My First Weird Experience

Before I became interested in psychic abilities (because I thought they were fake), I had a strong interest in hypnosis. I was about 14 or 15 years old, and I saw a hypnotist on TV knocking people out and making them do weird things, like make out with brooms. I was intrigued instantly.

As any nerd would do, my natural reaction was to go to the library and read every book on hypnosis I could find. Unfortunately, there weren’t any. There was only one in the catalog, and I had to order it from another library. A tormenting week later, the book finally arrived, and I dove in.

I didn’t try hypnotizing anyone else… I didn’t really care about making other people look silly. I wanted to try this stuff up close and personal. The only chapter that interested me was the one titled, “Self-Hypnosis”.

I did the exercises, and they mostly didn’t do anything. It put me in a light trance, but even then… it was more like - “Did I do it? Was I hypnotized? Or just messing with myself?” I didn’t have any solid success. I kept at it for a while (probably a month or two), but nothing crazy was happening, so I eventually lost interest.

Except for one experience…

At the time I didn’t make the connection, and concluded that self-hypnosis didn’t work for me. Looking back, I now know that my experience was directly related to my practice with self-hypnosis.

I woke up in the middle of the night, and was laying in bed. The next thing I remember, I could hear people faintly. The volume gradually increased until I could hear a crowd of people as if they were standing all around me. I’m talking about actually hearing people. If someone started a conversation with you in real life right now - that’s the exact kind of hearing I experienced. Real hearing. As if they were physically right next to me.

I could make out the voices and sounds. It was as if I was walking down my hallway in high school, between classes. I could hear some of my friends talking, and other acquaintances. I could listen to the entire crowd and take in all the mur-murs, or I could focus in on one group of people and hear specifically what they were talking about. Just like in real life.

I was absolutely amazed. I was fully aware that I was laying in bed, in the middle of the night. My eyes were even partly open. I was completely calm and conscious. But I heard voices :-P. Perhaps I am crazy? It wasn’t a dream, although part of my brain might have been in a dream state. Eventually I fell asleep, after listening for about 5-10 minutes.

Hypnagogia

Before you actually think that I really am clinically crazy, I should tell you that my experience is somewhat common, and has been scientifically studied. It’s called a hypnagogic experience. Weird word for a weird state of mind :-).

The scientific community claims that it’s a form of hallucination that people experience between the sleep and awake state. There are a lot of different ways to experience this hallucination. You can hear weird things (auditory), see weird things (visual), or feel weird things (tactile). Or maybe a combination. It just so happens that in my experience, I heard voices.

Since my experience, I’ve had a lot of hypnagogic hallucinations. I can sometimes induce them on cue, but usually they just happen randomly. Some hallucinations are very vivid and seem real, while others are very light and I can easily tell that it’s something in my head. Either way, they are a lot of fun to play with, as long as you don’t get too freaked out :-).

How to have a Hypnagogic Hallucination

Chances are you’ve already had a light hypnagogic hallucination before, you just didn’t know what it was called. I believe that day dreams are a very very light form of them (although I’ve never read research that has made the connection). A more solid hypnagogic hallucination can be experienced before falling asleep at night.

How? Simple: trance.

Trance out before you go to bed at night, and weird shit happens. It’s a law of the universe :-).

But maybe this is your first time trying to induce a trance, and you have no real clue how to go about it. Hey, don’t worry! It just so happens I have some tips you can try :-).

First, lay down. Close your eyes. Sometimes I listen to music, and that can really help a lot. What kind of music? Surely you can guess by now: trance music :-).

If you choose to listen to some music, then a great way to get into a trance is to focus ONLY on the music. Focus on every layer, every instrument, every background ting and whiz. Make sure the songs are in stereo, and focus on how the left ear is slightly different from the right ear. Put 100% of your focus in the song. Forget your body. Do this for about 20 minutes, and you’ll be in a nice trance :-).

If you choose not to listen to music, then you might have to work a little harder to trance out without falling asleep. Progressive relaxation helps. Basically, just lay there, don’t move your body, and relax all your muscles. Then go muscle by muscle, and focus on making sure it’s completely relaxed. Start at your feet, work your way up your legs, through your torso, down your arms, into your neck and face. This entire process should take from 20 minutes to 40 minutes. It’s not a race! Take your time.

If you do progressive relaxation, and get to the end and you still aren’t tranced out, then just think of nothing. Focus on thinking of nothing. Keep doing that. It’s hard. But it works.

