I had another out of body experience (OBE) last night.  Three in a week!  This one was induced voluntarily.  I’ve mastered the technique :-).

A good portion of the questions that people ask me are concerning OBEs.  The question might be, “I can trance out, but then nothing happens!”, or “How do you know when it’s time to actually leave?”, or “I had a weird experience… do you think it was an OBE?”  These are all great questions!   Unfortunately, my honest response to each one is: “I don’t know” :-P.

Maybe I can be more helpful than that though…

The hard part about learning how to have an out of body experience is that it is so dependent on feel, that it’s very hard to teach.  There is a certain feel that goes along with the build up to having an OBE.  Whether that “feel” is a brainwave frequency, or chemical imbalance, or some other weird thing in the brain - I don’t know.  What I do know is that I can usually predict within the first 5 minutes of a trance whether I’ll be able to navigate to the correct feel required for an OBE.  Not intuition, not talking with my subconscious… it is a feeling in my mind.

Having an OBE is just one of many outcomes of trancing out.  In order to have an OBE, you must navigate your trance towards the OBE-feel. So, if you’ve never had an OBE, how can you figure out where to navigate your trances towards?  Basically, brute force.  You trance out, try new things, mess around, and just hope for the best.  Yes it sucks, but I can’t think of any better way (maybe hemi-sync if you want to cheat :-P).

Once you have your first OBE, then you have a basic idea of where the OBE-feel is.  But it takes practice to really pin-point it down, and possibly years to get there willfully.  I don’t know why it’s this hard, but it is what it is.

I can have an OBE using a lot of different techniques because I know where the OBE-feel is located, and I can use the techniques to help control my mind to get there.  If you don’t know your destination, you can have all the control in the world, but it won’t really help you :-P.  Only until you start to lock on to the OBE-feel can you start having them consistently and willfully.

My OBE last night was induced via a Wake-Back-To-Bed method (those in the Lucid Dreaming circles will know the basic idea).  What I did was fall asleep at 8:00pm.  I told myself to wake up at 2:00am, but my body must have hit the snooze on my internal alarm clock, because I woke up at 3:00am.  I got up, walked around, surfed the net, thought about my future OBE, etc.

At around 3:15am, I felt awake enough to have confidence that I wouldn’t just zonk out once my head hit the pillow.  I set up my camera, with hopes of recording my OBE.  I found some new settings on it, which allows for (crappy) night-vision, and changed the settings from SP to LP - which basically meant I could record for 92 minutes (instead of 64 minutes).  I put it on record, then laid down.

I listened to some Daft Punk music - specifically, their live album.  My alarm was set for 6:00am, which is the time I get up to go to work.  I got a decent trance going for about 30 minutes, and then decided that the music was distracting more than it was helping, so I shut it off and went solo.

I fluttered in and out of consciousness for quite a while.  I kept trancing, and nearly fell into a dream state, but managed to keep myself from falling asleep.  Between black-outs, I noticed I was in the right state of mind to have an OBE.  I left for a short while and had a lot of trouble with my vision.  I didn’t remain passive, like I had been on my previous OBEs last week.  I was really disorientated, and having a hard time in general.

I floated over to my door, then back to my bed, and then it dawned on me: I’m filming this!  So I quickly floated towards my camera.  I couldn’t see anything, but I knew I was where it was pointing, and I tried to do crazy stuff with the intention of being caught on film.  I went back to my body, woke up, and checked the clock - 4:55am.  I made a mental note to myself that my OBE was probably around 2-3 minutes long, and made sure I wouldn’t forget the time frame.  I needed to remember exactly when my OBE occurred so I could check the tape when I woke up for that exact moment.

Well, for those of you doing the math, I’ll cut to the chase.  My tape ran out at 4:47am.  My OBE started at around 4:52am.  Noooooo :-).

