So much advice here, and all I can contribute is that whatever you read, it'll still be different for you, although there are common factors.

The ONE time I've managed a temporary OBE (which turned into some insane Inception-esque Lucid Dream) I was playing Battlefield 3 (the plane mission), and the sky going past put me into one of those odd trances. Feeling rather tired anyway, thought I'd hit the bed for half hour or so.

Vaguely remember my body feeling weird, and then what I thought would be 'crawling' off my bed, so that my legs were still raised up and my face and body were resting on the floor. (Looking back I realised it was more of a spin - yay 360 degree motion!). Then I felt myself being sucked up into the air, and I saw the earth get smaller and smaller below me, and my consciousness came to me.

I realised I wanted to visit my old Neighbourhood and house, and as I did I saw my neighbours coming out of their house. Absolutely no idea if they did or not, but I can remember it. Odd thing though - I remember seeing a red Polo (car) outside their house, and when I went back fairly recently, they had that car. Strange, seeing how they didn't have it before.

After that everything got really weird and I don't want to go into my lucid dream state.

Reading a couple of sorrowful comments above and haven't quite got the jist of who's passed away, but it seems like they were a respected member of this thread (and / or forum - will be reading back later, but 136 pages is a lot to go through!) - so RIP, and best wishes from a new member.

Back on topic though, if anyone fancies 'hoisting' me out at any point, I would be much obliged! Thoroughly enjoyed the last one, and this thread has rekindled the passion I used to have for it!

I have eveyr respect for the OP. Did she die? Doesn't matter. I respect everybody here anyway. But that doesn't mean I believe this. Now, I've had some weird lucid dreams. One time I partially fell asleep while in the car at a mall and I remember being above the parking lot looking down at the cars. I immediately woke up. And when I was a kid growing up I told my family that I slept with my eyes open. This is because I had a lot of lucid dreams. My sister had an OBE when she was sick - or she says she did. But I personally think that there's no after-life or astral plane or hocus pocus or whatever you call it. The human brain is an expansive elaborate natural thing. It's like a universe packed into 3 lbs of mostly water. I believe these experiences are created by the brain and people are incited to believe them to be real because it relieves some of their anxieties. No offense.

There could be something to it. Not impossible. But I doubt it. I'm a doubting thomas. I just think the urge to believe these things is so strong that it defeats any attempt at questioning it.

To anyone fairly educated, can someone clear this up for me?

I didn't know what a higher self was, so I did a quick google and came up with this..

"What is the role of the Higher Self?

Your HS is watching over you and helping to steer you in the direction you intended to go when you created your spiritual contract (your life plan). HS knows where you’re supposed to be, and when, and who you’re supposed to meet and when. Before you incarnated, your higher self got together with some spirit guides and basically said, “Will you watch over me when I incarnate? I’d particularly like your help to accomplish X.” HS gets all your guides together, explains the plan and how they will be able to help you, and then prepares to cast a portion of its consciousness onto Earth. HS works with guides of your future parents as well, to make sure they’re in the right place and the right time doing the baby dance at the right time of the month. Once you are born, however, all you have of your higher self is an ethereal connection, which you will hopefully feel or discover as you tool along through life. Your HS also scrambles to edit your life plan if, through your free will, you “mess” things up and get off track."

Main point - I was a test tube baby (swear down). Anyone fancy filling in the blanks ;/?

---

---

Originally posted by jonnywhite
I have eveyr respect for the OP. Did she die? Doesn't matter. I respect everybody here anyway. But that doesn't mean I believe this. Now, I've had some weird lucid dreams. One time I partially fell asleep while in the car at a mall and I remember being above the parking lot looking down at the cars. I immediately woke up. And when I was a kid growing up I told my family that I slept with my eyes open. This is because I had a lot of lucid dreams. My sister had an OBE when she was sick - or she says she did. But I personally think that there's no after-life or astral plane or hocus pocus or whatever you call it. The human brain is an expansive elaborate natural thing. It's like a universe packed into 3 lbs of mostly water. I believe these experiences are created by the brain and people are incited to believe them to be real because it relieves some of their anxieties. No offense.

There could be something to it. Not impossible. But I doubt it. I'm a doubting thomas. I just think the urge to believe these things is so strong that it defeats any attempt at questioning it.

edit on 12-8-2012 by jonnywhite because: (no reason given)

Nothing wrong with being a doubting Thomas. He certainly served a purpose as a skeptic, and I'm not even sure I believe my own experience (as real as it was to me). Be a doubting Thomas. I encourage you.

If anyone is still reading this thread & has been "traveling" for at least a year or considers them self very educated in the subject. PLEASE send me a private message! I have a question that I can not seem to find the answer to. No, I do not want you to come "yank" me out. It is just a question that words can answer. Please, it is a very important question..

Go ahead and ask here, there are many people who are very well read on the subject and should be able to answer easily. Asking publicly benefits the thread/community as well. I've had one full fledged out of body experience, but I've been well read on the subject for probably a decade. Then again, one can become well read on the subject in a few hours with Google these days.

One thing I have to point out though, is that "traveling for a year" is kind of relative. As I mentioned, I've had one experience, and I've been trying every night for -years- and failing to have another. Very few people are experienced enough to travel at will or even travel semi-frequently. The people who claim to be "experienced" seem to have sporadic results at best, every other month, once every few months, etc. It's usually a fluke.