Once you get to a solid trance, either by using music, or relaxing your body, then just maintain the trance. Weird stuff is bound to happen :-).

What Happens?

If you reach a trance state of mind, then you won’t be fully aware that you’re trancing out. It’s like watching a really good movie. It sucks you in and you completely forget that you’re sitting in a theater, watching a movie. It’s like day dreaming. If you try to pin down, “ok, NOW I’m day dreaming”, then you miss it. But if you just let go and experience it, then you flow in and through it, and you realize afterwards what happened.

So what happens when you’re trancing out? For me, usually something will yank me back. Maybe I was trying to think of nothing, and a flood of thoughts rush into my mind. Or I’ll hear something. Or I’ll feel someone poke me :-P. Hello hypnagogia!

Once a hallucination yanks me out of my trance, I don’t have to go back into a trance. I can just lay there, stay calm, and play around with the hallucination - completely aware of what’s going on.

I experience hypnagogic states of mind about five times a month. For example, last night I saw some weird stuff. I went to bed, listening to some trance music. I listened attentively for about 20 minutes, focusing only on the music, before I tranced out. Then a flood of images and videos came at me. It yanked me out of my trance, but the hallucination continued. I saw faces and people - I was inspecting them and trying to memorize their faces. This continued for about a minute. The faces flashed by me quickly. I didn’t recognize anyone :-P. It was crystal clear though. It wasn’t blurred, or fuzzy around the edges. I saw it clearly.

Sometimes I experience auditory hallucination like I did during my first experience. When I reach that state of mind, it’s like I’m a radio, picking up whatever I want. I can tune myself to music, and listen to songs in my head, with crystal clarity and perfect recall. Or I can tune myself to specific people, and hear them talk. For example, I may get yanked out of a trance hearing my friend say something (”I don’t think that’s fair. Wouldn’t it be better to just talk to him? Maybe I just don’t understand.”). I can tune in to that friend, and listen to them talk. Or I can change to another person and listen to them. Or change to music. It’s fun :-). And it’s all crystal clear, as if it was happening right in front of me.

In the same way, when I experience visual hallucination, sometimes I can tune it as well (but for me, tuning a visual hallucination is harder). I remember one experience where I tuned into receiving cartoon characters. Why? Boredom I guess :-). I tuned my hallucination to only show me cartoon characters. I received a stream of different characters for a few minutes, changing about every second, like a slide show.

Conclusion

If you want to experience something truly weird, then trance out before you go to bed at night. Don’t have any expectations. Just trance out.

If you can keep your cool, then you’re bound to experience some strange hallucinations. It’s a lot of fun to play with. It’s also amazing the first couple of times, because the hallucinations seem very real, and if you’ve never experienced a hallucination, it can be shocking to see how clear a hallucination can be.

If you do it a lot, you may figure out how to take slight control over a hallucination, and tune it in a certain direction. It’s cool :-). No drugs necessary.

Have fun! If you have a question, feel free to ask in the comments.  Or if you’ve had a strange hallucination in the past, feel free to share as well :-).

Today I present two short posts in one:

The first thing to note is that I just had an out-of-arm-experience.  I have these every once in a while.  Someone called me at 9:45am speaking Spanish that woke me up.  I went back to bed in a weird state of mind.  I did dream some, but I also experienced laying in bed messing around with my arms.

The experience went on and off for about 20 minutes.  I was laying in bed, looking at my wall, and my arms were “out” of my body.  I couldn’t see them, but I could sense where they were.  I moved them in front of my face, trying to see them, but no luck.  I felt my face with my hands, and my hands felt my face, but my face didn’t feel my hands.  It was pretty cool.  I had an experience like it before, years ago when I was 16 years old.

I almost decided not to post about it, because it was a mundane experience, but there was one important feature.  On my wall, I have playing cards taped to it for decoration.  While having these out of arm experiences, I focused on one of the playing cards to keep my consciousness aware.  When I woke up, it dawned on me that I should check that specific card to see if I perceived it correctly.  While in the bathroom, I predicted the card would be dark with two symbols on the front.  When I checked, I was correct - it was exactly as I remembered it.  This isn’t die-hard proof of anything, however it is an interesting thing to note.

