Stories of losing/overcoming fear

[In Flux]

I've had several moments where I experienced "changes" that people associate with out-of-body experiences or astral projection, such as loud thunderous noises in my head, shaking and vibrations, strong energy rushes in my body, and a feeling of expansion of my conciousness (as if I receive sensory inputs that I normally do not have access to). Invariably, this happens at night, it builds up during my dream, until I become concious of these experiences. At that point, I really freak out, and - using my intuition to mentally push the right buttons - I fight hard to shut everything down again.

I have also had much milder experiences, for example at the end of a dream I may sense myself flying back to my physical body, and gently swooping down until I wake up. Initially this freaked me out too, and I would start struggling to wake up, which made it impossible to enter my body. At some point, I learned that the only way to wake up was to let go. I know that in general the advise is to "let go", but when the experiences are intense, I am so scared that "letting go" doesn't feel like an option (my whole being is just grasping for the feeling of safety).

I would be interested know if other people were similarly freaked out, and if you overcame this fear somehow. Or did the fear simply fade over time?

[BlazingEssence]

Hi Dear Friend,
I experienced the same things. And yes it was scary at first. But I was obsessed with AP, so after sometime I started feeling good having those sensations because they wake us up in the non-physical universe. The trick was to recognize those as triggers for waking up in non-physical state.


There is an audio file available on YouTube that helped me later to overcome even bigger fears that I am not going to mention because I believe, if I do, others will start experiencing those.

Tom Campbell- fear nothing.(look up on YouTube)

Listening to this audio puts me in a relaxed state and the message I keep hearing is fear nothing. So it's like tweaking the brain not to fear by using suggestion(A kind of Hypnosis).

Good Luck.

[In Flux]

Thanks BlazingEssence, I started listening to a video by Tom Campbell on youtube called "Tom Campbell - OOBE, Fear & Ego".

He mentioned that "the system" will provide some tests for your ability to overcome fear. I think I've seen such a test in my dream, where I was supposed to cross an area that was like a hellish playground (similar to an army assault course). I knew I was in a dream, that it was there for me to practice, and it could not really hurt me, but would be challenging for me. I was too afraid again to take this test (I shy away from unpleasant things, I'm just not very courageous). But I could imagine myself taking such a test in the future, because it's less intimidating than the OOB symptoms.

He also mentions that you need to get the fear out of your system somewhat to be able to go further with things like AP, that rings definitely true for me. He suggests getting rid of some ego, that's something I can do some work on (I think I need to work on that anyway), with less ego, there is probably less to fear.

Anyway, I have only just started to watch the video, but I think I can already recommend it to anyone interested.

ps After watching more of the video, I'm surprised that he says that lucid dreaming and OOB are basically the same thing. This contradicts my experience, where lucid dreaming would often lead towards having intense OOB phenomenons. If they are already the same thing, then why would lucid dreaming be some kind of prelude towards OOB for me?

ps2 He also says that OOB doesn't actually involve getting out of your body. I'm not saying he's wrong, but my experiences so far suggest differently. I have felt myself being pulled out of my body (through my foreheard) and it really was not because I was looking for that experience, it happened spontaneously (needless to say I also fought this experience with everything I had, feeling terrified). Also, like I mentioned, when I felt myself returning to my body during my sleep, any efforts to instantly wake up failed, I could only wake up when I gave up struggling to wake up (then I would feel myself sinking into my body, effortlessly).

p3 Despite not being totally convinced by his explanations, I do find the video very interesting and inspiring (he clearly knows things that I don't). I'm now wondering about what he says about the fanged monsters going away if you don't fear them. I remember fighting such a monster in my dream (no fangs, but really terrifying teeth), and I still remember how ugly and "low" it was. I find it hard to accept that this monster could have been my own creation, just because of it's ugliness and baseness. I know I'm not perfect either, but I cannot really imagine how something that ugly and base could originate just from my mind.

[Astral Explorer]

Originally Posted by In Flux

I've had several moments where I experienced "changes" that people associate with out-of-body experiences or astral projection, such as loud thunderous noises in my head, shaking and vibrations, strong energy rushes in my body, and a feeling of expansion of my conciousness (as if I receive sensory inputs that I normally do not have access to). Invariably, this happens at night, it builds up during my dream, until I become concious of these experiences. At that point, I really freak out, and - using my intuition to mentally push the right buttons - I fight hard to shut everything down again.

I have also had much milder experiences, for example at the end of a dream I may sense myself flying back to my physical body, and gently swooping down until I wake up. Initially this freaked me out too, and I would start struggling to wake up, which made it impossible to enter my body. At some point, I learned that the only way to wake up was to let go. I know that in general the advise is to "let go", but when the experiences are intense, I am so scared that "letting go" doesn't feel like an option (my whole being is just grasping for the feeling of safety).

