Paddle to the Sea - 1 Week Challenge

[ThaomasOfGrey]

Session 3:

Went with the 10 minutes of noticing. Really easy to fall into the meditation zone now. After the 10 minutes I start the visualizations. This session was just a constant struggle to keep with the boat. My max focus time might have been around 5 seconds and I probably reset the visual on the boat 100 times. This was the least successful of the sessions so far, really frustrating experience.

Session 4:

Started with 30 minutes at least meditation in the sun. No mini dreams this time but a number of deep trains of thought without visuals. This time when I start the visualizations I decide to alter the approach, remembering struggling too much with the boat in session 3. The new approach involved filling the scenario with far more activity and things I find interesting, mostly fantasy characters and locations for the boat to pass through. The focus is a bit easier to hold this way, I can maintain the visuals for maybe 10 seconds. The scenario was very transient, skipping from thing to thing in a fairly chaotic procession. I learn that I struggle to connect one scene to another without jumping and resetting focus.

I read other accounts of the sessions and get a bit confused. When I read the description of another experience and compare it to my own the story looks the same on paper - the actual experience is far less remarkable than the recollection of the fleeting images and scenarios.

Session 5:

This time I skip the meditation and go straight into another new approach to visualization because what I was doing isn't working and I have some ideas from reading other posts. The new tactic is basically the opposite of the last one, instead of filling the scenario with more interesting things I try doing as little as possible. The visualizations don't come very well, when they do it is more vivid than the forced imagery but most of the time I am just bound to a sense of motion on the boat waiting for a visual that never comes. Still the best session to date, the new technique has some promise.

Session 6:

Now I come in with the mindset of watching a movie in my mind. I try to let a scenario unfold and become immersed in it. It works in 2-3 seconds bursts before I have to restart. I feel this is on the right track conceptually and yielded some of the more vivid visuals. The rest of the session was just more of the same, trying to stay with the scenario but having it die out really fast.

[Lumaza]

 Thaomas, you have shown great progress. I will speak more on that after your Day 7 report. But before that I want to ask you something, "Is a glass half empty or half full?".

Day 6

I lie back in the water. Quick relaxation. Quick 6pt directional focus. That directional focus really helps me loosen up.

For the first couple of minutes, it's fade in/fade out. That quickly changes. First I feel the forward drive of motion, then a accompanying visual comes into focus. I am on some kind of rubber, Zodiac inflatable, like craft speeding towards land. I use my thought = action to take a quick look in back of me, without turning my head and I see the Submarine behind me in the distance.

As I get closer I can see white sand, but before that I see the waves crashing to the beach. Now I am riding one of those waves. Very intense.

Quick fade out/fade back in and I see I am now on the Island. It's beautiful, full of color. I begin moving forward towards the tree line and all of a sudden. the tree line is gone and a small village is in it's place. I begin moving towards the village and now it's morphing into a bigger city. This "morphing" goes on for a few minutes. It's really weird because the scene hasn't changed due to a fade out/fade in. It's changing before my conscious "mind's eye".
This ends and I find myself once again in he 3D darkness. So I relax for a bit before ending the session.

Quick daily sneak peeks haven't yielded much. except for a quick jolt once in awhile of motion.


  Day 7

The last day. I just finished my Phase soak/session, so it's still fresh in my mind. I did quickly write the results down in point form, like I have been doing for the other 6 days here.

Lie in water, quick relaxation, quick 6pt focus and I am ready to go.

Fade in/fade out begins and it's hard to lock on to a visual, so I give up and try to relax into it with just some plain ole darkness "noticing".

The darkness I am seeing begins to wane a bit. I can see movement and feel movement, but I can't really see what it is. I demand "clarity now", that sometimes works, {Thanks Williiam B.  ), but the scene doesn't seem to lighten at all. Suddenly a spark shoots by. When it does it lights up he scene enough for me to see that I am afloat, in the middle of some huge water, possibly ocean scenario and it is pitch dark out. Hence the constantly feeling of motion and dark surroundings.

