Reddit OBE FAQ 01 - Practice Foundations and Methods
Beginner advice, mindset, routine, and practical methods.
Preamble
This document is part of an archive of sac_boy’s Reddit writing on astral projection, meditation, dreams, psi, and related subjects. Most entries came from the original Reddit FAQ; newer self-posts that were not in the FAQ have been added where they fit.
AI was used as a filing assistant: to gather the material, group related entries, write short question/context labels, infer deleted questions where needed, and put the entries into a readable order.
AI was not used to rewrite sac_boy’s answers or self-posts. Those sections are reproduced verbatim from the local Reddit extraction, including original wording, spelling, punctuation, links, emphasis, and quoted fragments.
This document contains 46 entries. It focuses on:
beginner orientation and expectations
mental and emotional conditions for AP
practice timing, routine, and session length
relaxation, body focus, sleep, and exit timing
visualization, imagination, gurus, and technique pitfalls
Table of Contents
Cultivate radical gladness
Can’t, can’t, cannot...you are programming yourselves for failure
Sharing a comment thread (on the nature of ‘meditation’ suitable for AP) that you might not have seen
Quick tip: un-identify (dis-identify?) with your physical body and its sensations, even when using them as a meditation focus
Letting go completely--tips that might help somebody
Try this sleeping position technique for me (I don’t know why it works and I don’t know if it’ll work for anyone else)
Mental health and grounded practice
Inferred: how doubt and feeling unready affect an AP attempt
Breathing methods, feeling blocked, and practice timing
How long separation usually takes, and beginner practice
How long separation usually takes, feeling blocked, and relaxation
How long AP experiences usually last
Practicing at different times of day
Building an astral projection routine
Claims that everyone projects every night
Trying too hard to relax
Inferred: how hypnagogia relates to AP practice
Intrusive thoughts during meditation, and meditation
Falling asleep during attempts, and falling sensations
Heavy-body sensations and watching the darkness
Body asleep versus body relaxed
Twitchy legs and the myth of perfect stillness
Setting intention, and the rope technique
Inferred: why vision may be missing or unreliable during AP
Claims of instant astral projection
Inferred: whether the rope technique is useful
Inferred: whether the rope technique is useful
How I first learned to AP
Inferred: how to interpret early sensations, fear, skepticism, and beginner progress
Inferred: whether a difficult partial separation means they are blocked
Falling asleep during attempts, meditation, and expectations
Beginner practice, falling asleep during attempts, and feeling blocked
Feeling blocked
Feeling blocked
When to attempt an exit
Dry spells after early success
When a successful method stops working
Feeling trapped or stuck in an astral environment
Whether some people simply cannot AP
When nothing seems to work
Visualization and imagination
Whether AP vision is just imagination
Visualization and imagination
Teachers and gurus
Whether beginners need a guide or teacher
Separating AP from lucid dreaming
1. Cultivate radical gladness
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/AstralProjection/comments/1l89la8/cultivate_radical_gladness/
Context availability: own_post
Paraphrased context: Original post by sac_boy; no outside question.
Answer:
Not enough is said about the relationship between your emotional state and ability to AP.
Maybe you read somewhere that emotions are important, but maybe you skimmed over that bit because it sounded like new-agey fluff, and you’re going to be a serious AP practitioner. You’re going to be scientific about it.
People approach AP practice with this dead serious mindset. They iterate through techniques. As the months wear on, this mindset turns to frustration and anger. This is a mistake that will keep you pinned to your physical body indefinitely. Instead, you need emotional levity. This, above all else, will mediate your ability to AP. Note that frustation, fear and anger do not lead to some sort of useful dark side. There is no symmetry here between positive and negative. Instead those emotions lead to you laying in bed for hours with a mind like a clenched fist wondering why you can’t AP.
If I had to describe the emotion I use to initiate separation (and it is a matter of using emotion) then it is radical gladness.
I don’t care what else is going on in your life! You need to put it aside during your AP sessions, let it go. That’s part of the ‘letting go’ we talk about. You’re not just letting go of your body. You’re letting go of all the concerns that are associated with it. What do you care that the roof needs repaired? Your body cares that the roof needs repaired. Leave that worry there.
Now relax...slow your breathing, keep it gentle...put all thoughts of past and future aside...now think about how awesomely glad you are to be able to take part in this life. Think about how amazing it is that you can step out now and then and see the world from a different perspective. How lucky you are. How glad you are to be this exact person at this exact moment. For me this emotion manifests as an energy that swells in my chest. My breathing gets heavier by itself. There is a slight physical arching of the spine, my head is pressed into my pillow, my face turns upward. Lights fill my vision. The emotion hits a peak and I’m out of the body. It can really be that easy when your physical relaxation and management of emotion work together.
I’ve been doing this long enough that there are no ‘vibrations’ anymore. There is no warning that the time is right, I have to initiate it. If I didn’t initiate this emotional shift I’d just lay there in the pre-AP state indefinitely. But this sensation of intense gladness reminds me of the swelling energy of the vibrations; it feels related, though it is much more calm and controlled. There is something simple about it. There is beauty in it. It’s probably a little bit orgasmic, though in a non-physical way. It’s worth chasing all by itself.
Anyhow I just came back from an OBE, I’ve still got that afterglow, and it struck me that I’ve never written about this specifically.
TL;DR: cheer up
2. Can’t, can’t, cannot...you are programming yourselves for failure
Context availability: own_post
Paraphrased context: Original post by sac_boy; no outside question.
Answer:
I checked the sub today and the three highest-voted discussions were all about failure and inability to do this or that.
You need to be careful with the language you use to describe your progress. Even the language of ‘progress’ is loaded and includes the idea that time and effort are required for results. As you type this stuff, you will believe it, because written words have a certain authority to them, and the act of writing has a ritual power.
Similarly, people need to be careful what they read and focus on when visiting this sub and others like it. Exercise good hygiene with regards to your subconscious. If you come here every day to read about how other people can’t, can’t, cannot, you’re going to take a little bit of that on board yourself. If you are a beginner, I would urge you to stay away from forums for a while--you already know all you need to know. Remember there is a selection pressure here towards reporting failure and complaining. These complaints get upvoted by other people who have convinced themselves that they can’t, can’t, cannot. The people who are on their beds right now doing the thing aren’t here complaining about it or upvoting other people’s complaints.
All of you are minutes away from AP. Every single one of you, regardless of all the cants you have put in your own way. It is a modulation of attitude, emotion, and attention, in partnership with your subconscious. When it works, it is very simple. When it doesn’t work, you got in your own way, or you let someone else convince you that this was difficult.
I for one will be downvoting lazy complaints and moaning from now on because I’m growing tired of people coming here and coughing their failure-germs on everyone without having consulted the responses to the many, many similar posts from the past.
3. Sharing a comment thread (on the nature of ‘meditation’ suitable for AP) that you might not have seen
Context availability: own_post
Paraphrased context: Original post by sac_boy; no outside question.
Answer:
(This was a link post pointing to an older comment thread. The original post body is empty, so the relevant thread is reproduced here from the comments.)
Quoted context from /u/AC011422:
I used to do this thing where I liked to “meditate” when I was a teenager. I’d take these ten minute naps and hover between awake and asleep. I never projected, but I had (and still have) a lot of hypnagogia. Haven’t been able to turn that into projecting, though.
I really think exercise is my missing link. I usually spontaneously project through affirmations and intention, but really want to nail down conscious projecting from a meditative state. I know there’s a difference between the two experiences, and I’d really like to explore that, but I usually fall asleep.
/u/sac_boy:
In my experience, good meditation just breeds more good meditation, which doesn’t open up many opportunities for AP. Once you’re locked into a solid meditative flow you tend to just stay that way in the stillness and want to deepen it, even after feeling yourself going weightless and popping out of your body.
So I would say that meditation is definitely a path out of the body, but not necessarily to out of the body experiences...it’s like you need to pump the brakes at just the right moment, but at that point your motivations have changed entirely. A bit of a paradox. You might be able to beat the paradox somehow though!
Quoted context from /u/AC011422:
Maybe I’ve been taking the wrong approach all along. I actually thought that’s what everyone who consciously projects from a waking state seamlessly into an out of body state is doing - meditating.
If not that, what do you do to achieve that?
/u/sac_boy:
It’s almost like widening rather than focusing. Widening your awareness to pick up more and more of the inner ‘random’ thoughts that bubble up constantly. Not the active, surface thoughts, but the things that well up from within. Let them come, be with those thoughts, let it wash over and through you, don’t reject anything. This stuff isn’t even hypnagogia, it’s not really sense information. It’s more like alternative cognition. And it’s often strange, but not random.
Through this process your body will just flop off to sleep by itself with no need to micromanage it. You’ll realize you haven’t been looking at the darkness of your closed eyes for ages, your attention has been truly elsewhere. Your ‘widened’ awareness can then narrow back down into normal human awareness at just the right moment.
It’s like we’ve been trying to cross the threshold of sleep by going through the eye of a needle (focusing tightly) to avoid all the weird stuff that bubbles at the edge of consciousness. When in fact it’s better to mentally widen, expand yourself into those bubbling thoughts, nomatter how weird they get. You can sort of imprint your intention on them and it will carry across reliably.
That’s the latest evolution of my method anyway--a step beyond just lie there and wait. I think I was doing this all along and I’ve only just realized. Some people say they black out on the way down to the pre-OBE vibrations, but reliably come back, and I think they’re essentially following this method without knowing it--they just haven’t trained themselves to accept (and remember) the ‘widened’ state, so it looks like a moment of blackout.
Quoted context from /u/AC011422:
I’m getting closer and closer using this method. Today I actually took part in hypnagogia a couple of times rather than simply observe. At one point I was on a sleigh of about twenty reindeer. Not sure what that was about. Another moment I was drinking coffee or tea with a few middle aged people. These brief flashes, maybe five or so seconds, but they were something.
Follow-up context from a deleted user:
I’ll have to try this. I haven’t AP’d yet but every time I try I would cast away random thoughts and focus on the blackness behind my eyes and my breathing. But I would end up not seeing or hearing anything and eventually my eyes will open by themselves
/u/sac_boy:
Yep, that’s the paradoxical nature of ‘focus’. Lots of people staring into the darkness, fighting any thought that creeps into the well-kept little dark space behind their eyelids. Constantly polling their limbs for numbness, stressing over itches, getting excited by every little twitch and tingle. All while fully awake (or rather, in the same normal, narrow-focus, day to day concentration mode you might use to fill out a spreadsheet for work) and going nowhere. I wrote a bit of further clarification over on the thread:
Don’t focus on normal surface thoughts. Try to avoid any active thinking as much as possible. You should know the difference between a thought that has come from you, the everyday surface consciousness, and something that has come from elsewhere. The idea is not to focus at all, but do the opposite--become a receiver for thoughts that just drift up unbidden.
