Strong Lucid Awareness Experience – May 21, 2013

So, last night was pretty fruitful in the spontaneous projection department for me… finally. LoL

I haven\’t been actively practicing projection, so I\’ve been relying upon my spontaneous projections to have experiences. I have them semi-often, but I don\’t usually remember enough to write down later in the morning… and I\’m usually too tired to do it upon waking. So thankfully I retained a bit more of this experience than usual.

I had one REALLY LONG experience that felt like it lasted at least an hour. Unfortunately, I don\’t write this stuff down, so I\’ve forgotten most of it… however, what I do remember is pretty neat. I don\’t believe I had a full astral awareness throughout the experience, but it was a very strong lucid awareness almost on the cuspe of an astral awareness. What I mean by this is that I obviously knew I was non-physical, but I didn\’t have a full waking awareness of knowing where I was and how I got there… I was with my parents, so I had that bit of knowledge. I remember walking my parents around explaining to them the non-physical and all the things you can do while experiencing it. For example, I picked up a glass and asked if anyone was thirsty and proceeded to fill the glass just by my willpower. I held the glass in the palm of my hand and it filled with whatever I wanted. First it was apple juice, then orange juice. I also remember grabbing a candy off the shelf of the particular store we were in and tasting it. It was soooooo good… best orange flavour ever. LoL

At one point near the end, I took my leave from my parents as I just wanted to fly around a bit. I did so, and came across some kinds playing football. The ball bounced over to me, which I then picked it up and threw it back.

Sadly, this is where everything ended… although usually I\’m able to \’sense\’ when an experience is starting to end, yet this time it just faded to black before I even had a chance to notice. I tried in vain to retain the experience and strengthen it, but by then I was already feeling myself in bed… bleh. LoL

Anyway, as I said, the whole thing felt like an hour, at least… I even remember commenting about the duration of it to my parents at the time. Funny.

Is Phasing the Same as Astral Traveling

I saw the above question just now and I wanted to get my answer down. I’ll just get right to the point: yes, Phasing and Astral Traveling are the same thing. They’re synonyms. Meaning that they’re different words we use to describe the same thing.

There are other words that you’ll see people use to describe Astral Traveling, such as:

Phasing
Astral Travel
Astral Projection
Etheric Projection
Out of Body Experience
Lucid Dreaming
Remote Viewing
Projection
WILD
DEILD
MILD (basically any of those -ILD techniques)
Dreaming

Doing any of those above labels will take you to the same place (the non-physical) where you can do the same things.
“Dreaming” would be the only one from that list that is slightly different from the others. The other labels describe an event where you’re Conscious and Aware that you’re in the non-physical… dreaming denotes that you’re not aware that you’re in the non-physical. That’s the only difference between a dream and the rest of those labels.

In the end, I like to simply call what we experience a “Projection”. Mostly because if someone was to ask me “Was what I experienced an astral projection?” and I answer saying that it was probably a lucid dream, then immediately the individual asking the question feels like they failed because they didn’t have an “astral projection”. They didn’t do what they originally set out to do. It has a very negative connotation towards it. Whereby if I just say that, yes, they had a Projection, then it has a more positive influence upon them. They succeeded! And really, they DID succeed at what they wanted… which is to become aware while being non-physical.

I never worry about if I’m lucid or astrally aware in the non-physical. I simply ask myself, “was I conscious and aware while having a non-physical experience?”, and if the answer is YES, then I’m happy. Even if I didn’t, a dream awareness experience is still highly valuable to me.

Is Astral Projection a Spiritual Practice?

The simple answer to this question is no, Astral Projection is not a spiritual practice in itself. I have no doubt that some people will be surprised to hear that and others will be nodding in agreement. Please allow me to explain.

This is, in fact, the wrong question. The question should be, \”CAN Astral Projection be a spiritual practice?\”. The answer to that is a resounding YES. Of course it can be, but you need to make the conscious choice to make it so.

It starts with asking yourself why do you want to learn Astral Projection, or if the case is that you already know how, then simply ask why do you Project? It begins with the Intent behind the \”why\”. If all you\’re looking for is the thrill of something new, or perhaps you want to just fly around, or maybe you\’re wanting to spy on people… well, the Intent associated with these actions isn\’t of Love. Some of it is self-serving. Some of it is just outright negative. I\’m not saying don\’t spy, don\’t fly and don\’t find a thrill… I\’m just saying that if you\’re looking to grow spiritually, then those things should probably be kept in balance with your other activities. I\’m a big fan of flying… and a lot of the time I get caught up in doing just that. So I understand that sometimes it\’s not easy to keep your mind on track.

Now remember that you can grow spiritually much faster simply by interacting with others in this physical reality. Don\’t hide from other people, they\’re your path to spiritual growth! That is the entire reason why you chose to be here in the first place! To fast track yourself towards becoming a being of Love. If you can stick to that path in the current social atmosphere of greed that surrounds us on a daily basis, then I think you\’re doing pretty good. The nice thing about becoming Love here physically is that it translates over into your Projections. You will find that your Projections take on a much more positive atmosphere to them and you will meet with more positive entities, because you\’ve now shifted your Intent towards a more positive position, hence you will begin to experience such directly. This concept also applies to our physical lives. The more you change within to become closer to Love, the more positive effects you\’ll see happen in your life.

You can definitely also learn to become a more Loving being through Astral Projection. This is where Astral Projection as a spiritual tool comes into play. Just as you grow spiritually here in the physical, through your interactions with other Consciousnesses, the same holds true while you\’re projecting as well. Be kind to all those you meet, because you never know if an entity you\’re interacting with is a creation of your consciousness or a truly separate being from you. So just be nice to everyone.

