Using Meditation to project? Or no? Here's my problem.

[dreaming90]

Fred made a good post on the EIC forum...

I do wonder, though, whether meditative approaches cannot also work against you when it comes to out of body practice.

Many practitioners of meditation do not seem quite aware at how far and deep most projectors go in order to get into the right state to project, and quieting your mind has little to do with it in my opinion.

For example, some monks work for decades to reach the void through meditation, whereas many modern-day projectors do not experience these difficulties.

I sometimes have the impression that the "empty mind" or "point of consciousness state" described, is nothing more than "clicking out" as often occurs as a sideways step from the mind awake/body asleep state.

It is a fairly light meditative state.

It is in fact a state one wants to avoid, since projecting occurs with intent, and with full mind. It doesn't need to be quiet at all in my experience. You can project with a lot of chatter going on.

I can see the use of meditation practice though, in various ways, and for several reasons. But not necessarily to project in the most efficient way in a reasonable amount of time, for most.

Link

[GRANT]

Actually, even if using the breatheing technique only, and not getting hung up on it, will get you out; no matter what position you are in.--------just breathe---------------focus on the breathing in a relaxing way--don't try to figure it out.

Grant

[SoulSail]

This may or may not add much, but here's my take:

~ Expectation is the bane of meditation. And it's fairly tough to project without setting intent and expecting success, so I don't like mixing exits with my core practice of Vipassana. But that's just me.

~ While meditation has often drawn me into transcendental states, as a practice, I do not use it as a springboard for anything other than learning to quiet the mind and go within. If the mystical happens (and it does...often), great, but that's not why I'm there. Phenomena come and go and can even be considered distractions (and they often are).

~ However, I believe that my meditation practice has taught me plenty on how to hold awareness while my body goes to sleep--this is awfully helpful when you're trying to do Mind Awake, Body Asleep while projecting.

So I guess it all comes down to you motives for one and the other, and it looks like CFT and others have addressed a number of those so I'll get off my little soapbox here. But in short, meditation is a killer tool to use for projecting, but I prefer to leave meditation itself alone, bring nothing to it, expect nothing from it. Or as the Bon Tibetan's say "Just leave it as it is."


Regards,

Soul

[AstralCody]

Thank you so much everyone for the replies.

@dreamng- It's funny you say... I have never projected meditating before. One time (My clearest OBE I ever had.) I was laying down... I answered the intercom thing because my grandma called down to me. So I had to get out of bed. I laid back down and within 8 seconds I had the falling feeling hit me like a ton of bricks. Literally only 8 seconds then Boom I was out. I was EXTREMELY tired too. That may have had something to do with it.

[SiriusTraveler]

I have alternated meditation with trancework for over a year now and I have never fallen so deep into trance when meditating as when doing trancework. I have never felt any vibrations when doing either though. I have felt falling sensations and feelings of clearer tought etc. in both cases but when doing trancework I have experienced much more deep sensations then when meditating. When meditating I have felt better synchronicity between my mind and brain though, and felt that I had much clearer toughts, much more clarity. When doing trancework I have felt this clarity, but not on the level as when meditating. Its as if the haze of toughts are still there when doing trancework.
I feel that there is a much much better chanse of leaving the body doing regular trancework then when meditating, but that meditation clearly helps improve everything about inducing trancestates. I have yet to sink as deep as many of the people here, let alone leave my body, but this is my take on it.