You can’t struggle, you can’t force it, you just get better and better at quieting your surface mind and hearing/feeling/thinking the strange stuff that appears between thoughts. So much so that it’ll come quite quickly after you consciously ‘widen’.
You’ve heard voices shouting your name before. This is a bit like that. You can get there really quickly with practice, and you’ll quickly realise that it’s more than just names and random words.
If you’re locked in some focus exercise, then this stuff only
happensgets noticed when you lapse, so it catches you at a moment of low awareness. However if you’re actively listening out for this while avoiding any other focus, you catch it right from the start, you pick up more of the ‘signal’.You’ll be surprised by the stuff that comes up. Images, words, yes, normal hypnagogic stuff...but also whole thoughts, alternate ways of thinking, the solutions to strange puzzles. That’s where the real consciousness-widening happens...seeking and accepting that stuff calmly, without getting shaken awake. Then now and then you’ll just suddenly be elsewhere--you’ll make a leap into alternate embodiment--and it can be shocking how quickly it happens.
It’s also easy to fit into your schedule...you don’t need to lie down, you barely need to relax. This stream is there all the time. It may be the underpinning of the surface consciousness itself. We’ve just been trained since birth to ignore it all. Even meditation is presented as being about control, about steering away from these thoughts along with your surface mind.
Good example, I was doing this exercise earlier today for about five minutes, no more than that. Closed my eyes...de-focused my mind, moved into that receiver mode...and BOOM I was at the top of my stairs about to take a step into the air, and the shock made me nearly spring out of my seat!
4. Quick tip: un-identify (dis-identify?) with your physical body and its sensations, even when using them as a meditation focus
Context availability: own_post
Paraphrased context: Original post by sac_boy; no outside question.
Answer:
(I...don’t know the right word. And I’m an English speaker. Oh well. Take a step back.)
Let’s say you like to use your breath as a point of focus on your way down to sleep. That’s great, and very successful for many including myself, but you can make the mistake of identifying with the breath...considering it your breath, your chest moving, the breeze moving past your nose, instead of some breathing happening near your point of awareness.
Every time you observe a sensation from within your physical body, you are inadvertently reinforcing your association with the body. You are still firmly strapped into the driver’s seat with your five-point harness and your hands at ten and two on the wheel, looking at the gauges moving up and down, rather than stepping out and just listening to the engine idle.
The same goes for any other physical focus. Change your frame of reference so that you are merely observing a body, as if you’re laying beside yourself in bed (indeed, overlapping with yourself and with access to your internal senses), rather than observing your body from within. The idea here is that you need to mentally distance yourself first, and your awareness will follow. It’s a subtle distinction but it’s a distinction you may find useful in your practice.
Remember, you are not some astral ghost glued to a physical body. You are also not a physical person waiting for a special window to transfer to an astral body. You are a consciousness from elsewhere, and you have a point of awareness that is free to move between these environments. It’s just that while we’re alive here on Earth, this point of awareness defaults to a physical focus. It’ll stick to the physical body at the slightest suggestion. Your attitude to the body and its sensations is just one more form of suggestion--which unfortunately can be reinforced by certain meditation practices.
How many times have you heard a guided meditation (or written meditation manual) say something like this:
“Breathe...and feel the breath as it passes in and out of you...and feel this and that sensation...feel your body getting heavy...” etc etc etc
I say nay! This attitude will keep you locked in the physical, or perhaps induce an OBE by sheer accident (as you start to forget every bodily focus through successful meditation, and you might randomly return to an astral focus as you start to come out of meditation). If you want to have a direct OBE quickly and easily, you have to start with an OB mindset. Stop observing your physical body from the driver’s seat!
5. Letting go completely--tips that might help somebody
Context availability: own_post
Paraphrased context: Original post by sac_boy; no outside question.
Answer:
This won’t be a revelation to many of you, but some of you might need to hear it (especially if you’ve been trying various techniques for months or years, and feeling frustrated.)
I’ve been experimenting with complete self-acceptance and submission to consciousness in my AP practice. That means not trying to control a single thing. Doing nothing. No mantra, no labelling or suppression of thoughts, not pulling on any internal levers at all (the inner sound, frisson energy, etc). No active visualization. No active imagination. Whatever my mind wants to do on the way down to sleep, I let it do.
If your mind is all over the place, zipping here and there with different thoughts, then great. It’s just a human mind, immersed in a human world, doing human mind things. Don’t expect it to be anything else. It’s perfect as it is. Let it go. Maybe you’re mulling over the past, worrying about the future...great. That’s just its function in a linear world of cause and effect. Maybe you’re narrating everything as if you’re already writing a blog post tomorrow. Fine. Don’t wrestle with it. If anything, give it a little bit of love and understanding. Delight in it.
You might find that when you truly let go of control, your surface mind behaves like a good dog behaves when you drop the lead...it stops and wonders why the lead has gone slack. Or it might behave like a bad dog and start chasing cars. Either way is fine. We’re not trying to control anything.
Don’t even try to become a coolly detached observer of your own thoughts. That would be more trying, doing. You have to get to grips with the strange logic of consciousness, where trying is often counter-productive. Don’t label or sort your thoughts. Just let them be. The observer-mind arises automatically. It doesn’t need your help.
Just be this thing, whatever it is, in its entirety. The observer and the observed.
Hypnagogic imagery will rise and fall. It might just come as sudden organization of the sparks in your visual field, or it might be a full, crisp vision. Your surface mind might react to what you see. Let it. Your thoughts might get strange and delirious, take shapes that you can’t explain in human language afterwards. Let them.
Don’t even cling to awareness. You’re not going anywhere. Let it go.
You might wonder, “how is this different to just falling asleep?” Well, exactly. You’ve hit the nail on the head. The only difference is we’re being mindful about our mindlessness. There’s a feather’s weight of intention behind everything. That tiny difference is all it takes. In the last couple of days I’ve found that when I do this (non-)exercise, when I assiduously give up control, when I seek to recognise all the ways that I routinely exercise control, I automatically become increasingly aware of my astral body on the way down to sleep. It starts as gentle waves of weightlessness, like I’m bobbing in a gentle sea. Again, I don’t try to control this by pushing one way or another when it starts. Then I become aware of the vibrations--not a roar or a rush, just a very even bass tone permeating every part of my body. I remember last night celebrating internally during the vibrations, thinking “was it really that easy?”...
So, your exercise for today, if you want one:
Go to bed at your normal time.
Get comfy, relax, close your eyes. Smile, it’s bedtime.
Make the assertion that you will have continuous awareness tonight.
Take great care to do nothing in particular. Add nothing to the process. Control nothing. When your mind wanders, wander with it. That’s you, don’t try to censor or suppress yourself. When you find yourself observing at a distance, that’s you as well.
If you must do something (because you are a verb-oriented human who believes that everything must be an exercise, a technique, a process, a trick), then look for all the various ways you are trying to control this situation, and stop. That’s your technique for today.
If you want to ponder something, maybe keep a lookout for some of the false dualities we maintain without noticing. Like the separation between observer/observed, or between the vision and the viewer, between the thing that is happening and the being it is happening to. Examine everything you think of as over there, on the other side of the fence, separate from you, happening to you...you could be inadvertently clinging to illusions.
If the neighbour’s dog barks, if you need to scratch, if you need to roll over...that’s all fine. That’s what it’s like to be immersed in the world. It’s all perfect as it is.
Trust the process. Trust consciousness.
6. Try this sleeping position technique for me (I don’t know why it works and I don’t know if it’ll work for anyone else)
Context availability: own_post
Paraphrased context: Original post by sac_boy; no outside question.
Answer:
This is a strange technique I use sometimes to induce the pre-AP state quickly and easily.
To be honest, I forgot about this technique for a long time, and I only recently re-discovered it. It’s not like me to suggest a physical-body-oriented technique, but this works so well (for me) that I think it’s worth putting out there as it might help somebody.
It’s very simple, so all of you should be able to try it:
Lay on your side on your bed in a comfortable sleeping position.
Put your arms out in front of you, roughly elbow to elbow, with the heels of your palms together. You don’t have to be super precise with your elbows, just get them close. You can choose to bend your elbows or keep your arms outstretched.
You can experiment with putting your fingertips together, but I generally just relax my fingers and let them half fold up into my palms. It’s going to look like you fell asleep in some kind of prayer.
Now just...go to sleep. I want you to employ no mental technique whatsoever. Just trust the slight weirdness of the sleeping position, or whatever strange energetic effect it has.
If I do this I am almost guaranteed at least sleep paralysis, and it often comes as a surprise because I allow for a complete black-out (I get automatically pulled out of full sleep). But I have induced direct OBEs many times this way--the only difference is remembering my original intention!
Now, a caveat: depending on the width of your chest/shoulders, this arm position might make it feel difficult to breathe. I have wide shoulders and I still experience a very slight discomfort and pressure in the front of my chest--but it could be that discomfort that makes it work. Too much discomfort, and you probably won’t be able to sleep. If you normally have breathing difficulties during sleep, I probably wouldn’t try this at all.
Another caveat: because this technique involves a moment of true sleep, you might end up in sleep paralysis with no idea of what’s happening. You will be rolling the dice here and just hoping for the best. Even after years of doing this I still get caught unawares by sleep paralysis sometimes. When trying this today for example, I was sure that the roar of vibrations was actually the threatening growl of a dog behind me :) Needless to say that attempt ended early.
7. Mental health and grounded practice
Context availability: post
Paraphrased context: Original post context: mental health and grounded practice.
Answer:
Sounds like she could use a firmer physical grounding. Daily walks of several miles, for example. Might be a good chance to just walk and talk if you know this woman IRL.
We see people blow through here who are clearly in a state of obsession of one kind or another, maybe trying to escape, maybe hoping for an easy solution to the problems of their lives via AP. It’s very unhealthy (and unproductive!) to put so much weight on it. That kind of desperation will not lead to the kind of useful results they want. When the natural approach doesn’t work, they look for chemical solutions. It’s sad to see.
Ultimately, whether people want to believe it or not, we work in tandem (and to some extent at the whim) of mysterious intelligent nonphysical elements of ourselves. This has to be a partnership, these aspects of the self must pull in the same direction. Denying or abusing the physical side of your nature will not suddenly open the floodgates to the nonphysical, it just makes you a dysfunctional cog in the greater machine. You are you for a reason. You are not a permanent astral resident. You would probably not be useful if you were.
