I'm 95% sure that I had a successful projection yesterday.
I used a combination of the Kepple/Monroe "Noticing" method and Robert Peterson's "Listen to the whining in your ears to narrow your consciousness down to a thread" method. One of the most important aspects of my session that stood out to me was that I went into it intending to project, however, I was just going to take a nap. It was that difference between intently working on methods and choosing to be "uninterested" in what's happening that did it. I was just being receptive to whatever happened.
It took about an hour because I was dancing around on the edge of napping for a while. But I got to a point where I started getting some vibrations and I learned that I could change their intensity by focusing my mind to a thread and then unfocusing. So I focused for as long as I could and then BAM! I got really intense vibrations that tickled my body so much that I almost backed out. I separated from my body, rose about a foot above it, then for some reason my awareness rotated 90 degrees. I was still parallel to my body in that I was "laying down" but my head was now facing to my body's left arm. Right as I turned and took a moment to try to turn on my astral vision I got this feeling that I was suffocating. I just couldn't breathe all of a sudden. I wouldn't expect to continue breathing once I'm out of my body but I also wouldn't expect to feel like I was suffocating unless I was really focused on the fact that i wasn't breathing. The issue is, I wasn't thinking about it at all. I was almost astrally peeing myself because I was out of the body, so I don't know where this whole suffocation bit came from. Either way, it pulled me right back to my body and I came too breathing normally.
I don't know what happened with the suffocating thing, but it ruined my first OBE. Nevertheless, I successfully got out. I only have 5% doubt because I had been teetering in and out of sleep. But I am almost positive it wasn't a dream because I didn't have an uninterrupted stream of consciousness. I was aware for the 20 minutes up to the exit, through the exit, through the OBE, and back into my body, then another 5 minutes that I laid there until I got up.
Whatever the cause of the suffocation feeling, this was helpful because it gave me validation and it helped me recognize the state of mind I need to achieve.
Quote from: personalreality on February 08, 2010, 17:47:36
It took about an hour because I was dancing around on the edge of napping for a while.
Congratulations! What do you mean by "dancing around on the edge of napping"? We're you drifting in and out of sleep? We're you fully conscious when it happened? I've had feelings of suffocating too, although they occur when I am in a very relaxed state and focusing on projecting. Unfortunately, I never project. I find it very distracting and impossible to ignore. It causes me to focus too much on my breathing and takes my mind away form the task at hand. Now that you've experienced it and know what it feels like, I bet you'll be able to fully separate soon.
It took an hour because for a long time I kept losing focus. It took me about 20 minutes to enter an appropriately relaxed trance state. Once I was there it took about another 30-40 minutes of trying to keep my attention focused on both the "whining" in my ears and the blackness behind my eyes without putting too much interest in the whole process.
But the time it took was a very good experience because I learned a lot about what I needed to do that no one had ever really said in a simple way to me before. First, people say "you're trying too hard" all the time, but no one elaborates on what that really means. Kepple touched on it when he said people fuss to much with methods and techniques. You almost have to be completely uninterested in whether you project or not. Its not that you shouldn't try "too hard", bit rather that you pretty much shouldn't try at all. When we try through methods and techniques, we engage our awareness too much and have trouble dissociating from the body. Granted some people naturally do this and don't see it as any big task. For the rest of us, entering the trance state is a good start. But as soon as you feel those tell-tale trance symptoms you need to withdraw your awareness and focus it down to a tiny thread.
Robert Peterson calls this the quiescent state of mind, I call it Q-Mind. He describes it with a great analogy. When you're outside on a warm summer night and you see some heat lightning or some from a storm in the distance, sometimes you stop to listen for the subsequent thunder. At that moment your mind is completely clear and focused, like it was just put in suspended animation. You have turned almost all of your atention to your ears and you wait. This is Q-Mind. One of the ways he recommends recreating it is by listening to the "whining" sound that everyone has in their ears to a greater or lesser degree.
When you get to Q-Mind your awareness is focus on such a singular, specific thing that is like it has been narrowed to a thread. In this state you become very passive the longer you hold your focus. If you do this once you've already induced trance to the point that you can just barely feel your extremities, the vibrations will start within a few minutes. When the do start you and vary your degree of focus and observe how the intensity of the vibrations change.
