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AP_04.TXT
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FILE 4 of 15 - CompuServe Astral Projection Class by Don DeGracia, 1994
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                   Astral Projection Class on CompuServe

                        by Don DeGracia:  72662,1335

                              Copyright 1994
                           None of this material
                          may be reproduced without
                          explicit permission from
                                the author.



                       HOW TO ASTRAL PROJECT - PART 1



1.  USING DREAMS AS A SPRINGBOARD FOR ASTRAL PROJECTING

Well, we've gone through the theory, now it's time to get to the
practice.  The $10,000 question is: how do you astral project?
There are two main methods I will discuss: 1. becoming lucid in a
dream, and 2. by putting yourself into a trance. We will discuss
each of these methods in some detail because these are the methods I
have used successfully time and time again.  There is also a third
method you will find which I will mention, though I do not use this
method. This third method involves visualization excercises.  We will
discuss dream methods first, trance methods second, and then end this
section with a discussion of visualization methods.  Also, I will
mention briefly tapes and other devices that people use to achieve OOBEs.

Before getting to specific methods, I want to lay out one important
thing that you should do:

                *-------> KEEP A JOURNAL! <--------*

     This is *very* important.  You want to keep some kind of concrete
record of all of your experiences with altered states of consciousness.
Why? Because it is very easy to forget the details of these experiences.
You may think you will remember something, but, just as is the case
with our normal dreams, you will forget as time goes on. If you have a
record of your experiences you can always refer back to it at any time.
I'm not kidding either; it's very easy to forget the details of specific
projections. Even now I will recount an old projection to someone, then
go look the actual entry up in my journal and realize I have forgotten
important parts of the projection or have confused two different
projections.

Another reason for keeping records of your experiences is that, as
these records accumulate over time, you can go back periodically
and read through them. What you may then discover are similarities
and regularities in your experiences that you may not have
found otherwise.  For example, after I had been projecting for
a few months I read over my journal and discovered a recurring
pattern in my projections. What I  discovered is that, often, I
would attempt to fly in my projection but, once I would start
to ascend, my way would be blocked by tree branches.  Now, this
didn't happen all the time, only once in a while. It occurred
infrequently enough that I didn't realize that it was a pattern.
It was only by looking at my accumulated records over a period
of about 6 months that I realized this was occurring often enough that
it might mean something.  And mean something it did. I have since
come to realize that these tree branches blocking me from flying
away were a message from my subconscious mind.  Every time this occurred
in my projections - the trees preventing me from flying -  it was a
symbol of a serious defect in my personality.  It took me some time
to figure this symbolism out, but once I did I started working on this
problem.  And over time, as I've overcome this problem in my
personality, I have not been plagued by the occurrence of trees
blocking me from flying in my projections.

So, not only is the above an example of why you should keep good records,
but it's also an example of what I said earlier about how your personality
appears to be *outside* of you during a projection and how projections
are a form of self-therapy.

Back to note keeping: In my case, for a long time I simply kept a
notebook close to my bed. Everytime I had a projection the very first
thing I would do when I returned here to the physical plane is write
down as much as I could remember of my projection.  The entries I've
made have been as long as 10 pages (in the case where I remembered
the projection well), or may have only been a quick outline of notes
that I later (usually the same day) went back and filled in. Sometimes,
I have gone one or two days before recording the experience, but I
don't recommend this.  I've also made notes on whatever scrap paper
was available to me. Eventually, I've transfered all my notes to the
computer.  Now I keep my astral projection journal through my word
processor.  But still, I often write it down on paper before typing it
into the computer. The bottom line is to do whatever is convenient for
you, but definately keep records of your expereinces!

Keeping a journal takes discipline.  Astral projecting, just like any
other skill, requires discipline, and keeping good notes is a part of
the discipline you need to be succesful.

Another thing I want to say at the begining of this section on methods
is that astral projection is a SKILL.  As such it is like any other
skill that humans have; some people pick it up easily, others do not.
I like to draw the analogy between learning to astral project and
learning to play a musical instrument.  Some people are born with
the talent to play a musical instrument. A very few people are born
musical geniuses.  For most of us, however, the only way to learn a
musical instrument is by *practice*.  And for those of us who have to
practice, our learning may come easily or it may only come with much
work and dedication. Well, learning to astral project is the exact same
thing. A very few people are born with the talent to astral project.
For some, the learning process comes easily. For most of us, learning
to astral project requires work and effort.  THERE IS NOTHING MAGICAL
ABOUT LEARNING TO ASTRAL PROJECT.  Like anything else, you need to
learn the right theory, the right techniques and PRACTICE them. And
like anything else in life, you get out of it what you put into it.
The more you practice, the more you attempt to learn, the better you
will be.

