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I'm skeptical


Nic727

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On 06/01/2017 at 1:25 AM, Nic727 said:

Hi,

After two years on this forum I'm always skeptical about Astral Projection/OBE/etc.

I tried many time, but doesn't work at all.

Thaaaaat's because it doesn't exist.

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On 1/5/2017 at 5:33 PM, XenoFish said:

To me Astral Projection is just another term for Lucid Dreaming. Meaning it's the same thing.

You can learn to enter and control your dreams, lucid dreaming.I have done that at least occasionally for the last 20 years or so.  It can be entertaining and useful too if you are working things out.   I have tried to test it further several times. If I try to go to a specific place and observe something, or visit a specific friend; I find that the experience was contained in my brain.  I can talk to that friend, but it turns out only to be my projected image of that person.  Same with a place.

Some people can be disappointed by that, but it is a pleasing thing to do in its own right. To practice and gain control of that ability takes work and persistence, and is satisfying.  I started by setting an intention in my thoughts about what I would dream. I kept a dream journal for a couple of years; training myself to wake up after every dream and writing it down.   First thing when I woke up, before I got out of bed, I would try to remember every dream and write down the ones I had missed. I kept at it for the better part of a year before I started realizing, "Hey, this is a dream," and remembering to try to take control of it. 

Maybe some people have more facility for it, maybe I'm remedial;  but I believe unwillingness to work, practice, and commit time and effort  are the biggest barriers.  I think there is something fulfilling about striving toward incremental success rather than snapping your fingers to attain mastery.

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On 1/6/2017 at 11:25 AM, Nic727 said:

Hi,

After two years on this forum I'm always skeptical about Astral Projection/OBE/etc.

I tried many time, but doesn't work at all. When in my bed, I'm relaxing and laying on my back, but since I'm not very confortable in this position I change position, but I fall asleep a couple of minutes later... No dreams... Or sometimes I can remember a dream of about 10 minutes of non-sense stuffs (always weird to see that when you are in a dream, every weird things look normal for your dream-self even if it doesn't exist in real world) and that's it. Can't really control myself in dream to start from lucid dream and try to go out of the dream to go to astral plane (if it exist). Or sometimes I just wake up without remembering anything from dreams. It's kind of annoying, because I want to experience OBE or something similar. If only someone from the forum could try to visit me during the night and kind of wake me up to go astral plane, but I don't think it's working like that even if you can go around the world by teleportation... A lot of people are talking about a guide, but since my guide still doesn't exist, I don't know what to think about that... Do you need to believe in god to do Astral Projection? I'm atheist, so maybe AP is all hallucination?

Also weird that nobody tried to hide a card somewhere in the house and ask to someone to randomly pick a card and you try to see it and confirm via AP/OBE.

Try changing your skeptical nature to be more accepting spiritual wise. As an atheist, this may also contribute to the low vibrational frequency you possess in order to reach a higher form of consciousness. Perception, is everything.   

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Folks... stop with the bickering with each other or dragging old arguments and disputes across threads please. If folks can't discuss things nice with each other- then leave that person alone, or put them on ignore.

If a member is behaving in a rule breaking fashion, please report that comment to the moderators. DO NOT engage with further rule breaking behavior, arguing with that person, or further disrupting or derailing threads with further rule breaking behaviors. If you cannot manage to discuss and debate civilly and within the forum rules you agreed to as members when you signed in... step away from the topic, or perhaps from the keyboard for a while.

Discuss the topic at hand folks... and just stop with picking each other apart please.

 

Rashore, moderating team.

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Then what's the point in posting an opinion? With the two options of it being deleted or someone getting all upset about it?

Should trigger warning be at the bottom of every reply?

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3 minutes ago, XenoFish said:

Then what's the point in posting an opinion? With the two options of it being deleted or someone getting all upset about it?

Should trigger warning be at the bottom of every reply?

Posting an opinion in relation to a topic is one thing.... attacking or bashing each other personally, particularly when dragging it across days worth of a thread, or hauling out stuff from weeks or months ago in other threads is not just "posting an opinion". That is getting into rule breaking behavior, and it just needs to stop.

I get it that some members here have developed personal dislikes for each other. When that personal dislike starts regular arguments, the necessity for moderation to break up bickerments and derailments, and in general is making for a lot of unpleasantry and rule breaking- it needs to stop.