I don’t think it’s a case of the squeaky wheel getting the grease, either. We’d like to think that these nonphysical elements of the self have our (local, physical self’s) best interest at heart, but my guess is that broken people are left to wither in darkness and ignorance, like a tree cutting off sap to a damaged leaf. This does not lead to a good time for anyone.
I would prescribe walks and a bunch of cardio for just about everything...if AP is really her goal then it’ll help. My advice for everyone is to be the best physical self you can be. There is plenty of time in the day for both. Muddying up your brain with drugs is not going to help. Walking your legs off before laying down for an afternoon nap on the other hand, that’s the direct line. Seek novel physical experiences. Seek to be of use here on Earth. Observe how that feels. See how much easier it is to reach altered states afterwards, in a natural and healthy way.
I would also add that there are ‘AP’ communities which are very unhealthy echo chambers for total delusion. Full of imagineers and storytellers, very little practical knowledge or useful advice. Just pure escapism, often with a dash of mental illness. Sometimes these people bump into the real deal and wonder why it doesn’t work a certain way they’ve been told...it’s maddening to see. The amount of misinformation makes me despair for people. I’m sorry for your friend if she’s been caught up in all that. I’d suggest a full reset with a new focus on her physical life, followed by as much AP practice as she wants as long as it’s grounded in reality.
8. Inferred: how doubt and feeling unready affect an AP attempt
Context availability: unavailable
Paraphrased context: Inferred from answer: how doubt and feeling unready affect an AP attempt.
Answer:
You’ve already identified the problem. The practice doesn’t require blind faith but doubt is a poison when you’re in the middle of an AP attempt.
Reposting another comment from today: you just need to know that you’re about to do it. The knowing is enough. I smile, lay down, maybe have a moment of thankfulness for the here and now, and I just know that I’m going to have an AP session. It’s hard to describe (’knowing’ is not usually a verb) but the knowing is a choice, the knowing is an action in itself.
You also need to know that everything will be fine. The question “what if I’m not ready?” came from programming you have received here during your life on Earth--the idea of of being unready for something that is innate and natural to us all. You need to examine the root of this programming and reject it. It might come from some kind of hero’s journey concept where you think you haven’t put enough work in, you’re undeserving, your mind isn’t sufficiently pure or focused, surely there must be some resistance to overcome before you can achieve what you want to achieve...this is just storytelling. We all need to stop putting ourselves in stories (which are a form of memetic programming) and just be.
9. Breathing methods, feeling blocked, and practice timing
Context availability: post
Paraphrased context: Original post context: breathing methods, feeling blocked, and practice timing.
Answer:
I’m guessing your approach is too active, involves too much ‘trying’, has too much physical-body focus. This is a very common issue. Everything we do in life involves physical action, so surely some combination of physical actions and/or mental effort will lead to the OBE. You need to let go of that idea.
But hey, it worked that one time! You might be experiencing the “first taste is free” effect, which is also common. Again and again we hear people report that they were able to do it once but never again. Maybe that first experience seems very big and special to you. What follows on from this is the idea of a ‘blocker’, that people are somehow ‘blocked’, that they now have some obstacle to overcome, but no tools to do so. What I suspect really happens is that people get a little bit afraid after they’ve had that first taste. A tidal wave of memetic programming from Earth culture hits them: if this is real, maybe that is real, and maybe that is real, maybe I’m actually in danger, etc etc. You are not necessarily aware of these new fears--the best programming is invisible to you, it’s etched into your unconscious mind.
All kinds of human cultural memes are etched there, in your unconscious mind. Some of them might even be so old that they are written into this body’s DNA. Everything from the basic idea of separation from your wider consciousness, the need for approval from some higher being in order to access non-physical reality, the need for training or hard work to achieve something, etc etc. Part of AP practice involves discovering and challenging this internalized memetic hodge-podge.
So, what do you need to do?
Set time aside to practice. Turn up every day or every other day. Find a quiet place and make sure you are not disturbed for 60-90 minutes. Nothing will happen if you aren’t making the opportunities for it to happen. If this doesn’t fit your lifestyle, adjust your lifestyle. Everything starts with a choice.
You do not need to do this at night. You do not need to do this by interrupting your natural sleep. Make sure you’re getting the right amount of normal sleep so that you aren’t just falling into unconscious sleep during your AP sessions.
Start your sessions with some positive thought and action. Big smile, big stretch; one way or another, this is going to be good. How fortunate you are to have an hour to explore the potential of your own mind! No particular result is necessary, the session itself is a great experience!
Now lay down...I usually lay on my back for this, but lay whatever way is comfortable.
Let go of any thoughts of the past or future. Let go of any internal storytelling. That storytelling is just the mental expression of that memetic hodge-podge I mentioned before. It arises in the same way that proteins arise from your DNA, with mechanical inevitability when the conditions are right. The conditions are provided by your mind allowing itself to become a story-factory. This is the first layer you must penetrate, and you do by recognising the telltale signs of the storytelling machine at work.
Here’s one story that you might unwittingly tell yourself: I need pure meditative focus to achieve this. I need to be an awesome meditator. I need to don robes and live in a cave. Stop. That’s all way too much effort. This practice is effortless when you let go of the idea of effort leading to results.
Here’s another story: there’s a secret to this. The people who can do it have a special method. I need to learn a method. I’m bad at adhering to this method. I’m bad at this, I’m not ready for this.
Here’s another story: I need help. I need a mentor. I need a guide. I need to be pulled out, just this once. I need approval from something higher than myself.
Reject it all!
You need to learn to know. Knowing is a verb in this case. It’s the only action I’ll allow, the only action you need. You need to know that you are going to AP/have an OBE/move your awareness away from your physical body, however you like to know it. Ideally this knowing should be a wordless sense of sure-ness that you will now switch to your desired state, that the process is already underway. Try to minimize the use of words in your knowing. Words lead to sentences, every sentence is a little story, and suddenly the storytelling machine is back up and running, wasting your precious time.
Please note that the act of knowing does not involve continuous mental effort. It is not a focus exercise. You can just set it and forget it, as long as you don’t stumble into the storytelling state again you are fine, everything is automatic.
Now this is really all you need. Exist in this state of knowing and ignore your physical body, you aren’t interested in its senses. Do not poll your physical senses to ‘check’ if you are asleep yet, for example. Do not check for numbness or tingling. Do not stare at the back of your eyelids. Do not check for vibrations. If you successfully ignore your physical body, it will fall quickly to sleep; this can literally take a matter of minutes, just like when you’re going to sleep at night. If you poll it constantly, it will stay awake for an hour and nothing will happen. It’s as simple as that.
During this process you will probably be subjected to some vivid hypnagogia. Do what you like with that. I find it fascinating, personally. Do not let these passing bubbles of hypnagogia get drawn into the teeth of your mental storytelling machine, otherwise we’re back to square one. You can think of this as another layer that we must pass through (at the risk of telling yet another linear story!)
....
And you’re out. You can just get up and go. No special mental effort here either; no imagining, no visualization. The transition may come with crashing vibrations beforehand, or it may come with no special effects at all. When it goes smoothly it can be so subtle that you have to double-check to make sure you haven’t just stood up physically.
I’ll say “that’s it!” but of course all of this comes with its own kind of meta-effort, it’s not necessarily easy. But that’s okay. Turn up regularly and give it a go.
10. How long separation usually takes, and beginner practice
Context availability: post
Paraphrased context: Original post context: how long separation usually takes, and beginner practice.
Answer:
Be well-rested, get your 8 hours of sleep
Set time aside during the day, set a 90 minute alarm. Now don’t think about time again until the end of the session. Don’t ask yourself how long it’s been, don’t wonder how long it’s going to take. These thoughts take you out of the present, which poisons the process. If you have the time I would even suggest don’t set an alarm at all, put your phone in a different room.
Just turn up every day (or every other day) for a while and see what happens.
As a beginner you can expect to AP anywhere between the 30 minute and 60 minute mark, it really just depends how long you spend laying about in a fully mind awake + body awake state at the beginning. For beginners this can be quite long because so many just sustain a physical body focus. The worst thing you can do is constantly check yourself to try to work out how relaxed you are. The act of checking involves the physical senses, which you are trying to turn away from.
The other thing to avoid is any thought of the past or future. So don’t concern yourself with how long it’s been, and don’t concern yourself with what you’re going to do when/if you AP in this session. Definitely don’t concern yourself with long term life worries or big overarching plans for your AP journey. Your AP session is not the time for any of those thoughts. You must become simple, a creature of the present moment, detached from the physical life memory-sense along with all the other physical senses.
When you do so, non-physical sensory information can flood in. Vision and sound often come first. When non-physical tactile sense information reaches you, it becomes ‘embodiment’, experienced as separation.
11. How long separation usually takes, feeling blocked, and relaxation
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/AstralProjection/comments/10nrftu/maybe_i_just_cant/j6mgfhm/
Context availability: post_and_parent_comment
Paraphrased context: Original post context: feeling blocked. Immediate reply context: how long separation usually takes, and relaxation.
Answer:
Low end (more recently): literally 5 minutes in bed, on my side, sending my body to sleep like it normally does--just holding on to my awareness.
Upper end (and definitely more like this early on): an hour on bed, on my back, with too much attention paid to changes in physical sensations. Too many ‘techniques’ involve a physical focus--wait for your limbs to go numb, wait for your breathing to change etc...when really we just need to turn away from the physical body altogether and let it do its thing.
Set an alarm for 90 minutes and then just get up if it doesn’t happen in that window. If it’s taking an hour, you probably are too physically amped up (just awake after a full night’s sleep, or caffeine in your system, or a belly full of food etc) or too mentally active.
But we have people come through here who are giving up after 20 mins, and that’s way too soon. 30-40 minutes would be a good average for afternoon attempts.
12. How long AP experiences usually last
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/AstralProjection/comments/10ixqp7/longest_ap_experience/j5j7zkb/
Context availability: post
Paraphrased context: Original post context: short APs and the possible length of out-of-body experiences.
Answer:
I spent so much time there that I honestly didn’t know what to even do
At some point, yes, this becomes an issue. It’s also useful in a way, because you learn that a lot of the time OBEs are actually just as mundane as milling around in physical life, and this reduces the excitement surrounding them, which in turn makes them easier to accomplish.
At the minute a lot of my practice seems to go like this:
Leave body
Have a look around outside the house, leaving via the bedroom window or the front door
Shout for guides to see if they want to take this opportunity to show me something (which is pointless, I’ve found--they’re either there or they aren’t, they aren’t to be summoned)
Hmm...
