The Projection Stage / Vibes (Need some insight)

[Tisha]

wow, good post!  I'll contribute what I can:

For some people, trance comes easy.  Some people have a hard time NOT trancing - - - like me.  I have a reputation as a "space cadet," and no one wants to be in the car when I'm driving.  http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/images/icon_Smile_blush.gif" border=0>

Most people however, are specifically "trained" (for lack of a better term) NOT to trance, ever.  Modern Western Life does that to you.  So it's real hard to learn, and it takes a lot of practice.  Once you "get" it, however, it slowly gets easier.

The natural resistance barrier is fear.  It's a protective thing . . . fear has saved all of our lives numerous times, I'm sure.  All I can say is work with your fear, get used to the "weird" feelings by doing the exercises over and over.

Getting close to OBE and somehow not "making it" can be very frustrating.  I don't know how to make you feel better except to say, be happy with your progress so far!  If ROPE doesn't work for you, try something else.  There are a variety of ways to get "out."

The cold is actually a good sign that you've brought your body rhythm down to a very slow tick - - - very good.  When I go deep, I'll breathe perhaps once a minute, which actually feels normal at the time.  I get very cold sometimes, but I only notice it upon coming out of the trance.

Hope this helps - - - and keep it up!


Tisha

"As Above, So Below"

[Patty]

Also, there is a lot of room for individual experience. The Buhlman commands ("astral sight NOW!") don't work for me. ROPE creates an instant tugging in my midsection, even if I am not in trance. Just laying down and doing rope will get a strong tug on my midsection. But it has never gotten me out yet.

What works for me is to be on the edge of asleep/awake, for a long time (several hours is good.) This means skittering back and forth from awake to asleep, etc, for a long time. This also means I have to be intent. Really intent. Really really intent.  Most nights the sleep seduces me, it's pretty yummy after all.

Anyway, what works for me after some hours of this awake asleep, is to just try to get up and walk away. THis will either wake me up physically (calling for more time in this zone) or or it will work and I'll walk away.

Good luck, keep at it, and allow yourself to have experiences that aren't quite by the book.

Patty

[Zarklon]

Thanks for the detailed post , I always like to read those.  

Heres what I seriously think you should try.. it seems that you kinda got the same feeling that I got one night when  I had a successful projection .. sorta right into a lucid dream .. I didnt fall asleep first .. just went straight into it..

When you said "Pulsations When climbing the ROPE, the vibrations seemed to pulsate with every climbing stroke."

I got strong vibrations in the back of my neck everytime I started to try to float over to the corner of my ceiling .. when I stopped trying to fly there, they would go away .. when I started to fly to the ceiling again , they would start up .. what I did to make this effective was .. I tried to hold the feeling for as long as I could concentrate .. I tried to fly to the ceiling and I put up with the somehwat uncomfortable vibrations in my neck for a good 10 or 15 seconds and this created the feeling of me rolling off the bed .. it was strange but it all kinda took on an "Auto-Pilot" feeling and I just let the rolling off the bed feeling flow .. soon , I was out , fully aware of my surroundings and looking at my floor cause I was floating over it..

What I suggest is , when you climb the rope and get the pulsing vibrations , try to hold that vibration for as long as you can .. maybe imagine not stopping the climbing .. whatever keeps that vibration without stopping it .. go with it .. make that vibration last until the Auto-Pilot effect kicks in and you realize you can see ... my vision came when I was about 3 feet away from my body and I realized .. "hmm.. I still cant see" WHAM I got vision.  

Good luck , sorry if you have to translate some of this =P!

[Leviiathan]

One thing I would like to add. My comment with the Natural Resistance Barrier. I wasn't even aware that such a term existed! My impression was that it had everything to do with subconscious resistance (some invisible factor I cannot account for).

If you think this has anything to do with fear, think not. I do not fear the Astral, nor separation. I embrace it, and have been involved on and off in this for 5 or so years (I had a 3 or so year gap because of ho wmy views changed). Nothing really scares me at all.