I checked the tape, and I didn’t see anything noteworthy.  I’ll check again, just to make sure I didn’t miss anything.  The good news is that I have locked on to the OBE-feel, and I am confident I can OBE at will.  This should make future experiments much easier, and tonight I may even catch myself on camera :-).

I’ve noticed that there seems to be a large population of people who have attempted to learn and acquire psychic abilities, but have only achieved limited results. Maybe the results were a little cool, but overall, it wasn’t impressive or notable.

The question comes down to: what is the difference between someone with substantial achievements in their psychic pursuits, and another who simply has mediocre results?

Before I attempt to answer this question, let me make one thing clear: I don’t know the answer :-). I do not know how psychic abilities work, nor do I know the formula for success. What I can offer is my perspective and experiences. I believe I’m one of the many who has had notable results, and I think I might be able to help those that think they’re stuck at a mediocre level.

A Solid Base

First, let’s do some house cleaning. Priorities and overall goals are a large factor here.

You will probably be stuck at mediocre results if:

1. You want to develop psychic abilities because you’re bored, and it sounds cool. (Because you will only put in enough effort to cure your boredom).

2. You don’t actually practice, but you just like hanging out with weird folks online. (Because achieving results usually takes some effort, like learning any other skill).

3. You want to beat up someone at school with your awesome mind-control skillz. (Because your maturity will grow faster than your abilities… I hope).

4. You want to do something you saw in the movies. (Because movies are fictional, and at best are exaggerations of reality).

5. You want immediate results. (Because learning a new skill takes time, no matter what that skill is).

Those are pretty obvious, and I hope that if you’re reading this, you don’t seriously fall into one of the categories above. If you do, then that’s no big deal - but don’t get bummed out when you don’t have the results you were expecting. Becoming proficient in psychic abilities is just like any other skill, like playing the piano, or learning to speak a new language. It takes effort. The more effort you put in, the better results you’ll get (in general).

What are some good goals to have? Well, I learn and practice my psychic abilities because I am fascinated by reality and truth. I love doing things that others think is impossible, especially if at one time I thought it was impossible myself. It’s about outgrowing an old mindset, and stepping into a bigger world. This goal has allowed me to stay focused and motivated for a long time. I didn’t choose or design this goal consciously - it’s something that I feel inside of me that keeps me going automatically. If you ask some other people who have developed their psychic abilities quite a bit, you’ll likely find they have much more deeper goals than just doing something cool. Don’t get me wrong - psychic abilities are totally cool! But that’s not the prime motivating facility.

Don’t Listen to Anyone

No one knows how psychic abilities function. NO ONE. Including myself. So don’t listen to us. If someone starts preaching some “truth” to you, don’t treat it as gospel. My ego is flattered when people follow my instructions religiously, but ultimately - it’s not healthy. And it will lead to failure. If you are a follower, then you will probably be stuck at mediocre results. You will only consume whatever small successes the leaders have achieved. If you want to step it up, then you need to lead yourself.

There are phases that one should go through. Usually, when you first learn about psychic abilities, it’s a whole new world of ideas. At this stage, it’s highly encourage to read and take in a lot of ideas, information, and techniques. The reason for this is so that you won’t ask annoyingly broad questions, like “how do I do telepathy?” or “any tips for psychokinesis?” These questions make me irate :-).

After you have a solid foundation of ideas, and have practiced with the standard techniques for a little bit, you need to go into a new phase. You need to switch modes from learning what others have done, to creating your own path.

If you want more results, you need to take personal responsibility for your results. You need to be self-reliant, and do what makes sense to YOU. Stop asking for help. Stop looking for someone else to tell you what to do. Think for yourself, come up with a plan, and do it! Yes, sometimes you will fail. That’s the price you have to pay for meaningful results. You can either be stuck at mediocre, waiting around for everyone else to tell you what to do, or you can take charge and evolve your own understanding.

Practice Correctly

When you are just starting out, your practice routine should be exactly what the standard techniques tell you to do. If step one says meditate - then meditate. If step two says visualize - then visualize.