Meditate on floor in vicinity of body (often mind-blowing at the time but hard to recall)
I have the strong intuition that it’s my time to actually step up and work out the next steps for myself. Guide interactions have dwindled to the point where I haven’t been visited in a year or more, but I’ve had several powerful visions where I feel like I’ve been invited to very much non-mundane locales by beings who seem to be friends of mine. I know this sounds dumb but it’s almost like they are sending postcards from the beyond. But I feel so distant from those places while I’m bumbling around the house!
Now I should mention (in case any readers find this discouraging) that perhaps one in five OBEs still involves something weird or interesting. But I feel like I’ve been left hanging at this point to figure out the next bit for myself.
13. Practicing at different times of day
Context availability: post
Paraphrased context: Original post context: whether AP can be attempted at any time of day.
Answer:
If I made a chart of my own AP success vs time of day, it would be pretty level over the 24 hour period with a peak in the mid afternoon and a big dip (but not all the way down to zero) right at bedtime.
We are creatures of habit and those habits are how we communicate with our subconscious. One of those habits is “when I put on my PJs and get into my normal bed beside my wife, it’s sleep time”. An hour later I might wake up and randomly AP. An hour before I might nap on my bed fully clothed after a long day and AP.
But it’s definitely not a rule!
14. Building an astral projection routine
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/AstralProjection/comments/11m0lqj/astral_projection_routine/jbfexzp/
Context availability: post
Paraphrased context: Original post context: daily routine, meditation length, energy work, and tools.
Answer:
Up to the spare bedroom mid-afternoon or after work (not my normal bed)
No coffee except a cup first thing in the morning
Lay on top of bed in clothes with a thin blanket over me
Optional blindfold if it’s too bright
Big smile, time to AP, this is going to be good whatever happens
Let go of all thoughts of the body, thoughts of the past, plans for the future
That’s been my most reliable routine. No other work necessary and nothing else seems to have moved the needle one way or another. Lots of people grasping at straws out there trying to find a routine or a technique that lets them pour in effort and extract results, just like they’ve been taught since they were kids...unfortunately, that’s not how things work in this realm.
15. Claims that everyone projects every night
Context availability: post
Paraphrased context: Original post context: the claim that everyone astral projects every night.
Answer:
I’m not familiar with Delores Cannon at all, but the “we all astral project every night” thing is at partially true (but it’s more like “many of us astral project, most nights”).
But the definition of astral projection needs to be clarified a bit here. Does an astral-capable body shift from the position of the sleeping body? Yes. Does it occasionally wander further than a few feet? Yes. But can that be called astral projection if the person isn’t conscious of it? This is one reason why ‘OBE’ is a tidier term...it’s not an OBE without the experience part. We’re ‘OB’ several times a night.
My own observations:
Sleepers often hover a couple of feet above their physical bodies. They are still unconscious, or in a dormant state, or in an internal dream, though they will often speak if spoken to (and sometimes with great power and authority, like it’s some kind of higher self actually talking, like the person’s higher self is taking care of the astral body at that time).
I have become conscious many times in the middle of the night while drifting a few feet above my physical body. On one occasion I seemed to be busy working on something in my neck. This further reinforces the idea that some other aspect of the self is in control here...perhaps literally performing maintenance on your physical body or its energetic interface while your day-to-day consciousness is just off, dormant, not present.
I have become conscious in the middle of the night after having wandered further from my physical body. I have found myself outside in the street opposite my house, standing under the streetlight. I have found myself in my back yard, or in my garage, in the passenger seat of my dad’s car on the other side of town...so something wanders (or teleports) around, for sure.
This is a good reason why people really shouldn’t concern themselves with the safety of the physical body during AP. You have spent a lot of time away from it without knowing.
16. Trying too hard to relax
Context availability: post
Paraphrased context: Original post context: difficulty reaching deep relaxation.
Answer:
Stop trying to relax. You seem to believe that there’s some special level of ‘relaxation’ that you can’t reach. If you aren’t using a limb, if you aren’t paying attention to it, it’s relaxed enough. Your problem here is a physical body focus. If you’re checking to see if your body is relaxed, you are too focused on the physical body. If you turn your attention away from it, it will relax (and sleep) all by itself.
I’m sure you sleep every night. How do you manage that? Really study your own sleep process. The problem is that ‘sleep’ is a thing we just automatically do from the day we’re born, and we usually never need to study the process, we just turn over and...’go to sleep’. You don’t need to progressively relax your limbs, you don’t need to worry about your breathing, if anything that will keep you awake for longer. That kind of automatic sleep involves a certain a mental attitude with its own flavour, like you’re abandoning the day, abandoning consciousness, switching off. This is a great clue for the kind of attitude you need for AP. You’re abandoning physicality, letting go of the body. Abandoning happens quickly. Trying takes forever.
17. Inferred: how hypnagogia relates to AP practice
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/AstralProjection/comments/186ow1k/what_am_i_doing_wrong/kb9hbi7/
Context availability: unavailable
Paraphrased context: Inferred from answer: how hypnagogia relates to AP practice.
Answer:
with my palm facing upwards
Where did you get that advice? Supination of the palms is an awkward position that will only keep you awake for longer. Turn them face down, or lay them on your belly, stick them in your pockets, whatever is comfortable. Comfort is far more important than any particular position. You could lay on your side or face down if that was comfortable for you.
Bad advice (i.e. anyone who is very specific about body position, because maybe they think there’s some sort of magical energy flow involved that you would be blocking with your mattress) is a red flag, and any other advice from that source should be considered a little bit suspect (possibly derived from meditation traditions, less likely to be first-hand experience). Being over-specific about physical position or any other physical body behaviour/characteristic implies a physical-oriented mindset, for example, when really the task is to move your attention away and ignore the physical body.
i do feel vibrations
We all vibrate all the time, because we are made primarily of liquid and various forms of jelly and we have organs that exert forces on that jelly in a rhythmic fashion (heart, lungs, intestines, etc.). You also have nerves that produce far more noise than you usually realize. Don’t focus on physical vibration. Constantly checking your body to see if it is vibrating slightly (which it always does) is counter-productive. If the pre-AP vibrations hit, they will call attention to themselves VERY LOUDLY. You will be left in no doubt.
i feel that I can see through my eyelids
The same thing applies here, you will know for sure if you do. It’s not a vague impression of light and dark against the darkness of your closed eyes. It’s also not actually important and doesn’t happen every time. If you are trying to see, that is going to be another problem for you, because you are polling a physical body sense for information, which will keep you connected to the physical body and its senses. An indicator that you are fixated on physical vision is having trouble keeping your eyes closed, for example, or worrying about eye orientation. If your attention is turned away, your eyes will stay closed by themselves.
My best advice is to keep practicing, it’s still early days, but make sure your practice involves turning away from physical sense information. Just don’t pay attention to it. This is the fastest path to the correct state. When you get good at ignoring the physical body, you’ll reach altered states (hypnagogia at the very least, but occasionally the pre-AP state) in minutes.
18. Intrusive thoughts during meditation, and meditation
Context availability: post
Paraphrased context: Original post context: intrusive thoughts during meditation, and meditation.
Answer:
Finish the thought: “Okay, let’s see this through to the end. Has the little thought had enough attention now? Let’s move on.”
Defer the thought to a proper time: “This isn’t a thought for now. I’ll think about that later, making dinner/in the car/on my walk.”
Categorise: “Worry thought. Horny thought. Work thought. Meta thought.”
Investigate: “Where did that come from?”
Don’t run from thoughts--make a study of the process of ‘thinking’.
It just comes down to recognising when you are engaged in active thought, and being willing to put that thought aside. People are actually quite attached to their thoughts, both pleasant and unpleasant ones. They think thoughts have value, that there might be some prize at the end of the thought if they can just get to the end. Teach yourself that so many thoughts are empty and pointless, and you don’t need to constantly babble in your parents’ language in your head.
That, OR USE A MANTRA TO DROWN THEM OUT
And if another thought pops up while you’re doing your mantra, cool, that’s a whole other mental verbalisation channel that CAN ALSO DO A MANTRA....
(Note that this approach might overheat your head...)
19. Falling asleep during attempts, and falling sensations
Context availability: post
Paraphrased context: Original post context: falling asleep during attempts, and falling sensations.
Answer:
This is actually positive: err on the side of sleep and adjust from there. So many people just lay there with too much mental commotion going on, too many ideas and plans for their AP session, unable to sleep at all.
Just keep at it. You might try to develop a ritual to affirm that you intend to AP. For instance, I have the Ritual of the Sock. In the Ritual of the Sock, I take the first sock I can reach in my sock drawer, lay down, and lay the sock over my eyes to block out some of the light. Now the ritual is complete and astral projection is a certainty (at least, that’s what you tell yourself.) Rituals like this are a great way to communicate your intention to your subconscious. Words in your head carry less weight than physical actions.
Whatever ritual you design, add positivity into the mix. Smile. Reflect on how cool it is that you even know about this. Be certain that this process will work. Fill your thoughts with that happy certainty and nothing else. Fling yourself on the bed like a teenage girl about to chat to her bestie on the phone. Finally remember that there is absolutely nothing wrong with a total blackout nap, or a spark of hypnagogia, or a full on hypnagogic vision, or a dream, or a lucid dream...you’ve set your intention to AP, but you’re in an easygoing mood and open to all possibilities. You don’t care about little disturbances, the itch on your leg, the kids playing outside, it’s all good. This attitude will get results. More than that, this attitude will get more useful results, clearer and more interesting OBEs.
20. Heavy-body sensations and watching the darkness
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/AstralProjection/comments/1f7rbo1/needing_clarity/llbqszs/
Context availability: post
Paraphrased context: Original post context: heavy-body meditation sensations and uncertainty about where attention should go.
Answer:
Little bit too much active trying/internal analysis perhaps. Try to avoid the “are we there yet?” mindset. That’ll just keep you awake and staring at the back of your eyelids.
I feel like I just see space.. through my eyes”
Yeah, sounds like you’re very much still tapped into physical vision. You’re watching for changes, watching for something to happen. Now I have played with a technique based on phosphene-watching (staring ahead at the bubbling phosphene light in the middle of their vision), but ultimately I think it’s just another focus -> focus fatigue/blackout -> AP path.
Should I be seeing this in my head?
Little bit of a tricky question to answer as we have to break down what ‘seeing in your head’ means. Your eyes have never seen anything, everything is seen ‘in your head’. Even the tiniest flash of physical or non-physical vision comes to us via the subconscious and its rendering system. It is ultimately the same pipeline, just with a different kind of information feeding into it.
