It might seem strange or seem like an irrelevant point, but consciousness and thinking are not the same thing.  In fact, meditation is about trying to get rid of as many of the thoughts going on in your head as you can...while staying conscious.  This is what you need to do so that your body will fall asleep.  I don't think that your body will go to sleep until the thoughts going on in your head have lessened to a pretty low level.  That's what happens when you go to sleep normally, but normally your consciousness is also turning off with your thoughts.  The trick to astral projecting is letting your thoughts turn off like normal so that your body will go to sleep, but staying conscious so that you will be aware of what happens after that point.  Most of the techniques people use are trying to achieve that simple goal.  So find a way to shut your thoughts off wile staying conscious and your body will fall completely asleep and saliva and breathing won't be a problem.  Swallowing and breathing are regulated automatically.  It's actually kind of weird when your body automatically swallows without being told to.  That's startled me a few times.  Haha.  I think you just need to practice meditation. 

[Firmitas]

I had this problem for a long time too and I just recently got through it.

If you're focusing too much on forcing your body to go to sleep it wont happen. Because once you think about your body, you've realized that its still there. The objective is to forget your body. Also if you are focusing so much on some sort of progress (as far as astral projection) you will end up psyching yourself out if nothing immediately happens, thus creating doubt which is another huge block in progress.
So you sort of need to be ok with nothing happening. Try to care less about whether or not anything happens this time or next time or even after that. Just think about each meditation session as adding power to get you closer to projecting and eventually it will 'just' happen.
Once you do manage to become fully mind awake body asleep (which you definitely will) just place a location in your mind and visualize it as much as you possibly can. Keep focus on that place even when you feel your etheric body start to move. Just dont take the image out of your mind and see yourself in 1st person at that location.
Ive recently been doing chakra meditations and that is a terrific way to focus on something, forget about your body, and reach f10 (body asleep mind awake). So maybe you can try those out.
As far as the saliva thing, I never had that problem but I did have a similar one with my eyes moving (REM). Which would keep my face from falling asleep, thus keeping me attached to my physical body. The problem is that your throat isn't relaxed. My eyes didnt relax until i tried the chakra meditation. The same could happen with your throat so you wont even notice anything.
I would give it a shot.

Anyway my bad for the extra long advice, I just wish that someone would have told me about this sooner it would have saved me some time haha.

Good luck!
-Firmitas

[blis]

As far as I'm aware you're mouth doesnt produce saliva when you're sleeping. So if you get up in the middle of the night it should be dry. As long as you dont wake yourself up too much or move your tongue around you should be able to get into a trance without saliva forming. If you've just woken up it will also solve the problem of your mind being too awake.

I get the breathing problem sometimes too. In my case its from thinking about controling my breath. I can be aware of my breathing in a trance without it messing it up but if I accidently think about the fact I'm capable of consciously controlling it then it's like I get partial control again which is hard to relinquish quickly.

To echo the others, the best thing to do is keep your attention as far away from your breathing as possible. So you need something to concentrate on. Try as many techniques as you can find and use the one that you find keeps your attention best.

[personalreality]

You start over because if your mind is fully awake its too awake.  Thread of conscious awareness.