Just really.... talk about the topics, debate about the topics... but just leave off with all the personal sniping at each other. That goes for everyone on UM, not just you because I happen to be quoting you.

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The ability to act like civil, rational, adults involves being able to view an opinion, understand it, and decide whether it merits an intellectual counter or not.  If all you are doing is reacting emotionally to the person and not to the opinion of the person, you are not acting like a civil, rational, adult.  You are acting like an internet anonymous.

The purpose of posting an opinion is to get a reaction from someone.  The type of reaction you give is on you, not on the person posting.  If you believe you are going to be triggered, then, like any adult, you should try to stay away from that particular conversation.  If you are actively hounded or attacked, you need to bring in the people with the authority to review your case, and in the meantime, do your best not to make their decision that much more difficult by becoming part of the problem.  An adult understands the concept of giving people enough rope to hang themselves.

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2 minutes ago, rashore said:

Posting an opinion in relation to a topic is one thing.... attacking or bashing each other personally, particularly when dragging it across days worth of a thread, or hauling out stuff from weeks or months ago in other threads is not just "posting an opinion". That is getting into rule breaking behavior, and it just needs to stop.

I get it that some members here have developed personal dislikes for each other. When that personal dislike starts regular arguments, the necessity for moderation to break up bickerments and derailments, and in general is making for a lot of unpleasantry and rule breaking- it needs to stop.

Just really.... talk about the topics, debate about the topics... but just leave off with all the personal sniping at each other. That goes for everyone on UM, not just you because I happen to be quoting you.

wow Rashore, you gone all Millicent Fritton there.  :D

 

JOOOOOOKE.:ph34r:

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On 06/01/2017 at 0:03 PM, XenoFish said:

To me Astral Projection is just another term for Lucid Dreaming. Meaning it's the same thing.

Except, to use the example in the op, if you are able to go and look  at that card while projecting and then remember it, and it matches the one someone else chose without your knowldge

If you do this regularly it is not coincidence but evidence of something else at play. On the other hand i agree that, without such verification, one should consider a lucid dream of astral projection t be exactly that. 

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On 06/01/2017 at 11:55 AM, Nic727 said:

Hi,

After two years on this forum I'm always skeptical about Astral Projection/OBE/etc.

I tried many time, but doesn't work at all. When in my bed, I'm relaxing and laying on my back, but since I'm not very confortable in this position I change position, but I fall asleep a couple of minutes later... No dreams... Or sometimes I can remember a dream of about 10 minutes of non-sense stuffs (always weird to see that when you are in a dream, every weird things look normal for your dream-self even if it doesn't exist in real world) and that's it. Can't really control myself in dream to start from lucid dream and try to go out of the dream to go to astral plane (if it exist). Or sometimes I just wake up without remembering anything from dreams. It's kind of annoying, because I want to experience OBE or something similar. If only someone from the forum could try to visit me during the night and kind of wake me up to go astral plane, but I don't think it's working like that even if you can go around the world by teleportation... A lot of people are talking about a guide, but since my guide still doesn't exist, I don't know what to think about that... Do you need to believe in god to do Astral Projection? I'm atheist, so maybe AP is all hallucination?

Also weird that nobody tried to hide a card somewhere in the house and ask to someone to randomly pick a card and you try to see it and confirm via AP/OBE.

Can i make a practical suggestion?

. Begin with learning to lucid dream, and then progress to controlling your dreams . The single biggest help i found in this was ensuring i had a lot more sleep than i needed. So i was not falling into a deep sleep when sleeping.This ensured i hovered more in an in between state, where i could carry my waking thoughts into my dream thoughts.   Also, if you wake up slowly, not via any form of alarm,  and transition into wakefulness slowly,  you have the time and opportunity to think about your dreams as you wake up, and store them in your conscious memory, so you don't forget them.

Also, taking time every day to record and also to talk about your dreams helps your mind think about them and focus more on them.

Don't think of your dreams as separate from your waking experience, but as an integrated part of your total consciousness within a 24 hour period.  That is what dreams are; your subconscious processing of everything in your mind over  recent  times.  You can make this a conscious process with time and effort. 

One technique i use, if i ever forget a dream, is to empty my mind when i wake up,  and then begin a process of random association, while i am still lying comfortable in bed; thinking about anything which comes into my head  This often brings a single flash back from a dream into my mind, which then gives me a hook on which to remember the whole dream.

eg i might think "dogs" , during  that random generation of  thoughts and words, and then  have a flash memory  of myself as a dog in a dream, and then recall i was dreaming that i was a were wolf. (or something more mundane, like walking our dogs, but that I was one of the dogs) You dont need a guide; you don't need to work from the perspective of astral projection with all that vibration etc.