That lesson also holds true here in this physical reality, except you know that everyone is separate (well, that\’s the illusion anyway) from you. You don\’t know the life stories of other people you meet here physically, so treat everyone with respect. This is the first lesson, in my opinion, of becoming Love. Respecting everyone. It has just as many implications physically as it does during our Projections.

So, as you can see, Astral Projection is only a Spiritual Practice if you choose to make it such. Likewise, even your physical life requires a choice to be made as to whether it\’s a spiritual life or not.

Learning Astral Projection & Meditation – Emptying Your Cup

I think everyone, at one point or another throughout their lives, has hear this phrase before – \”Empty your cup\”.
It\’s not directly spiritual or religiously related, although it can be related to just about every aspect of your life.

This is something that I have personally experienced, and I whole-fully believe that everyone has to do in order to progress on their path. That path can be learning Projection, Meditation, Spirituality in general… anything.

\"EmptyFor myself, it was relating directly to the first two… Projection and Meditation. Over the 15+ years I\’ve been practicing meditation, I read and learned much about what others were telling me that meditation was about, the same was true about projection. Everyone was filling my head with what I should be experiencing and feeling when doing these things. What did I actually learn? I learned that all the stuff I was learning that I THOUGHT was the truth, actually wasn\’t. What it was doing was getting in the way of what *I* was experiencing. I was throwing away valid and valuable experiences because they didn\’t match up to what others were telling me. This is a huge mistake…

So I came to a conclusion that in order for me to actually progress, I had to forget everything I thought I knew about Projection and Meditation. My cup had become so full with the notions, ideas and concepts of other people, that I had no room for my own notions, ideas and concepts to grow and flourish. I don\’t know exactly when this action happened, but it did… and ever since that day, I have found my own path through the forest instead of relying upon the footsteps of those who have come before me. I\’m now self sufficient in my opinions and beliefs, because they\’re no longer beliefs to me… they\’re now based solely upon my own direct experiences, and as we know, \”direct experiences\” are the trump cards with knowledge.

So please, if you\’re looking to learn anything new, be it anything about this physical reality or non-physical reality, you\’ll be doing yourself a huge favour by forgetting everything you think you know and begin to explore with the wonderment of a child. Everything is new.

Forget the labels you\’ve learned… dreaming, lucid dreaming, astral projection, out of body experiences, etc… forget it all. They are the labels of others… they only serve to confuse. Just go out and experience and learn from those experiences. 🙂

EDIT: It\’s been pointed out to me that people are taking this too literal. What I suggest above shouldn\’t be taken as such, it isn\’t literal.
Nothing in relation to projection should ever be taken literally. I\’m speaking about everything you\’ve been told about what projection is supposed to be or is.

Your ideas.
Your concepts.
Your labels.
What you identify with Projection.

Ditch them as they\’re useless to you.
Start from a position of \”not knowing\”.

Remembering Our Astral Projections

I have a theory… it revolves around how to remember our experiences (dreams, astral, etc…).

Take a look at how you remember things in this physical reality. If you don\’t add a certain amount of importance to any given event in your life, your chances of remembering everything in full detail is pretty minute. Likewise, this holds true for your dreams (lucid or otherwise). If you believe your dreams are nothing special, that they\’re not important, then you\’re probably not going to remember them. You\’re probably not even going to have that base level of awareness in order to experience them.

How do you solve this problem? How do you give importance to something like this? You have to prove it to your subconscious mind… change your attitude about wanting to remember your experiences. A dream journal is the absolute best method I can think of to do this.

Work on trying to convincing yourself to place more importance upon your dream time journeys! It\’ll take some time, but the more you can prove to yourself that these events are important to you, the more you\’ll begin to remember them. Also, don\’t be lazy and write down whatever you remember immediately upon waking, because you will forget things really quickly. The more you do this, the less you\’ll forget!

Astral Projection Labeling Our Experiences

I’ve made Astral Projection posts of this nature in the past, but as I’ve re-read them, they’ve seemed confusing, even to myself! And I wrote them! LOL

So I wanted to see if I couldn’t clarify things further.

I want to explain why “labeling” your experience in an attempt to categorize and define them is a bad idea, especially when you’re just starting out.

When I first started attempting to explore the non-physical, 10+ years ago, I had terms like “out of body experience”, “astral projection”, “lucid dream” and more all knocking around my skull. The only experience I had originally known about were lucid dreams, as I’ve been having those for as long as I can remember. It wasn’t until I really started putting the puzzle pieces together within the last 2 – 3 years that I figured out the actual nature of those experiences.

I found that there is one constant, one commonality, that linked all of these, supposedly, separate experiences/labels… dreams, lucid dreams, astral projections, out of body experiences, false awakenings, etc… there is one factor which everyone seems to completely ignore: YOU. Well, more to the point, Consciousness! Because you ARE consciousness. This is why these experiences all feel “different” and “separate”, because the “YOU” is different in each case.

YOU are the label. YOU are the definition.

How did I figure this out? What experiences did I have which gave me this conclusion? I have directly experienced the full spectrum of, what I can only describe as, “levels of awareness” within a single non-physical experience. I have started an experience with a dream awareness (normal dream), then become lucidly aware (lucid dream), then initiated a technique and brought forth my full waking awareness bringing me to an astral awareness (full astral projection). “Awareness”, to me, is a point along this spectrum. At each “level”, it feels like a different and completely separate experience. I can completely understand why people feel this way, but these aren’t experiences which you “have”… they’re experiences which you “are”. There is a vast difference between those two statements.