Once you finish with that phase and decide to start leading yourself, then you need to modify your practice. Don’t do what the standard techniques tell you. Modify the techniques, insert new steps, try entirely new approaches, experiment with different belief structures, skip steps, mix techniques, etc. This is now the correct way to practice.

When starting out, the correct way to practice is very procedural, and step by step. This will get you the mediocre results, which serve as a great start. But when it’s time to move on, then you need to start using your creative mind, and try new things without asking for permission.

Be Open Minded

Lastly, you absolutely must be open minded. This does not mean gullible. Being open minded simply means that when someone comes to you with a new idea, then take it in and digest it. Have respect for the person who is presenting this idea to you - clearly they must believe in it to some degree, so even if it sounds insane from your perspective, it is very real from their perspective.

The reason this is important is because of the axiom of this article: no one knows how psychic abilities function. Never treat anything as gospel, and never outright dismiss someone else’s perspective. There is a happy middle-ground, where ideas are treated as ideas, nothing more, nothing less. Truth can be evasive, so you must always stay alert.

Conclusion

In conclusion, there is a certain mindset that a lot of successful psychics have. Meaningful goals, independent thought, and open mindedness has shown itself to be stronger than any individual technique. Why do you think experienced psychics argue over techniques? Because we usually create them ourselves, over a long time of trial and error, and feel a strong sense of pride and ownership for them :-). If you are stuck at mediocre, then stop walking behind us, and start walking beside us.

With perception abilities, like empathy (perceiving emotions), telepathy (perceiving thoughts), communicating with your subconscious (perceiving internal messages), or remote viewing (perceiving foreign locations) - the question almost always arises: How do you know what you’re perceiving is real?

How do you know you’re perceiving someone’s emotions correctly and not just making it up?  Their thoughts?  How do you know that when you communicate with your subconscious, that you’re actually accomplishing something?  How do you know you’re actually perceiving something accurately?

For certain situations, it’s pretty easy to test.  If you’re remote viewing a location, and you want to know how well you did, then go to the location and check it out.  Or if your friend is trying to telepathically send you an image, then look at the image afterwards and see how close you got.  Easy :-).

However, with a lot of “real world” applications, it becomes a lot harder.  If I read someone’s emotions, how can I tell that I’m really doing it?  If I’m reading a complete stranger, then it’s not like I’m going to ask them afterwards how close I got.  Or even reading friends - it can be pretty awkward to approach them and ask, “are you feeling confusion over whether you should continue your relationship, or call it quits?”  So how do I know that I’m reading someone accurately?

Or if I’m communicating with my subconscious… how can I honestly tell that what I’m receiving is accurate?  How can I tell it isn’t just my imagination?  I mean - it IS all in my head - by definition!  A challenging situation.

The answer is: I don’t know, especially at first.

As a follow up question: if I don’t know whether I’m doing it correctly, how do I even know if I’m doing anything at all?  Maybe I’m just psychotic?  I mean… if I can’t know whether what I’m doing is real, then it’s pointless.

My response is: Well, that’s fair… at first.  Keep your skepticism on high when you first start - I completely agree.

However :-).  We can be smart about things.  We can stay flexible, be skeptical, but still play along and see what happens.  And that’s the attitude I encourage.  Be skeptical - but don’t let that skepticism turn into cynicism.  Keep trying new things, keep experimenting and having fun, keep doubting and questioning.

If you maintain this attitude of having an open, playful, and skeptical mind, then you will succeed.  If you turn off your skepticism, then it’s possible that you will delude yourself at some point.  So skepticism serves us well.  If you turn off your open mindedness, then the skepticism will overtake you and you’ll develop cynicism.  With this attitude, it’s very possible you’ll do something amazing, but completely ignore it.  So open mindedness is very important too.  Therefore, the goal is to maintain a healthy balance between the two extremes.  The middle path.

