Michael's MAP Journal

[michaelsaganski]

OBE/Astral Projection Trial Day 25

Book Reading:

* I’ve finished reading both “World of Lucid Dreaming” and “Adventures Beyond the Body”, and am currently starting “The Power of Now”.
* World of Lucid Dreaming was good but it contained a lot of information I already knew, so it just filled in some gaps of my knowledge.
* Adventures Beyond the Body was ok. I liked his dimensional model of the non-physical universe but there wasn’t very much meat to the book. I liked reading about his personal experiences but they didn’t really connect with the rest of his book very well. He makes some great arguments for the benefits of OBE’s but does little to back it up.
* I’ve only started reading “The Power of Now”, but I can already see the power behind this book. I think it will greatly help with my mind taming exercises.

Program Notes/Observations:

* Primary energy center work this week so far has been quite productive. I have felt a lot of activity in my base chakra, little activity in my naval chakra, and a moderate amount in my solar plexus.

Dream Notes:

* I had my first lucid dream last night ever since I’ve started this 90-day trial! That’s the third I’ve had in my lifetime.
* I attribute my success this time primarily to the wake back to bed (WBTB) method. The reality checks, affirmations, and energy work also help as well of course. I fell asleep just after 11:00, woke up at around 3:30, stayed up for about 10 minutes (went to the bathroom, drank a glass of water), and then went back to bed. I focused my intention on holding my consciousness into my dream, repeating the affirmation “I am more and more conscious in my dreams” as I fell asleep.
* At first I thought it was a Wake Induced Lucid Dream (WILD). But, after I woke up and thought about it some more, I think it was more likely a Dream Induced Lucid Dream (DILD). There was a small break in consciousness between being awake and asleep, but it was much smaller than usual, which I think helped me realize it was a dream right off the bat.
* In the dream, I found myself lieing in my bed, but the room was different. A woman came out of a painting and materialized in front of me. I asked her if she is a spirit guide and she said “No, but my dad is”.
* I then asked her “How do I know this is real?” She didn’t answer with words but just reached out and touched my base chakra. This was an incredibly intense feeling which almost made me wake up – I’m pretty sure I lost some lucidity after this as it sort of turned into a regular dream afterward.
* The fact that she touched my base chakra was interesting because the base chakra has been the one I’ve activated the most with my energy work so far.
* After I woke up, my base chakra throbbed quite intensely for about an hour and has mildly throbbed/felt active for the whole day so far.

It’s great to see some of this work starting to pay off. This has been quite exciting so far and I can’t wait to see where this goes!

[astralflyman]

Hi Michael,

I have been following your journal. I am excited about your progress.

I have started MAP too(still in my 1st week), still have to convince myself to post something.

Anyways, good luck with everything.

[michaelsaganski]

Be sure you're at least writing for yourself if you're not posting online.

[astralflyman]

Thank you, I am indeed writing stuff down. I don't think is nearly as detailed as yours.

[michaelsaganski]

Looks like the board lost some of my posts. You guys can go to my personal blog (see signature) to read the ones that were missed.

OBE/Astral Projection Trial Day 40

Well, things keep getting a whole lot more interesting.

Progress generally feels like 2 steps forward, 1 step back, but every few days I am able to get into a slightly deeper trance state. This basically means a reduction in sensory input, which is part of the process in dissociating from my physical body – I need to keep my physical senses from rooting myself into focusing on the physical. I am able to feel a tingling sensation and a heaviness in my arms and legs fairly easily, but my chest seems to take more effort (especially since I am focusing on my breath).

During a couple of my meditation sessions I’ve had the urge to see if I could communicate with my “guides”. I’d openly ask if they were “around”, and I have gotten confirmation. The type of confirmation is just on the edge of what my analytical/left-brained/atheistic mind can accept – energy surges through my body, eye twitches on demand, and an internal dialogue that feels almost imaginary. The experiences can be interpreted as real or made up, depending on what you believe.

I now see that our beliefs are what limits us, and is what also limits our experiences. It’s sort of a catch-22 because in order to experience something profound you have to believe it to be possible in the first place – that can make it hard for skeptics, when self-fulfilling prophecies come to mind. I feel like I just need to keep an open mind to slowly chip away at my limiting beliefs and concepts. Patience, persistence, and practice will expand my capabilities over time.

