A little bit of progress, finally

[Jefus]

Hi everyone,

A little background before I get to my story... For about four years now I've been interested in astral projection. When I first discovered the idea, I read everything I could and made many attempts but never really got past a light trance. Eventually I started paying less attention to it,  and it was no longer a priority.

For some reason in the past week or so my interest has been renewed, and now achieving some sort of separation is a major goal. Since I came across these forums, I find myself reading posts for hours on end. Fascinating, and so full of helpful information. But anyways...

(hmm... this is as long as I feared it was going to be. hope you don't get bored easily. I don't have anyone that I can share this sort of thing with, so... )

A couple of nights ago I made my first serious attempt in a while. Lying down in my bed at night, I started doing deep breathing. After a while I felt my body begin to relax and feel somewhat numb. This is usually as far as I get... I guess my biggest problem is concentration. My mind will start to wander and I'll forget to keep breathing deeply, until I catch myself a few minutes later.. Or sometimes I'll try to make sure I'm still relaxed and find that I'm tensing my whole body. And of course, if I feel anything new or interesting I get a rush of excitement, which immediately bumps me back down a notch.

Well, every time my mind wandered off I'd get set back a little but, but after a good hour or so, my hands and feet started to buzz in a very tingly fashion, shortly followed by my lips and most of my face. I tried to focus on the feeling, make it spread and sink into it, that sort of thing.  I tried doing the rope as well, but I have never really felt anything from that... Nothing really happened and I slowly became aware of my body, especially my bladder. When I got up to go to the bathroom, I got a head rush, and my limbs felt tingly and paralyzed, almost like I'd been sleeping on them. It was like I'd just woken from a deep sleep, but I was wide awake the whole time, so I guess that's a good step. I couldn't get anywhere once I got back to bed, so I just went to sleep.

The next night, I decided to try using bwgen with the factory deep meditation preset. It definitely felt very interesting to focus on once my body started to relax. My biggest problem was still concentrating, though. I tried to pay attention to nothing but the binaural beat, but I can only hold it for several seconds at a time before my mind starts to wander, chattering away. Well, after chasing after it enough times, I eventually sank pretty deep (for me at least). I could still feel my body but it was different, almost like I was tensed, but pretty sure I wasn't. I felt like I was deeper inside it, or like it had grown larger..

Now after this point, a number of different things happened... I drifted in and out of different states (due to losing concentration and having to "go back" again), over a period of 3 hours, so it's hard to remember what order they happened in, but I'll try to describe them.

At some point, I remember suddenly hearing a loud CLICK sound, and something changed. It made me feel very alert and different somehow. Probably at the same time, my field of vision began to widen. A minute ago there was blackness, and now there was a lot more of it. I've had this happen a number of times in the past while meditating, but I never really figured out what it was about. Is this the 3d blackness I've read about here? I can't remember if it seemed to have depth or not, but I definitely observed at least two of its dimensions expanding rapidly. In any case, I got distracted at some point and drifted away from this.

Whenever I remembered it (I seemed to lose track of things very easily in this state), I tried the triangle method, focusing on my ears and my third eye. I wasn't too sure if I was doing the whole third eye thing right because I don't really know how it should feel, but nonetheless it felt very interesting with the whole 4Hz binaural beat thing going on. Of course I couldn't keep it going for very long, though. I experimented with alternating between each ear; I focused on the left for a few seconds, then the right, bouncing back and forth like a ping pong ball. After a few bounces, the sound suddenly became much sharper and clearer, more REAL somehow. This sensation was extremely brief though, and didn't really lead me anywhere.

Eventually after drifting away and back (I may have fallen asleep for an instant, or I'd realized my mind was wandering) a number of times,  the widescreen blackness effect came back, only this time it was in color, too! There was sort of a radar thing going on... I was seeing vague clouds of color being drawn on the blackness, in a counterclockwise path around my vision. A couple of times, I heard music as well... I'd suddenly realize that I was just drifting away, and then I noticed I was listening to keyboard playing (probably my own). I tried to zero in on the shapes and colors I was seeing, but I had a lot of trouble with concentrating, and with not using my physical eyes.

It wasn't long before that state faded away again.. after that I don't remember what happened. Until suddenly, BANG!! I was jolted wide awake by what felt like a serious blast of electricity through my body. I also HEARD exactly how it felt... it was an electrical bang, but so raw and sharp sounding, metallic even. Man did that startle me! After a couple of minutes I was back in trance land, mostly repeating my earlier adventures... and then it happened again, exactly the same way. It was exhilarating but scared the crap out of me only because I wasn't expecting it. A long time passed without anything interesting happening, so I called it a night and went to sleep. I was really hoping that I'd wake up in sleep paralysis at some point and have another chance, but it didn't happen.

Well, this is my first post and I feel like I'm rambling on and on here, but I thought it might be a good idea to write down some things that I experienced. Hopefully people will have some comments, explanations, or tips to share. I feel like I missed a few details from this 3 hour session, but I've only been at it again for a couple of days. I'm sure many more interesting experiences will come my way.

Oh, and one other thing... sleep paralysis. For some reason I get this pretty often. Well... sometimes it'll happen once a month, sometimes it'll happen a couple of times a week. Once it even happened three times in a night. It was extremely frightening when it first started happening, and then after I learned more about it I was able to control it a couple of times but never managed to project... but now the last half dozen or so times it's happened to me, I cannot control my panic. I try to move, and when I can't, I freak out and struggle with every ounce of strength until I wake up. I even think, "I should relax, this would be a good time to project!" but it's immediately overshadowed by "NO! I can't breathe, this has to stop now!"

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get past this fear? In the past, there were a couple of times where I got past the paralyzation-induced panic and was able to deep breathe and try a few different things, but didn't get anywhere and eventually aborted because the experience is always accompanied by a constant, intense creeped out feeling. But these days I can't even get that far...

Well, I meant to end this long time ago so I'm going to shut up now. Have found out there in the astral, and thanks for bothering to read.  

[Jefus]

Hi Jefus,

Welcome to the forums, and thanks for the great post.

It actually describes very well the transition into an altered state very much associated with OBEs.

Hope to hear more!

Glad to be here, MajorTom  I feel like I'm on the right track, and I'm not going to give up this time.  There will be more!

[Jefus]

Definately on the right track. Entering the state you describe is usually a bigger roadblock than moving into an OBE from there. You already did 90% of the work IMO in that particular instance.

The problem is usually repeating it, but each time you break the barrier it gets easier.

Hmm, that's pretty encouraging.

If you don't mind me saying, I'm not sure whether listening to the binaural beats is necessary. They are supposed to do the work for you automatically. Then again, it seemed to have helped you stopping the distracting mind chatter a bit.

Yeah, either I focused on my breathing or I listened to the sounds. I'd get distracted and forget about one, then start thinking about the other.

[nicedreams]

I was meditating a few nights ago because i try and project every night and i was there and i get deeply relaxed i think and my body gets numb well i was doing what i normally do and it felt like something hit me in my chin what do you think that was ? I should not hijack his post with my question but i don't like making my own post because i don't feel its worth while to make a whole post just about me.