[Frank]

quote:Originally posted by Leviiathan:
Alright, first of all, I'd like to ask:

About Entering Trance
I'm come to understand that the process of entering trance may be one that may need to be developed over an extended period of time, like a person learning how to ride a bycicle. With each attempt, the person improves. Is this true?

Yes, absolutely. Though people naturally tend to develop at different rates. But each time you succeed it gets just that little fraction easier the next time. The key is to develop familiarity with the various states and use them as signposts that indicate your progress rather than stumbling blocks that trip you up.

quote:
About Conditioning step, and the Natural Resistance Barrier
Do any of you believe in a so-called (my term) "Natural Resistance Barrier?" I feel that it's different for each people and that what this is is a suconscious level of resistance that prevents people from inducing altered states of consciousness (i.e. trance). For me, entering trance has been one of the biggest, hardest, most frustrating steps I have ever taken in my journey to AP.
Like cooking, it seems that inducing trance requires the right set of ingredients, or rather, in this case, correct amount of focus, correct style, correct center-of-awarenss-position, etc. The philosophy here is that your subconscious naturally tries to stop you from performing a willing self-hypnosis (or being hypnotized in general), and it takes a matter of time for the process to be accepted as a normal function process that is performed in the every day life step. For me, hopefully my 3 hours-a-day of practice (3 1-hour sessions) will develop my abilities.

Again, your insight is pretty much spot on. Where you say, "and it takes a matter of time for the process to be accepted as a normal function process that is performed in the every day life step" you couldn't be more accurate.

Problem is, your Astral progress is largely determined by your willingness to believe. That's why, when people post about their experiences, the first thing I look for is the phrase "I believe" and study carefully what follows. Because in the text of what follows, is usually a major stumbling block that the person in question has possibly been tripping over for years.  

quote:
Personal Philosophy
I feel that I have a puzzle that is incomplete. I have to get from step a to step d. I can already advance to step d from step a, but if I do that, I mess up completely. I need to get from Step A to Step D, through Steps B and C. Why is this? Because if my body is asleep, then I will be able to project!

To quote your analogy, above, "Like cooking, it seems that inducing trance requires the right set of ingredients, or rather, in this case, correct amount of focus, correct style, correct center-of-awarenss-position, etc."

It's a question about having the right set of ingredients that creates just the right kind of mental mix that fires the process.

quote:
My Mistakes I've Realized
I'm just explaining a typical session for me. Ironically, my experimentations began with Robert Bruce, expanded out in many different directions, and seem to have come back to his simple techniques. All I've done is merely expanded my knowledge so that I can apply them properly. It is not that they were wrong. I have realized that my understand of how to apply them in practice was wrong. So here I am.

Successful projection is a mental exercise that comes by obtaining the correct degree of mental understanding. Realisation is a very powerful emotion that tears down inner mental barriers at a terrific rate. The more you expand your knowledge and the more you practice, the more you realise. And the more you realise, the thinner that mental barrier becomes... until... one day, you break through.

quote:
Prologue Step / Readying myself
This is what I do. The conditions, be light, darkness, or semi-darkness don't necessarily bother me, if not at all. Semi-darness is the most ideal condition, as indicated. I lay down, tense up my muscles (3 times or so), then breathe in, hold it, breathe out (2 seconds breathing in, hold for 1 second, breathe out for 2 seconds) at a gradual and slow pace. After doing this a few times, I close my eyes and do it again. In the case of tonight, I just kept doing that, then led into the next step. Like most people, I do this to prepare myself. I don't like to call it a process that calms my mind, nor a process that relaxes me. It does all of those things, but the description is purely that it is a preparation step. I don't think of when I'll be ready, I don't think of how many times I'm supposed to do the breathing. I just let it happen. I don't think about it. And the reason why is because my mind is not focused on the concerns of how I'm supposed to breathe. It just happens.