And, unlike other skills we learn here in the physical world, such
as the example I gave for learning to play a musical instrument,
the factors that underlie your ability to project are primarily
*psychological*.   Factors such as intelligence, personality,
emotional make-up, social upbringing, and your belief system are all
going to be determinants in how hard or how easy it is for you to
project.  So, for example, you don't really have to change your beliefs
to learn to play an instrument or to learn to play baseball. However,
when you learn to astral project, your beliefs are critical.  If
you hold certain beliefs it will be impossible for you to astral project
(i.e. if you are a totally cynical materialist). Other beliefs could
potentially lead you to harm when you learn to astral project (i.e.
if you are a staunch Christian who believes in Hell - you just
might find yourself in Hell during a projection and scare the ****
out of yourself!).   So, this is just another way to say what I
said earlier; when you learn to astral project, you are embarking
on a journey of *self-transformation* to some extent or another.

Now, there is no easy way to determine if you are a person to whom
astral projection comes easily or if you are the kind of person who
has to work hard at achieving a projection.  At the very end of these
notes I will discuss how you can use astrology to determine your
propensity towards having an OOBE. But these astrological methods of
determing how likely you are to have a projection are only indicators.
And furthermore, these astrological methods are limited by the
accuracy of astrology, and in particular by the accuracy of the
interpretation of your chart (reading charts isn't easy to start with,
let alone using a chart to determine if you can astral project
or not.) Even if your chart predicts that it would be easy for you
to project, this is still no substitute for learning the right
methods and for honest practice and work.  So, until you can prove
otherwise, it's best not to glamorize your potential skills at
astral projection.  It's best just to assume that, as an average person,
you will have to put some work and effort into your attempts to
astral project.

So, this said, let's get into the "how to" of astral projection.

I suppose it takes some of the mystique and excitement out of astral
projecting when we realize that we very instinctively, and *unconsciously*
astral project all the time.  Except in this case we don't call the
activity "astral projecting". What I am referring to, of course, is the
very common process that we call "dreaming". As I said above, DREAMS
AND ASTRAL PROJECTIONS ARE VERY CLOSELY RELATED.  In a nutshell,
dreams are UNCONSCIOUS (or you could say "instinctive") astral
projections, and astral projections are CONSCIOUS dreams. Let us now
explore this notion in detail.

Every one of us dreams every night. We may not remember our dreams
the following morning, but this does not mean that we did not dream.
You can take it for granted that you dream at night, whether you
remember it or not.

When I discussed theory above, I said a couple of things about dreams.
First I said that psychologists do not have a good explanation of what
dreams are. It was also stated that occultists claim that the act of
dreaming is a transfer of our consciousness from the physical plane
to the astral plane. The bottom line is, NO ONE KNOWS FOR SURE WHAT
DREAMS ARE. But the nice thing about this is that it doesn't matter if
no one knows what dreams are, because we EXPERIENCE dreams for our-
selves. So, we can explore and study our own dreams directly, and
from these explorations come to our own conclusions about what our
dreams are are not.

Now, part of the problem is attitude. In our society in general
dreams aren't given much credence.  We generally associate dreams
with fantasy and unreality. We definately do NOT take dreams as
seriously as our physical waking life. Or, if we do take dreams
seriously it's usually at the level of those dream interpretation
books you see in the supermarket checkout lines which provide
you with pat, simple-minded explanations of what your dreams mean.

On more "intellectual" levels, we run into Freudian or Jungian-based ideas,
nebulous ideas that do little to address the concrete fact that
we all dream.  These types of ideas, that focus on the symbolism
or meaning of dreams, important though these views are in some respects,
implicitly deny the concrete reality of the fact that our dreams
are real experiences that happen to our consciousness.  It's ironic
when you think about it. Our society, with its physical sciences,
has incredible knowledge and control over the physical forces of
Nature (albeit a tenuous and perhaps deluded sense of control), yet,
with our practical and literal mentalilty, we don't take the fact
that we dream literally.  Dreams, are "symbolic", "subjective",
"psychological", which implies they are not real, not objective events.