Another spark goes across the sky. I guess I am seeing falling stars. They begin to get more active and plentiful now. I am seeing little flickers all over. I decide I will follow the next one I see go by, but now there isn't one. I just lose focus and find myself in the 3D darkness "void".
I change my focus there to working on my new Earth Elemental design. After awhile of that I end the session.

A couple of times in the last daily sneak peeks, I was met with some vivid visuals immediately after closing my eyes. They were short lived, but they were only meant to be quick sneak peeks anyways.

[ThaomasOfGrey]

Still unable to access the forums on my normal machine. Been super busy but I did my final session on schedule.

Session 7:

I started on the deck in the sun. Relaxing the mind was easy and before long I was in the mindless state mostly. I didn't fall asleep and develop any mini dreams. After 30 minutes or so I went to the visualizations still on the movie in the mind approach. It got a little easier but was still difficult. I would imagine things like pirates and war on the river in bursts. The difficulty is in allowing the scene to unfold for longer than a few moments before becoming too self aware. I am allowing myself to leave the river scenario to seek interesting scenarios. Interestingly the process unfolds naturally on mundane trains of thought which I easily become immersed in, forgetting the visualizations.

After 50 minutes I go inside and lay on the couch for round 2. This time I allow myself to go into a deeper meditation bordering on the timeless state. Early on I caught myself entering dreams in the stage where the it is still a conceptual train of thought that has yet to render visual information. The glimpse I get at this phase of the mini dream initiation has been witnessed many times but it reminds me that it is similar to the mundane train of thought experience. I think this type of entry could be a kind of focus that is effective for projection. I fly by the next 2.5 hours in the timeless zone. I fell into the mini dreams again 4 or 5 times, each ended as soon as I became self aware, which has become the norm. The scenario aborts so fast it feels like I don't have a chance. This problem slowly faded away in fully lucid dreams over time.

Session X:

I had another session that was a bit different but worth sharing. I have decided to try a fast of a kind after learning about the mythology around the Oil of Christos / Sacred Oil. My inner fire was way more prominent than usual and I was enjoying the healing energy in my stomach. I let my mind wander and reflected on some recent sadness with life. I discovered a source of inspirational energy and my core felt lit up with the energy levels. The experience was so strong that the energy feelings were body wide and I could feel my brain being filled with happiness hormones. Muscle tension was going and my spine clicked several times. I just basked in the energy and imagined it like a healing force.

Along with the thoughts of healing I started to spontaneously visualize trees of lightning coursing throughout my body. It was very natural and easy somehow unlike any of my other sessions. When my energy levels are this high I often get offered the chance to project in a way. Its a strange feeling of energy rising like the coiling of a spring about to fire you into the sky. In the end I was afraid to accept the offer, in the moment I knew what the source of the fear was but it escapes me now like a dream. After this my energy levels plummeted to zero and I had to slowly summon it back over the course of 30 seconds or so.

The experience comes full circle if I integrate the data with my initial suspicions. There is some kind of hidden fear or block that wants to be overcome. It isn't a problem when I am already asleep or if I coincidently get past some critical point in a conscious projection. I am not sure if this aspect plays a part in the troubles with visualizations. I learned that I can get some success by leading the visualization by something non visual.

[Lumaza]

 Excellent progress Thaomas!   You even put in a "extra" day. Kudos for that!  

This whole exercise had so many valuable lessons in it. I always state that any technique including my own are only "blueprints". You, the person that's doing this, needs to learn to "adapt" to what works for you. Who knows you better than you?
You adapted Thaomas quite a bit. Right off the bat, after your first experience, you were trying for some reason to sabotage this. Then a change took place. You learned to adapt and allowed the whole scenario and theme itself to change. But, something mentionable still occurred.

This daily exercise and daily mediation itself also opens you "neural network" in your brain.
Jurgen Ziewe explains it like this. " I think the first thing with all meditation is to find the technique which suits you most, but the most important thing is TO STICK WITH IT. The reason being is that you are programming your brain to go down a certain route and you align the neural network of your brain. It is a bit like creating a path through high grass to get to your cottage in the middle of a field. If you keep changing your path you'll always have to keep treading the grass down again which is laborious and when you return to the previous path the grass will have already overgrown your path so you'll have to start again. So STICK TO YOUR TECHNIQUE and do it regularly!