Ive never encountered resistance, or vibrations in 60 plus years of projecting my consciousness. i just lift off out of my body, leave the house and go where i direct myself to go.  You can enter via simple lucid dreaming, which i have done since a few years old, when i dreamed every night that i was floating around the high ceilings of our house while my parents tried to catch me.

Only when i came down to get through a door did they do so and put my body back to bed  (restoring my consciousness into my sleeping body)   So then i developed the technique of melding my body with the wall or ceiling so that  i could pass through them and escape outside  From memory it took a few years to get from first learning to project  and fly ,to where i could go out into the neighbour hood, then a few more years to get the abilty to travel the world and another couple to project  my consciousness off earth. And tha t was with conscious effort, trying, learning,  and practising every night.

Of course a psychologist would explain this was a result of me developing Independence from the authority of my parents to control me and due also to my expanding understanding of the world outside my home. As a young child my mind generally was thinking mostly about the environment of the home  and then of our yard but a s i grew, my mental horizons expanded and thus so did my abilty to travel further and further form home.  i remember the first time in a dream when i used my abilty to fly  over the front fence and begin my exploration of the neighbourhood.

i reckon i was about 2 or 3 years old.   To me it required a lot of work, energy, discipline and effort, to travel further and further,  , but this might have simply  been subconscious resistance to going beyond my boundaries, until i was comfortable to do so. 

Edited by Mr Walker
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2 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

Except, to use the example in the op, if you are able to go and look  at that card while projecting and then remember it, and it matches the one someone else chose without your knowldge

That is the test !  If one can really have a conscious ' out of body experience '  and either travel or sense things remotely  then they should be able to report back accurately what they have seen . How many can do this ? How many have tested this ?  I know a few, no one, including myself could do it. I haven't seen a convincing report of it anywhere else either.  The same applies for many other 'psychic phenomena' .  

' Astral travel ' seems an 'imaginative process' .

2 hours ago, Mr Walker said:

If you do this regularly it is not coincidence but evidence of something else at play. On the other hand i agree that, without such verification, one should consider a lucid dream of astral projection t be exactly that. 

 

That is a different and  other ' power ' .   The 'lucid dream' type of 'astral travel' experience is to contact and have effect between the conscious and unconscious mind , but a translatable 'symbol set' needs first to be established * , in a way, like dream interpretation . 

* That is why,  in a traditional curriculum  (on such matters )   instilling a specific symbol set comes at a stage or level before the practices associated with the 'Body of Light'  (  and other levels and practices sit in the order that they are given  - got to learn to walk before  trying to run)  .   Even so , they are clearly indicated to be ' imaginative '  :

 

1. Let the student be at rest in one of his prescribed positions, having bathed and robed with the proper decorum. Let the place of working be free from all disturbance, and let the preliminary purifications, banishings and invocations be duly accomplished, and, lastly, let the incense be kindled.

2. Let him imagine his own figure (preferably robed in the proper magical garments and armed with the proper magical weapons) as enveloping his physical body, or standing near to and in front of him.

3. Let him then transfer the seat of his consciousness to that imagined figure; so that it may seem to him that he is seeing with its eyes, and hearing with its ears.

This will usually be the great difficulty of the operation.

4. Let him then cause that imagined figure to rise in the air to a great height above the earth.

5.  .....

 - Liber O .

( my emphasis ) 

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48 minutes ago, back to earth said:

That is the test !  If one can really have a conscious ' out of body experience '  and either travel or sense things remotely  then they should be able to report back accurately what they have seen . How many can do this ? How many have tested this ?  I know a few, no one, including myself could do it. I haven't seen a convincing report of it anywhere else either.  The same applies for many other 'psychic phenomena' .  

' Astral travel ' seems an 'imaginative process' .

 

That is a different and  other ' power ' .   The 'lucid dream' type of 'astral travel' experience is to contact and have effect between the conscious and unconscious mind , but a translatable 'symbol set' needs first to be established * , in a way, like dream interpretation . 

