The Problem?

Lately all my nightly/early-morning attempts have resulted in nothing but sleep. In thinking about what I have done differently, one thing I have come up with is this: I'm actually TRYING to fall asleep. I've been trying to catch myself on the border of sleep and THEN project or at least get into trance. However, what I am going to try to do is take my full consciousness to the border of sleep by using my imagination to as high a degree as possible. Basically, pick an exit technique and just hammer away with it for as long as it takes. Instead of doing the trance-inducing techniques where I'm imagining myself drifting down, I will instead use my imagination to get me moving up and out of my body.

Holiday Shuffle

With the holidays and work and school and music and all the other tidings that come along with normal life, I haven't been able to practice AP much. I've done the second exercise of the Gateway Experience a few times with no success. A couple times that I've tried I just fell asleep. The other times I just felt to wired to really get fully into the exercises... either I couldn't get comfortable or couldn't fully focus or it seemed like I was too excited to be laying down and trying to get into the AP state.

I think that I will continue with the Gateway tapes for my nighttime practice. It is a good exercise for my imagination. What I am planning to do now is do some "wake and bake" practice during the week. Instead of sleeping for 5-6 hours and getting up to try, I am going to try waking up after 3-4 hours and then attempting. This will give me a little more leeway between the time I attempt and the time I have to actually get ready for work. Plus, with the holidays here my son doesn't have to be at school at 7:20am, so I can get a *little* extra sleep.

Monday focus

So last night I popped into the back room and played the next track from the Gateway Voyage Wave I. When I first laid down I was a little nervous with the house being so quiet and dark so I lit a candle to make myself a little more comfortable. Perhaps I need to work on my fear of the dark. Throughout the exercise I had difficulty getting entirely comfortable. I would be comfortable at first, but then my foot would start to bother me because it was resting against the end-rail of the futon. Then my neck could never fully relax. It's like I need something very small propped under the very back of my neck.

So anyhow, this track is very cool. At one point I had a brief "wow" moment when I felt like my mind was more clear than it had ever felt. It's difficult to describe. They do a really effective relaxation exercise that was very different from what I have been doing. Monroe leads you through a relaxation exercise that starts with your head. From jaws, to forehead, cheeks, scalp, etc. Then you guide the relaxation deep into your brain until you entire head is relaxed. From there, you work the relaxation into the rest of your body. I will definitely be using this more in the future.

Throughout the exercise, however, I never felt like I could fully relax. I was a little nervous; perhaps from it being my first time listening to the track. I think this track will require many subsequent listenings, but I can definitely see that it is headed in a good direction. Getting the body really, really, totally relaxed is key to having an OBE, especially if you are trying at night.

This just in...

Partying is not conducive to having OBEs. Lol. This past Friday I went out with friends and partied a little too hard. I felt like I had to spend the weekend recovering when I would have liked to focus a little more on other things. I did wake up early on Sunday and attempted but didn't have any success.

I didn't stay awake quite as long as usual and I didn't feel like I had really woken up when I laid back down on the futon. Instead of eating a bowl of cereal, I had a few raisins and some water. Maybe blood sugar makes the difference? I'm thinking of adding caffeine into the mix to see what effect that has on AP. Maybe this weekend...

Despite the lack of success on Sunday, I did have an especially long semi-lucid dream that morning. It was one of those really long and intricate dreams where it starts to end and you go back into it by thinking of the dream. In it, I was in some huge mansion/estate with a co-worker just running around and having fun. So I shouldn't say I was completely unsuccessful.

Also, I now have in my posession Wave I of the Gateway Voyage by the Monroe Institute. I've only listened to the introduction track a couple of times so far. Both times I got some pretty strong hypnogogic imagery and felt VERY relaxed. Tonight I'll be giving the next track, Intro to Focus 10, a spin. I'll definitely report an update tonight or tomorrow.

Work-week attempt fail

On Monday morning I decided to go to be early and then get up super-early to attempt AP. I got to sleep around 11pm and woke up at 4am. Stayed awake for a little while and then laid down and tried to get into a trance. I couldn't even come close to falling asleep. I just laid there and my mind wandered all over the place. I think the fact that I had to be at work in a few hours, not to mention get my son to school, distracted me and kept me from getting close to anything resembling trance. So I got up and went to bed and just went to sleep.

I'm pretty certain I won't be trying this again. I was exhausted at work and I think the success rate of this would be fairly low. However, that leaves me in somewhat of a quandary. If I only try only on the weekends, that leaves me with a pretty limited number of times that I can attempt.