Once the neural network is conditioned to your meditation it should take you only minutes or even seconds to get into the deep state. In the end your consciousness picks you up and it does the meditation for you."
You can take the word "meditation" and replace it with any kind of other "non local state of consciousness".

Jurgen is a good guy. I talked to him in the past when I had a Facebook account. One time he questioned why I had/used a "Alias". I said, it was because it's the "message", not the "messenger" that's important. Jurgen states in his writings and videos how he used to, (I don't know if he still does), put in 5 hours of meditation a day. Like many other's, including myself, his first conscious experience was "spontaneous". It peeked his curiosity enough after that to pursue looking deeper into this phenomenon and then he made it his "lifetime passion".
Here's a link to his website for anyone wanting to know more. He has one of the best Binaural Beat downloads, for "free" too, that I have ever used.
http://www.multidimensionalman.com/Multidimensional-Man/Astral_Travel_and_life_after_death.html

His new book is called the "Ten Minute Moment" and this is the intro to that book
"What happens when attention is focused on Attention for one week? What does it feel like when you step over the very edge of human consciousness and cross the great divide which separates individual identity from a unified and cosmic sense of being?"

Every session I did above had one very important thing in common and that they all put me deep in the 3D void. After all the visuals subsided, I was left deep in the state "being" and there is no other feeling that we have that compares with that.  

This whole practice is fun and different. Is it 100% necessary to project? No. But to all the "Nay-sayers" and people that think it's a waste, I have a question for you. When was the last time you had a successful daily session? I don't mean experiencing the "NP" by means of a LD. I mean a good old fashioned either total "OBE" experience in the physical sense of the word or a completely conscious "shift in consciousness"/Phasing.

I would like to continue with this.

I just completed my daily Phase/soak session and just like you Thaomas, I have continued with my daily "Paddle to the Sea" adventures as well.

Today though, the idea to change it up came to me.

For this new practice, we will change the "Paddle to the Sea" scenario over to just "flying" in general. Duration: 1 week daily sessions, with multiple little "sneak peeks" as well.

I will do the relaxation for a couple of minutes, then some quick directional 6 pt. focus and next I will just begin to focus on the motion of moving forward. I will then mentally use the message/intent "I AM FLYING". I will say that in my mind 3 times, then I will await what comes.
So, the instructions are:
Do what it takes to get yourself into "the zone".  
Create a mental focus of moving forward.
Say mentally 3 times "I AM FLYING" .
Observe and report back later.
Continue with the quick daily "sneak peeks" as well.

Everyone is welcome to try this. If you do, please share your finds/results with us here. We can keep this thread open and fresh by using fun exercise like this.

Next week, someone else can change the "target" of focus. The thing is, we will all be able to experience this and because of that, we will be able to see "Group" results and finding for others. Like I said, it can't hurt!   It also keeps this Forum, which has had a lack of posts and posters recently, active again. You in the "shadows" are welcome to come out and try this too.

So instead of questioning, why.  Just take the plunge or in this case "learn to fly". It's one of the most thrilling things you can experience in the NP.  

[Nameless]

Session 4 and 5.

Weird and I don't know what to make of them. I got into a relaxing mode and began my visualization which went wonky almost from the start. Everything got BIG. I aborted session 4 deciding to try again later.

So later the same day I repeated the session. I had decided to visualize the beach area again. My intent was to stroll down the beach to the dock where I first saw my little sail boat. Next thing I know I'm sort of staring at my leg. I had to pull back to see the entire scene. I'm reclining on the beach looking out over the water, only I'm like a GIANT. Once I spot the sail boat - it's GIGANTIC.

I tried to see what perspective I was seeing from when my leg filled my vision. Must have been an ant or some other very tiny creature but I couldn't see whatever it was.