That spectrum looks kind of like this:

(Keep in mind that these are MY metaphors… MY labels. But I ask you to try and identify these labels in comparison to the ones you use. I try to make the comparison as obvious as I can using words and terms which people “mostly” agree upon. LoL)

“Dream Awareness” …… “Lucid Awareness” …… “Astral Awareness”

On the left of this spectrum, you have the experience which you don’t realize you’re in the non-physical. Essentially, it’s you dreaming… it’s you experiencing a reality that isn’t this physical reality, you just don’t realize that fact. It’s you having a dream awareness. You have to have a very base level of awareness in order to experience this, otherwise you won’t directly experience the event, so you’ll have zero chance of remembering it (which would be any experience taking place to the left of this point). If you’ve ever awoken in the morning with brief flashes of symbols and images from the dreams you had during the night, then you had a dream awareness experience, but you were just on the very cusp of having the bare minimum level of awareness in order to remember the experience.

On the far right, you have the experience which you do realize you’re in the non-physical *AND* you have the same awareness which you have right now while reading this post. You’re wide awake and fully aware of who you are with all your memories of such. THIS experience is what most people (and myself) would consider the “holy grail” of projections. It’s what most people refer to as an Astral Projection. It’s you experiencing the non-physical with an astral awareness.

I should point out, too, that your awareness can move both ways along this spectrum. You can gain awareness, and lose awareness.

So far I’ve described the two ends of the spectrum. Where does a “lucid awareness” fit into all this then?

Well, in the middle is the point where we have become “aware” that we’re in the non-physical and experiencing a reality that isn’t this physical reality. Anything to the left of this point is a “dream awareness experience”, or as most people call them, a “normal dream” (it’s important to point out here that the further right you move from the far left, the more “clear” and “vivid” your experience will become until you actually become lucidly aware). It’s at this point that the only thing you have is a base awareness that you’re in the non-physical. At this time, the closer you can bring your awareness to your full waking awareness, the further to the right you’ll move along this spectrum towards the “astral awareness” (aka, full astral projection). I have some techniques I’ve written about on my website to accomplish this. If you can’t find them, please let me know and I’ll provide the links.

So, as you can see, an astral projection is just a “dream” where you have a full waking awareness. However, don’t let the “just” fool you… what most people consider a “dream”, as I mentioned above, doesn’t exist. There is no such fundamental experience called a “dream”. There is only you experiencing the non-physical unknowingly!

This is why labeling an experience is a waste of time, because they’re all the same experience. What differs is only how consciously aware you are during the experience. This is why I don’t really worry too much if I had a lucid awareness experience or an astral awareness experience, because I know that what’s important is that I was consciously aware in the non-physical! I have a set of goals which I always keep solidly in my mind, so even if I’m only lucidly aware, I still remember enough to do them… such as meeting a guide. Sometimes it works out, other times it doesn’t… but as I said, in the end, I’m happy that I had an experience outside this physical reality.

I have a challenge for anyone who can project. Try to experience the full spectrum of awareness in a single non-physical experience. If you manage it, try to take note how each “level” feels compared to the last.

How to Increase your Chances of having Lucid Dreams and Astral Projections

I\’m going to take this directly from my free 60 page eBook on the Basics of Phasing, which you can download from here.

Another way to have a non-physical experience is becoming aware during a non-physical dream awareness experience (aka, a normal dream). Some people call these DEILD\’s (Dream Exit Initiated Lucid Dream) There are certain things you can do to increase your likely hood of becoming aware during an experience. The following are ideas you can use to make such occur.

1. Practice Reality Checks throughout your day
2. Keep a Dream Journal
3. Repeat Affirmations while falling asleep at night
4. Practice Mindfulness
5. Have the proper Intent

The first way to try to increase the number of Lucid Awareness experiences you have is to practice doing Reality Checks throughout your day. What this means is that as you’re going about your physical life, stop for a second every so often and check to see if you’re actually awake. If you’re awake in the physical, the check should be obvious. Likewise, if you do a reality check while you’re non-physical, it should also be obvious. I tend to use the same questions as in the above section:

1. “Where am I?”
2. “Where am I going?”
3. “How did I get here?” and
4. “What am I doing?”

You can ask yourself these questions in 10 seconds or less. Then, when you get the result you either continue going about your physical life or fly off into the sunset in the non-physical to have some amazing adventure. It’s important that the timing of your reality checks happen when you’re doing something that you usually do while you dream. For example, you might do a check when you hear a beep on your watch. Or perhaps when you look at your hands, or maybe when you go to the bathroom. Timing is everything with reality checks. You’ll need to do them for at least a couple weeks before they’ll carry over into your non-physical
time. Just keep them up and be persistent, they do work!

The next thing you can do is to keep a dream journal. This is probably one of the best things you can do as the benefits are twofold. It helps you to remember your non-physical experiences by programming your subconscious mind into remembering as much of them as it can. Also, we tend to dream the same stuff over and over. The more dream experiences you can actively remember because of your journal, the greater the chance that you’ll notice one of those experiences happening while you’re in the non-physical. If you can recognize certain dream elements that you tend to dream about a lot, you can use that knowledge to trigger a lucid awareness within your consciousness. For example, say you dream a lot about walking down a side street in a city. This is a dream element that appears in your dream journal quite a lot, then one night you have a dream that you’re walking down a side street in a city. As you’re having this experience, you might stop for a second and remember your dream journal entry regarding it. This might trigger your lucid or astral awareness.