So, then, I think my next move is to get skilled at getting into a trance at other times of the day. I've been considering purchasing one of the Monroe Institute's Gateway Series CD's. I have ethical dilemmas about pirating a copy (I don't judge anybody who does pirate, but for me and my bag of karma, it is just unwise) and the price of buying the full set is around $230. I could buy one phase at a time, but in the end, if I continue buying the CD's individually, I would have saved much buy buying the whole set in one fell swoop.

OK, I think through typing this all out I've come to a conclusion. I'm going to buy Phase I of the Gateway Voyage CD's, and if I have success using that, I'll just pirate the rest.

LOL.

OBE or lucid dream?

Went to bed last night at about 12:30 and got up at 6:30. Ate 3/4 of a granola bar and read from Energy Work again for around 20 minutes when I started to feel like I had been awake long enough. Went to the back room and got situated and continued doing energy work.

This time I made better effort at following a procedure of getting out of body. I worked on relaxing, then on clearing my mind, and then on getting into a trance. Soon I was in or near the trance state...

For the first time I really FELT vibrations. When I tried to make them stronger they started to go away and I felt myself coming out of trance. This is a lesson to learn: trying too hard will kill it. So I reminded myself to "relax into" that feeling and then they kicked in pretty hard. Soon after that I started feeling that floating, drifting exit sensation.

Well, this is where I'm not sure if I became lucid or was actually out of body, or both. I felt like I had "landed" on the floor. I got up and started toward the doorway. Walking down the hallway, everything was backward. My son's room was on my right, and there were a bunch of pictures on the wall to my left. I was still having difficulty moving and was kind of staggering and leaning on the wall. As I came to the end of the hallway it turned into a dream.

A guy's bare foot poked out from the end of the hallway. That foot belonged to a friend of my uncle and aunt. Then I was in a parking garage at some tennis courts in Gainesville and my Aunt was playing tennis. Soon after I lost lucidity.

I think losing lucidity was due to already being tired. I felt low on energy due to a long work week, and this may have affected my ability to stay lucid. Either way, I was able to remember this experience pretty clearly when I woke up a couple hours later so that is a good thing.

This waking up after 5-6 hours sure works well if you can manage to wake up!

Weekend wrap-up

This morning I again woke up at 5am after a little more than 6 hours of sleep. It may have been closer to 7 hours actually. I had a small bowl of cereal and half an apple. Then I stayed awake for a little longer than usual. It was probably closer to an hour or more before I laid down again.

Because of these things I think I had a little harder time getting into the near-sleep state:

-A little more sleep than usual: I felt more rested than I did on previous attempts. The goal here is to catch myself in between sleep cycles but I may have just caught myself a little too well rested perhaps
- Food: I hear that apples have a lot of sugar and can spike your insulin levels. This may have been a possible problem today.
-Stayed awake for too long: By the time I laid down again I was pretty damn awake. While laying there trying to focus on energy work and energy body loosening, my mind was drifting heavily toward physical-reality concerns. This made it pretty tough to move toward the state I am looking for.

Well, after what felt like a long time of laying there I did catch myself in the state and started bringing on the exit sensations. For some reason though I said something aloud in my mind as I started to "move down into myself" (that's the best description I have at the moment for what it feels like). I said something like, "here we go" or "this is easy" or something and that snapped me out of the state and I had a hard time getting back there again before I fell asleep.

I did learn from this nonetheless. While laying there in the state that I did NOT want to be in, I was able to contrast the waking-life consciousness from the near-sleep or trance-state consciousness. It really is much like a tuning dial on a radio. The near-sleep state is much more focused inward, while in normal waking consciousness your focus goes outward toward all the zillion things in the world. Little hard to describe.

Well, the weekend is near over and I'm very happy with what I've learned. I got to see a lot of friends and family, and also got to go to a kickass college football rivalry game (FSU vs UF) and my team won! Hopefully during the week I'll have some time to try OBE. Maybe I should start working on night-projection. We shall see.

2nd Success!! Sort of...

Today I ditched the alarm clock method for the way I had my first success a few weeks ago. I woke up at 5:45am but this time I didn't eat anything because I didn't even feel slightly hungry. Yesterday was Thanksgiving and I pigged out like a starving kid in China. Then I picked up Energy Work by Robert Bruce (highly recommend) and did a bunch of energy work for about 30 minutes. Finally I went and laid down in the back room on the futon and continued doing energy work and trying to get into trance.