So, right from the start we pretty much have built into us by our
very society a bad attitude about our dream experiences.  Since
society as a whole doesn't take dreams too seriously this creates
a situation where we are, basically, completely ignorant of the nature
of our dream experience. Thus, the first thing you, as a potential astral
projector, need to do is to CHANGE YOUR IDEAS AND ATTITUDES ABOUT
WHAT YOUR DREAMS ARE.

Consider this:  When you dream, *you* are *somewhere* doing *something*.
Right?  Wherever you are when you dream, you definately EXIST, right?
Things are going on in your dreams: you are doing things, interacting
with other people, being involved in situations, etc. So, to say dreams
aren't real flys right in the face of your direct experience. For, when
you dream, you are experiencing *something*.  What you have to realize
is that YOUR DREAMS ARE REAL EXPERIENCES OF YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS.

Basically, we all live a dichotomous life. We live two lives. One life
we live here in the physical plane. The second life we live in the world
where our dreams occur. They are both REAL.  They are very different from
each other, but each life is totally and completely real IN ITS OWN
TERMS.  See, the problem with how we look at our dream life stems from the
fact that we try to interpret it in terms of our physical life.

Our physical life has certain characteristics, the most basic and
important of which is our experience of SPACE and TIME.  Both space
and time have very definite properties in our normal waking life, and
our entire mind and perception are conditioned by the properties of
space and time as we know them here in the physical world.  For
example, we cannot see around a corner here in the physical world.
Nor can we go backwards in time.  Time is an overpowering factor in
our waking experience. We were all born, we are all aging, and we shall
all grow old and die; Time.  These things are so fundamental, we take
them completely for granted.

Now, given how fundamental time and space are, and given the fact that
we take time and space so for granted, what we do then is interpret
our dreams in terms of our physical experience with space and time. And
of course, as each and everyone of us knows FROM OUR DIRECT EXPERIENCE,
our dreams make no sense whatsoever if we think of them in terms of our
experiences here in the physical world.  So, the normal "knee jerk"
reaction is to conclude that dreams are NOT real, since, obviously,
our physical experience IS real.

Well, this attitude assumes too much and takes way too much for granted.
Isn't it completely possible that there is a logic to our experience
in the world of dreams, a logic of its own that could be DIFFERENT
from our physical waking experience? Could it be that, in the world
of dreams, space and time behave DIFFERENTLY than they do here in the
physical world? Could it be, perhaps, that the place where dreams
occur is indeed a world of its own, a completely natural world with its
own laws of space and time?

Such thinking takes us right back to the occult idea of the planes. The
astral plane is the world in which dreams occur, and it is a world
DIFFERENT from this physical world, which operates according to
laws of Nature different from (but related to) the laws of Nature that
operate here on the physical plane.  I do not want to go off on this
too deeply.  What I am trying to do here is to expose attitudes that
we all possess and take for granted.  The bottom line of what I'm
getting at is trying to help you, the reader, realize that it IS very
possible to think of your dreams as objective experiences occurring
somewhere. Whether you buy into occult ideas or not doesn't matter.
What matters is that you start to take your dreams seriously, that
you begin to appreciate that, when you dream, YOU ARE HAVING EXPERIENCES
THAT ARE JUST AS REAL AS YOUR EXPERIENCES HERE IN THE PHYSICAL WORLD.

This last statement you need to internalize, especially to be able
to see the intimate connection between your dreams and your astral
projections.

So, whether you want to believe that your dreams are experiences just
as real as your experience of reading these words or not, I'm going to
have to assume you will at least pretend for the time being that this is
the case so I can go on with the discussion.

Having established that our dreams are real and objective experiences
like our physical experiences, we need to look closely at the
relationship between these dual lives that we all live.  Let's now
look at some facts about dreaming.

There are two facts that we need to consider, and each of these is
something we have directly experienced. Most importantly,
we will see that the key here is memory.

First fact: we do not, as a rule, remember our dreams as well as we
remember our physical experiences.

Second fact:  When we are dreaming we generally do not remember the
facts of our physical life, nor do we even realize we are dreaming and
that we even live a physical life.