One of the most important aspects of the whole process though is the very subtle difference of focusing on the "whining" vs. focusing on "focusing on the whining" as a technique. That difference is what allows you to dissociate from your body enough to shift the perspective of your awareness.
Its subtle, I know. But it seems to be an important difference. When you're just passively focusing on the sound you feel more relaxed and its a noticeable difference. One place that you can look to to determine where your focus really lies is the movement of your eyes. If you're focusing on doing a technique, and you haven't narrowed your consciousness enough, your eyeballs will make little movements (not like REM) and may even feel strained. If you're just focusing on the whining for the sake of focusing then your eyes will be still, like you're going to sleep.
Another way to achieve Q-Mind besides the whining sound is to focus on the blackness behind your eyes. But this can be tricky because you don't want to put much interest in it. Again, you can tell if you're "trying too hard" by noticing if your eyes are moving or if they feel sore/strained. They should be still. Here the subtle difference is like looking out of your eyes vs. looking through them. Once you experience it you'll know what I mean. You look out of your eyes in normal waking consciousness, but when you look through them its like you've been sucked to the back of your head and you're looking out your eyes and on to something in the distance. This focusing (or noticing) method is harder for me to do in the beginning, because I'm usually still too awake and invested in the process. My eyes won't relax at this point. So I will usually start by listening to the sound in my ears and then later once I've narrowed my consciousness more I include staring into the blackness as a focus. Like listening for the thunder, I look into the blackness like I'm expecting to see something any second.
So towards the end I will focus on the sound in my ears and the blackness simultaneously. Sometimes I will even visualize that my ears and the center of my field of vision in the blackness are connected by a line. This forms a triangle and I see my consciousness as an ever shrinking point/thread in the center of the triangle (about where the pineal gland is).
All of this combined gets the vibrations to start. Then I just held out a little longer and I was out of the body. It took a while to get a good grip on Q-Mind in a way that was secure enough to hold on to. Once I got to that point it was less than a minute or two until I was out.
I hope all that made sense. It was quite the earth rattling revelation to me after that session was over. I'm the kind of person that needs to understand the principles behind a technique. I need to know how and why something works before I can put it to use. This experience shed a lot of light on what actually needs to take place to get out.
Let me know if I can answer questions about my explanation of my process.
Rusty
Nice going!
I've also noticed that. You can't strain yourself when doing a technique. You have to behave as if you were going to sleep, you have to be passive to all stimuli. You have to ignore what your body tries to tell you (through the five senses and through the brain's mumbling) and stick to your consciousness alone.
Exactly. No one ever said that to me though. You read about all these techniques but no one ever really describes that passive mind. You said it perfectly too, you have to behave like you're going to sleep.
I feel like I've wasted years of practice because I wasn't including that fundamental bit of being passive and receptive instead of active and intently. Granted, I have learned a lot about focus and trance. But I feel like I could have done so much more with my years of work had I known about this "Q-Mind".
Maybe I should have read Peterson, then Bruce. I might have been able to do more work with astral dynamics info with the conceptual info from Peterson's books.
Oh well. The floodgates are open now.
Quote from: personalreality on February 09, 2010, 15:28:04
Exactly. No one ever said that to me though. You read about all these techniques but no one ever really describes that passive mind. You said it perfectly too, you have to behave like you're going to sleep.
I feel like I've wasted years of practice because I wasn't including that fundamental bit of being passive and receptive instead of active and intently. Granted, I have learned a lot about focus and trance. But I feel like I could have done so much more with my years of work had I known about this "Q-Mind".
Well, by sharing your experience so descriptively you've explained more to me than what I got from reading Robert Monroe or William Buhlman, to name a few. I'm the type of person that needs to do to understand, not understand in order to do. Sounds crazy, but I do best at something if I just do it. If I make a mistake, I learn from it and it makes me better for it. I been doing, but to no avail, which is frustrating. I think you may have given me a nudge in the right direction. I'll let you know how it goes. Keep posting your experiences. I think you're onto something. :-)
The best description comes from Robert Peterson's book. You can read it online for free.
STEP 2. Quiesce and Focus Your Mind : http://www.robertpeterson.org/chap24.html and
State of Mind - http://www.robertpeterson.org/keys.html
Congratulations! Most first OOBEs are short... they get longer as you get more and more practice. But this is a really great turning point. I wonder about the suffocation. I have read about a condition called astral blindness, but nothing about suffocation. I guess it is some personal thing... I am not sure though.