A lot of these self-realizations I’ve been having have caused somewhat of a belief-system crash, as coined by Bruce Moen in the Afterlife Knowledge Guidebook. Some of my old limiting beliefs have been dissolved and this has caused me to lose part of my identity/ego. This “loss of self” can be tough on the mind and I know that I need time to heal and reintegrate my new beliefs into a more accurate model of reality. This is hard! (whoops, I suppose that was an affirmation…)

Even if I don’t have an OBE from this trial I’ve already had enough experiences to further pursue meditation and the exploration of consciousness. I now realize that an OBE is just a subset of the larger reality that can be experienced by consciousness. I almost feel like this trial is morphing into something more general – the evolution of my consciousness – rather than to just attain an OBE.

I’m thinking about going to The Monroe Institute for their “Gateway Voyage” retreat. I have their Gateway Experience CD’s which I think I will start listening to regularly instead of the Lucid Dreaming track provided in bwgen. I’ve been a little disappointed with bwgen so far when compared to some of the other binaural beat tracks I’ve tried. I’m going to be focusing on “CD 1 Track 2: Focus 10? for now until I get good at achieving that state.

I have been absorbing quite a bit of material on consciousness this week and I feel like I should slow down a little, especially with the belief system crash. I’m getting the feeling that I should be working on experiencing more, rather than just reading about it. The books are only pointers. Reality is subjective so it’s up to me to see what is really true or not.

That being said I am now interested in reading the “My Big Toe” trilogy from Thomas Campbell. He worked with Robert Monroe at the very early stages of the creation of Hemi-Sync. I particularly like his model of consciousness and reality, especially the mapping of entropy with love.

[michaelsaganski]

OBE/Astral Projection Trial Day 45

I’ve finished reading the Afterlife Knowledge Guidebook as well as The Secret of the Soul. The Afterlife Knowledge Guidebook is absolutely fantastic and I am starting to incorporate its exercises into my daily practice. I’ll be writing about my experiences with it as well.

I flipped through The Secret of the Soul as the writing didn’t appeal to me that much, much of it was testimonials about things I already knew about or concepts that seemed more rudimentary than Monroe’s Focus Level system. I’ve also been casually reading about traditional yoga (not the physical exercise), Thomas Campbell’s online material, as well as the posts made by Frank Kepple on the subject of phasing.

Today’s main OBE exit technique was to imagine climbing a rope downards. While doing this I felt intense pressure on top of head, like a vice, which later moved down to my third eye and then stayed there. Pressure stopped as soon as I stopped the exercise, although a mild throbbing was felt afterward. This pressure was very intense and made it quite difficult to focus on climbing down the rope.

The pressure was a downward pressure, almost as if my the act of imagining the downward climbing was pulling my etheric body. But for some reason I guess it didn’t want to let go… I also think I started to feel my heart chakra flutter but my excitement and awareness of it quickly made it stop.

[CFTraveler]

Could you describe how the downwards rope climb is done? (As if you were going down a rope with your head upwards, or like Spiderman? (you know, upside down)- Thanks.

[michaelsaganski]

It was right side up, as you would normally expect someone to climb down a rope (not like Spiderman). One hand after another moving down the rope while allowing the rope to slide through.

[michaelsaganski]

OBE/Astral Projection Trial Day 51

So about a week has gone by with trying OBE exit techniques, and I am making progress. It seems like there won’t be any major changes to the day by day practice according to Mastering Astral Projection. The only thing that changes is a different exit technique to try every couple of days.

Fundamentally though, all the exit techniques are pretty much the same. The basic idea is to focus your awareness to a point in space outside your body. My favorite so far has been the basic rope technique, where you imagine yourself climbing a rope upwards from your body.

A major roadblock I’ve hit is that I have a hard time keeping my mind focused on climbing the rope for more than maybe 30 seconds. I’m getting better at catching myself wandering with my thoughts, but sometimes it really surprises me. One minute I’ll be practicing my exit technique, and the next minute I’ll realize that I had been daydreaming and I don’t even realize how I lost track/focus.

On the other hand, I’m starting to notice a distinction between some of the daydreams. Some of them are clearly my own subconscious mind worrying about various aspects of my life (the ego, I guess). However, others can be rather – weird. I’ll sometimes “see” people I’ve never met before quite clearly, in a situation that seems beyond what my own mind could come up with. Maybe they’re just symbolism/metaphors created by my own mind, but they seem so random and out of place. If you are familiar with the perceiver/interpreter concept by Bruce Moen, then I think I may be getting better at non-physical perception without letting my interpreter run away with the thought (which I have noticed as well).