Let me relate to you what has happened to me over the years.  I first started getting into empathy and communicating with my subconscious back when I was 17 years old (I’m now 24).  I can remember feeling unsure of whether it was working at all.  I can remember specific situations where my subconscious told me something that wasn’t true, and I questioned if I was wasting my time completely.  Did my subconscious actually not know?  Or was it my fault - and I was bad at communicating?  Or was I just crazy?  I really didn’t know the answer.

I would go a few weeks, attempting to communicate, and eventually getting pissed and giving up for another few weeks.  Then a day would come by where I would think out of the blue, “Man, I haven’t really tried talking to my subconscious in a while… I should really start doing that again.”  So I would give it another shot.  Over time, I gradually became more and more confident, and the messages started getting more and more clear.  I’m at the point right now where I can clearly distinguish between my own thoughts, and the messages from my subconscious mind.  I can easy dictate a conversation, with close to zero effort.

At this point, how do I know that it’s real?  I just know.  I’ve developed a feel for it.  It’s sort of like asking a baseball player: how do you know when to swing the bat?  Well… they just know.  They don’t have a formula in their head… it’s a feeling they’ve developed over time.  They know.  The same is true for me at this point.

With the subconscious, my confidence slowly grew over time.  However, with empathy, my confidence was pretty high at the beginning.

I believe that everyone is naturally empathetic, and it’s inside all of us… it’s just a matter of tapping into the right feeling, and then developing it to be more accurate and specific.  Sort of like hearing.  We all hear.  But musicians will develop their hearing to the point of picking out certain notes and frequencies, different layers and instruments.  We all have a natural empathetic sense - and if we exercise it, we can become much more accurate with it, extracting emotions and watching them interact with each other.

I’ve always been confident of my empathic ability, because I can just see it.  I honestly can’t think of a time when I read a situation incorrectly.  Like I said - with empathy, it’s something we all have.  Even when I was bad at empathy, I still read things correctly - I just read them with less detail, and couldn’t piece it together as well.

How do I know when I read something if I’m correct?  Well, I make predictions based on what I read.  For example, if I read that a girl is starting to think sweet thoughts about me, then I will predict that she will attempt to ask me out on a date in the near future.  However, if I read that she isn’t the sort of girl to ask a guy out on a date, then I will predict that she will have her friends ask me about her, so she can get a feel of the situation.  And if I know that I’ll reject the idea of a date, then I can see how she’ll emotionally respond to this, and what her reaction will be.  I can see that she will reason that we just need to spend some time together in social situations… so I can see that she will attempt to set up social situations where we hang out.  And I can keep going further into the future, predicting my emotions, and sensing how she will react to them.  I can make an entire timeline for the next couple months.

Now - I see all of this about a week before it even begins.  How do I know how accurate my empathy is?  I watch and see how accurate my predictions become.  And if I have 100% accuracy, then I can be confident that my empathetic perception is real and accurate.

If I test my empathy with predictions every now and then, I can get a sense for how accurate it is.  Then when I read a situation that I can’t test, I can still be confident that my empathetic perception is correct.  I might not be able to test that specific situation, but why doubt it?  I’ve proven myself credible.  So I trust in my ability.

Overall, it can be a little hard to trust in these strange abilities at first.  So don’t.  Keep that skepticism high, but also keep an open mind.  Over time, things will start to add up, and you’ll develop the confidence through seeing the results.  It might not be 100% accurate, but if it’s accurate sometimes, and the accuracy keeps improving, and you can FEEL the improvement, then you’re on your way.  Eventually you’ll reach a point where you can be confident in your abilities, because you’ve proven them to yourself.  Until that time comes, have fun, and do your best :-).

Personal liberation is great.

But I get stuck. See, it turns out that everyone is already free. So if I sit here and say that I can help free you, then I’m lying. You are free.

But I see a lot of people using their freedom to enslave themselves. Then they cry because they are enslaved. What am I suppose to do? Help them to stop crying? The only way to stop them from crying is to get them to realize they are already free. But to get them to realize they are already free, they must free themselves from their own enslavement. So I have to tell them that they aren’t free. But they are.