In other news… Steorn, the guys who claim to have discovered perpetual motion, had a public demonstration July 6th, 2007.  Unfortunately, they couldn’t get their technology to work.  Here is a video of Sean McCarthy making excuses.  I didn’t watch the whole thing because of the bad quality and length, but maybe someone else is interested:

The great thing about out of body experiences is that ANYONE can learn and see it with their own eyes. Let’s start at ground zero:

What is an Out of Body Experience?

An out of body experience (OBE) is when you perceive your consciousness outside of your body. The basic outline is that you lay down, meditate or trance out, and at some point you start to float outside your body. Sometimes this feels so real that you’re not even sure if you’ve left your body. There have been times when I’ve fallen out of my body, and thought I actually fell out of my bed physically! Only to “wake up” back in my bed, slightly confused :-).

It’s hard to wrap our minds around what an OBE actually is. If you read about OBEs, then you might draw the simple idea that it’s like being a ghost, floating around going through things. This idea could be true to some extent, but you’ll be very disappointed if you think you can just get up and do whatever you want once you leave your body. Once you leave your body, motion, sight, logic, memory, and other basic functions need to be re-learned. I’ve been having OBEs for 8 years and I still can’t move around freely every time.

Other people might argue that OBEs are a form of hallucination or dream. After all - a lot of OBE techniques focus on going to sleep and messing around with altered states of consciousness. It seems like a logical explanation on the surface. However, just like the ghost explanation, it’s an oversimplification. It’s true that during an OBE you will probably experience hallucinations of some sort… there have been OBEs where I perceived my environment completely wrong. Garages in the wrong location, outdoor decks that don’t exist, paint cans that don’t exist, etc. But there are also experiences where I’ve perceived things accurately that I couldn’t have known otherwise - in my favorite experience, I saw a black plastic washer on the ground. Upon waking up, I realized it was really a black guitar pick that I had dropped.

Another piece of evidence that OBEs are real to some extent is that during my 8 years, I’ve always experienced the OBE in the same location as my physical body (except maybe once). You can’t say that about dreams. Nearly all dreams are in foreign locations, like schools, malls, fields, etc.

My point is that OBEs are weird :-). I hate when people try to simplify it without having personal experience or doing any research. It’s like being a ghost, but it’s not that simple. Some parts seem like hallucinations, but it’s not that simple. So whatever your opinion is, please be aware that this is not an easy thing to explain, and if you find yourself simplifying it in your mind, the most likely reason for that is that you haven’t researched it enough, and/or you’ve never had one.

Strong Desire Method

There are an unlimited number of techniques to achieve an OBE. There isn’t one set way to do it. Here is one method that I’ve had success with:

Have a burning desire and unhealthy obsession with wanting to leave your body. Want it more than you’ve ever wanted anything else in the world. If you can achieve that level of emotion, then you’ll have one.

Now why does this work? Perhaps you want it so much that you brainwash yourself into having one?! That’s not good! Well, relax for a second :-). I’ll explain why this works, and then maybe you can understand the sort of “desire” I’m talking about. I’m not talking about the “self-delusion desire”. I’m talking about the “every level of being desire”.

The reason this method works is because the gateway to an OBE is in an altered state of consciousness. When you’re in an altered state of consciousness, you think differently. You make different decisions. Logic functions differently. Memory functions differently. Emotion is different.

Everyone has experienced this. Has your alarm clock ever woken you up? You hit the snooze, laying in bed. The night before you decided to wake up at 6am to go for an early run, but now that you’re in your comfy warm bed, that logic simply doesn’t make any sense. Who cares about exercising? Screw that. More sleep.

When you were awake and alert the night before, you made a simple decision: get up early and exercise. Makes sense to me. But when you were in a groggy state of mind, a different part of yourself made the decision to stay in bed. If you think back to the exact moment you made your groggy decision, you can see how your mind functioned very differently.

The burning desire is necessary to overcome this. If every fiber of your being wants to have an OBE, then when you get into an altered state of consciousness, that altered decision making process will still want an OBE. This is extremely important. There are states of mind where it’s almost a completely subconscious decision. If you really want to have an OBE that’s great. But if your subconscious fears or desires are screaming “No way!”, then when you hit that altered state of consciousness, you will resist having an OBE.