Both of these are absolutely true. I have experienced this, and so have
you, as has every other human on this planet.  These are both very common
facts about our existence. What we need to ask is: What do these
facts *mean*?

First off, these two facts are two of the main reasons we don't
treat our dream life as being equal to our waking life.  There is no
*continuity* between our dream and waking lives.  For the average
person, the dream and waking lives are mostly separate from each other.
Sure, one may dream of events which occurred when awake, and even
rarer, one may remember dream events that are relevant to one's waking
life (such as deja vu for example, or maybe a dream premonition).
Generally speaking though, this discontinuity between our dream and
waking life is the main thing that prevents our physical pesonality
from IDENTIFYING with his or her dream personality.

We can look at these two facts from another angle though, and that is
in terms of the relationship between our waking and dream selves. What
is the one thing that can relate our waking personality with our dream
personality?  That thing is MEMORY.  Memory is all important in this
astral projection buisness.  As far as I have discovered to this point
THE ONLY THING YOU CAN TAKE BACK AND FORTH BETWEEN THE PHYSICAL AND
NONPHYSICAL WORLDS IS YOUR MEMORY.

Look at those two facts I listed above. What do they have in common?
Memory. We cannot remember our dream experiences when we are here in
the physical world, nor do we remember our physical experiences when
we are in the dream world.  Learning to astral project will change all
this for you.  Here now is a very functional definition of what
astral projection *really* is: ASTRAL PROJECTION IS A CONTINUITY OF
MEMORY BETWEEN YOUR WAKING AND DREAM PERSONALITIES.

This is a big time practical statement, folks!  If you come to learn the
truth of this statement by direct experience, then you *will* be a
bona fide astral projector!

Now, for the first time in these notes we are ready to define what an
astral projection is. It is a dream, but AN ASTRAL PROJECTION IS A
DREAM IN WHICH YOU ARE FULLY AWARE OF YOUR WAKING LIFE.  See, the
term "lucid dream" normally refers to a dream in which you are aware
that you are dreaming.  Well, this is fine and all, but realizing
that you are dreaming doesn't mean you realize your self-identity to
the same extent you do while you are awake. In a full-scale projection
experience, your self-identity in the projection is identical to your
self-identity when awake here in the physical world.  This is what
I am trying to teach you how to achieve here: how to take your waking
identity into the world where dreams occur. You can call this an
OOBE if you want, or an astral projection, or a lucid dream. I don't
care what you call it, I only care that you understand what it is
you are trying to do. And again WHAT YOU ARE TRYING TO DO IS TAKE
YOUR WAKING MIND INTO THE DREAM WORLD.

With this understanding you are now in a position to realize
that THERE IS A SPECTRUM OF AWARENESS BETWEEN DREAMS AND ASTRAL
PROJECTIONS.  An astral projection is NOT a cut and dry thing.
It is NOT a thing completely different from dreaming.  Dreams
bleed imperceptibly into astral projections. The criteria to determine
if your experience is more a dream or more an astral projection is:
to what extent have you brought your waking identity into the dream
world?  You can do this more or less.  For me personally, I have
conditioned myself to recognize when I am in the dream world.
Once I recognize I am in the dream world, then I consider myself
"lucid", and I record the experience in my astral projection
journal.  That is to say, I draw the line between my dreams
and my astral projections when I consciously recognize I am
in the dream world during a dream.  Rarely, I may not even remember my
name, but if I remember that I'm "in that place again", then that is
my criteria to say I have had a projection (or OOBE or whatever
you want to call it).

When I project, I remember very cleary who I am in THIS physical world.
I recognize that it is me, Don, but I realize to some extent or another
that Don is no longer in the physical world.  I realize that I am in
some other world. To be absolutely honest with all of you, when I
am in a projection I am completely amazed. That is the main thing I
feel while projecting: amazement. I'm amazed that I am me, but I am
not in the familiar world I know. I stand there (or float, or fly) and
often, with intense curiosity just wonder where the hell I am at.
It is my curiosity about where I am at that drives my behavior in
my astral projections (most of the time at least).  I will wander
about and explore my environment. I will talk to the people I meet and
ask them questions. If I see books I will try to read them (reading
is actually very difficult for me in a projection).  I will study where I
am at as closely as I can. That is what I do in projections, and it is
because it is me, Don, the guy writing these words right now, but I'm
not in this world - I'm somewhere else. And it just amazes the hell
out of me.