Yes, good advice. It's all about realising that projection is a natural process where you just let it happen, rather than try and force things.

quote:
Intermediate Step / Inducing Body Sleep, Mind Awake
I don't want to call this "Trance", because it is not a trance step. I prefer to describe it as the process that dims my full awareness, and puts my body to sleep. I have not mastered this area, so in given time, I believe, I will be able to. This area, being the most crutial developement step of my training, is something I still have yet to develope to the required level.

This step, which entails switching from 2D vision, i.e. merely looking at the blackness behind the eyelids, to 3D vision (the switching on of Astral Sight) is a very tricky mental balancing act. Even now this step frustrates me. Like, the other morning I merely only had to think about the step and it almost right away came about. However, this morning I couldn't make the step at all after about an hour of trying... why?

That's the question I'm currently seeking the answer to. Why is it that some mornings it's virtually instant, where other mornings it happens but with varying degrees of difficulty. And there are times like this morning where I couldn't make it... why?

quote:
One thing I also noticed: I had these black-outs seem to hit me. This feeling where you start to black out, but then within a split second, your awareness returns back to where it was. Any particular comments on this?

Yes, I recognise your description and it is caused by failing to keep the right kind of mental focus (well it is with me). It happens to me when I let my sense of mental focus shift from a point that I sense is about the middle to upper of my head. If I just let it drift then I'll fall asleep. In a way this is a signpost that tells you the body is on the verge of sleep, and right at this point comes the tricky part.

As the body sleeps, out of sheer habit, it wants to shut down your sense of awareness. But you are lying there wanting to project. So you get this little tug-of-war going on where the body is trying to take away your sense of awareness, and you keep trying to snatch it back. Eventually the body will give in, drift off to sleep, and then you are free.

Projection Stage
I figured I might as well do a projection and see what I'd get. I started to climb the rope. It was not long till vibrations came over me. They started out small, and seemed to become stronger. One thing I noticed is that they were not intense vibrations, nor anything weak.

When you say vibrations, where did you feel these were coming from?

Yours,
Frank

[helen]

Hi everyone----------------FRANK--------Helen's waiting for a REPLY-------------------------STOP the Ignorance---------------Helen .

[Leviiathan]

Alright. I'm going to make a quick post right now. Last night, I had 3 10-minute sessions, each one was an attempt to develop the corect technique for me to induce successful trance.

About Vibrations
It's hard to recall, but let me try to remember. I think they were paramount around the top of my knee caps to around my neck area, but were mostly felt throughout. It wasn't a surging feeling (which is more intense, and different). I have a pulsing feeling, like my body is pulsing. When I said "pulsations", I was saying that as I'd breathe in, there'd seem to be a sight and fast reactions of the pulsations suddenly going "PULSE" as I breathed, instead of just "pulse".

Most of the time, vibrations begin for me with the heart chakra begining to pump energy. It feels like my heart rate it speeding up. On one or two occassions, I noticed that my face was red and warm, as if I had just exercised, so in those cases, I think it had something to do with my heart.
With the heart chakra beginning to pulse, the body begins to surge with energy soon after. From my mid-section / heart (area I described as where it is generally felt), it spreads out to encompass my feet, hands, and face.

In previous attempts, I've had very intense mental sessions using ROPE. The sheer feelings of climbing it, played out in my mind, caused my body, without my notice, to tense up and react. I'd feel myself lifting out, when in actuality, nothing of that sort was happening. It was my body somehow thrusting itself up. Then when the vibes would go away, I'd realize my body was tense, then just untense... and fall back into the bed.

Over time, I was able to identify this more and more. In fact, I payed very, very close attention to this and what was happening, so I'd be able to instantly catch it as it was happening. It still happens, but not as much, and if I ever hit vibrations at present, my first reaction is to check to see if my body is tensing in this way. How I do ths is to just make sure my muscles are relaxed. It's a process of checking to see if I can loosen myself.

Lately, when I lay down and begin to try and induce a trance / focus away, I find my neck tilts back 10 - 15 degrees. I'm always having to tilt it back. This tilting is not a natural relaxation mechanism. It is an act of tensing.