This experience was so weird I couldn't figure out what to do with it. Everything else seemed in perfect proportion but I simply could not focus on the boat with out it filling my vision to the exclusion of everything else. And any glimpse of myself, like a hand or whatever did the same.

So I'm more than happy at this point to move on to "I Am Flying" LOL

[Lumaza]

Session 4 and 5.

Weird and I don't know what to make of them. I got into a relaxing mode and began my visualization which went wonky almost from the start. Everything got BIG. I aborted session 4 deciding to try again later.

So later the same day I repeated the session. I had decided to visualize the beach area again. My intent was to stroll down the beach to the dock where I first saw my little sail boat. Next thing I know I'm sort of staring at my leg. I had to pull back to see the entire scene. I'm reclining on the beach looking out over the water, only I'm like a GIANT. Once I spot the sail boat - it's GIGANTIC.

I tried to see what perspective I was seeing from when my leg filled my vision. Must have been an ant or some other very tiny creature but I couldn't see whatever it was.

This experience was so weird I couldn't figure out what to do with it. Everything else seemed in perfect proportion but I simply could not focus on the boat with out it filling my vision to the exclusion of everything else. And any glimpse of myself, like a hand or whatever did the same.

So I'm more than happy at this point to move on to "I Am Flying" LOL

Nameless, you kept with it. Kudos! 

You could probably skip your Session 6 and 7 and just move onto a new week and "Flying" challenge.

That's weird, just the vision of you leg. That probably occurred so you could concentrate more on "peripheral" vision.

I very rarely see any of my physical "appendages". I try to conduct all my Phase sessions from a "point of consciousness" mindset. That way I find and experience no limitations.

The only time I see my enteric body now is my hands when I do my closing ritual, which is to 'bow" with closed hands in front of me. I always give "Thanks" to whoever it is that has chosen to aide my on this Journey. Every time I do that, I get a quick visual back as well. Many times it seems to be a row of Monks bowing back to me. Sometimes it's "other". But there is always some kind of quick visual.

[Lumaza]

 Session 1 (Flying)

I lie in the water, do some quick relaxation exercise, then some quick 6 pt focus and I am ready to begin.

I try to kick the forward focus into gear, but for some reason, it's not there. I then mentally say "I am flying" 3 times, then I wait. Nothing. I go back to creating the forward focus again and still nothing. So, I just lie there "noticing".

Now quick visuals are occurring. Really blurry at first and fading in and out.

Then the scene gets vivid and I am "hovering" over a guy. He's in a boat and is fishing on a lake. I take a quick look around, using 360 vision and see it is a beautiful area. This guy is alone in his boat and it looks like he is trying to "set" a hook (get the fish to bite). He has a lot of patience and I can tell he is very adept at his craft. I am looking down from the same viewpoint the entire time. I watch him for awhile. Then the screen fades. I never attempted to communicate with him at all. My "mission" was just "observation.

It takes a while until a clear visual comes back. Now this one is I am flying in some mountainous area. It is completely barren at first. I see in the distance a small cabin. I immediately focus on it and find myself there. I go in the home, not moving, just by thought and see a Family sitting around eating. The Mother is feeding a baby and this seems really peaceful. There are 5 in the Family. Once again, I never attempted to make contact. I just wanted to observe.

Then the scene went completely dark and once in a while I saw distortions in the darkness. The "distortions" seemed to be periodic, in waves kind of felt like the view you get when a Subway or Train goes into a dark tunnel. We live in the Country, so it has been many years since I have been on a Train or Subway. I think the last time was the Epcot Center in Disneyland and we were riding the Monorail there. I was in my teens then.
  I stayed with that focus of moving in the dark tunnel, until I watched how the darkness was morphing before my very eyes. At first the darkness was "flat". But gradually it got deeper and deeper, until I was just there.

Every time I do a Phase Session, eventually I find myself in the 3D void. But I don't actually get to watch it change before my eyes. Normally, I come out of a great visual and see the 3D void already there. But this time, I got to watch it change. It was very cool.