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!