I can't say I'm proficient at getting into trance... at least not at getting into deep trance. When I meditate I try to get into trance and I might get to the point where I begin to lose some sensation in my body, particularly my hands, but after that I generally don't "feel" like I'm in a trance at all. This is something I want to work on because my goal is to be able to induce astral projection at will.

So anyway as I'm laying there and trying to get into trance and doing energy body loosening I finally catch myself going to sleep. Once I caught myself at this level I exhaled deeply... or really, exhaled twice and the exit sensations came on very strong. It's such a strange energetic feeling... maybe this is the vibrations that people describe often.

The exit sensations feel to me like a lot of floating and movement and are always accompanied by auditory noises. This time was a little strange though - I thought I was out of my body because of the exit sensations. I was hearing my own voice talking and I could see but it was hard to tell where I was. I "willed" myself to go see my son and nothing happened. Then I figured out that I was still in my body was completely disassociated with the physical. Around the time I figured this out I re-associated with my body and then I couldn't get back to the exit sensations.

So I'm definitely considering this a success as I definitely had the ability to get OB, but got confused during the process. Nonetheless, I have to consider the fact that both times I've done the above process I've had more success that at any other time. I will definitely continue this in the future and most likely every day this weekend.

The only drawback of this method is that it takes a full morning to do, so it would be really difficult to do during the work-week.

2nd day of alarm clock method

This morning was another wash for the alarm clock method. This time I tried 30 min, 9, 12, 3,17,10,10. No luck but I did remember a couple dreams. Also I woke up again exactly 1 minute before my initial alarm clock went off. Very interesting. However, I'm starting to think that this alarm clock method isn't for me. I have this uncanny ability to sleep straight through alarm clocks, which has proved true in the first two days of this experiment. Maybe I should go back to what worked a few weeks ago: wake up after about 6 hours of sleep, eat a little bit, do a bunch of energy work and then lay down doing more energy work.

Alarm Clock Method

For the next two weeks, I'm going to follow the alarm clock method to obtaining lucid dreams and/or astral projection(s). The "alarm clock method" means that you use an alarm clock to keep you at the border of sleep and hopefully into the full-trance state.

This morning I woke up at 4:16 (exactly one minute before my alarm clock was set to wake me up, cool), used the restroom, and went to our back room where I had the laptop setup with a timer that I downloaded from SaltCube. I used the settings recommended here which recommends the alarm go off after 30 min, 22 min, 30 min, 15min, and then 37 minutes. I got situated and put the headphones on and laid down on the futon on my back.

Well, I guess I was kind of excited or SOMETHING but I just couldn't fall back asleep. As I was beginning to drift off the first alarm went off and really startled me. I think I should have been focusing more on getting into trance or doing energy work or something. At the same time, I was wearing these huge headphones that were a pain to sleep in because I couldn't turn my head. Not stellar pre-planning, but it's my first try so I'll give myself a break.

So it ends up that I wake up to my normal alarm clock at 6:45am without remembering much of a dream or anything else. The headphones eventually came off altogether. Here is what I plan to correct on next try:

- Use earbuds so that they don't fall out so easily
- Focus more on getting into trance and doing energy work. Especially when I first lay down and am still a little restless.
- Set my intent more intensely
- Get to bed a little earlier. If I'm dog-ass tired my body isn't going to care what I'm trying to do and will be more than happy to sleep through numerous alarm clocks.
- Use a different timer method. I think it needs to be set to go off more frequently.

Vegas tomorrow!

I'm headed to Vegas tomorrow for a business-related conference! I plan on having fun and hopefully having a little extra time to practice OBE stuff. My plan is to try once in the afternoon and once before the sun comes up. Wish me luck!

Not a lot to report...

Very little to report over the last couple of weeks due to "extenuating circumstances" (wow, I just used the word extenuating). I had a ridiculous cold for almost two weeks so I was trying to get as much rest as possible, work has been very busy, my son has had a lot of school work to do, Halloween activities, etc. The big one, however, is that I've been working very hard to get ready for a talent show of sorts that I'll be performing in this Friday (tomorrow). The "talent show" part sounds the ghey, but this show is a big deal to me. It's at a big event downtown that thousands of people attend. A lot of friends, family, and co-workers will be cheering me on, plus the video will be online, so you can see what I'm putting extra effort into getting ready. Plus the winner of the whole thing wins a trip to New York City, so that's a nice incentive.

