MAP program notes

I've just started the Mastering Astral Projection program. If it's alright with the forum moderators, I would like to post my notes here. This is in part because I prefer typing over writing in the book, and in part because it will keep pressure on me to make accurate notes.

A bit about me: Perhaps my greatest barrier to success in this program is that (as a result of my education and upbringing) I have a considerable dose of skepticism about the concept of OBEs and their components (lucid dreams, energy body work, astral planes and mythical creatures?) I am intrigued though, and I want to move past that skepticism. Reading has convinced me that there something to OBEs, and I want to elminate any latent doubts and have the full experience.

Day 1 Notes:

• Setting up environment: My apartment is small. The refrigerator turns on sometimes and hums loudly. There is a garbage compactor nearby that makes wheezing noises every few minutes (been meaning to complain to building management about this). The brainwave generator partly covers the noise, but for non-bwgen portions, I will need earplugs.[/*:m:1f0cdt0n]
• Initial relaxation: Listened to the bwgen for 20 mins while repeating the affirmation in my head. Light pleasant tingling in my feet, sometimes moving up to my calves. Annoyance at the garbage compactor intruding.[/*:m:1f0cdt0n]
• Relaxation, lower legs: Taking off headphones and inserting earplugs broke the sense of relaxation somewhat. Tensing thighs is difficult to do. After completing the exercise, I don't feel that every muscle in my legs has been tensed and relaxed, mainly just my feet and calves.
  Breathwork: Tried focusing on leading edge of breath, entering nostrils, moving downwards into lungs, swirling about and exiting. Afterwards, tried focusing on chest and abdomen instead -- much less interesting, I'll stick with the leading edge. Didn't feel anything special.[/*:m:1f0cdt0n]
• Mobile body awareness: Focusing on specific body parts made me feel as though somehow I was "leaning" towards that part (even though my physical body was still). Sometimes I caught my eyes behind closed eyelids looking at the body part I was focusing on. I cannot easily shift my awareness from one place to another, it seems to take time to readjust. Tracing a path takes a long time because it moves very slowly. I spent 20 minutes on this instead of the prescribed 7.[/*:m:1f0cdt0n]

Overall, I think maintaining relaxation and focus between exercises is difficult, because of the timer going off, the earplugs being inserted, the perceived need to review the notes in the book, etc. Need to think of a way to reduce distractions during exercises (e.g. garbage compactor noise) and between exercises.

Day 2 Notes:

Falling asleep, I often found the nightly affirmation fading from my mind. It seemed to take a long time to get to thirty repetitions, because often I would say the first sentence, forget the second, drift off a little, catch myself and start over. It seems to have worked though, because I awoke in the middle of the night with a somewhat vivid dream recollection (involving rollerskating while playing some kind of piano-guitar-combo with a friend of mine, who was also a lion, and some other subplot centered around a fancy rice-cooker). I wrote down some keywords. When I woke up again in the morning, I had some very vague recollections, but before I could write anything down, they were all gone.

Exercises today:

• Relaxation: I used some incense this time around. The smell is very strong, but not unpleasant. It's a good idea to associate this with relaxation. I seem to be getting the hang of tensing my thighs properly.[/*:m:1pfokoac]
• Breathwork: Decided to focus on both the intake of breath as well as the motion of my chest and abdomen. Seems to work well, because the motion of breathing appears more fluid and natural, and it takes less work not to think about other things.[/*:m:1pfokoac]
• Energy body work: No matter what, I couldn't get the "stirring" action to be effective at all. When using my finger to circle around the thumb-joint, the sensation feels vivid, but I cannot replicate anything remotely like it using energy flows. Brushing was much more successful -- I could generate the sensation of motion along my skin just by focusing on it. Sponging was even better, there was a clear sensation of something moving around inside my thumb! I couldn't get the sponging action to move all the way into my thumb-tip though. Even after my successes with brushing and sponging, I still couldn't get stirring to work. Oddly enough, the book said that my thumb would feel heavy, but I felt exactly the opposite: while the rest of my hand felt heavy, my thumb felt oddly alert and prickly.[/*:m:1pfokoac]

I'm pretty pleased, since even though it's only day 2, I'm already experiencing sensations that I had never felt before. It's a good motivator![/list]

I am remembering many more dreams than usual. There were many distinct dreams last night, but the problem is that often they fade before I can write down any keywords. I managed to jot down a few disjoint keywords for some of them, but in the morning, I was unable to reconstruct them from my notes. The dream memory disappears at the slightest body movement, no matter how fixed I think it's in my mind before that. Hopefully this will improve.