Also, often in my projections, I remember what I've read in various books
about astral projection and I'll try to do the things I've read about.
This is one really important reason for reading as much as you can
about projecting: it gives you ideas for things to do. In the next
section I will offer some suggestions of what you can do once you
are lucid in the dream world.

To tie all this together at this point, what you are trying to
accomplish is to take your waking personality into your dreams.
What this means is you want to build bridges between your
waking and dream personalities. Basically, anything that will help you
strengthen the connection between your waking personality and your
dream personality will help you become an astral projector.  And, as
this section of the notes is entitled "Using Dreams As A Springboard
To Astral Projecting", let's now look at what you can do in this regard.

Basically, all of your efforts will start with your physical personality.
That is, YOU, the person reading these words, has to make the effort to
break down the barrier that currently exists between you and the other you
that lives in the dream world when the waking you sleeps.  There is really
only one being underlying these two lives, and that being is the
greater "you" in which the waking and dream personalities dwell.

THINGS YOU CAN DO:

1. Remember your dreams.

This is really an important first step.  You might want to keep a
dream journal (as distinct from keeping an astral projection journal)
just because of the simple fact that writting dreams down will help
you remember them better.

Another excersise to do is this: when you wake up in the morning, before
you do anything at all, just lay there in bed, relax and try to remember
as much as you can about your dreams from that night. Block out
any other thoughts that come into your mind. Often when you wake up
you immediately start thinking about what you are going to do that day.
Well, don't do that. Block those thoughts out. Instead, just relax
and concentrate on your dreams. Usually when we wake up we have at least
a trace of rememberance of that night's dreams. If you just relax and
focus on what little you do remember, you'll be surprised to discover
that automatically you will begin to recall other parts of the dream.

Both of these exercises will help strengthen the memory connection
between your waking and dream personalities. This is very important,
for when you start projecting, it is critical that you remember what
you did during the projection once you return here to the physical plane.
It's no good if you project, but forget all about your projection
once your consciousness is back in the physical plane. If this happens,
you've basically wasted your time.  Take my word for it, it is very
easy to forget your projections once you have returned back here to the
physical world.  It has happened to me a number of times.

Above I said that once you return from a projection you will want
to record what happened to you during the projection. Well, the all-
important prelude to recording your projections is remembering them.
If you don't remember your projections, you cannot write them down.
Once you start projecting, not only do you want to get in the habit
of recording your experiences, you also want to get into the habit
of trying to remember your projection as completely as possible
once you return to the physical plane.

What will happen is that the end of your projection will be marked
by you returning to your body. You will know you have returned to
your body because you will feel your body lying in bed, or however
your body happens to be situated. Once you feel yourself back in your
body, the absolute first thing you want to do is exactly what I said to
do when you wake up in the morning: relax and try to remember as much
as you can about what occurred during the projection. This may take up to
5 minutes.  Then, once you've remembered as much as you can, you
will want to get right up and write down everything you remember.
And again, just like with dreaming, if you take these first few moments
to relax and try remembering your astral projection, you will be amazed
at how easily you can remember what happened to you. The details
of the projection will just pour into your mind. But you have to allow
this to happen. If you just wake right up and make no attempt to
remember, then chances are very good that you will forget many things
that you could have otherwise remembered easily.  Again, this is
necessary disipline for being sucessful with astral projecting.

I really want to stress how easy it is to forget your projections once
you've returned here to the physical world.  Over time, as I became
better at projecting, and after having completely forgotten a few
really good projections almost upon waking, I actually got into the
habit of remembering my projection while I was still in it!  There
have been a number of times when I was projecting that I would
just sit in the projection and make a mental note of everything
that had happened to me up to that point in the projection with the
explicit purpose of remembering it once I was back in the physical.
I have even had projections where I literally wrote down what was
happening to me during the projection!  I'm serious about this; I
would find paper and pencil in the dream world and write down what
was happening to me right in the middle of my projection!  Needless
to say, making such effort to remember my projection while I am
actually in it makes it easier to remember once I am back here in
the physical world.

So, this is something you may want to try once you find yourself
lucid in the dream world: make very clear mental notes to yourself
of what is happening to you with the explicit purpose of recording
this information once you return here to the physical plane.