From being sick I noticed how much my energy levels affect practicing AP. My dream recall was far less and my desire to get out of bed and attempt AP dropped significantly. This makes a good case for exercise and good diet if you are attempting to learn AP. Keep the stress levels low and the energy levels high!!

My relaxation procedure

I've been posting uber-long descriptions of experiences so far, so I thought I would change it up a little tonight. Below is the method I've been using to go into a fully relaxed state. It's something I've adopted from some of the NLP (Neurolinguistic Programming) stuff I've read.

My method is just an adaptation of the progressive relaxation exercise that so many are familiar with. There's really only a few small things I do differently. I work my way up the body tensing and relaxing each muscle or muscle group as I go up. This much is pretty standard. I will typically go in the following order:

-Feet
-Back of calves
-Front of calves
-Quads
-Hamstrings
-Pelvic area, including the PC muscle
-Lower back
-Abdomen
-Upper back
-Chest
-Arms
-Back of neck and shoulders
-Front of neck
-Face, tongue
-Scalp
-Whole body

When I get to each body part I tense the muscles there and slowly breath in. As I breath in I imagine the tension in that body part is a certain color and then visualize pulling that tension upward into my chest area. I actually see the color swirling. It doesn't matter too much what color you use. I choose whatever color comes to mind on the fly.

Once I've pulled all the tension out of every fiber of that body part, I slowly breathe out and feel/see the tension escaping my body through my breath. At the same time I am SLOWLY relaxing the tensed body part. Doing it very slowly is very keyto really feel that relaxation taking place. Sometimes I will add in the visualization of a long balloon that has slowly run out of air in place of the body part as well.

That's really all there is to it. Nothing extraordinary IMO, but I think it is an effective adaption of the typical progressive relaxation exercise. It also sets your imagination in motion to begin whatever meditation or exercise you choose.

I think I just had an OBE...

So I got up about an hour ago, did some reading from Energy Work (Robert Bruce), ate some cereal, then put on some warmer but light clothes and then went into the back bedroom. As I laid there I was doing energy work when I sort of fell asleep and then woke up in the middle of actually falling asleep.

The sensations were very strong and I was having some auditory hallucinations as usual. It sounded as if I was gasping for air or trying to speak but couldn't. Just typical weird-sounding noise, but it sounded like it was coming from me. For a few seconds I started to get frightened and tried to return to normal consciousness, but then I decided to go deeper into that dream state or trance state.

Next thing I know I'm feeling those floating sensations and I tell myself to relax even more. And then I'm floating in the room I was just in. I can see the cat box and the rubbermaid dresser/shelving unit at the foot of the futon I'm laying in (I didn't look to try to see myself - that would have been cool). I was thinking "wow, this feels real". My sight was good but not perfect so I said "clarity now" and it seemed to improve enough. Everything looked very clear but sort of ultra-sharp or something.

I had designed a "walk-through" of what I would do when I went OBE and I tried to perform this but my movement was very difficult. I was trying to move around like I would if I was swimming, which was probably the problem. But I remember thinking it was cool that I could "feel" my legs and arms as I floated there trying to swim through the air.

The experience lasted maybe 8 seconds and then all of a sudden I'm back in bed as if nothing had happened. No heaviness, no vibrations or altered state. Just normal full consciousness.

Things to try next time:

-Work on movement. Move by just thinking where I want to go instead of trying to swim around (lol).
-Look at my hands or body.
-See myself laying in bed. I think this will give me better validation (to start with) of if I'm OBE or lucid.
-Have a longer experience. Perhaps more intensive energy work will help with the length of the experience.

All-in-all, what an amazing experience! Maybe all the work I've done is paying off like Danielson painting Mr. Miagi's fence and waxing his cars. It was the most intensely I've felt exit sensations, or trance induction sensations, whatever they are. The actual experience itself felt more real than the lucid dreaming experiences I've had thus far. I have to think that the fact that I opted NOT to go drinking with my buddies contributed to this success. If I had gotten home at 2am last night I would not be writing this.

