The Path of the Soul

I've been trying unsuccessfully to astral project for a long time now, using product after product and method after method. Unfortunately except the Hemi-Synch which did "something" (but not much), everything else was really useless for me.

A few days ago I got in the post William Buhlman's latest set of CDs called How to have an out of body experience (check out the link if you want to see what is all about with the full description of the program), and finally last night when I went to bed, I popped in the first CD and started listening to it.

William Buhlman was actually the first who got me interested in astral projection with his book Adventures Beyond the Body, a book which I treasure even now.

So I've started listening to the first CD, where Buhlman was talking about his first AP experience, was giving the list of what you can feel as you're getting closer to have an out of body experience and the last track was a 30 minutes visualization exercise.

While listening and following this exercise track, my body started to feel first twitchy, then I felt a light tingling all over the body. Then it became lighter somehow (part of the exercise was to imagine we're floating on a cloud) and eventually the body started to feel heavier, and sinking in the mattress.

And then I heard a loud pop in my ears like a cork being pulled out of a bottle. Sadly this brought me out of trance but boy I was so happy: these were the exact "symptoms" that Buhlman listed in one of the previous tracks on this CD, right down to the popping in the ear.

I knew I was closer to an AP than ever before. And this was only an exercise for practicing visualization, it was not the 'real deal' yet.

Now I can't wait to start listening to the rest of the CD and practicing with one of the methods Buhlman describes in the CDs.

I've read at the Astral Pulse forum a while ago (and even Buhlman mentioned) that not every technique or method works with everyone. You have to try to find the one that works best for you. So far it seems I've been trying the wrong techniques - for example listening to any form of Binaural Beats seem to cause me headaches.

But the guided voice is what really seems to mostly resonate with me, so I'll keep on using the Buhlman CDs and report back on how I got on. I can't wait to have my first real astral projection!

I had a few more Introduction to Focus 10 sessions during the last few days, however there was nothing special to report. I know it's early to have any big headways in this. I was always in bed with the headphones on. Today I tried it again like I used to one year ago, sitting on my chair in my office. For one, I got really deeply relaxed. I clicked out a few times.

During one of those click-outs, a woman put a spoon on one of my hands. As soon as I clicked back in, I physically felt the cool touch of the spoon on that spot. That was quite interesting and different experience. I had that feeling for a while until it actually disappeared. Otherwise it was, again, a regular session whereby I simply felt myself deeply relaxed.

Another thing I'm trying when I go to sleep is learning to see the hypnogogic images that are usually happening before falling asleep in a dream. I'm reading an ebook by Donald DeGracia called Astral Projection Class on Compuserve, it's a free pdf that is makes it really easy to understand many things about astral projection, OBE and lucid dreaming. Why is it that many times the free books are more useful than those were we pay heavy money for them?
Here is the ebook (it's a pdf so you need Acrobat Reader to open it) if you're interested in reading it. I highly recommend it!

I feel I've neglected my spiritual practices enough so I've decided to get back into meditation. I am currently testing two different types of meditation, the original OM CD by Tom Carey and Dick Sutphen's Ultra Depth Hypnosis. So far I find that Dick Sutphen's voice reaches me more than the OM bells, I tend to respond better to it, so I will just use this for now. I know it is a past life regression CD, but it has some good meditation tracks on it and I want to start small again, and take it one step at a time...

Also I will start again with my out of body (or astral projection) exercises in the night when going to bed, before falling off to sleep. It's a pity that I stopped actually as I was making some good headway. I got a few times to the state of vibrations earlier on, and now, I have to start it all over again. Oh well, it's true what they say, better later than never...

I have a lovely old neighbor who is in the habit of sitting out in his garden (which is just next to our bedroom window) and around 6-7 am and have his radio blasting on the news. I've tried many things, talking to him (worked temporarily), even put foam ear plugs in my hears (didn't work as I woke up with pain in my ears), left the air conditioning on in the morning, closed the window...I'm at my wits end, really. He's just one of those annoying neighbors that are old and simply don't care about their own surroundings and neighbors.

Anyway, I was sitting in the bed this afternoon reading Psychic Discoveries Behind The Iron Curtain by Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder - an amazing book about the many different psychic experiments in Russia during the Communist era - when I heard again the radio blasting fully in my year...I was actually reading about this guy who was explaining how to trained himself to become psychic. He was basically 'commanding' people to do this, do that, and of course at first it didn't work, but he kept at it until the people really started touching their foreheads, or waving away a non-existent fly from their ears. While reading the book, I remembered my previous attempts at meditation, relaxation and astral projection and since I had about an hour to kill, I started to relax my body. After a few minutes I said a couple of times 'close the radio', 'switch off the radio', I even said it in Greek. Soon I listened to something weird...silence. The guy switched off his radio and he was nowhere to be seen, he went inside the house.

Now of course, I don't say that this had anything to do with my meager psychic attempts on his brain :D But nevertheless for I moment I was grinning from ear to ear. Needless to say, I felt very smug.

After that I continued with my AP experiment - nothing happened except I became very sleepy, but it was interesting, nevertheless.

I haven't really been doing any spiritual or psychic work during the last year as 'real life' took over and I had lots of things to deal with, but I will start meditating again and I will start my AP exercises again. I've just realized today during this afternoon 'experiment' that I was actually missing them...

I have a go away - come back relationship with astral projection. I keep trying it for a while, then I give up. Now I'm back again at it, wanting to try it out once again.
An interesting post has been made on the Astral Pulse forum, which got me thinking, because it is also valid for regular meditation, which I do at times.

When we meditate, we always try to get the body to relax as much as possible, almost to 'go to sleep', while keeping the mind busy - not with day to day thoughts, but with whatever it needs to be focused on during meditation. However I've tried it today the other way around. I did get comfortable, while focusing all the time on relaxing my closed eyes instead, forget about the body. Just relaxing the eyes, getting them close to the stage of before falling asleep. This would be the first stage in one of the ways to get an OBE. I'm not there yet, but it was definitely an interesting experience. 25 minutes passed practically instantly. My body went at some point numb by itself, without me trying to focus on getting it there. And while I was focusing all my time on resting, relaxing my eyes, for some reason the mind chatter, the daily chit chat was gone very fast from my mind today.
Hm, very interesting, I'll try meditating this way for a while, even when I'm not trying to project.

I loved this quote from that forum regarding the usual way of getting the mind awake and the body asleep, had a chuckle at it:

"I believe 95% of you out there who have trouble inducing an OBE fall into this trap. You spend all of your time focusing on preparing the PHYSICAL BODY for an OBE (which doesn't get to experience it), and less time on preparing your MIND for an OBE (which does get to experience it).

That's like washing your brand new car for your vacation to Disneyland, and then you take the train there instead."

The whole post is talking about OBE but I can really see the benefits of this different technique for regular meditation as well.