Another way of having more lucid awareness experiences is to program yourself while you’re falling asleep at night by repeating an affirmation. The affirmation should always be kept in the present tense and should allude to you recognizing that you’re dreaming. Something like, “I am recognizing I am dreaming”. Try not to use future tense such as, “I will recognize I am dreaming”, because your mind will always look at that as being “in the future” and will never apply it to your present self. That’s just how the subconscious mind works. Try coming up with your own affirmations and see which works best for you.

Next method to increase your lucid awareness experiences is to practice always being mindful. Always be fully aware of what you’re doing and when you’re doing it. That level of awareness will travel over into the non-physical with you if you do it enough while awake. It will become part of who you are and you’ll naturally realize that you’re in the nonphysical.

The last thing is your Intention. Command your subconscious on a constant basis by saturating it with Lucid Dreaming and Astral Projection content. Read as much as you can on the subject. Read books, websites, forums, talk about it with other people. Just keep your mind completely on the subject to the point where your subconscious mind can’t ignore it.

Great Article I Just Found – Astral Voyage

There’s a really well written article I just found on the website I go to once in a while called Astral Voyage.  The article is entitled “Astral Projection/Dreaming/Lucid Dreaming”.  I stumbled upon it when I was doing a google search for articles pertaining to differences and similarities of Lucid Dreams to Astral Projections.

http://www.astralvoyage.com/projection/difference.html

April 30, 2003
It’s my opinion that astral projection, dreaming and lucid dreaming are intertwined in the same locale. The difference between dreams, projection and lucid dreaming is what is at the controls (the conscious mind or the subconscious mind). Even if you get the vibrations and roll out of your physical body, you will end up “dreaming” very quickly if you don’t know what you’re doing. People say, “I failed because I fell into a dream.” Well, no you didn’t, you just gave up conscious control to the subconscious mind which makes the experience totally different! The subconscious mind has its own agenda and communication system.

Your conscious mind is concerned with the here and now. Your subconscious mind is concerned with processing life events, working out soul lessons, attempting to bring past and future events into your consciousness, and a bevy of other things. Subtle realm experiences, dream or otherwise, get “fantasy like” because again, a person has lost conscious control. The same exact thing happens in the astral if you don’t use clarity statements. People just don’t realize what the astral is like (during a conscious projection). Yes, it can be as lucid and clear as the waking state, but you can slip into the Alice in Wonderland effect (subconscious control) faster than you can shake a stick! In fact, control can be lost in less than a minute. I have rolled out of my body, gotten half way down my stairs, totally lost conscious control, and slipped into fantasy land immediately. Only through sheer will power, and constantly directing my focus towards my goal, am I able to maintain a lucid state. Published astral projection author, William Buhlman, also states that clarity statements are a must for maintaining lucidity and control.

The astral is a malleable place where form follows thought, but don’t just think it follows “conscious” thought. It also follows subconscious thought. Many an advanced projector, including the famous Robert Monroe, would marvel at how things would materialize (or that they would be transported to an event or place) quicker than they could form the desire consciously. That is how fast and strong the subconscious works!

An example of an astral dream is if you are working on a lesson. Many lessons cannot be worked out on the physical plane because you wouldn’t be able to handle the issue over and over (or even once), whereas you can handle fairly severe scenarios in the astral. For example, we assume all beings not recognizable, such as subtle plane entities, are “evil.” If you dream of a freaky looking entity then you’ll experience the fear emotion. Fear is generally the first reaction, and often the only reaction, to this experience. Time and time again I was afraid of what I didn’t recognize, until I learned to give it a chance, and even send it love. Only then did it morph into something I recognized and that is, the very same life energy that I was. I doubt I’d find it all too pleasant to find some scary looking being in my bedroom at night in the physical, but I can endure it over and over in the astral. It seems like a “crazy” dream, but it is your subconscious mind nudging you in the direction of total awareness and unconditional love.

Dreams can often come true. A common name for a psychic of this sort is a “sleeping psychic.” If we did nothing but remain in our bodies during sleep then this would not be possible. People have even met their friends and loved ones in “dreams” and both parties remembered the experience. In so called dreams, messages are given and futures told.

People write me in frustration that they can’t consciously project. Well, why not instead realize that you project every night and tackle it from a different viewpoint? Why not learn lucid dreaming (or lucid projection) and bypass the whole nonsense of “vibrations and rollout?”

Remember, you project every night you sleep. All we’re doing here is trying to get conscious control of the subtle state.

Anne

Explaining that whatever is at the controls determines the experience is a different way of saying what I talk about when I say that what differentiates the experience is YOU, not “where” or “what” you’re experiencing. If you’ve read my own articles here on UB, you’ll know that I try to internalize the experience instead of externalizing. Dreaming, Lucid Dreaming and Astral Projection aren’t something you do, they’re a state of mind you are. Anne tells that beautifully when she talks about either having the conscious or subconscious mind in control… and that’s really a “bang on” explanation for it.

The inclusion of ideas from Buhlman and Monroe are nice. It shows me Anne’s ability to perceive the bigger picture and the ability to pick out the ideas and thoughts that most resonate with her from any particular person/author… which is refreshing to see.

When she talks about “sending the entity love” I believe this is a simple metaphor (and a well used one by a lot of people, some people might call this “sending PUL”, although I don’t think it needs to be so meticulously defined) for accepting what you experience and don’t be afraid. “Sending Love” simply means to go out and experience things with no desire to harm and all the desire in your heart to help others through no gain to yourself.

