Overcoming fears and false beliefs

[Palehorse]

In my quest to AP, I ended up on the same side-quest most of us experience -- that of dealing with mental blocks, false associations and fear.

For me, one of the biggest blocks has been the fact that my body goes into panic mode at the first hint of trance or exit symptoms.  The reason for this is the context in which I've felt them in the past.  When I was younger and had to have an operation, I had an odd experience with the anaesthesia that I now think was an artificially induced deep trance.  As I was going out, suddenly I felt a full body cold numbness and a dramatic falling sensation all at once.  Of course when you're ten years old and already heavily sedated and thus not thinking clearly anyway, the only conclusion I could reach before I was out completely was "holy <bleep>, I'm dying!"  That association has stuck with me ever since.  I've always thought that if I could overcome that, I'd be one step ahead of the game because I already know what the sensations are and how to mentally duplicate them... but I've never had much luck knowing how to even approach it.  Until now.

I've been reading a lot of Bruce Moen's material lately, and I've already read just about all of Robert Bruce's.  What finally came to me was a combination of Bruce's tactile imaging and Moen's technique for changing or eliminating beliefs (link).  

I start by doing Bruce's full body relaxation technique and some NEW to get myself in a relaxed meditative state.  I then bring up mental images representing the two things whose association I'm trying to break -- in this case the first was me on the op table, and the second was a combination of picturing myself feeling the sensations and actually feeling them.  I then picture these two concepts connected by cords that meet in the middle and plug into each other, like an extension cord.  I feel myself taking hold of these cords and physically unplugging them, and let the operation image fade away.  I then bring up a third image that is to be the new association -- in this case I used the image and sensations of myself flying free, like in those flying dreams that are so much fun, as a fitting symbol of the freedom I'm seeking via AP.  I finish the whole process by plugging the old concept into the new image.

I've only been experimenting with this, as well as the changing and eliminating of beliefs for a few days, but it really appears to be working.  I can now mentally reproduce those sensations without the old feelings arising.  I've also been addressing other sources of fear with these methods... and whereas I could formerly produce a slight sensation of fear just by imagining them, now there's nothing there where said fear used to be.

I'm posting in hopes that others could benefit from this, and even expand on it and compare notes.  I definitely plan on playing with it a lot more myself.

[wisp]

Palehorse,
I hope this helps. Your anaesthesia experience was unfortunate. It was a bad one. I had a bad experience with it once too. I went through some anger because it for some time. I can tell you, it's not even close to a natural oobe! I have to wonder if a few people with the gas don't get a kick doing this to people?! Don't let it effect you now. I put off a tonsillectomy because of fear of anaesthesia. I had a talk with the one putting me under this next time.He made up for my bad experience by using better care than the other person.They won't admit too much, but it's good to let them know when a  person does this. This may save another person from being at the mercy of an incompetent or a masochist.

[Palehorse]

Hiya wisp, thanks for the reply.

I don't think my experience was due to any incompetence or malice on the anaesthesiologist's part.  I think it's just the fact that everyone's body is different, and no one can really predict with total accuracy what effect a given drug will have.  All they have is a "best guess" based on their accumulated data -- not a very comforting thought, but that's the reality of it.

Aaaanyway, wow, I really do think this is working.  Last night before I went to bed, I addressed the following with this "system"...

--Fear off the "spirit world" brought about by religious conditioning.
--Fear of spirits and other nonphysical entities for the same reason.
--Insecurity about being considered, or considering myself "not all there" for taking AP and related pursuits seriously.
--Inability to perceive nonphysical stimulus due to the idea that only physical sensory input is "real."
--Re-addressed the association between strange sensations and dying.

I think that's everything.

So, after all that I fell asleep.  At some point, I don't know if I was awake, or half awake, or what... but I felt like I was being repeatedly struck by lightning (there *was* a hell of a storm going on last night... coincidence?).  However, I was oddly unafraid, and able to passively observe this "process" to completion.

Then I woke up this morning, checked my email and went back to bed.  As I was going back to sleep, I put out the intent to do a retrieval.  I then had a dream where I was walking through some sort of park-like environment.  I came upon two Muslim guys doing some sort of prayer service, and they took no notice of me at all until I was literally almost right on top of them.  For some reason I thought it'd be a good idea to walk right through the middle of what they were doing.  At this point one of them looked up at me for the first time, appearing rather angry, and got up to follow me.  I turned back with this "I know something you don't know" smile... and rose up about fifteen feet in the air.  AngryGuy got this really surprised look, and at this point the dream scene sort of melted away, and I felt some really heavy vibrations.  Tried to turn them into a full exit, but it didn't happen and I woke up completely.

But WOW.  What a crazy night this has been.  And all this, after not even having any dream recall, let alone exit symptoms or anything else, for weeks now.

[wisp]

Palehorse,

Nice to hear you had a long awaited oobe!  

I popped out of my body one night during a storm, usually I'm one to sleep through anything.

Panic is preceded by anxiety. Cure the panic, control the anxiety. Just my 2 cents worth.

Sometimes the worst has to happen before one can move forward. After the paralysis, that is.  With my bad anaesthesia experience (now that I think back on it), my astral body failed to get the effect of the drugs (of course!). When my astral body stayed with my paralyzed physical body (instead of exiting), my astral body began thrashing around in a panic state. I couldn't feel the life force! I didn't think about the death part.

Congrats on your oobe!

[Palehorse]

Nice to hear you had a long awaited oobe!  

Eh, in one sense I didn't really consider it one.  It was more like a non-lucid dream -- it just had many of the same characteristics of all the retrievals I've been reading about.  I thought the sensations that followed might have lead to an actual OBE, but I couldn't pull it off.  Then again, since I have been reading so much about retrievals, it might have been created by that as well.

In another sense though, I consider dreams (lucid and otherwise) OBEs, etc, as just points of reference on the spectrum of consciousness.  Perhaps the only difference is that of more or less lucidity.  So I do consider it a milestone along the path in that respect, which is very encouraging.