* That is why,  in a traditional curriculum  (on such matters )   instilling a specific symbol set comes at a stage or level before the practices associated with the 'Body of Light'  (  and other levels and practices sit in the order that they are given  - got to learn to walk before  trying to run)  .   Even so , they are clearly indicated to be ' imaginative '  :

 

1. Let the student be at rest in one of his prescribed positions, having bathed and robed with the proper decorum. Let the place of working be free from all disturbance, and let the preliminary purifications, banishings and invocations be duly accomplished, and, lastly, let the incense be kindled.

2. Let him imagine his own figure (preferably robed in the proper magical garments and armed with the proper magical weapons) as enveloping his physical body, or standing near to and in front of him.

3. Let him then transfer the seat of his consciousness to that imagined figure; so that it may seem to him that he is seeing with its eyes, and hearing with its ears.

This will usually be the great difficulty of the operation.

4. Let him then cause that imagined figure to rise in the air to a great height above the earth.

5.  .....

 - Liber O .

( my emphasis ) 

Or you can simply do it as  a 2/3 year old, and work it out from there.

 I agree that symbolic interpretation is a useful skill and so is the abilty to link your subconscious and conscious minds   A high level of self awareness can also be helpful, but a lot of the stuff you posted here is totally unnecessary and may even make it harder to learn the process.  (eg i hear so many peole say the y have trouble getting past the vibrational stage, yet that is not even a necessary stage  in projection of consciousness.

The two basic things i found, i have explained Make sure you sleep only lightly by being well rested, and ensure you talk about  or record your dreams every day to help you connect your dream consciousness to your waking consciousness.

Reality  checking,established as a daily/ nightly ritual also helps the beginner realise when they  are dreaming, and hence establish lucidity.

The rest is mostly familiarisation and practice. I spent some time trying  a method i read about where you try to imagine each part of your body as weightless and then finally  your whole body becomes weightless.

 It never worked for me but them i was already travelling the galaxy by then. 

  I guess i was an adult before i even realised that controlled lucid dreaming was a process that others could use or that others could project their consciousness anywhere at will.  I stil dont read of many people who can create, design,  construct,  pre ordered  dream scapes, and then live in them for months or even years just as  as you live in the real world. for example you might BE a knight in king Arthur court or aan artificiall intelligence in a space ship, or you might simply create a more mundane verison of life, where you go each night to live a different life from your daily existence with a different wife family work etc.     You end up seamlessly transitioning from one world during the day into another equally coherent and real world at night, with only reality  checkers to make clear which is waking and which is dreaming.  It was not written about or discussed in the fifties and sixties.  and for me every element of them came as self discovery and self learning

.When i was  about 5 or 6  i remember talking about it to other kids in the  infant school sandpit, and getting bashed up for telling lies.

 Simple version. You go to sleep, become aware you are dreaming through reality checking, take control of the dream and shape it into anything you want . More advanced version. You  create or script  the dreamscape you want during  the day and then step into it a s soon as you fall asleep. It is really pretty basic stuff. 

Oh but yes as a learner  the use of weapons, energy shields etc for protection is useful but you soon realise what dreams are, and that they represent (sometimes conflicting, sometimes harmonious)  elements of self, so that nothing in a dream can harm you because you control ,it.  You then step beyond the need for defences and weapons, except as a part of being a character in the dream and using appropriate weapons. Its not fair to bring a blaster to a knife fight, for example. However it IS fair to install inertial dampening and energy/force  fields on your lfying carpet . 

Edited by Mr Walker
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Exactly what I mean about you . 

You would have been directed to the local Dungeons and Dragons group .  

 

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3 hours ago, back to earth said:

Exactly what I mean about you . 

You would have been directed to the local Dungeons and Dragons group .  

 

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I don't get this comment.

 I RAN the local D and D group   back in the 80's and over a dozen people travelled  up to 50 miles each week to take part, for several years . .  ,My extended family still play modern versions of it on Monday nights, along with other board games. I am the oldest at 65 and the youngest, a great nephew, is about 8.  

So what? It is a  n interesting and challenging game when played in the original  form, and i constructed whole civilisations and detailed maps with realistic topographies, demographies, transport networks, towns and cities,  climates, ocean currents  vegetation zones and habitats,  economies and settlement patterns, based on actual  models  of hierarchy and hinterland.

This requires a detailed knowledge of many academic disciplines, but also a good imagination and the abilty to construct a detailed, holistic, working model of a civilisation in which your characters can effectively involve themselves. . 

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