She does talk about “remaining in our bodies”, and my experiences directly conflict with this idea, but I can definitely support the vast majority of what she talks about. It’s a great article. Hopefully you’ve read it through with as much gusto as I did. I believe it’s easy for people to confuse WHAT they’re experiencing due to that Conscious/Subconscious switch. A fully conscious experience (aka: ASTRAL AWARENESS) will feel entirely different from a fully subconscious experience (aka: DREAM AWARENESS). It’s this separation that causes the confusion in people and is what I believe to be the very source of much of the division between the non-physical community at this time.

Lucid Dream – Sunday, May 22nd, 2011

I\’ve been in quite the non-physical slump as of late.  My last lucid awareness experience was back in mid-February!  So I\’ve been quite eager to continue my exploration.  Last weekend, I finally had one, it was relatively short, but I think I might have made a strange personal discovery.

I remember it started off on a beach, I was standing around with my father.  What triggered the initial lucidity was everything had a slight \”grey\” filter on it.  I noted this to my father, and I got to thinking that something was up.  Once that happened, I started a reality check.  I got stuck on the question \”How did I get here?\”.  I tried really hard to answer it, but seeing as I had no idea how I got to the beach in the first place, I couldn\’t answer it… so I must have been dreaming.  However, I went to attempt to fly (which is another reality check I usually do to solidly confirm if I\’m dreaming), yet failed twice in a row, but then a minute later, I tried once more and I got off the ground, I came to the conclusion that I was definitely dreaming.

The strange personal discovery was this \”grey filter\” on my vision.  I\’m wondering if it\’s always present and I just happened to notice it this time.  I think next time I need to really look around more and \”see\” what I\’m seeing.  I\’ve never noticed anything like it before.  Everything was perfectly clear and in full colour, there was just this greyness to everything that was glaringly obvious.  So obvious, in fact, that it triggered my awareness.

I guess I\’ll have to wait and see where this new information takes me.  It\’s been a few days since, and I haven\’t really experienced much else… nor have I noticed anything strange about the \”colours\” of my dreams lately either.

Morning Projection – Saturday, February 12th, 2011

I had another astral awareness experience that I want to write down and share.  I hadn\’t planned on trying for any conscious exits, so this is quite spontaneous.

I woke up around 7am this morning and went the bathroom, came back and just tried to get back to sleep as normal as I felt rather tired from a frustrating day prior.  Anyway, as soon as I dropped back to sleep I found myself in the non-physical with an astral awareness!  I was quite shocked really.

I believe what occurred was a Focus 2 oC experience.  Anyway, the environment was someone\’s house and there was a party of sorts going on.  I walked up to a random stranger and began talking to them, trying to see where abouts I was (F2 or F3)… the gentleman I spoke with didn\’t see \”all there\” and he had some trouble making words, so if it could have been something manifested by my own mind, or it could have been someone dreaming… this would throw some wrenches in my \”no sharing dreams\” thing.  LOL  Oh well, I remain skeptically open.  🙂

I asked him for any information, like his address or something… and I mentioned to him where I lived, and he agreed and said the same city.  To which he also replied \”54..\” then a pause like he was really trying to think hard about it \”54 Rustyax\”.  Now, I know no such road exists where I live… but I noted it down anyway.  I didn\’t get much more information out of him about that.

We began to walk elsewhere, to which I began to attempt to explain where exactly we were, I mentioned to him that we were in the non-physical and that he could possibly be dreaming.  I remember mentioning how physically real the non-physical felt, even though we \”call it\” the non-physical.  I picked up a dog which looked like one of the first dogs I owned, and began petting it, noting to myself how real and lively it seemed.  I noted that the gentleman had a crutch or limp of some kind with some kind of metal gadget hooked up to help him walk.

We proceeded into the basement where a few other people were there watching, what looked like Lord of the Rings on the TV.  A few seconds after that, I abruptly woke up.  It was a really quick wake up too, immediate shift to black and back in my bed.  I didn\’t even have time to realize I was coming to.  Total time projecting felt like 5 minutes.

A Thought on Retaining Consciousness in the Non-physical

Tajtas, on the Astral Pulse asked the question, “Ive been trying so hard to get it past 25 seconds… When I realize I’m dreaming I start drifting away and then I woke up. Has anyone have had a LONG lucid dream, dozens of minutes? Is it possible hours or days?”.

The_One made a nice response, “I’ve had this problem. It’s quite simple when you think about it. Don’t get excited, concentrate on a animated character (can be any thing). As, don’t think “I’m about to wake up because I’m lucid”. (Easier said than done).
I’ve substained a dream for so long doing this, I got worried that there was something wrong with my body. As over doing this will pull you out of lucidity and back into the dream.
Hope this helps.”

This got me thinking about why something like that works… I wondered if the effect of how we initially Phase into the non-physical can provide us with a clue about how to REMAIN in the non-physical.  We know that there’s a fine balancing act that must be done to Phase… you need to work at balancing your consciousness so your mind retains, at least, a single thread of consciousness.

Generally, we do this by keeping our minds active in some manner… in the case of the “Noticing” exercise, it’s placing our conscious intent within the blackness behind our eyes and noticing the changes of that which we’re seeing.  In the “Rundown” exercise, we’re placing our intent within the visualized scene that we’re creating with our imagination.