Anyway, I'll expand on my exercises from yesterday. I'm still wondering what's stopping me from projecting.

[Frank]

quote:Originally posted by Leviiathan:
About Vibrations
It's hard to recall, but let me try to remember. I think they were paramount around the top of my knee caps to around my neck area, but were mostly felt throughout. It wasn't a surging feeling (which is more intense, and different). I have a pulsing feeling, like my body is pulsing. When I said "pulsations", I was saying that as I'd breathe in, there'd seem to be a sight and fast reactions of the pulsations suddenly going "PULSE" as I breathed, instead of just "pulse".

Most of the time, vibrations begin for me with the heart chakra begining to pump energy. It feels like my heart rate it speeding up. On one or two occassions, I noticed that my face was red and warm, as if I had just exercised, so in those cases, I think it had something to do with my heart.
With the heart chakra beginning to pulse, the body begins to surge with energy soon after. From my mid-section / heart (area I described as where it is generally felt), it spreads out to encompass my feet, hands, and face.

Okay, now I'm not sure how universal these feelings are amongst people but, with me there are several vibrational states I can sense. Only one of these is to do with Astral Projection. In other words, I am of the opinion that it is not enough merely to feel vibrations: they must be vibrations in particular.

First I'd like to stress that I'm not into doing any kind of "energy work" it's just that I went through a phase of trying to understand at least some basics to do with Chakras (and the like) more out of curiosity than anything. There are a number of people on this BBS who are quite expert at doing things such as "energy raising" very little of which I've had any experience with.

From my limited experiments, I discovered there are 2 bodily vibrational states I can muster. (That is, apart from the vibrations I feel that are to do with Astral Projection.) One of these is centered around the area of my abdomen. It's a very high pitched kind of vibration similar to an intense tickle. Or the kind of feeling you get in your belly going over a hump-back bridge at speed. I often find this vibrational-centre active during sleep. Many times I catch myself dreaming about standing on the edge of a tall building. As I become more consciously aware, I begin to sense this intense tickle coming from my abdomen.

As the feeling does bear some kind of resemblance to the feeling you can get in your abdomen when looking down from a great height, I figured it was this which sparks the dreams about standing on the edge of a tall building.

The other vibrations are felt in the region of my chest. These are of a lower frequency than the one I just described, but still quite a high pitch. It also gives me the feeling that my heartbeat has raised itself to a high level. Which is hasn't actually, but that's how the feeling comes across.

Also, my whole body develops a feeling like it were made of some kind of spongy foam and that it had expanded to about double its normal size. The bottom half of my body gets this weird sensation like it carries on forever and ever. Which gives me a feeling like I were "in" my physical body at the region of my head and neck, but the rest of me was "out there" somewhere.

The third vibrational state is the one which comes about at the onset of what I call my "travelling projection". Basically, I have two ways of projecting: "step into" or "travelling".

With a travelling projection I'm laying back relaxing and, as I do so, I'll feel a kind of stroking sensation within my head. At the same time I get a sound. It comes across as an ever so gentle swooosh sound, like a little wave just rippled through my head. So I relax further and it will come again after about 30 seconds, or so. Then I relax into it more and it will start happening faster to the point where each swooosh comes about every second or two. Then it develops into a low-frequency vibration that feels as if my whole brain is shaking slightly from side to side. Which it isn't literally. But again that's what it feels like.

I also feel the swooosh sensation naturally as I wake up. Not every time but, say, around half the time. As I am coming awake, I'll feel at least one tiny swooosh. I'm saying this because the thought occurs to me that maybe other people have felt this and not really given it a thought. In the sense they may have just habitually and long-since ignored the sensation thinking it was merely a factor involved in coming awake. You see, the first time it happened to me as part of a projection I thought, hang on a minute, I recognise this swoooshing feeling. And, sure enough, it was the same sensation I have often felt while in the natural process of coming awake.