If I tell you, “The only way to become free is to strive for truth in all things”, then that is nice. It’s a nice little statement, which is very useful. But it’s a lie. And very hypocritical at that… I’m lying about striving for truth!

But if I tell you, “You are already free”, it is true. But it’s not useful to you. You are suffering, you feel enslaved, and you want to be free. What good is it to know that you are already free? If anything, that makes it worse!

So I must do the compassionate thing… I must lie in order to help out. Everyone is free, but a lot of us don’t realize it.

So how do you free yourself? Fuck if I know :-).

Personal liberation is one of those things you gotta do for yourself. There’s a lot of bullshit out there… including this post :-). Some idiot thinks he has things figured out, and wants to share his distorted perspective with the world. That’s life. Every person you see is expressing their personalized slavery. So join them if you want… though I wouldn’t recommend it :-P.

People who make sense only make sense because they reflect the things that make sense in our own head. Someone doesn’t help us or hurt us… we help and hurt ourself. The person is only a reflection of this self-process.

So how do you free yourself anyway? I suppose the best way would be to stop taking shit so seriously. And don’t take that advice too seriously either :-).

It’s one big contradiction. If I tell you how to free yourself, then how can you be free of my instruction? Teaching is enslavement. If I give advice, then are you free to not take my advice? Or do you feel compelled to take my advice? If you don’t take my advice, you are enslaved, and if you take my advice, you are enslaved. Good luck! (don’t worry, there’s a third path :-P).

Avoid people who know what they’re talking about. They ruin truth. I’m sure I’m guilty of it… sorry :-P.

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 :-).

I’m going to give you the best method to become telepathic. This is a big secret, so please don’t tell anyone :-P.

The ability to read someone else’s mind is the same ability as reading your own mind. To read someone else’s mind, you need to simply read your own.

Now this might not make sense at first. You might argue, “That’s stupid, I’m thinking about things all the time, yet I can’t read anyone else’s mind.” Well, there is a difference between “thinking” and “reading your own mind”.

We all think. Thinking is easy. To read your own mind, it’s a question of: what are you thinking about right now? And why?

The degree to which you can answer those questions correctly is the degree to which you are consciously telepathic.

Please don’t discount this idea. I know it might seem simple on the surface. But it’s actually much more difficult than you might originally think. What are you thinking about right now? Have you ever looked?

Right now, I’m thinking about 100,000 different things, all at once. And so are you. What we’re immediately aware of is just scratching the surface. I’m thinking about my family, my job, females, food, money, the future, the past, my possessions, the time, my toe, this post… I’m planning, organizing, digging, covering up, learning, teaching, breathing, slouching. In an instant.

This is what meditation is all about. Or at least - one aspect of meditation. Sit down and look inside your own head. Look at what you’re thinking about. Trace it back. Why are you thinking about that? What is it connected to? What sparked your current train of thought? And what sparked the spark? Can you keep your mind quiet? Can you stop all thought? Probably not for long - so why not? What thoughts arise to fill the void?

After doing this for a long time, you start to get a hang for how your mind works. The surprising thing is that everyones mind is exactly the same. The people you hate and the people you love are all using the same mind. It’s the very mind that you use. It’s my mind as well.

Practice this if telepathy interests you. You’ll begin to see other people think inside your own mind. You’ll see their eyes, and your thoughts will be their thoughts. You’ll start seeing the future. Not because you’re “psychic” or anything like that - simply because you are aware.

On the down side, reality can become boring when you know what’s going to happen. It’s like watching a movie in slow motion. Seeing a sentence form in someone’s mind, only to hear them start to speak it; waiting patiently for them to finish what you’ve already seen. Doing something before you’re “suppose” to do it. Throwing off the natural order of events, and confusing people. Becoming offended by people’s thoughts, and them having no clue why you’re so pissed off at them. Becoming annoyed before an annoying person starts to annoy you - and then becoming even more annoyed when they do exactly what you knew they were going to do :-P.