Well, what if, while we’re in the non-physical, we do this act in reverse?  When you feel yourself beginning to lose the non-physical consciousness, begin immediately placing your intent on something within the non-physical, in essence it’s allowing you to focus your intent more INTO the non-physical and away from the physical, which is where your intent seems to be going when you’re slowly in the process of waking up.  In other words, bring your focus/attention to something on or around you in the non-physical.  It’s kind of the same act as increasing your awareness from Lucid to Astral in the first place, except you don’t need to ask yourself any questions.  Your goal here is to give your mind something non-physical to focus on so it ignores the physical reality sensations.

A lot of people say to look at or rub your hands together.  I believe I now understand why that works… because it’s giving you something to focus your mind on that’s away from the physical senses that you’re beginning to feel.

From the point when I begin to feel that I’m waking up to the point when I actually do wake up… seems to be anywhere around 5 – 10 seconds.  So, perhaps it’s best to not even wait for that signal to happen and just do this exercise every minute or so, because once the signal occurs, it doesn’t take long before you’re back in bed wondering what happened.

Morning Projection – Sunday January 23rd

Nothing special happened during this experience, I just wanted to get this one down as it\’s my first experience in a few weeks.

I woke up several times during the  morning… and this experience happened sometime between 10am and 11am, after my third waking up.

I found myself driving down what I thought was one of the main highways in my area… and I accidentally exited off the wrong exit!  I dodged a couple cars and a couple people (yes, people on the highway), then I found myself walking… it was at this point that I realized, \”Hey, where\’d my car go?  I was certain I was just in a car… \” and that\’s when the penny dropped, I was in the non-physical and I had a lucid awareness at the time.

At this point I decided to fly straight up, however, the \”highway\” was directly above me… I flew upwards really quickly and through the material of the highway, I could feel the concrete as I passed through it.  The problem at this point was that I felt like I was beginning to lose the non-physical moment… so I quickly went back down, and it stabilized.  I walked forward a bit… and then I remembered my LD -> AP conversion.  I knelt down, and focused on a piece of paper that was stuck to a wall… it had writing on it.  I remember glancing at my hand as well… that was apparently enough to bring my full waking consciousness into the mix, I didn\’t have to ask myself my questions!

Unfortunately… as soon as my Astral Awareness came around, I started to lose it once again and couldn\’t regain it.  And I woke up… ending my non-physical experience. The entire thing felt like it was around 2 – 3 minutes.

 

What are Astral Projections?

I\’m ending this three-parter with my opinion on what Astral Projections are.

Astral Projections and Lucid Dreams are VERY similar, actually they\’re the same experience with one difference:  You.  Sometimes it\’s VERY HARD to determine which experience you are in because of it.  The difference is not the environment you\’re in because the area of consciousness where the two (including normal dreams) take place is the same.  So, if the area of consciousness that these experiences happen in is the same, then what exactly IS that difference I mentioned?  I mentioned in the What are Lucid Dreams article that LD\’s are when you recognize that you\’re in the non-physical (dream).  That knowledge is really the ONLY requisite.  You probably won\’t have any notion that you actually have a physical body somewhere else that is fast asleep.  Well, an Astral experience is when you recognize that you\’re in the non-physical AND you retain all your waking faculties/awareness (or as close to it as possible).

Now, for me… this area you now find yourself in is, in essence, the same place where you dream.  This opens up a world of endless possibilities for you.  You\’re limited, LITERALLY, only by your imagination.  If you want to fight demons or dragons?  Go right ahead!  If you want to talk to elven folk or perhaps visit some faeries?  You can do so!  You can also sift through every memory your physical senses have ever recorded… this is where it starts getting really interesting.  So yeah, whatever you want to do/experience, you\’re able to do/experience.  This area, I call Focus 2 oC as per Frank Kepple\’s model of reality.  It\’s your own personal area of consciousness… sometimes referred to as your \”imagination\” or \”subconscious\”.

You can, however, use this area as a jumping board to Focus 3 oC (again F. Kepples Model), which is what I refer to as \”Collective Consciousness\” area.  Focus 3 oC is where you\’ll meet other \”people\” who are either projecting, or even people who have already physically died and have no physical body anymore.  You may also call upon actual guides to come assist you.

To get to Focus 3 oC from your current Focus 2 oC area you need to clear your mind and stop your thoughts/emotions from fueling the Focus 2 scenario around you.  Doing this will cause the Focus 2 environment to fade away and you\’ll start to see the Collective Focus 3 oC environment come into view.  From there, do what you want.  However, just remember that to remain in Focus 3 oC you need to always keep that tight grip on your thoughts and emotions, or you\’ll start to get Focus 2/3 overlays happening.  Basically, this means that dream imagery will start to creep into your Focus 3 experience… and if you don\’t stop it, you\’ll be pulled back into Focus 2 oC until you can calm your mind down again.

Dream, Lucid and Astral Awareness… these three states of awareness are very important to understand if you care enough to define your experiences.  There are more than just these three levels though.  Between each state of awareness is a wide range.  Think of it as a spectrum with \”Dream Awareness\” on one end, \”Astral Awareness\” at the other end, and \”Lucid Awareness\” in the middle… your consciousness can be along that spectrum anywhere at any time and you can potentially go through the entire range within a single non-physical experience.

So happy traveling!  Enjoy every second of it!

Reality Check Success – November 7, 2010

This will be short.  Off and on, over the past month or so, I\’ve been half-assedly trying reality checks in an attempt to increase the frequency of my Lucid Dreams.

Well, this morning it paid off with a very brief Lucid Dream.  I found myself walking down the side of an unfamiliar road… I looked around and nobody else was around and no cars were coming, so I decided to try to jump into the air and fly.  I jumped, flew a bit… realized, \”Hey, I\’m dreaming!\”… then almost immediately I fell back into a Dream Awareness but the environment and dream changed completely and it was World of Warcraft related. >_<

But, at least the reality check initially worked.  🙂

What are Lucid Dreams?