Imagination/memory is something different. It does not feed into that same vision pipeline (if it does, cool, you’ve created a feedback loop that leads to amazing visualization ability--you might run into this randomly now and then as a kind of controllable hypnagogia, I suspect it could probably be trained). But generally, no, holding an idea in your mind, even ‘mentally rotating’ objects and scenes, does not push that scene into your literal vision pipeline.
If you’re waiting for hypnagogic visions, they arrive much like actual vision. They enter the vision pipeline. They are literally seen. They do not appear in the dancing lights of your retinas and nerves. The vision will either overlay or replace that physical vision information.
Anyhow, none of this is a solid prerequisite to AP. But hypnagogia (and developing the skill to reach hypnagogia quickly) is a useful signpost on the way down. The really important thing is turning away from physical vision, ignoring it. That creates a vacuum that the subconscious may try to fill. Or, you may simply see nothing. Seeing nothing is not the same as seeing blackness. “Seeing nothing” is more like ignoring your sense of vision altogether. This is a useful state to remain in while you wait for the body to sleep.
21. Body asleep versus body relaxed
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/AstralProjection/comments/11nhh9x/questions_about_ap/jbo9o7a/
Context availability: post_and_parent_comment
Paraphrased context: Original post context: basic AP questions. Immediate reply context: whether physical sleep is the same as relaxation.
Answer:
Isn’t physically asleep the same as body relaxed
Completely different states. Your body can be relaxed while you’re watching TV, but it’s not asleep. Just laying around with relaxed limbs and slow breathing is not enough; you might enjoy the benefits of relaxation, but for AP it’s a waste of time. The aim is body asleep/mind awake.
Rule of thumb...if you can get up to answer the door or take the dog out to pee at any moment...your body is not asleep. Anything you feel before that point is just a normal physical sensation. We are wet blobs of electric jelly and we jiggle around all the time, but this isn’t the vibrations. Laying still for long enough will make you feel numb and ‘floaty’ but this isn’t AP, it’s a physical result of the physical brain de-prioritizing nerve signals that have been the same for too long.
And if our body is physically asleep, how do you stay mentally awake?
Well that’s the whole trick isn’t it...that’s what all the techniques are trying to achieve. But a lot of ‘relaxation’ techniques put far too much emphasis on the body and not enough on the important part, the mind. It’s vital that you forget your physical body and mentally navigate the stages down towards bodily sleep. Your mind does not have to black out in order for your body to sleep, that’s the key thing you will learn. If your mind is awake while your body is asleep, you are then in the correct state for AP.
It’s just like how you normally go to sleep at night--except you don’t let go of your awareness, you don’t black out (or if you do, you come back to awareness quickly). You must learn to forget your body, and keep a gentle hold on your awareness without entirely letting go.
22. Twitchy legs and the myth of perfect stillness
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/AstralProjection/comments/11jar8u/can_astral_projection_work_if/jb1v3tp/
Context availability: post
Paraphrased context: Original post context: whether involuntary leg twitching prevents AP.
Answer:
If you can sleep, you can AP.
You don’t have to lie completely still; whoever told you that doesn’t know what they’re talking about. You just have to stay as still as you would normally stay to get to sleep. It’s about forgetting your body, ignoring it, it’s not about keeping it rigidly under control.
23. Setting intention, and the rope technique
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/AstralProjection/comments/1657ezy/how_to_set_a_proper_intention/jycxpem/
Context availability: post
Paraphrased context: Original post context: setting intention, and the rope technique.
Answer:
You want to get to the point where you truly assume you will AP. That’s the sort of intention that the subconscious understands most clearly.
Lay down, smile, and be ready to AP. That’s as complex as your ritual needs to be.
Let’s talk about the level of ‘expectation’ you would employ here. It’s a bit like reaching into your mug cupboard and fully expecting to withdraw a mug. Your intention is to have a mug in your hand for your morning coffee, so you reach into the cupboard. You don’t even have to look. It would be more of a surprise if you didn’t find a mug there. You didn’t need to shout “I will have a mug now!” to the sky. You didn’t need to light your mug-fetching candle or rub your mug crystal. (If you think it helps, you could, but you really just need to reach for a mug.)
Astral projection is a lot like that. Expecting it to happen is the most reliable trigger. The power of ritual is the power to change your expectation of a certain outcome. The idea that our rituals work directly on the subconscious is not quite right; rituals work on our conscious expectations, and our set of honestly-held expectations about reality is what directs our subconscious. So you can shortcut everything by just laying down and expecting to astral project in exactly the same way that you usually expect unconscious sleep.
24. Inferred: why vision may be missing or unreliable during AP
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/AstralProjection/comments/1f30n6w/breathing_question/lkbjz6c/
Context availability: unavailable
Paraphrased context: Inferred from answer: why vision may be missing or unreliable during AP.
Answer:
I don’t directly manage my breathing at all, ideally you want your body to simply do its thing without your involvement.
Of course I have experimented with breath control and it seemed to work for me in the early days, but I came to the conclusion that I was just keeping myself busy until I inevitably let the control slip, and it was when the control slipped that I actually made progress towards body asleep/mind awake. I might as well have been repeatedly counting my teeth with my tongue or blinking in morse code--or any act of concentration at all that leads to mental fatigue and a micro-blackout.
Skipping the ‘waiting for mental fatigue’ bit chopped about 40-60 minutes off all my AP attempts.
If you’re doing a breath meditation, try not to control the breath at all, try to just observe the breath without controlling it. People think they are observing their breath when in fact they are observing the act of controlling their breath. Exerting physical control over anything keeps you in a body-awake state. But if you’re truly observing just the breath doing its thing in a detached way, you’ll hear it naturally settle (and you’re likely to hear yourself snore). You should be able to listen to yourself snore indefinitely without getting too excited about it. It’s a thing happening off in the distance, you’re not involved at all.
Note: of course there’s something to be said for the relaxation that comes from deep controlled breathing, but a few minutes of that is plenty. Once you’re relaxed, let the body do its own thing.
25. Claims of instant astral projection
Context availability: post
Paraphrased context: Original post context: techniques that supposedly allow instant AP without sleep or meditation.
Answer:
I’ll say this: any kind of impatience in this practice will be met with frustration and dead ends. You’ve got to accept the process for what it is. There are no masters hoarding secrets. You aren’t going to be the one to discover and share some wonderful shortcut, as cool as that would be. Let go of that idea. That idea will poison your AP attempts. I say this from experience--hoping to find something that helps the community is another type of future focus and will not help you.
Of course its fine to be curious about the possibilities here, and spontaneous/very quick AP is certainly possible, but I say this to help you avoid wasting time: trying to find a shortcut that involves some kind of action or choice on your part to reproduce this will be fruitless.
My fastest APs have all been down to letting go more completely. No attempt at control. I flop down on my bed with a smile and full certainty that I’m going to AP, no plan beyond that, and then I just peel out of the body and I’m away. When it works smoothly it really is a matter of single-digit minutes. My record was essentially no delay at all, maybe three minutes. But there is no way to force this, instead you have to provide the correct conditions and avoid an incorrect mindset. Then you take your hands off the wheel.
Anyway, you don’t have 20-30 minutes to spare? That’s sort of the average time from fully physical walking around to AP if the initial physical and mental conditions are correct. You can expect it to be in the 45-60 minute range as a beginner, but that’s also fine. 60 minutes is nothing.
If you want to get to that “lay down and just get up” stage, I can give you hints but you ultimately have to make the mental leaps yourself.
Have no plan whatsoever for the AP session. The only plan is to let go, ensure maximum alignment with the whims of your wider nonphysical self, and see what happens. Throw yourself in the river and see where it takes you.
Have no plan to report on the AP session. Have no plan to aid the community. Have no plan for any sort of greater good or making even minor change in the world due to this AP session. Have no plan to benefit yourself in any way (physical or mental health, mental abilities, etc). All of this is human baggage and there is no baggage allowance on this flight. Of course these things may end up being happy side-effects of your session but you will NOT allow yourself to build any kind of expectations.
Your mind has to weigh nothing. The closer you can get to having this weightless mind, the faster AP will be. Wanting faster AP turns you from a feather to a brick. Choose to be in a happy, equanimous mood. Smile as you lay down. Grin like a fool if you have to. Release all thoughts of the past or future, all regrets and worries and positive or negative expectations, those are for your poor Earthly day-self. You aren’t trying to bring that you along. You’re going to shift into another mode.
It goes without saying that you can’t bring fear along. That’s even heavier than having a plan.
You might hear ‘weightless mind’ and think, okay, I’ll try a meditation. No. No active meditation at all. That’s another action. That’ll just have you meditating in bed for your whole session, or getting lucky and failing to meditate and ending up in the pre-AP state by sheer accident.
Now augment all of this with the power of a small personal ritual. Communicate your intention to AP to your subconscious--not with words, but with actions. My ‘ritual’ is just using a different room and laying down in a different orientation. This is a thousand times stronger than repeating “I want to astral project!” in that silly human brain-chatter, your subconscious barely pays attention to that (if it did, you would be all over the place, a baby at the steering wheel of a truck...)
That’s it, the whole ‘technique’. Anything more active than this (especially any kind of attention to your physical senses) will slow the process down.
P.S. I’ve gotten the impression over the years that the ‘letting go’ notion is not popular among people who have recently discovered AP and want quick results. They want to hear that there’s a secret button on your forehead that pops you out of the body if you hum a certain tone and press it just right. They want reproducible instructions--lay this way, visualize this, wait ten minutes for this. But what they need are intuitive leaps.
They also don’t the idea of helplessness. This comes from the usual old fear of the unknown. They want techniques where you can AP while physically awake, and they don’t want to hear about anything else. They refuse to accept things the way they are...surely there’s some Dr-Strange-level astral power that’s only available to top level psychic spies in the secret lab under Cheyenne Mountain...oh and by the way I only want to see the physical world exactly as-is, anything else is for suckers...
But instead you must be willing to be a baby (seemingly) without a parent, left on the ground in a strange wilderness, and accept that state without fear. When sleep paralysis comes you shouldn’t even notice as you aren’t fighting for control. That’s the other side of letting go. When it works it works fast.
26. Inferred: whether the rope technique is useful
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/AstralProjection/comments/11lt8gk/heave_dense_feeling/jbeayw6/
Context availability: unavailable
Paraphrased context: Inferred from answer: whether the rope technique is useful.
Answer:
Sounds like you’re making a classic mistake (that we see a lot on the sub) of trying to separate long before the right time.
