Hello fellow projectors/dreamers
I have been nudged - *prodded* - to write this. I've written bits & bobs before, mainly pre-crash. Thought I had a lot of it stored on my old computer but can't find it (*cries*) so had to start again.
Just to confirm, these are my thoughts/experiences and I make no claim that any of this is true or a universal truth (or Truth, lol). I've come to these conclusions based on the years of experience/experiment/understanding. Even now, my 'conclusions' change with the breeze and I have days/periods where I think it's all simply in my head.
Generally speaking, I have three types of experiences. I rarely post them in the astral projection forum (or even the lucid dreaming forum) as I've come to see them all as simply 'experiences'. I'd rather not sub-label them and get into debates about the terminology. I post them in my own personal MySpace YourSpace Space, called Squatchit's Scribbles.
OK. So here are the three experiences, sub-labelled for the purpose of this post, lol.
Out-of-Body-Experience (OBE)
This is how *all this* started. I was having an afternoon nap and my mind woke up a few seconds before my body. I'd been reading about OBEs (via a lucid dreaming website) and wondered if I could leave my body. Amazingly, I did.
Over the next couple of years, I had many OBEs. Most of them involved separating from the physical (using a variety of methods) and exploring what appeared to be physical reality. However, physical reality would sometimes look different with doors in the wrong places and so on.
I occasionally encountered other people, learned to fly, went through hundreds of windows/doors/walls, met a group of beer-drinking monkeys, tried to contact deceased friends, tried to contact alive friends, learned to create portals, went through mirrors, explored the nature of my 'second' body, went through the back of the wardrobe in an attempt to get to Narnia, and many other things that are written down in my journals. I also successfully carried out the playing card experiment that Robert Bruce suggests in his book, Astral Dynamics.
In all the hundreds of OBEs I've had over the years, I've probably encountered the vibrations a handful of times. I have experienced sleep paralysis, but because I read about it
before experiencing it, was never scared and actually enjoyed exploring how to get through it.
As time went on, I began to have OBEs from dreams. And that's when the lucidity began and I became an avid student of 'phasing'.
Phasing
Phasing is quite simply phasing out of the physical and into the non-physical without any break of consciousness. Rather like changing the frequency on a radio from one station to another. From what I know of it, and based on my experiences, a Wake-Initiated-Lucid-Dream (WILD) is the same as Phasing. It was Robert Monroe who first used the term 'Phasing' and I think he wanted to get away from the word 'dream' so as not to dissuade anyone from exploring consciousness.
Of the three types of experience, phasing is my favourite. I had a period of time when it would happen maybe three times a week. These days it's much less... mainly because my focus of attention has shifted.
During the night after a few sleep cycles, I will wake up and practise. This involves watching myself go back to sleep...until the body is asleep and the mind is still awake. Getting the mind to a very deep state and staying awake is a balancing act. Oh and there is the hypnagogic stage to get through first.
The hynagogic stage involves visual/auditory and tactile sensations that need to be ignored to get through it to the next stage. Mine are mostly auditory. Bear in mind, I wear ear plugs and an eye mask so cannot hear or see anything physical.
I have had dogs barking, doorbells ringing, church bells ringing, my name being called loudly right against my ear, singing, voices (especially sounding like they are coming from a radio), rain lashing against the window, footsteps outside the bedroom door, and so on.
It took me many times to get used to these noises and ignore them. I found what helped was to remain emotionally neutral (SO important, imo) and turn in on myself. Sort of like curling up inside yourself, making yourself smaller and lower/deeper. It got me through that stage faster and easier.
If I hear footsteps and my mind thinks, "oh my, someone is outside my bedroom," then the mind has started to create and will manifest the door opening and the mind thinks, "oh *insert swear word*!" then the emotions kick in (fear) and before I know it, I am being strangled by a masked man in my bed. All because I allowed my mind to tell a story and my body woke up and reacted with fear. And then of course I wake up with a jolt - and think, "oh darn it, I was almost there."
Once I'm through the hypnagogic stage, everything goes very quiet and black. Then the images begin in my mind. Very quickly at first, maybe 10 per second. I watch them and eventually they slow down. One will stop and stay there. That's when I know I'm ready to phase. I will use my dream arm or mind to enter the image (if it hasn't happened automatically). I tend to use touch as my primary entrance. If I can get hold of something, a wall, grass, a tree, then instantly I find myself in the image. It's three-dimensional, full colour and I'm totally lucid. Simply put I've just walked into my own dreamscape. Without a loss of consciousness.
Astral Projection
I use this term if one of two things happen during either OBEs or lucid dreaming. During an OBE, if I go through a door/wall/picture/mirror/portal and find myself somewhere totally different than expected, I deduce I'm in the astral.
During phasing/lucid dreaming, if I remove the 'dream' aspects of my dream (through various techniques) and create a new environment, then I deduce I'm in the astral.
I have found that my astral experiences tend to be fairly 'human' in terms of environment/landscape and population. I've had one or two strange things and met a deceased friend or two, but otherwise they are pretty 'normal' experiences.
Sometimes everything seems so much brighter and cleaner, sometimes people are very tall - up to 12 ft - and sometimes animals are not quite how they should be. I've visited Monroe's 'The Park' and seen Monroe himself a couple of times.
These days, all the above experience tend to overlap. Which is why I'm more reluctant to separate them. I find myself rocking in a dream (either side-to-side or backwards-forwards) and leap out of my dream body, thereby creating a third body. Or I simply become lucid and go through the nearest wall to escape the existing dream and change environment. To the astral or a more 'public' dreamscape.
I'm of the opinion that lucidity is a very important factor...not necessarily for
where you are, but for memory/control and keeping a level head. I once read many years ago over at the Astral Pulse someone said, 'Lucid dreaming is
experiencing the dream, whereas non-lucid dreaming is simply remembering it.' That's stayed with me all these years. To actually experience a dream at the time you are dreaming it makes all the difference.
I think there are personal dreamscapes and public dreamscapes. I also think there are scapes/places/mindstates that have different properties. For instance, in some dreams I can easily manifest; in others I am unable to do so, regardless of the level of lucidity.
The whole of consciousness could be deemed under the umbrella of 'astral'. To me, it matters not whether I've been to the 'astral proper' or my own personal dreamscape. As long as I've enjoyed it, had fun, and perhaps learned something, then that will do me.
My very latest thoughts about why I always seem to end up in 'human' environments is that I'm there to show those residents/characters/dreamers that there is more to their reality than what they perceive. I become the 'higher' being (ugh, that doesn't trip off the tongue too well, but I hope you get my drift). Either by becoming holographic or explaining about the nature of a dreamscape. Teaching them to go through walls or doing a bit of magic for them. Flying around them...but also explaining they can fly too. I'm never violent (it's not in my nature) even though I often come across violence. If I'm lucid enough to face it, I always dissipate it with the tricks of my trade.
In essence, I'm quite gritty and down-to-earth, but have a box of tricks up my sleeve. I'm more suited to these human realms.
---ooo000ooo--
Phew. And I haven't even mentioned the Void.
Any questions, feel free to ask. I can only answer for me based on my experiences. I know I keep stressing that, but it's quite important (for me, ha!) to make that clear.
Linear Mode