On the plus side, there is a lot less worry. If something fails, you see it fail before it does… and you may see it succeed even further down the line. While everyone else is coming to terms with the failure, you already see the solution manifesting in the future, so it’s easy to stay positive. Now you just have to wait around for the present to catch up :-P.

Ironically, Jesse just e-mailed me the following news article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19875410/site/newsweek/

Happy reading :-).

In light of dealing with skeptics on ld4all.com’s message boards, I will offer multiple ways to prove psychic abilities are real. There are two main paths: do the research, or experience the phenomenon. Feel free to do both at the same time for double the proof.

Do the Research

Here are some links that JoeT provided (I hope he doesn’t mind I ripped them off from him):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parapsychology
http://www.parapsychology.org/
http://www.parapsychologydegrees.com/
http://www.rhine.org/
http://perso.orange.fr/basuyaux/parapsy_eng/links/
http://www.biomindsuperpowers.com/
http://www.espresearch.com/
http://www.parapsych.org/
http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/
http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0003044

Here are some links of my own that I’ve enjoyed:

http://www.ions.org/
http://www.lfr.org/LFR/csl/
http://www.dina.kvl.dk/~abraham/psy1.html
http://www.fmbr.org/
http://www.psywww.com/asc/obe/missz.html

Here are some books:

Out-of-Body Experiences - A Handbook, by Janet Lee Mitchell, Ph.D.
Remote Viewing Secrets - A Handbook, by Joseph McMoneagle
Journeys Out of the Body, by Robert Monroe
Altered States of Consciousness, by Charles T. Tart
The Invention of Telepathy, by Roger Luckhurst
Experimental Telepathy, by Rene Warcollier
Telepathy and Clairvoyance, by Rudolf Tischner

The links and books above give more than enough proof. How many of you searching for proof will actually read any of it though? The information is usually pretty dry, I admit. Nonetheless, if you really want that scientific proof - there you go. It’s all at your fingertips. The only thing holding you back is your ability to read.

Experience the Phenomenon

The path that I personally enjoy is to experience the phenomenon directly. You can’t really argue with personal experience! Oh sure, after you have a bunch of weird experiences, people will look at you differently. Some will call you crazy, and tell you what you experienced was simply impossible. Some will treat you like a circus animal, asking you to perform on cue for their personal amusement. Some will say you’re a liar, and that you’re trying to deceive people for profit. But hey - if you really want that proof - you’ll need to make some sacrifices.

Here are some links with “How-To” information:

http://psipog.net/articles.html (I like this one, personally)
http://www.psipalatium.com/
http://www.psc-online.org/sections/view.php?id=9
http://www.upconline.net/articles.php
http://zhkyrl.brinkster.net/psionline/allarticles.html
http://www.psipog.net/activepsy/contents.html (This is where I started)
http://www.fork-you.com/
http://www.crvmanual.com/
http://www.robertpeterson.org/obebook.html
http://www.firedocs.com/
http://alittleweird.com/2007/05/11/how-to-receive-anything/
http://alittleweird.com/2007/07/04/how-to-leave-your-body/

Here are some books with “How-To” information:

You Are Psychic!, by Pete A. Sanders
Astral Dynamics, by Robert Bruce
Astral Travel for Beginners, by Richard Webster
Out of Body Exploring, by Preston Dennett
Psychic Development for Beginners, by William W. Hewitt
Develop Your Psychic Skills, by Enid Hoffman
Kundalini Awakening, by John Selby and Zachary Zelig

Conclusion

There you go. There’s your proof. Everything you need - right there. A lot of the information is free on the web. Purchasing books does cost some money, but surely it’s not that much. Maybe $10 per book. If you’re going to invest in only one book, my personal favorite is You Are Psychic!, by Pete A. Sanders. It gives a lot of great exercises to try and has a nice explanation for how psychic phenomenon might work.