When the right time arrives, your body will be asleep. Simple as that. Sleep paralysis is technically the right state, but if things go correctly you won’t notice it, because you will have automatically shifted your focus to your astral body and you will be able to stand up and leave.
Trying real hard will not help--you have to let go of the idea of intense effort leading to success. Intense meditation (an oxymoron in itself), intense imagination exercises, etc etc...all of this is counter productive.
I tried imagining my self on the top of my ceiling but somehow didnt do anything.
I imagined myself going to the shop for milk but my fridge is still empty. Imagination is an active surface mind activity with no consequences one way or another, other than keeping you awake.
My gut tells me I shouldve waited more so my body could be fully asleep in order to seperate properly.
Yep, your gut is right--but it’s not a matter of ‘waiting’, though it can seem that way. We had a person here earlier in the week wondering why their mental countdown from 2000 wasn’t working. They were doing plenty of waiting but they might as well have been on their phone reading Reddit for all the good it would do.
It’s a matter of letting yourself slip into the right state, which is really only minutes away if you are physically tired and you have the right mental attitude (one of letting go, letting your subconscious do the work). However, when in doubt, wait a while longer...because the very act of doubt (am I ready? is it time? should I wait a while longer?) is another surface thought, and if you’re having surface thoughts you are still more or less at step 1 of the process.
27. Inferred: whether the rope technique is useful
Context availability: unavailable
Paraphrased context: Inferred from answer: whether the rope technique is useful.
Answer:
If I had to come up with a psyop to really mess up new Astral Projectors, teaching them that they should start each OBE with an intense imagination exercise like the rope technique would probably be the way.
It has done far more harm than good, based on the evidence of this sub. At least once a week we get someone who was right on the edge of AP and then started imagining hard, which is a great way to create and enter a dream environment. You’ve even created a dream about climbing.
Next time: just stand up. Just stand up!
28. How I first learned to AP
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/AstralProjection/comments/11nhh9x/questions_about_ap/jbq7tb9/
Context availability: post_and_parent_comment
Paraphrased context: Original post context: basic AP questions. Immediate reply context: Robert Bruce’s arm-drop technique and early practice.
Answer:
To be honest it’s getting to a point now where I’m having a hard time remembering how it all started.
I remember I would go for these afternoon naps in my late teens--maybe ‘98-’99--I would love just resting on my back and listening to the world go by outside. I’d shifted my education away from traditional school and into an IT specialization that I was particularly good at, so I honestly had very little stress in my life. When I think about it I was pretty healthy, didn’t drink or smoke, just straight up sprinted miles a day to get home after school and go to work in a physical job. Maybe all that physical exercise helped too.
During one of these ‘naps’ I ended up in sleep paralysis, which is how a lot of people start out down this path. Shadowy thing in the corner of my eye, the whole lot. I don’t know if I’d ever read about sleep paralysis before that point but I definitely did afterwards.
Then I just downloaded half the Internet (ten minutes at a time, over dialup), built up a massive woo-woo folder on my PC--just about everything connected to sleep paralysis, then astral projection (text files of all the big books), then more fringe stuff like merkabas and so on. I didn’t believe in any of it but I figured there was something there worth investigating, that it might unlock some kind of waking-dream creative potential. So for the next year or so my daily naps turned into a conscious exploration of the edge of sleep.
Around that time I was trying all sorts of stuff, like the Robert Bruce energy work, but I didn’t put a whole lot of stock in it. I started reading about Buddhist meditation and doing various focus practices, mostly the the breath, but also some internal visualization (a candle for example) and was dipping deep enough to see nimittas during my sessions. Around this time a few visions led to my interest in ‘hypnagogic’ imagery, which was my main focus for a long time. I wasn’t trying to astral project, I knew it was on the menu, but I was just turning up specifically for the visions.
Then I suppose I was just knocking on the door long enough that it opened. Had a ‘dream’ that was clearly designed to trick me into taking a step forward, then the dream was expertly dissolved at just the right moment for me to miss the step, and I was halfway out of my body. After that I knew it was real and my first full body direct OBE was about a week later.
Since then I’ve obviously tried a bunch of different things (work with frisson, inner sound, etc), looking for subtle internal levers that other people might have missed so far, but I keep coming back to simplicity and letting go/trusting the subconscious being the best way forward. At the minute my focus is on expanding awareness, embracing the pre-hypnagogic weirdness at the edge of waking thoughts, seeing if this is actually a path to a proper dialogue (or integration) with the subconscious.
29. Inferred: how to interpret early sensations, fear, skepticism, and beginner progress
Context availability: unavailable
Paraphrased context: Inferred from answer: how to interpret early sensations, fear, skepticism, and beginner progress.
Answer:
You’re still early in the process but you’re taking the right approach (have an open mind, try it out, observe what happens). You will likely need to work on this for weeks or months before you get that first “oh wow!” moment, but when it comes you’ll see that this community is actually full of earnest explorers and not so much woo.
Maybe you’ve already had that first “oh wow!” moment by encountering this magnetic sensation. You’ll run into a bunch of sensations that you maybe never imagined were on the menu. I can’t say exactly what you encountered here but all kinds of expanding, pulling and vibrating sensations can be expected once you start paying attention.
So much of it is just a matter of paying attention perhaps for the first time in your life. Sometimes this makes people think they are further ahead (in the relaxation and pre-AP process) than they are, which is why people sit up or move too early. But just try again. You’re in this for the long haul. Even in the same session, just lay down and try again--the work of deep relaxation is not all ruined just by sitting up once, there’s a momentum to it. Later you will see this directly in situations where you AP, then come back because you need to pee, then go back to bed and AP again 30 seconds later...
I recounted my advice for beginners here today. It’s all about setting more immediately accessible goals and exploring in baby steps.
I may harbor deep seated fear and mistrust of things I cannot explain. I am working to overcome this.
Skepticism is healthy here, and should continue to be applied even once you actually leave your body. It’s useful up until the point where an unfounded anti-belief becomes a barrier to progress. (But here are some great things to remain skeptical about: why is that ‘spooky guy’ wearing a black hood, is he into 20th century fantasy as well? Why does that guy have golden wings and an impressive voice, who is he trying to impress? Why are shadows automatically bad and bright things automatically good? Wow, did that person really just try a witch’s cackle straight out of a kids movie?)
Fear is not so useful but you will process your way through it naturally. Everyone does. If you’ve never dived in deep water before, it’s a bit scary. You worry about drowning, the bends, sharks, mythical krakens. But by your 20th dive you’ll just be doing your checks and jumping in, if you see a little shark now and then you don’t even panic, and you aren’t worried about myths.
For years I’ve struggled with a deep emotional numbness as a result of unchecked depression.
Well, nothing beats the buzz and mass-recontextualization that comes from wandering around outside your body. It’s not necessarily a cure for depression, and you will still get completely clouded now and then. But having this experience to fall back on means that complete nihilism is no longer an option. It’s nice to have questions again--a few precious open questions can be good for mental health.
I struggle to visualize concepts and I know I must work to focus my concentration and will.
Don’t concern yourself too much with active visualization. I’m personally quite anti-visualization when it comes to AP methods, I don’t think they help. Let the visuals come by themselves...and they will.
30. Inferred: whether a difficult partial separation means they are blocked
Context availability: unavailable
Paraphrased context: Inferred from answer: whether a difficult partial separation means they are blocked.
Answer:
Sounds like you’re on a perfectly normal progress curve and not blocked at all. Getting better doesn’t mean that every attempt ends in success. Not every failure is a backslide. You’re probably one or two visits to the vibration state away from complete separation.
It’s hard at first (it can be, anyway). The body can feel impossibly magnetic. When I first got to the stage you’re at (and for months after my first separation) I would reach out and grab on to furniture in my room, and pull myself out that way. Funny thing, some of that furniture was on the other side of the room, so there was a certain amount of go go gadget arms...
Even then the magnetic pull of the body made me feel like a medieval knight trying to escape an MRI machine. I would leave my room in a forward lean, pulling on my doorframe, then I’d be out into the hallway and things would ease up. This is just how it was for the first year or so.
After that, something changed (practice? a change in my own expectations?) and I was able to comfortably exit and operate quite close to my physical body. The exits eventually became effortless, like I was even getting ejected. But that took time to kick in.
31. Falling asleep during attempts, meditation, and expectations
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/AstralProjection/comments/1kz1322/day_146/mv1vrjg/
Context availability: post
Paraphrased context: Original post context: falling asleep during attempts, meditation, and expectations.
Answer:
Keep it up, you’re knocking on the door, it’s going to open up eventually. You’re probably reaching about the median sort of time before a first partial AP. It took me about 10 months of sporadic practice, other people get lucky early on.
I would just caution you that this daily report might act as a kind of daily ritual with a counter-intuitive de-affirming, dampening effect. Coming here every day and writing a little bit about not astral projecting creates a constant ritualistic pressure that may not be pushing in the right direction. You’ve got a number in your head now, 146 days, when really you should treat every day as day 1.
Another unhelpful symptom you should look out for is imagining or planning your next diary entry during your meditation or AP attempt. If a little bit of you looks forward to writing this every day (and why not), that same little bit of you might be holding back your progress. Thoughts of the future (writing your diary entry for your first success!) and thoughts of the past (it’s been 146 days, tomorrow is 147) are both going to take you out of the moment.
You can also try to counter this with a stronger ritual with an affirming effect. This ‘ritual’ can be very basic, just flipping your pillow a certain way or laying inverted in bed, something like that--but remind yourself what it represents each time.
So--in your position--I would consider taking a break from the diary altogether. Tell yourself that even if you AP successfully tonight, you’re not going to report it tomorrow. The past and future have a weight to them that will hold you down. It seems to follow a curve where thoughts of recent past and immediate future have more weight to them, so I think it’s alright if you decide that you want to share your progress in a month or two, but keep it vague.
With all of that said, you are obviously free to progress as you wish, it’s just that sometimes you might want to try a hard left turn, explore a degree of freedom you haven’t allowed yourself up until now. Progress comes in leaps like that.
32. Beginner practice, falling asleep during attempts, and feeling blocked
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/AstralProjection/comments/10nrftu/maybe_i_just_cant/j6mr9fs/
Context availability: post_and_parent_comment
Paraphrased context: Original post context: feeling blocked. Immediate reply context: beginner practice, falling asleep during attempts, and astral vision.
Answer:
Well the trick is to enjoy the wait, to turn it into a good time for yourself. Appreciate how lucky you are to be able to lie for an hour on a nice bed. Spend time just with the inside of your own head with no expectations. Once you have that mindset, true relaxation and bodily sleep becomes easier, because you aren’t waiting for a certain moment, you aren’t constantly polling your senses, you’re just enjoying the now.