To understand this method, simply understand that when you’re in an altered state of consciousness, you make different decisions. It’s that simple. As another example… have you ever had a weird dream? Of course! One of my dreams today consisted of me making sure no one contaminated the ingredients to a juice maker. Some guy was being a jerk and messing around with the equipment, and it was my job to get him out of there, so the juice would be free from contamination. Now that I’m awake, I see how silly the entire situation is. But at the time, I was in an altered state of consciousness, and my decision making process was completely different. My memory was different. My emotion was different.

Had I had a burning desire to leave my body, then even the part of myself that felt it was necessary to guard a juice maker would have wanted to leave.

In Conclusion…

OBEs are weird. We might be tempted to explain them using simple ideas, but we should remind ourselves that reality isn’t as simple as our beliefs would like reality to be. Research and personal experience can keep us rooted in reality.

One method to leave our body is to have a strong desire on every level of our being. The reason this works is because we need to make the decision to leave our body while in an altered state of consciousness. We’ve already seen in our past experiences how an altered state of consciousness usually makes strange decisions. Having a burning desire to leave our body will ensure that even our altered decision making will point us in the correct direction.

Thanks for reading!

You’ll have to forgive me.

I was lying in bed, about to fall asleep, when suddenly a bolt of lightning struck me.

My subconscious made a comment to me. A very calm and seemingly innocent comment. Perhaps I’m just insane :-). That’s a much more comforting explanation at this point, it seems :-).

My subconscious revealed the metaphor guiding me these past months. And now I can come to no other conclusion than this reality is a form of dream. This idea is so overplayed in religion that it leaves a bad taste on my mouth to say it, but now I’ve seen it with my eyes… so I have no other choice but to admit it’s true.

Ok whoa whoa whoa. Hehehe. I am insane :-). Or maybe I just mind-fucked myself. I don’t know.

There is a deeper meaning behind our personal realities. Everything does happen for a reason.

Look… I don’t want to go into the realization I made, because it’s pretty personal, and I don’t feel like spilling my heart all over the internet for everyone to see :-P. I mean, I like you guys and everything, but not that much :-P. But I can break it down from another perspective that is understandable, now that I have some hindsight.

When I say that “reality is a form of dream”, what I’m talking about is how dreams have deeper meaning when looked at from a metaphorical perspective. So does this reality.

It’s very interesting to analyze your own dreams and see how things manifest. For example, dreaming of taking a shit can represent unloading emotional waste that’s built up inside of yourself, and be a sign of growth and psychological cleansing. So in real life, perhaps you are dealing with old problems that you feel need to be taken care of for you to move on, and tying up loose ends. As a result, one night you dream of taking a massive shit in a bathroom. You wake up thinking, “Now where did that come from? Very bizarre!” But there is an underlying meaning. It’s a metaphor.

So, what I’m saying is that this reality also has this same exact sort of deeper meaning. What we manifest in this reality is a reflection of who we are and what we are dealing with - just like in dreams. It’s a metaphor. This is what intention manifestation tries to talk about (but fails, I believe).

What I’m saying is that this reality uses the exact same metaphor function that dreams use. The exact same function. This is why this reality is a form of dream. This is also why intention manifestation actually produces results. It hijacks and focuses this metaphorical function of reality to produce an outcome.

I don’t know if I’m explaining this correctly or not. Maybe I’m not giving enough examples. Let me try again.

If you’re walking outside, what do you do if it suddenly starts to rain? Do you run for shelter? Do you pause and enjoy the sprinkles? Depending on your personal reality, this reaction means different things. If you run for shelter, perhaps you do this because you feel you need to run from your problems. Other problems you experience in life, you run from. Do you curse the weather? This might mean you feel you’re being treated unjustly by “God”. The weather could represent a system that is out of man’s control, and therefore only under the control of “God”. If it rains on you, you feel that “God” is unjustly making your life miserable, so you curse the rain. It’s a metaphor. Do you see how this is the same function as dreaming as well?

It’s all connected. All the ideas in your head, all the beliefs you hold, all the emotions you feel, all the experiences you have in this reality… it’s all connected.

I’m not saying that if you run from the rain, that you run from your problems. It depends on who you are as a person. Just like your dreams… if you dream about being in the bathroom, it might represent a time period where you need to do some psychological cleansing. But if you are a janitor for a living, then the idea of being in a bathroom would have a completely different meaning to you, since you probably clean a lot of bathrooms for a living. Perhaps it means it’s time to clean up someone else’s mess?