One time while I was meditating and realized I had lost focus, I actually saw (not visualized) myself go through a dark tunnel (1st person viewpoint) when I regained awareness. That was pretty cool, but also VERY subtle and easy to miss/forget. I really had to stop for a moment and think: “Holy crap, what was that? REMEMBER this Mike…” because I find a lot of my “daydreams” while meditating are not actively stored by my memory – they slip away quite quickly.

Depending on your definition of OBE some of you might say I’ve already been successful by the experiences I’ve just mentioned, and my lucid dream in the past. Through my readings I’ve discovered just how broad “out-of-body” really is. The classic floating above your physical body in the real-time zone is actually only a VERY small subset of the continuum of consciousness. I’m very interested in exploring all of this quite a bit further.

In my search to improve the focus of my mind and self awareness I’ve stumbled across traditional Yoga. I’m not talking about the physical fitness program you see in the West, but the original and true Yoga. The Yogis figured all of this consciousness “stuff” out (including OBE and more) thousands of years ago! One particular site I like is SwamiJ.com, because it has a huge wealth of free knowledge on this topic.

In MAP, there are optional exercises in the 90 day program. I’ve substituted some of those for exercises I feel would be more beneficial to me, based on what I’ve learned from other authors. I’ve been listening to a Hemi-Sync track once a day, which I absolutely love. I try to be as present and aware as possible throughout the regular happenings of my day, and I’ve extended the time I practice mind taming each day. I usually do breath awareness for mind taming, but I’ve recently been experimenting with repeating a mantra.

I’ve been noticing a gradual shift in my overall world view as well. I find myself becoming less materialistic, or at least am noticing just how materialistic the culture is where I live. There just isn’t any balance, mostly everything is about exterior facets of life with very little emphasis on the interior. But it’s the interior that actually matters, because everything else is just temporary.

I think that if more people realized that consciousness is eternal and that the whole point is to have it evolve and grow in knowledge, then there wouldn’t be so much focus on materialism and so many of our problems would go away.

Heh, sorry for getting a little carried away there.

[michaelsaganski]

OBE/Astral Projection Trial Day 56

So another week has gone by with what I think has been steady progress. No OBE yet but that’s ok, I have a ways to go yet!

My third eye chakra has been feeling quite active lately, especially when I do any sort of meditation, body awareness, deep thought, or energy work. It basically feels like a throbbing, with the intensity being different depending on what I’m doing. Sometimes the throbbing can be quite intense when I’m working on an exit technique.

Generally, I’ve felt a tightness in upper body during exit techniques. At first it was mostly my head that would feel like it was getting “pulled”, but now it’s mostly my chest/heart. It’s like I’m trying to pull away but my physical body is holding on too tightly. I sometimes have my inner voice telling me it’s not possible.. right when I’m about to do it! This is counter-productive and something that needs to be worked on. I have to believe I can do it before I will ever let myself let it happen.

I have now jury rigged a headset with Audacity recording my voice. I’m finding that I get a lot of random imagery when I’m in a deep meditative state, so I’d like to record some of it with my voice when it happens, otherwise the memory is lost quite quickly. Stopping the meditative state and writing it down just isn’t practical. Perhaps I can figure out some sort of pattern or meaning to what I’m seeing if I analyze enough of it.

I now regularly feel falling sensations when I sometimes go too deep in the trance state and regain awareness, which is sort of a “mini-obe”. Learning to just relax and let go of any expectations seems to provide the best results. I could have swore I felt one of my “astral” fingers move inadvertently on two separate occasions, which shows that I’m starting to have my energy body loosen up.

Other interesting occurrences include my guides thwacking me on the back of the head when I asked if they were around, haha. Also, during one session I am pretty sure I experienced a very weak form of astral sight because I was able to see my arms and legs with my eyes closed. There wasn’t any spectacular detail, just shiny blue lights among the blackness that took the shape of where I would have expected my legs and arms to be.

My dream awareness has not improved all that much lately, as it just hasn’t been on my mind as much. There’s been a slow but steady improvement in my dream recall, but it really depends on the quality and quantity of sleep I get that night.