When you do that the time will just disappear.
33. Feeling blocked
Context availability: post
Paraphrased context: Original post context: feeling blocked.
Answer:
I lie there still. I relax my body, everything. I keep focusing in relaxing everything. I lie there from 1 to 2 hours in this state. I have ear plugs and eye mask. I’m breathing in a controlled way, focus on breathing.
None of this is compatible with bodily sleep, which is what you are trying to achieve here. Good job keeping at it for 1-2 hours and trying at different times of day though, that’s the kind of commitment you need!
You need to turn your attention away from your physical body, just like you do when you normally fall asleep. Right now you are doing way too much trying, too much focusing, when you need to switch to a mode of letting go of absolutely everything. All thoughts of your body. All thoughts of your past or what you expect to achieve. Just let go. Currently your brain and body have the impression that you are deeply engrossed in a task. You need to switch away from the sort of task-based, effort-based approach. Stop constantly checking your body for its relaxation level as well!
These ‘active’ approaches are easy to teach because these online teachers can offer a method and talk you through it, even if it doesn’t work for half their students (the student accepts that they’ve just failed at executing the method, not that they’ve been taught incorrectly from the start). They wouldn’t get many video clicks or class signups if their method was lie down and do nothing.
The ear plugs and eye mask are a good idea though, but I find ear plugs can be a bit distracting as well. Funny how something that is designed to dull a sense can actually be more distracting than just letting the world breeze by and fade out exactly how it normally would if you were just taking a nap.
I’m grieving my son and just this relaxing state helps a lot
Sorry to hear that. Just be aware that wanting this too much (i.e. to visit with a dead loved-one) is also a common barrier to progress. You need to let go of that desire, that plan (if you indeed you have that plan). Kick it down the road a bit...you can try in a year or two once you get good at this.
34. Feeling blocked
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/AstralProjection/comments/10nrftu/maybe_i_just_cant/j6angtl/
Context availability: post
Paraphrased context: Original post context: feeling blocked.
Answer:
Quit the videos and any other external tools. Spend more time just relaxing on your bed at different times of day. Before meals, after meals. Before work, after work.
Close your eyes, relax, and wait. Try not to let your mind slip away as your body falls asleep. That’s all there is to it. Every time you try, you get a little bit more familiar with your internal states on the way down to sleep.
Stop trying to meditate your way into AP. Meditation is great, and important to do, but do it for it’s own sake. Meditation to AP is just a frustrating dead end for most people. A bad meditation practice and a bad AP practice. The reason is that sufficiently deep meditation will generally mean that you won’t want to AP; you will pass right through the window for leaving your body, and ignore it, because you will be lost in your object of focus.
How quickly and easily can you fall asleep when you have no plans, no expectations? A matter of minutes. You need to get into the same mindset. You need to see the OBE as a natural, simple thing that just happens when your body sleeps.
You won’t get there through gritted teeth and intense mental effort. You will get there by just turning up regularly and knocking on that door.
35. When to attempt an exit
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/AstralProjection/comments/1e0j88a/what_point_should_i_do_an_exit/lcnl6vi/
Context availability: post
Paraphrased context: Original post context: when to exit during hypnagogia and micro-dreams.
Answer:
Sounds like you’re doing fine, you’ve made good progress if you can observe these things on your way down to bodily sleep. But trying to exit too early (i.e. at the hypnagogic or micro dream stage) is a common problem. With practice you can access hypnagogia after a few minutes sitting upright with your eyes closed, but a traditional, stable AP exit is not going to be possible at that stage as your physical body is still very much awake.
(You can have fully embodied hypnagogia while your body is awake and this can be stable for short bursts, but it’s nowhere near as reliable as classic mind awake/body asleep. It’s a careful mental balancing act to remain there while being distantly aware of your physical body.)
So while hypnagogia and micro dreams are great indicators that you’re relaxing in the right way, they are not themselves good indicators that you are at the exit point. Instead you need to become aware that your body is asleep. I say “become aware” because I don’t want you to maintain a constant vigil of your physical body...I want you to forget it, so that it can sleep! If you poll your physical senses for information your body will just stay awake. This is another common problem. Instead, let it go, watch that hypnagogia come and go...a point will come where you simply realise that you feel significantly different--weightless, possibly buzzing all over with vibrations, possibly hearing or seeing powerful sensory noise. This is where you can just sit up and exit.
mini dream which i am not aware of - should i do an exit here but how can i exit when i am not even aware of it
If you end up in a stable dream, you might have blown past the ‘body asleep’ stage without realizing. Believe it or not I think this is good progress because it implies that you are properly turned away from bodily focus...you’ve successfully fallen asleep. Entering a dream isn’t the end of the world, shatter the dream and you should end in your body in just the right state for an exit. But yeah, you’ll have to realize that you’re dreaming first. That’s a matter of classic lucid awareness and carrying your intention to AP across the threshold.
A really memorable example for me is when I laid down one afternoon in my spare room to AP, spent about half an hour getting down to the right state, but then got bored and sat up to read a magazine. I leafed through the glossy pages for a while looking at the aftershave adverts and looking for an article that interested me until I realised I hadn’t bought a magazine like that in about a decade. The room was a perfect sim of my physical bedroom (albeit with better lighting), my body was identical to my physical body right down to the hairs on my legs and little birthmark above my knee. The only thing out of place was that magazine. Upon realizing it wasn’t real, WHOOM--I was in my body in the vibration state, weightless, ready to exit.
36. Dry spells after early success
Context availability: post
Paraphrased context: Original post context: a dry spell after several successful APs.
Answer:
The thing to do now is to observe what is different about your life, or what is different about your approach to AP. A common source of dry spells is wanting it too badly, or having a very fixed idea of what you want to do in AP now that you know you can do it. This causes over-excitement. I also suspect that our subconscious [the part of us that manages access to AP] just flat-out rejects certain ideas until we let them go.
Generally it’s time for a letting-go session where you just take whatever comes. Just turn up regularly and repeat this without expectations. Astral projection is just one part of a larger exploration of consciousness, and you can’t have a dry spell from consciousness itself.
P.S. 10 days isn’t long at all.
37. When a successful method stops working
Context availability: post
Paraphrased context: Original post context: a once-reliable vibration-stage exit method no longer working.
Answer:
I think there’s a kind of development program built into AP practice that seems to follow a similar path for a lot of people. It starts with those big, flashy, attention-grabbing vibrations (and yes the ‘revving up’ is something I did as well). I also had very quasi-physical separations in the early days--grabbing on to nearby furniture and pulling myself out with heroic effort, for example. It was a big struggle against what felt like a highly magnetic body, there was always this powerful pull if I was within about ten meters or so.
All of those features are now gone, more or less. There was a transition that happened quite quickly in my early 20s, after a couple of years of practice.
Vibrations became subtle, just a gentle whoosh in my head if anything, like someone kicking through dry leaves. I can’t remember the last time I had that now.
My old technique of intensifying vibrations just altered the rate of this gentle whoosh without doing much else. So that’s another parallel to your own experience.
Separation involved less and less action. At first I found myself just gently drifting upwards, or urging myself upwards with the flight mechanism. Later there would be no moment of separation at all--I’m just standing by my bed, or even out in my back yard or the street outside my house. It comes as a realisation that I’m already there. That’s an important point, I can’t stress it enough--there is no separation, just a realisation that the sensory stream is already in full flow. This might always be the case.
If I am near my physical body (or its local representation), there is no magnetic pull.
I think the process teaches us that separation (despite its very strong common elements across everyone who experiences it...) is largely illusory, and that we can simply “realise” ourselves out of the body with a gentle nudge of your attention to find the non-physical sensory stream. Why it happens this way, I don’t know. Maybe without the early separation experience we wouldn’t even notice that we were having an OBE, leading to confusion. I find it hard to believe that those early separation experiences are just cultural/expectation-based--I’m more inclined to believe that something in us actually does get modified with practice.
So your next steps: get down to the appropriate state for AP without waiting for the big obvious signpost of vibration, and move your attention to your non-physical senses. You may already have an embodied non-physical sense experience underway, but you’re waiting for those traditional quasi-physical signs (which involve a kind of physical focus). To be clear, I’m saying you might be standing beside your bed already while you’re still focused on those quasi-physical separation sensations. These streams can be active simultaneously.
Experiencing ‘simultaneous’ input might also be a part of the development program--around the time that things changed for me, I had a few experiences of physical and non-physical senses mixing, I was aware of my physical and non-physical bodies at the same time. For example I found myself staring at the ceiling through my physical eyes while feeling my way downstairs and out into the nearby field. I labelled these ‘failed OBEs’ at the time, but I wonder if it was a sign of progress instead. I’m curious if something like this has happened for you recently as we might discover that it’s a common developmental stage.
38. Feeling trapped or stuck in an astral environment
Context availability: post
Paraphrased context: Original post context: feeling stuck in water or blocked in an astral setting.
Answer:
Astral projection is not an imagination journey and does not require visualization or active imagination at any point. I don’t know your friends but what you are describing sounds like group storytelling with some trance impersonation rather than astral projection. There are a bunch of people out there who think astral projection is the same as daydreaming about being elsewhere, and this idea has spread on social media because it’s such an easy alternative to actually entering a significantly altered state and leaving your (sleeping) body. So just be careful about what other people claim to be able to do. Don’t let it give you an inferiority complex. If anything it sounds like you’re the only one being real in this situation...because you can’t see what they are claiming to see.
People massively over-report aphantasia because they have no idea how little other people see in their ‘minds eye’, due to the very poor descriptive language we have for imagination vs actual minds-eye visions.
Nope, you are not stuck in water in the astral realm.
39. Whether some people simply cannot AP
Context availability: post_and_parent_comment
Paraphrased context: Original post context: whether AP may be impossible for some people. Immediate reply context: visualization, imagination, and guide-assisted AP.
Answer:
How would you define awareness moving vs remaining and imagining, overall?
Imagination is when you tell yourself a mental story. Imagine going to the shop for milk. You get into your car, seatbelt on, pull out of the driveway, drive down your street, round the mini roundabout, down the hill, along the main road a bit, pull into the shop car park and find a space, walk through the sliding doors of the shop, navigate to the back where the fridges are, pick up milk, feel the cold and the weight of it in your hands...