2. Self-conditioning excercises.

There are other excercises you can do to strenghthen the memory
connection between your dream and waking self.  I will now discuss
what I call "self-conditioning" excercises. These are very important
and form the basic technique for becoming lucid in a dream.  What
I am about to say now are the common ideas you will find in
technique books about astral projection (e.g., see Rogo, Ophiel,
and Fox in the bibilography) for using dreams as a means to
astral project.

"Self-conditioning excercise" means you are to plant suggestions
in your mind.  The idea is that if you keep telling yourself these
things long enough, then they will happen.  There are two suggestions
you want to convince yourself of:

1. You *will* become lucid in a dream.
2. You will find clues in the dream itself to trigger off your
lucidity.

Let's discuss each of these in turn.

You must convince yourself that you will project. Only in rare
cases will a person spontaneously project. For most of us, it
requires a strong desire to want to achieve the projection
experience for it to happen. In Rogo's book "Leaving the Body"
he calls this the "Desire Method", and bases this method
on ideas described in another astral projection book by a
Frenchman named Yram.  What this method entails is constantly
desiring to astral project. You want to think about projecting
as much as possible during your waking hours. You want to tell
yourself such things as, "I *will* project", "I am going to learn
how to project", etc. And what's more, you can't just say these
things to yourself half-heartedly, you have to really work yourself
up into believing these statements. You have to develop an almost
stubborn persistence that, come hell or high water, you *will*
project.

There are two things you are doing here. First, you are admitting
to yourself that astral projection is a real thing. This is very
important because any scepticism you have will only prevent you
from projecting. By telling yourself that astral projecting *is*
possible and that you *will* do it, you are opening up the possibility
in your mind.  Like anything else, you have to believe a thing
is possible to do it.

The other thing you are doing here is mustering up the power of
desire.  As we all know, when we truly desire a thing, we obtain
it much more readily than the things we don't care about.  Desire is
a very strong power in human affairs. Occultism teaches how to control
desire to achieve your ends (this is also an important part of
ritual magic).  What you are doing by building up the desire to
astral project is putting the power of desire behind your efforts.
In a sense this is like a booster rocket on a space ship. Desire
adds extra power to your attempts to project. Desiring
to really achieve a projection can make the difference between
being successful or being unsuccessful in your attempts to project.

I know the truth of this from personal experience.  In my own case,
during the times I have projected the most frequently, I had an almost
one track mind.  All I would think about was projecting. During the day
I would read as many books as I could find about projecting and
just desire more than anything else in the world to project.  As I would
go off to sleep at night (or when I would take a nap during the day)
I would think about nothing but desiring to leave my body as I fell
off to sleep.  I hate to say it, but you just won't be able to astral
project if you have a half-ass attitude about it.  Astral projecting
is not achieved by the half-hearted or the casual.  Along with practicing
the right exercises and developing the right attitudes and understanding,
you have to *really* want to achieve the experience.

I can say with much certainty that the stronger your will to achieve
a projection, the more likely you will actually project.

Now, let's consider the second suggestion you want to plant in your mind:

 You will find clues in the dream itself to trigger off your lucidity.

This is the heart and soul of using dreams as a means to astral
project. Again, this idea is taught in many books that explain how to
astral project. The essence of this idea is as follows.  We all know
that things occur in dreams that are absolutely impossible in our
waking life.  It could be anything: maybe in your dream you know some-
one who you do not know in physical life. Maybe you are in a familiar
environment in your dream, but things are out of place.  For example,
you may be in your house in your dream, but the furniture is different
in the dream, or there is something obviously different about your house
in your dream.  Or it may be something even more spectacular. Maybe
in your dream you are seeing animals fly - or even talk! Or you are
seeing something occur in your dream that is simply impossible as
far as physical life goes.

Now, here's the trick:

YOU WANT TO CONDITION YOURSELF SUCH THAT, WHEN YOU SEE ODD THINGS
OCCURRING IN DREAMS, YOU WILL USE THESE ODD CIRCUMSTANCES AS A
TRIGGER TO TELL YOU THAT YOU ARE IN THE DREAM WORLD.