Day 3 Notes

• Relaxation: I'm getting better at this. Got the `floating' feeling I sometimes have in bed before falling asleep, but feeling fully conscious. In a hard-backed chair no less! Tensing and relaxing muscle groups still doesn't feel quite right.[/*:m:7bhpgz8e]
• Breathing: Not so good. Nose felt stuffy and sometimes runny. Hard to focus.[/*:m:7bhpgz8e]
• Energy work: It always takes me much longer to do this than the time given in the book. The book says five minutes, but that's about how long it takes me to get a decent sponging feeling in my thumb alone! I probably spent about half an hour on this today, because I had trouble sponging my big toes. They're quite far away, and not very long. Splitting awareness was also semi-successful: there seems to be a much clearer feeling of sponging when working on a single thumb. Giving each thumb `half my awareness' also results in about `half the sensation'.[/*:m:7bhpgz8e]

Even more dreams last night. I keep waking up to write down key words, but it's quite tiring. Maybe from now on I'll just write down one or two per night at most. Anyway, it's quite difficult to reconstruct them from keywords in the morning, so I should start focusing on that skill a bit more.

Day 4 Notes

• Initial Relaxation: While listening to the brainwave generator, more details about last night's dreams began coming to me. I was able to remember one dream quite vividly, even though I hadn't had any recollection of it at all after waking up in the morning. I relaxed more deeply than ever before. When the timer rang after 20 minutes and I wanted to exchange headphones for earplugs, the movements of my hands and arms were jerky and uncontrolled. I may have been partially paralyzed.[/*:m:2slnvt0g]
• Body relaxation: I found Bruce's tip about letting "oil" drain out after tensing and relaxing all body muscles to be quite helpful. It made me settle down quite deeply after completing the exercises.[/*:m:2slnvt0g]
• Breathing: Still can't quite focus entirely on the breathing. Thoughts and dream images keep popping into my head. Sometimes my attention drifts from my chest and lungs upwards into my head.[/*:m:2slnvt0g]
• Energy work: My left toes are much better than my right at responding to the brushing and sponging techniques. This is odd because I'm right-handed. I had expected the opposite. All my left toes responded nicely with a strong prickly feeling, but on the right foot, I had trouble localizing the action to an individual toe, or to get a synchronized response from all toes at once. Also, there was less prickling. Sure it'll get better with practice.[/*:m:2slnvt0g]

Considering how strong the prickling was in my left toes, I'm slightly concerned about having that in my entire body at some point (since that's probably where the book is headed). Seems like it would be quite unpleasant ...

Terrible session today. Didn't get much sleep last night because I had to work late. Relaxing and focusing was difficult due to throbbing in my head and ears. No dream memories either, bah.

Day 5 Notes

• Relaxation: Broke off listening to bwgen after 10-15 minutes because it wasn't going anywhere. Still decided to go ahead with daily exercises. Stretching felt okay, but overall not nearly as effective as yesterday. I felt myself tensing back up again all the time, perhaps due to frustration at being tired and ineffective.[/*:m:37cf538j]
• Breathing: Not much success here either. Couldn't maintain proper relaxation while breathing. Stronger throbbing in my head and ears after inserting earplugs.[/*:m:37cf538j]
• Energy work: All my toes responded well to the brushing and sponging action. Stirring the underside of my left foot worked well initially also, but my right foot barely responded. As I became more frustrated with my right foot, the sensation in my left foot faded away. After that, I couldn't get my left foot to respond to stirring anymore. Brushing and sponging responses on both feet were very slight. Eventually I just became annoyed and decided to end the session.[/*:m:37cf538j]

I'm trying to decide whether to try the same exercise tomorrow or move on. I'm tending towards moving onward, since the frustration of this session is likely to stick with this exercise.