Some success stories

OK I've really slacked on this blog entirely, but I'm doing this for the fame and fortune so I might as well keep up with it. I've had two instances of success so far:

1) I don't feel like typing it all out again so here is the post I wrote over at Astral Pulse the day after the experience:

Hey everybody - Just wanted to share a little success with the forums. I've been working on Energy Work and OBE stuff for about 2 months now and have had very little real success aside from a couple times when I had vibrations and some exit sensations. This morning (Sunday) I woke up at 6:30am and did some reading and hung out for around 40 minutes and then laid down in another room I have setup to try OBE work. I put on the BrainWave generator from Mastering Astral Projection (the trance induction track... week 5 I think) and laid there for a while. Well, 1.5 hours passed and I had only managed to go in and out of sleep once or twice, no trance or any sensations whatsoever. I decided to just get some sleep and went back to bed next to my wife.

Around this time, some of those pessimistic thoughts from the past crept in. Such as, "This crap just doesn't work" or "this just wasn't meant for me" and so on. I decided to go with my new philosophy in life which is that failure means you're at the threshold of success. That's just kind of the mentality I've tried to adopt lately. So I continued doing energy work and clearing my mind as I drifted off to sleep when I started really feeling those sensations. I guess like vibrations but really just the feeling of trance coming on. It sounded like my wife was speaking in jibberish next to me (which has screwed me up in the past) but I knew better that this was just a sign that I was getting closer. I just kept going with the feeling and next thing I remember I'm completely lucid in a dream.

I was on school bus with a bunch of kids I went to high school with. Realizing I was in a dream I was just messing with all of them when they would say something to me and just kind of having a good time. I watched the scenery go by out the window just enjoying the feelings and sensations of being lucid in a dream. I remember thinking to myself 'wow, I've been lucid for a while, this is great'. Sometime around then I decided I wanted to see more and so I thought to myself "UP" and lifted out the roof of the bus and started flying into the sky. The clouds looked kind of stormy so I changed them and made it nice and clear. I wanted to get more lucidity so I tried to open my eyes more for some reason and my physical eyes open and I could see the fan spinning in my room. Around this time I lost lucidity and drifted back into sleep.

However, I half-awoke in a trance state and had some really interesting sensations. A light wave of energy was slowly moving up and down my body. It had a light "orgasmic" feel to it and really felt similar to a low-voltage electric feeling. Very, very interesting. I've felt this before in small doses while drifting off but this was VERY distinct and I was lucid enough to observe the feeling this time. Anybody know more about this?

Anyhow, just wanted to share a little success with everyone. Good luck!

2) Just this morning I stayed home sick. I woke up and took my son to school, sent some emails for work and then laid back down. As I laid there I decided to try for an OBE, which lately has been a really long process of waiting for my body and mind to chill out enough to get on the verge of sleep. Eventually I managed to catch myself drifting off to sleep. I got myself to the point of feeling the vibrations and exit sensations, but that is as far as it got. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong here but it's the familiar thing where I get all sorts of weird feelings and then I get a sort of 'drifting' or 'floating' sensation and then it goes away. I'm not sure if I'm getting too excited or what, but this has been a recurring theme.

So eventually I drift in and out of sleep and at one point, while awake I keep noticing all this hypnogogic imagery. Very lucid images that would float in and out. At one point one turned sexual and I was having a threesome in my old college apartment. I was completely lucid the entire time and the dream eventually shifted to myself laying in bed at my parents house. I decide I'm going to try for an OBE and I successfully lift off the bed and toward the bedroom door. I think to myself "I'm having an OBE" and then decide to get back in my body so that I will recall everything (which is what the recommend).

The funny thing is that I think I was only dreaming about having an OBE... or at least I think I was. I know that during the dream I was still aware of my physical body because as I was floating I was still in the same body position that I was laying in in my bed. I didn't want to move because I thought I might move my body and wake myself up.

Either way, this is good progress for me. This is one of the first mornings I've had in a long time to really sleep in un-interrupted so I attribute the success to that. I've realized lately that I'm horribly sleep deprived. I have a hard time going to bed before midnight and I'm woken up at 6:30 every morning. This is plenty of sleep for some people, but I think it leaves me half-tired every day. This is evidenced by the fact that every time I try to meditate in the middle of the day I just fall asleep. So my plan is to just start getting stuff done earlier and get in bed at 10pm every night. Weekends may be different, but I'm trying to get away from alcohol as well so that should help.



OK, the last thing I am going to write is that I just finished the book Far Journeys by Robert Monroe. INCREDIBLE book. It really caught me off-gaurd because I was just expecting stories about his out of body research. Instead, it's a story about how beings from a..."higher?" dimension met with him and basically showed him the story of our planet and how and why it was created. I'm sure he is taking some literary liberties, but the man obviously experienced something extraordinary. It really changed my viewpoint on life and our purpose here in general.

