Hi. I've been trying to project for about 8 months now with only a few lucid dreams to show for it. The lucid dreams happened spontaneously. They were very real in the sense that I was fully conscious and controlling my dream. In one of them, I received some kind of sign in the form of flags. The flags represented past lives, for which I had five. What was very interesting is I saw the flag of my current life, and under it were the words "Raleigh NC", where I currently live. Now I had no idea Raleigh had its own flag. When I researched it, sure enough, it was the flag I saw in the dream. This has been the most significant LD I have had. I had one other (my very first one) in which I was flying around checking out a palm tree. Anyway, my first was in June and the flag one was in July. I may have had a few others since then, but I do not have clear memory of them like I do of these two.
What I really want to do is separate my consciousness from my body and astral project. I want to do this so bad, I think about it all of the time. I've read books by many authors on the subject. My favorites are William Buhlman and Robert Monroe. I recently got Robert Monroe's Hemi-Sync series and used it last night to meditate. I believe I can easily reach the mind-awake, body asleep state pretty easily. At least I think I can. Judging from what I have read in those books and this message board, I believe I can achieve that state almost at will. The problem is I can't do anything beyond it. The few times I have felt vibrations or saw the weird visuals of patterns is when I wake up from lucid dreaming. I have not been successful of even getting to the vibrational state, other than through these few spontaneous occurrences. I see so many people on this board who say the same thing, and then I see so many who say they can AP pretty much all of the time. It's so frustrating trying to do this every night without success.
I'm wondering if my perception of conscious reality has something to do with this. Could I be so emotionally tied to Earthly issues that I can't let go enough to AP? Let me give you an example; I read from so many people who AP and claim that humans are damaging the planet and causing global warming, yet I do not believe the Earth is warming. I have not seen anything to validate this claim. Only politicians clamoring over what to do about it. I really let this bother me because I do not like the proposed solutions to this "problem". There are many other things going on in the world that bother me which tend to be negative, or at least I perceive them to be. Now, I know you are supposed to be positive and fill yourself with positive energy, but this can be very difficult to do, especially when I am surrounded by negative people all day long at work. This is why I've taken up meditating every day. Staying informed on current social, political and economic issues I find to be a very negative practice, but something that I feel needs to be done.
So, in writing this, I think I've convinced myself that I let negativity stand in the way of my astral projecting. I try to be positive and do things to raise my vibrational energy, but no success to date. So I guess after all of this rambling, what I need to know is, how do you people who can successfully AP view the world? Are you happy with humankind, or do you see a lot of shortcomings? If you think positive/negative energy effects your ability to AP, how do you maintain a positive energy state? Any thoughts or comments would be appreciated.
No, you may just not using the right technique for you. The fact that you have achieved LDs shows that your interest in this field is affecting how you're making your unconscious conscious.
I would ask you, what is the technique (step by step) that you are using to go OBE?
What I do is relax at night before I sleep and try to get to the mind-awake, body asleep state. Form there, I focus on OBE'ing and wait for the vibrations. I end up falling asleep after some time though. Also, I usually wake up around 3:00 AM and then try again. I've tried moving to a different room and reaching that same mind awake, body asleep state, but again, usually just fall asleep after a while. With the experiences I have had, they were spontaneous. I wasn't trying, they just happened. I'm not sure what else to do to induce an OBE.
Last night, I believe something was going on. I abruptly woke up with a jolt, like I was slammed back into my body. If I was out, I didn't know it. I think back on all of the vivid dreams I used to have and wonder if I was OBE in some of them? Ever since I got into this whole OBE/lucid dream thing about 8 months ago, I very rarely even remember my dreams. I feel like I try harder and harder, but nothing.
Well, relaxing to trance is fine, but if you don't do some type of mental exercise (like breathing exercises, simple energy raising, etc.) you run the risk of falling asleep.
I recommend that you do it very early in the morning (to avoid falling asleep) and adopt some of the above mentioned exercises, before getting to the deep trance state- this will keep you aware and awake when the exit sensations begin, and then, when they are unmistakeable (as in, possibly dramatic) try an exit technique, and do it consciously.
There are techniques galore on the Techs section of this forum.
Good luck.