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.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
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.
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.
Monday, October 20, 2008
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:
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.
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.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
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.
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.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
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.
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.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
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!
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!
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