Success? Ish?

This weekend I woke up early and tried using the timer method (where you set an alarm to go off at various intervals) and woke up frustrated that I didn't have results. Then I remembered one attempt where I was getting vibrations and was concentrating on staying very still but nothing was working so I went out and laid on the couch and tried and was getting various vibrations out there. But then I realized that this was a dream... or was I actually out of body but just not lucid enough? Either way, my effort carried over into my dream state so I think that's progress.

Last night I got way too drunk to even attempt much of anything this morning. It was a bruiser. I'm hoping to have some luck tomorrow morning given that I have the day off.

Booyakasha.

Saltcube

Yes, the saltcube. What a strange name.

I saw a product called "saltcube" this week while browsing some forums. It's a video set geared toward lucid dreaming and Astral Projection so I thought I'd check it out based on the reviews around the net. I watched the first video (of two) last night and I must say I'm impressed at the information. Very to-the-point. It gives you techniques you can try that same day.

I decided I would try the timer method suggested in the video. In this, you wake up for a little while and then go back to bed with an alarm set to go off at various intervals. I created my own silence/alarm track using Cubase and loaded the mp3 onto my iPod. I went with the suggested minutes interval: 8,4,8,12,16,20,20,6. I plugged the iPod into my iPod alarm clock and off to bed I went.

So I wake up at 4:30am (ugh) and hang out on the interweb for 20 minutes and then get back to bed. Next thing you know the alarm just starts going off. No iPod track like I had hoped. So I kick off the track and lay there very still and hopeful...

Laying there there I eventually feel myself going off into a trance state. My body becomes very heavy and tingly and a rushing sound starts in my ears that keeps getting louder. Then I start to feel sort of excited and it's like I'm sort of out of breath. I keep having to consciously focus on my breathing.

After struggling with this for a few minutes the trance sensations subsided and I realized that a lot more than 8 minutes had gone by and I never heard the beeping programmed into the iPod track.

So I look over at the iPod alarm clock and it is paused at three minutes. I think it auto-sensed the silence and paused itself. I tried to start the track again but it did the same thing. Frustrated, I decided to just kick off to sleep and try again another day.

It looks like I may need a computer in the room to manage the timer because the iPod doesn't seem to like the extended periods of silence. Despite the frustration, I'm happy that I consciously got as far as I did into the trance state. Keeping my body and my eyes very still seemed to really help a great deal.

I'll be trying this method again this weekend so look for an update then. In the meantime, I'm going to work on a post regarding relaxation or energy work.

Projectionist in training...

Over the last month or so I've progressively gotten more and more interested in spirituality and some of the more esoteric and new age material. In early July I bought the audio version of Eckhart Tolle's "The Power of Now" before leaving for vacation and loaded it onto the iPod. As I whizzed down I-95 I found myself glued to every word. It explained, it seemed to me, the very cause of the problems I had been facing for my entire adult life: ego.

I was an ego-maniac. Blaming everything around me for my internal state. Not taking responsibility for my own feelings, thoughts. Projecting my feelings onto external people, things, and events to assess blame for my own unhappiness. One quote from The Power of Now that stood out to me so brightly on my 3rd or 4th listen: The mind harbors resentment and unhappiness in the unconscious belief that those feelings will change the situation.

My name is Dave and I am a recovering ego-maniac.

So with a new bag of reality, all of spirituality is interesting again. Tai Chi, Qigong, meditation, Buddhism, Jesus Christ, Astral Projection, Kundalini... you name it. After reading part of Robert Bruce's book Energy Work, I decided to get back into Astral Projection. I purchased Mastering Astral Projection (MAP) and off I go...



I had attempted it years ago but got frustrated and quit before I could have much success. Looking back, I don't think I laid a healthy groundwork for acheiving OBE success. Things such as keeping a dream journal, doing energy work, deep breathing, progressive relaxation, and a positive attitude weren't part of my vocabulary.



So I'm one week into MAP and I've successfully recovered dreams into my journal almost every day. The energy work I've done has created some interesting and sometimes powerful sensations. I think I'm off to a good start.



My hopes for this blog are primarily selfish. I hope to spur myself on higher and faster through journaling. Something about seeing your thoughts on paper ingrains concepts and ideas at a deeper level. But I would also hope that this can serve as a motivator and a support vehicle for those just getting into Astral Projection.

Look for me as MinstruelZ on the Astral Pulse, Astral Dynamics, and SaltCube forums!