Ok… so anyways. The important part about this is that reality does this. The experiences you’ve had in your life have meaning. They happened for a reason. Think of it like a dream. What is the metaphor? What does it emotionally mean to you? Decode it like you would decode waking up from a bizarre dream.

Now I really do need to get to sleep. This realization has interrupted me :-P. I’ll probably read this in the morning and face-palm :-P.

I had an out of body experience this morning. I haven’t had one in forever. This has been the longest stretch I’ve gone without having one (10 months according to my records), and it felt pretty good to get out briefly.

I didn’t get to explore or anything, unfortunately. I was mostly stuck in my body. I could get out for a little bit, but then I would get yanked back. A pretty standard OBE for me… it’s how most of them go. It’s annoying to read about other people’s OBEs, and see how much fun they have. Mine consist of me floating a few feet from my body, then getting yanked back. Lather, rinse, repeat. Not terribly exciting.

Of course it is cool just to have an OBE in general… even if I can’t get that far away from my body. Nonetheless, I do wish I could do more exploring. Oh well.

Locations!

1. Bed in NY home (both orientations)
2. Keith’s house in NY
3. Scott’s house in NY
4. Jason’s house in NY
5. House in Buford, my room
6. Hotel room for Dianne’s Publix thing
7. Apt 94
8. Dorm room in FL
9. Dianne’s apt in SC
10. Grandma’s FL room (twice)
11. House in Buford, the couch
12. Dorm room in MD
13. Second dorm room in MD
14. Third dorm room in MD
15. Apartment in MD

Most readers probably don’t understand, so I’ll explain everything:

An out of body experience (OBE) is when you perceive your consciousness outside of your physical body. Some people prematurely understand it as floating around like a ghost… that’s an extremely extremely simplified explanation. Things are a LOT more complicated than that. But if this is your first time hearing about OBEs, that might be a good place to start.

I started training OBEs when I was 15 years old. It took me 6 months of training before I accomplished my first OBE, when I was 16. Ever since then, I’ve had OBEs randomly… usually at about once or twice a month. They usually come in spurts, so it wouldn’t surprise me if I have another OBE tonight, since I just had one this morning.

Now, a logical guy would probably say: “Well, maybe it’s a hallucination? Or dream? How do you know it’s REAL?” To answer that question: immediately, I don’t know. And I can’t tell. Most OBEs are very strange… the state of mind is like nothing we normally experience. It’s not a dream state of mind… it’s not a normal waking state of mind… it’s just weird.

But we can be smart about it. For example, most dreams that we have take place in foreign locations. I have dreams about being in malls, in houses, in cities, in school, etc. But OBEs always start in the location where my physical body is at. This is so consistent, that I keep track of all the locations where I’ve had an OBE - which is what the list is above. Those are all the different locations where I’ve had an OBE. One notable location is #6. We were staying in a hotel for one night in South Carolina, and I had an OBE there. I had never visited the hotel, and I’ll likely never visit it again. In my opinion, that is strong evidence that OBEs are more real than dreams. What are the odds I would have a dream of that location the very night that I was sleeping in it, and fool myself into thinking it was an OBE?

What really convinced me that OBEs are real is this experience. In it, I perceived a “black plastic washer” on the ground. Later, when I woke up and checked, it was actually a black guitar pick. This proved to me that I was perceiving reality when I left my body, because I had no clue that my guitar pick was in the location where I correctly perceived it.

Different people have different beliefs on what OBEs are. It isn’t clear cut. A lot of OBEs contain hallucinations, and merge into dreams. It’s not simple. But there are some key features of OBEs which separate them from dreams, and which prove that they are more real than dreams, as outlined above. If you want to read about more proof, then I suggest reading Robert Monroe’s, Journey’s Out of the Body. Monroe’s work could convince some of the toughest skeptics.

When I decided to shut down PsiPog (my old paranormal website), my OBEs stopped. I think it was because I was telling myself that I was done with that part of my self, and it was time to grow and change. Now that I’ve settled down 10 months later, and am starting to hack reality again, I’ve had an OBE. I suspect I’ll start having them consistently again.

I would recommend everyone train for OBEs. While it’s true that my OBEs are usually dull, I have had some really thrilling ones. And just the experience in general is really amazing. To turn around, and see your physical body laying in bed… it’s scary, it’s disturbing :-), but it’s also awesome. I have no doubt that I’m more than my physical body, and that I’m going to survive the death of my body. And it doesn’t have anything to do with faith. I KNOW it. I’ve SEEN it. Having that sense of certainty has made it worth the effort.