Perhaps you did ‘see’ mental images when going through that mental story, like when you read a book. That’s to be expected. That’s how imagination is meant to work. But you didn’t pick up novel sensory information from the journey. You were ‘on rails’; rails of your own choosing, perhaps built just in front of the train, but still rails. Everything was the result of a decision you made, held in your mind. If something novel or surprising crept in at the edges then that might be interesting, probably a matter of filling in details from memory or a kind of ‘nested imagination’ filling in the gaps. For the most part people are just fooling themselves if they think that is astral projection.
Moving your awareness is like actually going to the shop. You have the full immersion sense experience of going to the shop. You move by actually moving. Importantly, it’s not just you telling the story to yourself. Just like physical life, the environment is external to you, you don’t have to keep it in your mind’s eye for it to exist. The experience can go places you didn’t expect or invent.
Some folks have said that you retain awareness of your physical body, but I would imagine that is case by case?
You do occasionally retain awareness of your physical body (split awareness). It can lead to a disorienting sensory overlap as you have actual sense information coming from two sources. I’ve never tried to create this situation on purpose, but it has happened to me by accident a couple of times...staring at the ceiling with my unfocused physical eyes while feeling my way down the stairs with my astral senses.
It is not at all like having a conversation with my wife about dinner while imagining myself doing loop-de-loops.
Seeing things come and go at the same time would certainly make me very dizzy, if being dizzy was even possible
Ah but you’re imagining how it might look, instead of experiencing it :) Even my memories of how it looks are imperfect and filtered by human perception. I am simply not operating in a mode that can perceive the world that way. But when you’re out there, you are no longer limited in the same way. We don’t even know all the various ways we are limited by physical bodies. We can’t perceive of some of these limits, until they fall away and we think--oh wow, of course that was just a human thing...
40. When nothing seems to work
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/AstralProjection/comments/10ns9no/everything_i_do_nothing_work/j6aoymb/
Context availability: post
Paraphrased context: Original post context: frustration after trying many approaches without AP success.
Answer:
Forget astral projection. Forget OBEs.
Forget all the tools people want to sell you. Forget all the videos and guides.
Just spend time by yourself in the dark. Be with the dark inside your own head. Set time aside for yourself once a day. Relax. Let it become your favorite time of day. This isn’t even meditation. It’s just experiencing you in silence and relaxation.
Get a feel for the inside of your own head with no plans, no expectations, no excitement, no worries. Create a sanctuary, a little slice of time for yourself, where nothing in life can affect you. If you have problems in life, you’ll be better able to deal with them after your hour on your bed. If you have big plans, you’ll be better able to execute them after a little rest. Leave everything behind and experience your pure, simple self.
Don’t even relax your body. Your body will relax itself when it’s not being used. Ignore your body.
OBEs will come after that.
41. Visualization and imagination
Context availability: post
Paraphrased context: Original post context: visualization and imagination.
Answer:
No group started the idea of astral projection. This is because it’s a real thing that has been with us from the start, and people stumble across it again and again throughout history. You will find it mentioned by any tradition that involves meditation (at least any tradition that involves more than scratching the surface). You will occasionally find it mentioned in other religions as well, though the accounts are usually blown out of all sense of proportion because the people doing it weren’t experts, they had no idea what was going on, and they went into it with a headful of prior religious nonsense. If we forgot everything about it tomorrow and it was wiped from the historical record, we would re-discover it in a matter of months and give it a new name (though I bet it would be reductive and limiting, or the purview of edgy teens in discords and called something like hyperlucid shiftenation)
The terms we use now are imperfect (astral projection, astral plane) but they came about in the late 1800s/early 1900s when enough people began to explore the phenomenon and share notes. Those terms are generally good enough for us to get on with, and we don’t need to reinvent them once per decade just to sound sciency or like we’re on some spiritual cutting-edge. I use the term interchangeably with OBE.
As for your second question, it’s really important that you understand that no imagination is involved in astral projection. I wrote a bit about this recently (because the misunderstanding comes up about once a week) and I’ll find the link. Essentially, there are some people out there that describe their little imagination journeys as astral projection, but they have no idea what they are talking about and they only serve to muddy the water.
My comment about imagination
A different recent comment about the reality of it
42. Whether AP vision is just imagination
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/AstralProjection/comments/10m4az0/what_does_it_look_like/j6339b2/
Context availability: post
Paraphrased context: Original post context: whether astral seeing is imagined or directly perceived.
Answer:
Is this basically just imagining looking at things (which is what I assumed but seems way underwhelming compared to how it’s described)
I don’t know where people have got the idea that astral projection involves an imagination journey. I’m guessing some TikTok thing or some other ‘astral projectors’ in some corner of the internet who think it’s a matter of just imagining yourself doing this or that. This is very much not the case.
Maybe it comes from people misunderstanding guided meditation (which has always sounded like an oxymoron to me anyway)...
No imagination is involved at any point. When we talk about leaving our bodies here, that is exactly what we mean. You experience a whole other sense environment. You experience the act of stepping out of your physical body into that environment. Sometimes you don’t get the transition moment and you get jumped directly into another environment earlier in the process, sometimes you can collapse a dream environment and end up in an OBE, but for the most part when we talk about direct OBEs we mean actually stepping/rolling/floating out of your body.
If anyone suggests otherwise (i.e. in some video guide or forum) then they have no idea what they are talking about, and their opinions/ideas on the matter can be safely ignored.
You can sometimes tell when people are reporting an imagination journey when they trip up and talk about themselves in third person (”I saw my soul getting up and flying away, then I met and we hung out in “ etc). These are fantasists, spreaders of misinformation.
43. Visualization and imagination
Context availability: post
Paraphrased context: Original post context: visualization and imagination.
Answer:
You don’t need to visualise at all to achieve AP, and I sometimes think active visualisation techniques are more of a distraction than anything. We get a lot of people through here who seem to be in the right state for AP--mind awake, body asleep--but then they just lay there visualising ropes or visualising themselves getting up, rather than just getting up of their bed!
How long would it take you to get to sleep if you were just taking an afternoon nap with no plans, no pressure? Minutes. Not hours. That’s how long it should take to get into the right state for astral projection if you are properly letting go. Laying there for hours visualising stuff is a waste of your time (beyond hopefully being nice and relaxing...but that’s about it.)
You just need to get better at falling asleep while holding on to consciousness...that’s the only skill required. It’s obviously not as easy as just falling asleep normally, but it should be, if we can get out of our own way.
44. Teachers and gurus
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/AstralProjection/comments/16lva99/i_need_a_teacher_or_some_help/k1a21lj/
Context availability: post
Paraphrased context: Original post context: teachers and gurus.
Answer:
Ok, this sounds like a case of too much effort, too much trying, over-reliance on techniques.
I’m going to say something controversial (well, maybe not controversial on this sub, but I bet it will be controversial with anyone trying to sell you a technique): when techniques work, they work by accident. They work because they sometimes fail just right.
There is a paradox built into every technique. As long as you faithfully execute a technique, you will just remain a person in bed faithfully executing a technique. This can last ten minutes, an hour, two hours, it doesn’t matter. No amount of trying will work. It’s when you slip a little...get tired of it, let go...in that little gap, there’s an opportunity. Sometimes you come back in just the right state. (Sometimes you just fall asleep.)
(But shit, I can’t sell that technique. I can’t farm clicks on youtube or tiktok. People want steps.)
I think you need to take things right back to square one. Forget everything you’ve learned, because clearly it doesn’t work for you. I want you to change your thinking to a model of focus and attention for a while, as opposed to a fixation on body-exiting. Your first job is just to get good at moving your attention away from your physical body and seeing what comes when you do that. Learn to locate your hypnagogic senses while simply not caring what your physical body is doing. It can look after itself.
If this process takes a year, it takes a year. You need to work on it at different times of day. Take little hypnagogic dives through the day...to the outside world it’ll look a lot like a bunch of 10-minute naps...but pick up one or two things, then come back and write down what you see and hear. This practice will inevitably make you good at turning away from matters of the body. Do it long enough and you’ll start having fully embodied flashes of being elsewhere...and this is while seated in an armchair.
Then once a day, maybe three times a week, go up to a quiet room and lay down while doing this exercise. See what happens.
P.S.
I’ve also heard from a channeled being that drinking distilled water can help with astral projection but idk if it’s safe to drink only that
Did you hear this from a channeled being, or did you hear from some dude who says he heard it from a channeled being? People are absolutely full of guff. Even channeled beings are full of guff. Drink what you want. I drink filtered water (not distilled!) because it tastes better. I just had a big glass of pepsi max and a hypnagogic vision session about ten minutes later.
45. Whether beginners need a guide or teacher
Context availability: post
Paraphrased context: Original post context: whether it is unwise to try AP without a guide.
Answer:
Okay cool--you now have a list of sites whose advice you can safely ignore, because they have no idea what they are talking about.
You can astral project safely any time you like. Go in with an open and fearless mind, free of superstition. Don’t let anyone else gatekeep the experience for you.
Competent guides may well show themselves once you learn the basics, but they’ll be on that side, not this side.
46. Separating AP from lucid dreaming
Context availability: post_and_parent_comment
Paraphrased context: Original post context: a possible first AP after years of trying. Immediate reply context: whether AP and lucid dreaming are different.
Answer:
Both AP and lucid dreaming are achievable for anybody. Just takes a bit of work. Lucid dreaming is generally considered easier, but you can move from one to the other (sometimes unintentionally). And yes--you’ll have setbacks, often right around major milestones, because as soon as you realise “oh shit this is real” your next task is getting over any excitement/expectations/plans and returning to an equanimous state, because you need to stay balanced and just a little bit unattached.
Dreaming takes place in astral environments--there is no difference between a solo astral environment, a dream, and a ‘community’ one, shared by many minds. The idea that there is an ‘overworld’ with dream ‘pockets’ is closer to the truth but isn’t quite right. It’s all just individualized consciousness interpreting (and participating in the creation of) a sense environment. Get enough conscious parties participating in a ‘dream’ environment and it’s just another astral consensus environment. Dreams don’t run on your hardware, you don’t have exclusive rights, everything is in the cloud...
This is why it’s super easy to get caught up in a dream during an OBE. We are dream-makers. Creators. It’s all automatic. If you aren’t careful the connection can be seamless (you open a door, you accidentally create a portal, and now you step through it into a dream. You try to teleport to the moon, you end up in a dream of the moon, populated by what you expect to find there.)
Step one for a new AP’er should be learning to avoid dreams and stick to consensus environments. It involves baby steps, careful planning of each move. Moving through a window without shutting your ‘eyes’. Pushing through a door rather than opening it. Flying carefully rather than letting your surroundings blur. Lots of people skip this step. I don’t have it perfectly down myself, but I’m aware of the pitfall.