As the swoooshing turns into a vibration I get a sensation of movement. Like my physical body were laying on some kind of flying carpet and we were going off somewhere. At some point early on, I get my Astral sight which usually begins with a brief view of the real-time zone, then I get a load of jumbled images following which everything begins to slow. At which point I find myself within the Astral.

Yours,
Frank

[Jeff_Mash]

quote:Originally posted by Frank:
Like my physical body were laying on some kind of flying carpet and we were going off somewhere.

That flying carpet explanation hit home for me.  Unfortunately, I've blown MANY potentially successful projections at this point.  This is also the point that I call "the black void" when I feel disconnected from my body (because I'm able to flail my astral body around at will) but I can't see a thing.

In the beginning of my projections, when I would get to this point, I would become scared, because I would literally plummet at lightening speeds in a downward direction.  This made me think, "Oh crap, I'm going tp ram head first into the ground!"  

Once thoughts like that took over, the flailing and spinning sensations slowly subside and I find myself back in my body.

However, now that I'm more experienced with this stage, I simply remain calm and try to tell myself, "Ok you dope, just remain calm and passively see what happens next."

The more you give in to it and let yourself go with the flow, the easier it is to make the transistion into the astral realm.  However, at this stage, if I were to force myself to roll over or something, I can usually project into what appears to be the RTZ.  That is, I find myself in my house, wandering around.




Keep smiling,

Jeff Mash
MyJokeMail.com - Jokes and Humor
http://myjokemail.com

[Frank]

quote:Originally posted by Jeff_Mash:
In the beginning of my projections, when I would get to this point, I would become scared, because I would literally plummet at lightening speeds in a downward direction.  This made me think, "Oh crap, I'm going tp ram head first into the ground!"  

Yes, this I very much recognise. It's what I used to do, only in reverse (mostly). I called it my cannonball-exit because it literally felt like I'd been shot from a cannon. Though there were times when it felt like I'd dropped about a thousand feet in just a few seconds. But since I started working on slowing it all down and becoming in touch with the Monroe Phasing process that never happens to me any more.

Yours,
Frank

[Leviiathan]

Alright, first of all, I'd like to ask:

About Entering Trance
I'm come to understand that the process of entering trance may be one that may need to be developed over an extended period of time, like a person learning how to ride a bycicle. With each attempt, the person improves. Is this true?

About Conditioning step, and the Natural Resistance Barrier
Do any of you believe in a so-called (my term) "Natural Resistance Barrier?" I feel that it's different for each people and that what this is is a suconscious level of resistance that prevents people from inducing altered states of consciousness (i.e. trance). For me, entering trance has been one of the biggest, hardest, most frustrating steps I have ever taken in my journey to AP.
Like cooking, it seems that inducing trance requires the right set of ingredients, or rather, in this case, correct amount of focus, correct style, correct center-of-awarenss-position, etc. The philosophy here is that your subconscious naturally tries to stop you from performing a willing self-hypnosis (or being hypnotized in general), and it takes a matter of time for the process to be accepted as a normal function process that is performed in the every day life step. For me, hopefully my 3 hours-a-day of practice (3 1-hour sessions) will develop my abilities.

Personal Philosophy
I feel that I have a puzzle that is incomplete. I have to get from step a to step d. I can already advance to step d from step a, but if I do that, I mess up completely. I need to get from Step A to Step D, through Steps B and C. Why is this? Because if my body is asleep, then I will be able to project!

My Mistakes I've Realized
I'm just explaining a typical session for me. Ironically, my experimentations began with Robert Bruce, expanded out in many different directions, and seem to have come back to his simple techniques. All I've done is merely expanded my knowledge so that I can apply them properly. It is not that they were wrong. I have realized that my understand of how to apply them in practice was wrong. So here I am.

