Hi Im new and this might as well be my intro plus meditation Q's from experts :)

[astral towers]

Hello to everyone in this fine community. Ive been a lurker for a little while now. You see, Ive had "spiritual" experiences throughout my life, everything from seeing entities as a child, to profound psychedelic transcendence to magickal occurances and quite possibly the one that takes the cake is all the strange experiences with the astral. Im sure that I will get a chance to go into my experiences throughout my use of these forums but in all honesty I could write a novel so I will try and keep this short and sweet.

So I have some important questions about meditation. What I would like to achieve with meditation is the ability to transcend normal waking consciousness to an altered state at will. I ave attempted meditational practice before but was quite loose about it in the past and pretty much gave up due to not receiving profound results...I guess I was expecting miracles...now I realize that the miracles that mediation produce can be subtle currents that ripple out through your life causing amazing results...

You see, I have had some crazy experiences in the last month that threw my life off balance so I decided to give meditation another shot and this time Im commited to doing a simple breath watching meditation for thirty mins a ..twice a day...its been almost two weeks now and im seeing the effects of this practice in all aspects of my life ...making me generally a better person in all ways.. but heres my issue; last week only after a few days of meditation I reached DEEP altered states which I could only describe as a drug-like effect... I had profound visions of lakes , forests and people walking in a city...I mean these images were as if someone turned a TV set on inside of my head... and my body felt light and euphoric. This profound state was reached a few days in a row but since then I was unable to reach this state...and my meditations have been a bit more bland since then....I cant seem to figure out why this is as Im not doing anything different .

So my question(s) to expert or experienced meditators is this; Is there a particular meditation you can point me to that focus' on reaching altered states while still getting the other benefits of say mindfulness meditation? If not how long on average does it take to get to a level in which one is able to reach an altered state at will? I understand that every dog has his days and that theres shall be times in which one may not be focused but I imagine with regular practice these days become fewer and fewer. 

Thanks in advance and I look forward to connecting with other astral travelers here in the near future!

[Kzaal]

Hey welcome to the pulse!
This is a very good topic and also an awesome feeling when you can drift your spirit in another state of mind whenever you want.
For me, I've been practicing meditation/lucid dreams and astral projections for a few years now and all I can say is yes there's a way to do it at will.
The only place I can point you for specific meditation and projections is by reading theses forums and different books.
For me the Daodejing worked pretty well, it may or may not help you but anything that you can read that is philosophical, moral, including valors, will probably help you immensely.
If you want to change your state to your astral projecting state even if you are awake, it means that you need to understand what you are thinking when you are in that state.
This means, you need to know your valors, know your faith, beliefs etc and submerge yourself in those thoughts without thinking of the things around you.
I think the only way to achieve it is with time, I mean that's how I did it, I was reading books and pretty much everything on internet concerning AP'ing and meditation... and I was doing meditation almost every day, and weekly. Eventually you change your way of thinking and then you realize how incredible everything is now that you're free. Taking in consideration everything I read or good ways of thinking I had, I can be outside in the cold and be leaning on the porch and start altering my state of mind to enter deep trance/meditation and then astral project from the place I am without even closing my eyes.
After reading so much eventually even some people develop skills such as clairvoyance, telepathy, auras reading, theses things are part of the 4th dimension which is revealed to you when you are getting experienced with the Astral.

There's no specific truth, The only truth that matter is the one that you find within yourself.