Again, you have to think of your normal dreams and the fact that
in your normal dreams, these odd circumstances usually do not
even phase you.  You need to begin by *remembering*
these odd occurrences from your dreams.  I'm sure all of you can
think of something odd you saw in a dream that didn't phase you
at all. As you remember such weird dream events, think to yourself,
"the next time I see something like that happening in a dream, I
will become aware that I am dreaming".  If you work on this over and
over, eventually it will happen: you will be in a dream, see something
weird that could never happen in your waking life, and all of a sudden
realize that you are dreaming.

When this actually happens, it is possible that you may actually *feel*
something happen to you in the dream.  For example, we all know the
feeling you get when you have been sitting in a chair for a long time
and then quickly get up. You experience a "headrush", where your skin
becomes tingly, your vision may even disappear for an instant, and you
hear a whoshing sound in your ears.  On many occasions, when I have
become lucid during a dream, I feel this exact sensation. I don't have
the slightest idea why this happens, but it happens to me fairly
regularly.

Another thing that may happen the first few times you recognize that
you are in a dream is that you might wake up!  You will see something
weird going on in your dream, this will trigger you to become lucid,
and all of a sudden you are awake lying in your bed!  If this happens,
don't become discouraged. This is very likely to occur to most of you.
It is not bad when this happens, it is good. It is a sure-fire sign
that you had your waking mind in the dream world, even if it was
only for an instant.  I have discovered that it is like a balancing
act keeping your waking mind in the dream world. In a sense, your
waking mind is "heavier" than your dream mind. I don't know how
else to say this so just bear with me. Your dream mind is much more
nimble at being in the dream world, which only makes sense. When you
take your waking mind into the dream world, it is like trying to
balance a quarter on the head of a pin. The slightest disturbance
can cause your waking consciousness to fade out of the dream world.
It will take some practice to get used to having your waking mind
in the dream world. I mentioned lockmolds above, and this is
what the lockmold is all about; keeping the right balance that
allows your waking mind to stay in the dream world for any amount of
time.

Finally, it is very possible that the first time you become lucid
in a dream (i.e. bring your waking mind into the dream world)
that you will be perfectly stable. In this case YOU'RE THERE!!
You made it! You are astral projecting. What to do at this
point will be the subject of the next main section of these notes.

So, to wrap up this section on using dreams as a springboard
for astral projecting, I will summarize the key points of this section
and as well assign you specific exercises to do.

In summary, these are the key points of this section:

A. You have to change your ideas about what your dreams are.
You have to learn to accept dreams as a real and valid part
of your experience as a living being.

B. You need to start a journal of your experiences. If you want
to have one journal for recording both dreams and astral
projections, that is fine. If you want a separate journal
for each, that is fine too. What ever you decide, you have
to start writing down your experiences in the dream world.

C.  You have to appreciate that dreams and astral projections
form a continous spectrum of states of consciousness.  A dream
is when you are oblivious to your life here in the physical
plane, an astral projection is a dream in which you are highly
conscious of your life here in the physical plane.  Your consciousness
can be anywhere between these two extremes in actual practice.

D.  You need to strenthen your ability to remember what happens to
you during dreams. This means you have to use your memory as a BRIDGE
between your waking and dreaming experiences.

E.  The more desire you have to project, the more likely it is that
you *will* project.

F. You want to condition yourself to recognize when you are dreaming.
This is most easily accomplished using the strange and weird events
that occur in dreams as a trigger to becoming aware that you are in
the dream world.

Finally, to end this section, here is a list of exercises:

1. When you wake up in the morning, before you think of anything
else, try to remember as much about your dreams as you can.

2. Write down everything you remember about your dreams.

3. Write down a list of all the weird things you've seen happen in
your dreams. (Not necessarily based on what you do for exercises 1
and 2, but write down *any* weird dream occurrences you remember.
Don't forget, any "weird" dream occurrence is something that cannot
happen, or is different from the way things are, in your physical life).

4. Throughout the day, stop and be aware of yourself.  Think of who you
are, where you live, and where you are at (i.e. home, school, work, etc.).
When you do this, tell yourself you are going to do the exact same
thing when you are dreaming.  Do this as often as you can throughout the
day.

5. When you go to sleep at night, meditate on the following thought:
"Tonight I will become aware that I am dreaming while I am dreaming.
If I see anything weird happening in my dreams, then I will become
aware that I am dreaming".

If you do these exercises, as well as the other exercises mentioned
throughout the text, you will greatly enhance your chances
of having an OOBE.


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