I'm starting to think that I've become a bit of a Negative Nancy on the subject though. I don't believe 98% of the people who claim to be able to do it, thought I believe in the phenomenon 100%. It's just gotten to the point where unless someone can do it at will, like literally 30-60 seconds after closing their eyes, I'm not interested.

If you are just getting started, I highly recommend the Lucidology 101 videos on youtube. Along with that, read the wikipedia articles on out of body experiences, astral projection, sleep paralysis, REM sleep, and hypnagogic / hypnapompic hallucinations. That will keep you busy and answer a ton of questions.

As per the OP, I come here, with a request. On a different forum I frequent I was in contact with an astral traveler who claimed to be a star seed from the arcturian star system. I am a very open minded being and had no reason to doubt or dismiss this person. We went back and forth in various messages about topics such as, spirit guides, the athena, meditation, crystals, and his astral travels, he even showed me paintings of his recalls, my were they beautiful. Anyway, when I first discovered astral travel I had no idea what I was getting myself into. My mind, my soul and my conscious were all not ready for the journey I tried to impose on them, for very selfish reasons. Now, having studied astral travel, meditation, spirit guides, so on and so forth I feel I am ready, i am willing to learn. Before, I wanted to astral travel because it sounded fun. Now, I want to astral travel to learn, to expand. The last message we had before my mentor got banned was discussion of him helping me out of my physical body by pulling me out. (I remembered this thread and felt it was worth a shot) I do not know what happened to our plan, perhaps he forgot about me, such is life. For the past year or so now I've been practicing pranayama meditations, sometimes flowing in kirtan, sometimes in silence. I'm able to put myself into a deep meditative, trancelike state within 5-10 minutes. My only problem is I cannot leave my physical body. It happened once, on accident, I was sitting in legs crossed, spine straight meditative pose and suddenly my third eye, my astral eyes shot open, everything was light light blue tinted, almost ghostly in appearance, my astral body began to rise and I felt as if I was flying. I was not ready for the experience and got startled by the feeling and returned back to my physical. I'm here with a request, of an Astral traveling adept to assist me in leaving my physical body. I don't know if you can u2u me due to my lack of posts but if anybody with the qualifications is reading this, answer my plea. Peace be with you, namaste.

I've just read through part of this thread and found out the OP is no longer with us. May your soul drift in ether for eternity among the great akashik teachers and builders. Although, reading your posts, I am certain you are, and always will BE. May it be my pleasure, should be meet again, in another life.

Well this has been a strange week.

Not sure if anyone even reads this thread anymore, but I came (once again) to give my insight, and hopefully get some advice.

For about 5 days now I've been having sleeping problems - I'll doze into a light slumber, manage to get into the Hypnogogic state without even meaning to (although I've seemed to find a really easy trick which does it for you - if interested, hit me up with a PM!), and been waking up sporadically throughout the night every hour or so.. It sucks.

Now tonight, my flatmate stumbles in drunk and wakes me from one of these Hynogogic dream states that I'm in, annoys me and goes to bed.. I figure whatever, back to sleep.

Manage to accidentally (again) get into that state, and I'm in some sort of dream where I'm being chased around the house by dogs. I then find a baby at the bottom of the stairs called Lucas, and I'm trying to carry him up. I'm struggling, he's really heavy for some reason and I feel quite drunk (in the dream). What seems like hours go on, and in the dream I make it upstairs and fall on a couch.. Then these dogs start sniffing around my arms and I swear to god, I knew I was dreaming but I could feel it in real life. I remember feeling cold touches on my arm twice, and twitching away from them..

Incomes this big loud soul-crushing noise similar to a really old tap that squeaks when you turn it on - my whole body starts trembling and vibrating intensely and I actually think to myself - oh cool, I'm going into an OBE! Let's ride it out, see how it goes.. In my head there's this whole visualization of the Dr Who intro where it's all purple and vortexy.

Next thing I know I feel as though I'm upsidedown, as though my head is where my feet should be.. Majorly confused - having never really got this far before I tried to 'lift' out of my body to no avail. I remember breathing really heavily and then waking up, incredibly spun out.

Now you're thinking 'cool story bro' - thanks But really what's getting to me is :

How to lift out of your body?
Why haven't I been able to sleep for the last 5 days and keep having these incredibly vivid dreams?
Am I safe when I'm in that state? (I ask because occasionally that hypnogogic state will lead me to believe there's something in my room around me - creeps me the # out.

So anyway yeah PLEASE, anyone with ANY experience with OBEs, please drop me a message. I'd really appreciate it, got a lot going through my head right now!

I have come very close to having an OOBE but I can't seem to get out at the last part. I get the energized rising feeling and it seems I am halfway out but I can't get completely out

I think I am just having very lucid dreams but I have had some strange experiences lately. I have began to be aware of my pulse inside my head. I started one night trying to figure out just where "I" am. If you have never done this, it is interesting. I figured that "I" am some place in my head of course. I feel like that "I" am sort of behind my nose some place. It is sort of behind my nose, between my eyes, and sort of above the roof of my mouth. I guess around where the pineal is. Anyway, I thought and thought about where my conciousness is. I feel like the real me is a tiny speck of conciousness. When I do this I can sort of start to feel very small and inside this big body.
I also am aware of my pulse and I sort of get the pulse in my temples and behind my nose. I just concentrate on this a bit and relax. When I do this I can go into a dream. Sometimes I don't go all the way into a dream, I sort of get about halfway. I feel like rushing or popping in my ears or hear myself snoring even. It is very relaxing just to even get to that point.

I remember reading theRiverGoddess's posts many a year ago, only found out she passed away, RIP river.