Prologue Step / Readying myself
This is what I do. The conditions, be light, darkness, or semi-darkness don't necessarily bother me, if not at all. Semi-darness is the most ideal condition, as indicated. I lay down, tense up my muscles (3 times or so), then breathe in, hold it, breathe out (2 seconds breathing in, hold for 1 second, breathe out for 2 seconds) at a gradual and slow pace. After doing this a few times, I close my eyes and do it again. In the case of tonight, I just kept doing that, then led into the next step. Like most people, I do this to prepare myself. I don't like to call it a process that calms my mind, nor a process that relaxes me. It does all of those things, but the description is purely that it is a preparation step. I don't think of when I'll be ready, I don't think of how many times I'm supposed to do the breathing. I just let it happen. I don't think about it. And the reason why is because my mind is not focused on the concerns of how I'm supposed to breathe. It just happens.

Intermediate Step / Inducing Body Sleep, Mind Awake
I don't want to call this "Trance", because it is not a trance step. I prefer to describe it as the process that dims my full awareness, and puts my body to sleep. I have not mastered this area, so in given time, I believe, I will be able to. This area, being the most crutial developement step of my training, is something I still have yet to develope to the required level.

Anyways, going back to the last step, that ended up transcending into the next part, which was to apply the "singularity" trick. Now, this was something I thought I had realized: the effect of sucking all my awareness into a single singularity point, then from that point, which was in the center of my head, observing the darkness. Immediately, when doing this, I found it centralized a good, say, 50% of my awareness there, maybe 75%. I could still fully hear sounds around me, the benefit of this was that I was not visualizing my body. Yes, I was aware of it, but I was not visualizing it. Good thing, because it means my awareness was not dispersed over a wide area. To do this, with my eyes closed, I merely did a hard stare at the blackness just in front of my awareness point.

I attempted to do this first, but then I changed my mind, and decided to feel myself getting heavier instead with each breathe out. I did that while holding my focus in that singularity awareness point. 1/2 hour later, my awareness was at a very dim point, and my body felt very heavy. The bed no longer felt flat. Rather, it felt like there was a large dip in the center where my hips were, so the areas around my hips felt higher than my hip / stomach area.

One thing I also noticed: I had these black-outs seem to hit me. This feeling where you start to black out, but then within a split second, your awareness returns back to where it was. Any particular comments on this? I had a few of these. I swear, had I gone deeper (I'll need to work on this), I would have fallen asleep or something. For the number, no, I did not feel the falling sensation associated with trance (in case I was in trance, and I didn't realize it). I was also getting frustrated, but decided to push myself. The result was that I was able to go a bit deeper (I probably would have stopped at the 20 minute mark or whatever, and not have ended up in a half an hour session).

Projection Stage
I figured I might as well do a projection and see what I'd get. I started to climb the rope. It was not long till vibrations came over me. They started out small, and seemed to become stronger. One thing I noticed is that they were not intense vibrations, nor anything weak. They were moderate, and they did not go away. In fact, they stayed with me, even when I lost focus on the rope at one part or two. They died down a bit in these cases, but didn't go away. As I did this, things became lighter, though my attempts to shout "Astral Sight, NOW!!" several times resulted in nothing (no astral sight, what a discouragement. didn't this work for auraseer?). I found as I climbed the ROPE, I felt lighter, and things started to light up a bit ~ the darkness just became lighter. When I climbed the ROPE, the vibrations also seemed to pulse quickly, with each climb, the vibes/energy seemed to pulsate. I found it weird.

Well, I found I didn't separate. I don't know why. Anyone care to explain. Technically, at the vibration stage, I should have separated if I was pulling myself up.

So to sum it up, here are my significant observations:

Black Outs at the extent of my trance stage, I begin to experience split-second blackouts. They were not completely blackouts, they just felt like blackouts that were starting to occur, and then they would stop and I'd have a complete return to what state of awareness I was at.

Pulsations When climbing the ROPE, the vibrations seemed to pulsate with every climbing stroke.

Drop in Body Temperature I gave up, and decided to go on my computer. I found that I felt droggy, half-tired. I was also cold, as if I hadn't gotten a lot of sleep. I was sort of shivering, and I knew that there had been a good drop in my body temperature.

With the above thing, I wonder if that had somewhat to do with the vibrations, and a possible loss of energy.