I would be interested know if other people were similarly freaked out, and if you overcame this fear somehow. Or did the fear simply fade over time?

There's no need to worry about getting back into your body because your body exists in the physical dimension and your astral body exists in the astral dimension. Meaning that if you're astral projecting you're not in the physical dimension and thus you cannot leave or enter your physical body. The only thing necessary for a conscious astral projection is your consciousness shifting into your astral body - nothing more. All of the other "leaving the body" and "returning to the body" is just validation people need to convince themselves they weren't dreaming, a manifestation due to that need, or energetic magnetism. The only real other option is the astral projection started prior to you becoming conscious and you were Tri-ported into an astral being's body. So you are leaving "a" body it's just certainly not your physical body. Since in the astral realm beings are capable of "going thin" as they call it (when you pass through objects and other beings) they are capable of inserting your body into their body and vice-versa. This is something that usually happens in dream experiences prior to the dream beginning, so unless you looked into a mirror or had something happen in the experience that made you aware you weren't "you", you would never know you were in the body of another being. Sometimes they will make it difficult for you to walk, talk, things of that nature to see how you react and/or to urge an experience into a certain direction. But usually unless you stop and refuse to do anything except acknowledge them they will not make their presence known and will just observe from a first-person perspective.

[In Flux]

@Astral Explorer, thanks for your thoughts on this. I think I remember reading somewhere (in Robert Monroes book?) that there are two ways to experience things outside of your physical body. In one way, you sense things in other places without actually travelling there, and in the other way, your energetic body does leave the physical body. Have you heard of this? Maybe there are various other categories of OOB experience that can not all be attributed to the same phenomonon (to use an analogy: you may feel dizzy because of lack of sleep, lack of food, due to drinking alcohol, being whacked on the head, etc, and it would be wrong to only discuss these feelings of dizziness in the context of how well and how much you sleep).

It's true that I am reusing the words other people have used to describe their experiences, and maybe my experiences are in fact shaped by expectations that are based on these descriptions. However, in many cases I was not looking for any particular experience at all (I would just be sleeping/dreaming, without any expectation that something is supposed to happen to me), and "things just happened". For example, when I say that in my dream I felt myself being pulled out of my body through my forehead, that's actually a simplification of what I really felt. What I really felt was a sensation of movement, a feeling of misalignment, in combination with an incredibly weird feeling in my forehead (that I've not felt at any other time, and that I have a hard time describing). When I try to make sense of these experiences, a possible explanation would be: my "non-physical body" was leaving my physical body through the forehead. The alternative explanation that this feeling was produced by my expectation to have an OOB does not make so much sense to me, because I was not trying to achieve anything (all this happened while I was having an ordinary non-lucid dream of washing a car).

In any case, thanks for reading. I don't usually have a chance to discuss these things. I did have an interesting experience once where I let my mind wander around while relaxing, and the image of a bridge came up. I imagined myself standing on that bridge, feeling the wind. To my surprise, the image became more and more vivid, until I had the sensation that I was actually standing there, it felt as real as any "normal" daytime experience. In that case, there was no feeling of leaving my body at all. How does this compare to your experiences with AP? (is this similar to how you experience AP?)

[BlazingEssence]

I have undergone many tests too. Mostly I confront the problem, but sometimes I run away from things that I can't possibly fight. Like a Tiger in my house. And when I do confront impossible situations, the test changes. And I don't have the luxury of knowing that it's a dream. Whenever I realize that it's not physical dimension, I switch to warrior mode and have fun. But that does not happen during tests.
And yes, those tests really challenge you. They are there to eliminate all kinds of fear.

And thanks for bringing this up. I have been having dreams lately that I don't want to experience. But perhaps those are there for me to learn. Your post reminded me to see the dream as a lesson and not to take it personally.

1. I also think both are same and as many others have mentioned, the difference lies in level of awareness. Dreams < LDs < AP/OBE. So, you can be in a dream and realize you are in a dream, from there is is Lucid dream. And I believe when your own thought forms cease and you are still in non physical, that is astral projection, because otherwise everything around is creation of your mind, thus a dream.
But dreams are very important, they are not just video clips that we remember when we wake up. Those are messages from subconscious. It's a really good habit to keep dream journal.

2. About leaving the body. You surely already know that Astral World is at higher frequency than Physical World. So if you enter Astral world, the body won't be there. About the sensations, well those can be felt when you are leaving the body I think, because you are experiencing rise in frequency).


3. I think it's possible for the mind to create anything. Remember there is so less part of your mind that you have control of. It has infinite potential.

[In Flux]

Thanks BlazingEssence. that's useful (I like the idea of seeing the AP phenomena as coming from a rise in frequency)