[peenumbra]

Hi there - This is my first post to this forum. I'm really glad to have found it!

I have some fears/concerns/excitement about new events lately and was hoping to get some insight.

So all my life I have been plagued by regular sleeping paralysis. Often it goes the same way: I have a horrible nightmare, I force myself to wake up to get out of it, and then I'm stuck in my bed, paralyzed, unable to move, still freaked out, trying to thrash and scream.

Over the last month I've been reading Robert Monroe's Journeys Out of the Body (purely out of fun and curiosity), and a couple of changes have occurred in this pattern since I have been reading this book.

The first was a couple weeks ago: I had a dream that I had a seizure, collapsed on the floor, convulsing and unable to control my movement. Very real, and very unpleasant. I quickly "came to" in my bed, but instead of the usual paralysis, I was in the midst of the vibrational state. Because I had been reading Monroe, I had the thought, "Oh my god, is this it? Could I leave my body right now?"

As soon as I thought this thought, I heard thunder in my room, and the pressure in my ears seemed to rumble. Right after this, something GRABBED me from behind, in my bed, and wrestled me down tight. It was terrifying. I tried to move and couldn't, and felt the incredible force of this person/thing/being behind me wrestling me down strongly. Even when I surrendered and let go, it did not release its tight grip. I could do nothing. It was so scary, all I could do was just think, "this will end soon, and maybe it's friendly - just think that it might be friendly!" Although it felt way too violent and terrifying to be anything friendly. This was just to keep my panic at bay. And before long I woke up, wrote down my experience, and didn't go back to sleep for a couple of hours.

The next one was last night. I had a dream that started to turn bad. I realized I was dreaming. I had the idea, maybe I can just see where this dream is going, and decide whether to stay or not. So I loaded up the future of the dream on a little screen. It was horrible, and it was starting to become real, out of the screen. It nearly caused me to panic, so I went back to my old pattern of forcing myself awake - with one difference this time: I decided to do it with patience rather than with panic. Don't push it or force it. Just decide to wake up, trust that it will safely occur, and calmly wait as the process unfolds.

It worked! Everything went dark, and I felt myself moving fast through darkness. After only a couple of seconds I was back in my body, in a full-on electric vibrational state. It was really, really powerful. I was aware that this could be a possible "jumping off point", but after my previous experience I dared not even THINK of doing it. I decided to just relax into it and WAIT.

After a minute, the charge just turned off like a light switch, and I found I could wiggle my fingers and toes, and move, fully awake and present in my body. I was amazed that I had just gone through a full transition from dreaming to physical wakefulness without any unpleasant paralysis or visitations. It's firstly incredibly exciting that if I can do this now, perhaps I have cured my sleep paralysis that's dogged me all my life? Simply by accepting that moving from dreams to waking involves a bodily process that takes some time. It's secondly exciting that I may also be able now to fairly reliably access the astral "gate" via return from dreams.

But I'm really, really terrified to do so. Partially because of some of the reports I've read (including from Monroe), and especially because of my prior experience of the "thing" holding me down forcefully.

What could that have been?? Could it have been friendly? Maybe something to do with the fact that my vibrations weren't at the right frequency for me to leave my body and so I couldn't? A dark entity, or perhaps a friendly one that was trying to protect me, but which I misinterpreted? It's really so scary I don't know if I want to pursue this in the future, but because sleep paralysis is a regularly recurring phenomenon in my life, I expect I will be entering this vibrational state much more regularly now that I have discovered the process.

If anyone can give me some insights into what that "holding down" entity was, if anyone has experienced something like this, I would love to know.

And I know I'm on an Astral Projection forum, so users will probably be more inclined toward "Pursue!", but I'm still not sure I want to. I've had pretty shaky and scary mental health crises in my life and this whole huge doorway opening up is, to be honest, a bit freaky to me.

Any advice and insight is much appreciated - And thank you all in advance!