I made a post a couple days ago regarding my views on what a Dream is and I figured I\’d continue this and write about my views on Lucid Dreaming… I guess I\’ll finish off with an article about my views on Astral Projection.

I find that people get confused with the idea of Lucid Dreaming thinking that one needs to be in full control of their environment for it to be considered a Lucid Dream, however Lucidity and Control are two separate ideas.  Being \”Lucid\” in a dream, at the very minimum, means that you know you\’re dreaming.  You might not know that your physical body is asleep in your bed, but you do know that you\’re in the non-physical.  That\’s it really.

In my first post about \”Dreams\”, I mentioned something I call \”Dream Awareness\”.  This is, generally, the first level of awareness one will have in the non-physical if you enter through normal sleep, people mostly refer to this as \”having a dream\”.  Now we\’ll move onto the next level, that I call \”Lucid Awareness\”.  As I said before, this ONLY means that you realize that you\’re dreaming.  Nothing more, nothing less.  It does not denote control over the dream.

So, let\’s move onto the cool and crazy stuff you can do in a Lucid Dream!  While you have Lucid Awareness, you\’re limited only by your imagination.  Whatever you want or desire can manifest directly in front of you in full technicolour 3D.  🙂

Manifesting these scenes and controlling your Lucid Dream isn\’t as tough as it sounds because your subconscious, which usually has full control while you\’re in \”Dream Awareness\”, is still highly active, it\’s still in the foreground of your consciousness.  So, to change what you want, you simply have to visualize it.

For example, the other night in a Lucid Dream I had, I was showing someone how I could destroy buildings.  I pointed to a skyscraper off in the distance, I put my forearms together in front of it and then pulled them apart… we watched how the building split in two right down the middle.
Another example is one of my greatest joys I have in dreams, is flying.  To do this, you need to visualize yourself flying.  The simplest way to do that is to just pretend you\’re superman.  Just jump into the air and pretend you\’re him… you\’ll take off.  🙂

So that\’s my view on Lucid Dream/Lucid Awareness.  If you have any particular question or need to know something specific to this, or if I just didn\’t make something very clear, please head on over to the UB Forums and ask away!  🙂

Lucid Awareness Experience – November 1st, 2010

So, I had a mega long lucid dream early last night. Unfortunately, I can\’t really remember too much of it… I have a bunch of jumbled, seemingly random scenes playing out in my head right now that I\’m having trouble reconciling them.

I do remember having what I call \”Lucid Awareness\” throughout it, meaning that I didn\’t know much else beyond the fact that I was in the non-physical. So, unlike my previous conscious experience, in which I had \”Astral Awareness\” (aka, I was FULLY awake in the non physical), this experience wasn\’t quite there. This tells me that this entire experience took place in Focus 2, mostly because of all the dream imagery involved.

I do remember flying around a lot… and strangely enough, I remember blowing up buildings. I was demonstrating to the person who was with me by pointing to a building in the distance and splitting it in two. I\’ve tried to do this kind of thing in the past, but had very little success… I think it was good this time because I wasn\’t fully aware at the moment, so my subconscious was still semi in control of things. If I had Astral Awareness it probably wouldn\’t have been so easy. With that said, I also wouldn\’t have had some very strong dream imagery either… as my subconscious mind was still in full swing fueling my scene.

This entire experience felt like it took place over a good hour or so. I do remember slipping back into the physical roughly 3 times throughout this non-physical adventure. Each time I felt it was happening so I managed to keep my eyes shut as I woke, so it was quite easy to stay still and shift back to the non-physical within 10 – 15 seconds. I can\’t tell you enough how good this particular technique is to remaining in a non-physical environment.

And now that I\’m thinking about it… I was reading some more of John Magnus\’ book \”Astral Projection and the Nature of Reality\” right before bed… and I remember reading something about that very thing. I remember a point where he was saying to use an affirmation of, something along the lines of, being able to wake up slowly so that I could keep my eyes closed. I guess my mind decided that the best way to do that was to become lucid in the non-physical so it could initiate that \”eyes closed\” thing. This would account for the rare \”early night\” lucid dream that I had.

Anyway, the last thing I really remember was shifting back into the Lucid state then immediately entering a false awakening where I was riding my bike by some reservoir thinking to myself, \”Wow, what a strange lucid dream I just had\”… at that point I had shifted back into a Dream Awareness so I didn\’t realize I was STILL in the non physical. I find it funny that I didn\’t make the connection that I was JUST having a Lucid Dream, and now I was outside riding my bike… LoL

This was, quite possibly, the longest non-physical experience I\’ve ever had and considering that the longest up until this point was only about a month ago… I\’m left wondering what this means. We\’ll see what the future has in store. 🙂

Inducing Lucid Dreams Using a Timer

So, in the same style as the Salt Cube timer people… I thought I\’d try my hand at making and perhaps improving their timer.

I created the following Wave file.
It\’s based around a base 3 minute system.  I give you 10 minutes at first, then break into the base 3 time system.

So after 10 minutes, you\’ll have alarms at 6 minutes, 3 minutes, 6 minutes, 9 minutes, 12 minutes, 15 minutes, 15 minutes and 6 minutes… total of 81 minutes.
I put a binaural beat in the background, very light, so you can just hear it.  For myself, the spike alarms to wake you at each of the above times didn\’t wake me as I\’m a heavy sleeper.
But I\’m hoping that other \”light\” sleepers might make better use of this.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=XMQB5KUM – download link here.