So I had a lucid dream last night. Before I continue, I’d like to point out that the MegaMillions Jackpot is at $45 million - the amount I require before I start playing. Back to my dream…

Before I fell asleep, I told myself that I wanted to have a lucid dream so I could investigate the lottery. Maybe get some numbers, or some techniques… something. Seemed like a good idea.

I became lucid a few hours into sleeping, during the beginning of a long period of dreaming. I knew I had a lot of time to kill before I would wake up (as long as I didn’t excite myself too much), and decided to get some answers about the lottery. I was inside a huge Victorian house that was also partly a mall, and there were tons of people around me.

I started by grabbing the next available person, and asking them, “How do I win the lottery?” They said they didn’t know. I asked another person. They didn’t know. I went up to another person, and declared that they would be representing my subconscious mind. I asked them how to win… they had a slightly longer response that boiled down to not knowing.

I left the area I was in, pretty frustrated. I saw some children playing, and asked them what they were doing. They said they represented different parts of myself - different characteristics. I asked them how to win the lottery - I asked them for numbers, and for techniques to try. They didn’t know.

By this time I was getting a little frustrated. I began searching for someone who should know, instead of asking random strangers. I would see someone and scoff them away, because I knew they wouldn’t know. Person by person… I floated downstairs, partly surfing on the banister (hey, I was lucid, might as well have some fun :-P). I turned a corner and saw a religious black man, who looked like a shaman.

I made friends with him and asked him how to win the lottery. He told me he didn’t know of the top of his head, but he knew where we could find out. He said he could look it up for me (in a book?), and to follow him. So I did.

We winded around the house, going all over, and eventually found the stairs to the basement. We went down, but it wasn’t a basement - it was the outdoors. It was shifting between night time, and day time, in the matter of a few seconds. He started doing some ritual, and the stars in the sky started to move. He told me he would find out by reading the stars. I told him I thought he was going to use books in a library - he said he could do that too, but that we could also use the stars. I said ok.

I watched him manipulate the stars into weird patterns. They rotated around the sky as he “read” them. I tried to read them too, but I didn’t get it. Unfortunately, I had been lucid for an extremely long time at this point (perhaps 15 minutes), and my lucidity started to fade.

While he was manipulating the stars, a women offered us some food samples. Cakes, brownies, and chocolates, and stuff like that. At first I said no, because I wanted to only eat healthy food, but then I realized it was ok because it was a dream. While eating the food, I became distracted, and lost my lucidity. After that, myself and the shaman forgot about the stars, and got stuck in these narrow tubes in the yard. Lucidity was gone, and I forgot about my lottery goal. No results.

I find that my dream characters are worthless when it comes to usable information. In the past, I have asked them for help on different topics, and they always fail to provide anything substantial. I remember one time, while lucid, I decided to track down a “psychokinetic master” and ask him techniques. When I found him, and asked him, all he gave me was a simple chakra meditation. Another time, I was lucid and asked to speak to my subconscious. A man walked up to me, but it quickly turned into helping someone with a drug addiction (that doesn’t exist). Another time I also asked to speak to my subconscious - the receptionist told me I’d have to call him. After finally getting a hold of my subconscious on the phone after some trickery, nothing was beneficial.

And most of the time in my dreams, all the dream characters do is try to convince me I’m not dreaming. What a waste. I’m lucid - I know I’m dreaming.

I also asked about the lottery when I first started playing. My dream gave me numbers…. 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 3. Needless to say, they didn’t win.

I wonder how people have precognitive dreams. While my dreams are fun and useful in self-discovery, they always fail at helping figure out things about reality.

Bah.

And now for something completely different…

I had a near-lucid dream this morning. I was walking around, and found myself in a zoo. I got myself stuck, and had to go down some stairs, but there was a huge snake guarding it. Unfortunately, I didn’t notice until I was so close the snake was right on my foot.

At first I was afraid to get bitten, but then I started to become partly lucid. I knew that if I feared the snake biting me, then it would bite me. Instead of focusing on the fear, I decided to try to focus on getting the snake to leave me alone. I started to visualize the snake going down the stairs, and leaving. It didn’t leave… but instead, the snake started licking my foot playfully.

