Hey, dont know if this is already a thread. If i missed it im sorry. For a while i've been trying to astral project and im not getting anywhere with it. Does anyone have any tips for how to do it? Also what was your first experience like?

after reading how to do it on spellsandmagic.com i tried it. my whole body went tingley with my finger tips hurting, and my heart slowed down till it almost stopped. Still i keep trying.

Be careful is all i can say

Yes!

It's fascinating stuff and I spent years wondering why I wasn't getting anywhere. I first read about it on Demon's Domain when I was about 13 (old Fidonet hang-out related to all things occult).

Anyway, I spent a good deal of my early adolescence laying flat-out on the floor of our spare room getting tingly fingers, playing with my heartbeat, feeling very cold and wondering why I wasn't out of my body yet lol

When I was quite a bit older and started reading up on entheogens and trance induced projections I realised that's what all the accounts from early shamanism were on about - had a bit more help than the average spotty teenager from Northamptonshire

But what broke the ice for me was getting into dreaming in a big way. I'd heard accounts of people rolling out of their bodies. I'd managed to do the hand-apparition thing where you get this sensation that your hand has lifted up from your physical hand and can move about. I also spent long car journeys letting my 'soul-self' fly along outside the car - I guess, looking at it now, it's a type of meditation.

But I never got proper out of my body. Until, like I say, I got into dreaming and most accounts you'll hear of full-on astral projection/OBE will be from people drifting off or on the borderlands of sleep.

Again, to really 'out' yourself from your physical body needs a little help, which you can get from chewing mushrooms, or from playing with the borderline of wake/sleep.

Dreaming is the key to really prolific OBE experiences. Immerse yourself in OBEs - imagine what they're like, read all you can find on them, talk about them, type about them, make up stories about them and you will induce them. You're mind will fill up with what you want to achieve and it will happen. Often unexpectedly and sometimes after you've lost your interest in them because you think they're never going to happen. Like most truly amazing experiences, you don't control them or tell them what to do, they come find you and take you with them.

They come in strange shapes and sizes. OBEs (Out of Body Experiences) you don't always know you've had one 'til it's over. You think you're awake, you might just go about doing really mundane stuff. Then you will actually wake up and realise you weren't awake before.

Other times you'll enter one from dreamstate - I had a dream once where I was bouncing up and down on a bed in an underground bunker trying desperately to touch an overhead electric light bulb. I knew that if I could just touch it I'd leave my body. I jumped and jumped and eventually with enormous effort, I touched it! The rush as I left my body was so exhilarating it woke me up! Pants

Other times, and the type of controlled astral projection you're probably talking about, you reach through lucid dreaming. You're dreaming, you become aware you're dreaming, you take it from there. More control than waking up after the event and realising it's over. But again, projection tends to have a finite length of time to it. If you don't wake yourself with the realisation you're actually travelling you tend to slip back into ordinary dreamstate after a while - sometimes you can do it a few times in one night. Possibly to do with chemical cycles of sleep. Though I probably shouldn't have told you this because now it'll be printed somewhere in your psyche and you'll believe it

Anyway. focus on dreaming. One way to slip into lucid dramstate is to lie there as you're drifting off to sleep - don't over think it or try and direct your thinking, sit like you would as an audience member at the cinema, just let all images come at you - and you'll see some weird stuff you can't figure out where it came from. But just let it wash over. You'll get more and more tired but you'll find as well as this tiredness there's part of yourself still there watching that isn't tired at all. This part of you can step out into the images and the dreams. Mostly you'll just fall asleep and wake up the next morning as normal, but sometimes you'll find that after the 'death' of conscious thought, this second self will be reborn into dreams - you will transfer to it. Your natural instinct is to try and make this happen - the more you try and make it the tireder you'll get quicker. You can't force it. But just be aware of it. You have to let go and sleep, like hypnotism it doesn't work if you try and stay awake to know what it feels like

But build up a dialogue with that second self, it's the part that travels

Drown in dreaming, make it your focal point and travel will follow.

Let us know how you go! x

I used to try and push myself out of my body, and always got stuck at my shoulders. It was quite annoying. Then I read about 'rolling' out of your body, and that is so much easier. A book I'd recommend is;

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Journeys-Out-Body-...12999240&sr=8-1

Q

I have to agree with Thin here, totally, dreaming is the key. Being able to lucid dream helps alot. I find the right type of music playing is also a great help, but thats also down to personal taste.

Visulisation is another good one to practice.

Had my first OBE when I was very young, was coupled with a near death experience too - nearly drowning in a river.

When I was going through my late teens and early 20's, sometimes I had problems staying inside myself!

Excellent post by Thinair, covers about all I reckon.
I am really a dunce at this stuff, always falling asleep but then, weeee, off I go! I find the main stumbling block was always the holding of consciousness that something was happening, as an observer of myself, without getting kicked back by the excitement or disbelief. So I to handle this I went through a period of strengthening my ability to just observe and watch in a dream, or to just allow a trance state to flow along as it wanted. Then I started to control it more with a sort of ritual intended to be an instruction set of what I wanted to achieve, where I wanted to go. Sometimes I would get the answers in a dream, sometimes I would travel.
I find that my ability fluxes a lot, never worked out why except that as with most things, a serious attempt at being healthy helps a lot, free of all drugs including tea, coffee, sugar and importantly spending time going to bed early so sleep and subconscious needs are naturally dealt with and don't take over.
The most important thing for me in gaining control was to treat it as part of magickal practise, to accept I wouldn't necessarily get what I wanted but would get what I needed. Thus I got more and more aware dreams and trances that were relevant to any particular time and place and the overall level of psychic states increased. That gave me a higher percentage of success which really helps in belief and then from that, will.
Just do it as often as you can, exercise it.

Wow! Thanks for that Thin.

I've had an OBE a few times but didn't know what they were until now! Examples are like floating in the air and trying to make yourself come down, and dreaming that you have just woken up but you are still sleeping. The latter can happen 3-4 times until I finally wake up.

Have had the wake/dream bit too and more so recently. Those are quite vivid.

I might just get that book.

This is something I would muchly like to work on to get into a position to do it conciously. I have had the dream state wanderings before, visiting places often strange but coming back with answers to questions. There have been times I have physically visited a place for "the first time" only to find I know my way around and where to find things, with no way of having the knowledge.

Aside from the dream travelling the only time i have ever been awake and its occurred I was very stoned. Lying on a bed staring at a point on the ceiling, when all of a sudden that point was an inch away rather than feet. Turning to look down at myself threw me straight back in though.

Sometimes people have problems letting go too, I mean, really letting go.

Aye I can vouch for that personally mate, it aint easy

When I started I used to meditate and imagined a mirror in front of me... over time I was able to go through the mirror and astral project from there............ It is amazing and not as scary as some people make out. I am happy to give more specific advice if anyone wants it. Of course, I can only offer what my experiences have been

I did this throughout childhood and later, then made a conscious decision to prevent it as there was nobody with whom I could discuss it - unless I wanted to be locked up.

It's returned again, thankfully. I get a sort of vibration as a precursor. And often a loud crack within my head. Weird!