Personalreality also created one using some premade timers, I\’m going to be trying this one out tomorrow morning, so I\’ll report what comes of those.
You can download his here: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=32QLN3LO

I did have a very good dream awareness this morning.  So much so, that I was very surprised after I woke that I didn\’t realize I could have brought my Lucid awareness forth.  >_<
But anyway, I\’ll see how PR\’s works for me tomorrow!

My New Consciousness Designations – “States of Mind”

I was dreaming this morning and I came to a realization after I awoke.  I realized that the term “Conscious awareness” just doesn’t work when using it to describe anything more than your awareness during a dream, or in any case, it makes it more confusing.  I need a phrase or phrases to make it easier for new people to learn the concepts and a catch all “Conscious Awareness” just doesn’t do that, because once you pass into Lucid Dreams and even further, Astral Projections, the term begins to fail.

We dream every night of our lives, yet we don’t remember all of them, why?  We have varying levels of consciousness through these dreams… everything from not remembering that a dream ever happened, to remembering bits and pieces of a dream, to remembering every last detail of the dream.

I was thinking about how we “remember” our dreams… and I realized that the dreams I remember most, are the ones in which I was most consciously aware in.  Not consciously aware in that I knew I was dreaming… but consciously aware that I was experiencing the dream AS it was happening.  I call this “Dream Awareness“.  Basically, I’m living the dream life as if I was awake and not realizing it’s a dream.  I am the actor not realizing he’s in a play.  This tends to give me the best chance to remember after I wake.

The next step up from that would be “Lucid Awareness“.  This is the point where you know you’re dreaming and you know that what is around you is a dreamscape.  You don’t have much more awareness than that though.

After that, I’d call it “Astral Awareness“.  At this point, you are as wide awake and aware as if you were awake in the physical reality… except you’re in the nonphysical.

Also, I believe that the line between Lucid Awareness and Astral Awareness can be very blurred.  Your awareness can float between that range at any one time during the experience.  You’ll start off with Lucid Awareness, then muster up Astral Awareness… after some time, you might lose focus and concentration and drop back down to Lucid Awareness.  You could shift back into Dream Awareness too.

For myself, I start off with Dream Awareness, then I’ll shift into Lucid Awareness… after that I’ll do my conversion to bring forth my Astral Awareness.  Generally what happens after some time in Astral Awareness is that I’ll just wake up.

So yeah, these are my new “States of Mind”.  Hopefully they’ll assist me in helping new members on the Pulse and other forums I frequent.

I guess you could say that this is the first thing I now disagree with Frank on!  🙂

Personalreality, from the Astral Pulse, wrote a nice reply to my post.
You can read it on his own personal blog, Shades of Consciousness.

Learn To Tell What Experience You\’re Having

To get you into the proper mindset in learning how to differentiate and interpret the many experiences (Dream, Lucid Dream, AP, OBE) one can have in the non-physical, I think the following statement sums it up nicely:

\”The difference is not in the nature of the reality but in the consciousness that observes/experiences it.\”

What I\’m saying here is that the nature of the reality you find yourself in (Dream, Lucid Dream, Astral Projection, Out of Body Experience, etc…) isn\’t defined by that reality.  It\’s actually the opposite.  You define the reality…  the nature of your experience is defined solely by your consciousness and how aware you are.

Phasing Method – Don’t Open Your Eyes When You Wake

SpiritualShawn on the Astral Viewers posted an interesting question about keeping your eyes shut when you wake up to help you to project.

Ok so I want to practice waking up in the morning without opening my eyes or moving? How can I do this? It seems like in the mornings I usually find myself rolling around while waking up or my eyes are already open by the time I realize im awake.

I know If I wake myself up super early and induce a lucid dream I should be able to gently bring myself back to physical conscious (waking up) without moving much because I am already aware in the dream. Other than that I really don’t know how to go about doing this as after waking up in the morning would seem like a practical time for a conscious exit, (for me atleast).

Any tips?

I don’t have any direct tips, but it did remind me of the ONE time I managed to do this… and I’ll recount it here in hopes it has something that might help someone do the same.

So, the one time I managed to do this I was already in a lucid dream (the LD was me in this room full of toilets and urinals… I know, strange LOL) and I began to feel that usual feeling of ‘waking up’. My vision went to black and I felt the shift… I knew I was back in the physical, lying in my bed, and it happened so smoothly that I didn’t bother to open my eyes. I figured I’d go back to sleep, and within what felt like one minute I slipped back into my lucid dream at the exact point I had left, in the toilet-filled room. A couple minutes into this lucid dream, I, again, felt myself waking up… I kept my eyes closed for that waking as well.

I kept doing this over and over… four times, each time I woke up faster and faster. The fifth time, I got into the lucid dream and I immediately began waking up. I initiated my spinning thing to ground and keep myself within the lucid dream… but it didn’t work and had a secondary effect of causing me to have a classic OBE experience where I felt my arms float up and the rest of me follow.  I opened my eyes and I was floating down towards the foot of my bed.  This lasted about 10 seconds, when I came back to the physical.

So that’s the only experience I can remember where I managed to not open my eyes upon waking up.

Many times I’ve read stories of people doing this exact thing to project… well, all I can say is that it does work IF you can remember to not open your eyes when you wake.  For me, it was a matter of already being lucid in the dream and sensing when I was waking so I could prepare myself to do it.

Hopefully this helps someone.  🙂