I believe there are lessons to be had in dreams. If you’ve never had a lucid dream, then I recommend training for it. That applies to anyone. We sleep one third of our life - it’s amazing we don’t take that time period more seriously. No matter what your beliefs are about what dreams are - there is one thing for sure. You choose how to navigate your dream. And you use the same decision making process in your waking life. Dreams give us the opportunity to test our belief structures in fantasy situations without putting ourselves in real danger. They’re beyond helpful in self-discovery.

Plus it’s fun.

EDIT: Also…

A not-so-funny experience happened. Yesterday, I reminded myself that I needed to pay my car payment, which requires me to go to the bank. I asked myself, “When does the bank close?” and got a response of “1:00pm”. I thought - gee, that doesn’t sound right. When I got home, I checked the bank hours online. According to their website, they close at 3:00pm. So I felt confident going to the bank at 2:00pm to pay my bill, despite the little annoying voice within telling me otherwise. Upon arrival, it turns out it did close at 1:00pm because of Memorial Day weekend. On their door, they have the normal hours posted, and then a cute little printed paper saying they’re closing early because it’s Memorial Day weekend.

How nice. Now my car payment is going to be late. I should have listened to my subconscious.

We are all “psychic” — there is nothing SUPER-natural about it. It’s just natural. Now we might feel a little less special when we think of it that way, but we have to put our ego aside in favor of discovering truth :-P.  Maybe some of you are thinking, “Yeah, that’s great Sean, maybe you are psychic (or crazy), but I’ve never done anything psychic! So it’s easy for you to say.” Ok fair enough. Let’s take Out of Body Experiences, for example.

The basic description of an Out of Body Experience (OBE) is that you lay down, do some meditation or something, and then you find consciousness floating outside your body. Then you can fly around and do fun things.

Sometimes we become so discouraged by our practice that we feel we’ll never accomplish our goal. Hey, cheer up! While nothing has been “proven” about OBEs, a lot of authors in the OBE field, along with myself, believe that everyone has OBEs every night. Now don’t just glance over that idea — if you’re training for OBEs, then really digest it.

Imagine that you actually are leaving your body, every night. Every night, since you were born, you’ve been leaving your body. That’s a lot of experience. That’s a lot of OBEs. Imagine that just last night you left your body. And the night before. And tonight. Get it out of your head that you need to achieve an OBE. You’ve already achieved them!

So what do you need to achieve? Conscious awareness. Right now you aren’t consciously aware of leaving your body. You leave your body every night, but you are zonked out when it’s happening.

The question isn’t, “How do I have an OBE?” It’s not a question of techniques, or step by step procedures. The question you need to pose yourself is: “How do I become aware of this natural process?” Now, we can have some tips that you can try. But these tips are not full-proof step by step techniques. They are just tips (that I’ll address in future postings).

If you’re trying to have an OBE (or even if you aren’t, but are just curious about it), start by really digesting the idea that you have an OBE every night. Maybe you don’t believe it - that’s fine - but just give the idea a try in your head. It can change your focus.

I had a lucid dream last night. I have them just about every night.

A lucid dream is a dream where you are aware you are dreaming while inside the dream. I’ve had them ever since I was a little kid, and it’s the only weird skill that I really have a natural talent for.

My dreams follow a basic pattern: some authority figure telling me I’m going to get in trouble for doing something, then me discovering it’s a dream and laughing in the authority figure’s face… then usually flying off and having fun. Sometimes I’ll take time to teach my other dream characters how to fly, or how to walk through walls.

There are a lot of ways to have a lucid dream for yourself. I think the reason I have them all the time is because, when my mind wanders, it naturally starts questioning things. Whenever my mind starts to wander in a dream, I start to question my environment, and it turns into a lucid dream.

One technique you might want to try is to start questioning your environment in real life. Ask how something works (”What does the inside of that doorknob look like? How does it do it’s job?”), or why someone designed what you’re experiencing a certain way (”Does each floor in my apartment have the same layout? Did they build these stairs last, after everything else was done?”). Look around and pick out random things that most people would look over. Be aware of the movement of your body. Be aware of the thoughts in your head, and specifically how you react to situations around you.

How we perceive our environment from day to day is extremely important. For example, check out this post about how artists will look at pictures differently than a normal person. Interesting stuff!

If you want more lucid dreams, chances are you’ll have to change something :-). Where we are is a result of what we’ve done… if we want something else, we need to starting doing different things. Happy dreaming!