It’s really not that hard to prove psychic abilities are real. The actual work involved isn’t that much. Mainly it consists of reading. If you decide to try some exercises, they aren’t difficult either. What usually happens is that people refuse to do the research because they’re lazy, or they refuse to try an exercise because they feel silly. Then they proclaim that psychic abilities can’t exist because they’ve never seen proof. Well no duh.

One last thing: This is by no means an exhaustive list. Use Google. Search. Go to a library. Actually GO TO A LIBRARY. I spent countless hours at the University of Georgia’s library, reading random books on psi research. The main keywords to look for are “telepathy”, “clairvoyance”, “esp”, and “psychokinesis”. Searching for other terms doesn’t usually produce results.

That’s it.

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!

A lot of psychic abilities fall into the category of perception. Remote viewing, clairvoyance, talking to your subconscious, telepathy, empathy, etc. Here’s one analogy that might help you in all your ESP endeavors.

Think of your mind and emotions as a pool of water. Every thought you have creates a ripple in this pool of water. Every emotion you conjure also makes ripples. Any mental or emotional “movement” will create ripples, which can turn into giant waves if it’s strong enough.

Now, to perceive something psychically, you need to keep your pool of water absolutely still. No splashing, no ripples, no swirling, no marco-polo :-P. When you do this, your goal is to stop all thoughts, and keep your emotions still and passive. You’re just holding still.

Hold that for a while, and see how long you can do that for. If you can make it past a minute, with ZERO ripples, then you’re doing great.

Once you gain the skill to stop all ripples on command (and it does take some practice), then you’ll be ready to receive information psychically. All you do is go stop all ripples, wait a second for everything to settle, and then announce one big wave of whatever your question is.

“How does my mother feel today?”

Once you make that announcement, then just sit back and calm your pool down. Keep your mind and emotions still. You’ll notice that new ripples will form on their own. You’ll know it’s not YOU creating the ripples, because you are already confident you can keep a still pool from all your practicing earlier.

Decode these new ripples into thoughts and emotions. Interpret them. Figure out what these foreign ripples are saying to you.

If all goes well, this will be a reply to whatever question you asked. If not - try again. If you continue to fail after a long period of time, then you either need a new technique, or you need to work on keeping your pool still. If you’re confused over whether the ripples are coming from your own thoughts, or somewhere else, then you need to practice keeping your pool still until you are confident that the ripples can’t be coming from you.

Try it out.

I might have a slight advantage when it comes to talking with your subconscious, because I’ve always talked to myself, ever since I was a little kid. However, it’s never too late to pick up a crazed habit :-).

Now, in the past I have claimed that the internal dialogue was between your conscious mind, and your subconscious mind. Which is true in a sense. However, I’ve experienced some odd events that make me think it also might be a little more. In this experience, I asked for help during an OBE from what I thought was my subconscious mind, however - two pairs of hands actually grabbed me and yanked me out. In this experience, I had made a deal with my subconscious mind, and experienced hands pulling me along during the following OBE as well.

The point being: sometimes when I communicate with what I think is my subconscious mind, I get external help from “someone else” during OBEs. So I might not just be communicating with my subconscious mind when I talk to myself. Judge for yourself.

Either way, until there is some more evidence that I’m talking to an external entity, we might as well just continue using the label of “subconscious”. So anyways… how DO you talk to your subconscious?

Talking to your subconscious is easy. Just use that internal voice you have, inside your head. Let that voice speak for your entire mind. By that I mean - don’t be thinking about a million things, and also try to talk to your subconscious mind. Focus on what you want to say, and say it with your entire mind. No side thoughts. Straight, clear, and to the point.

That’s the easy part. Now how do you hear a reply from your subconscious mind?

Well, first, you have to listen. Some people have zero listening skills. Have you ever been in a conversation with someone, where you were trying to tell them something, but they just didn’t listen? They kept interrupting, trying to make their own point, and wouldn’t really give any consideration to what you were saying? Pretty annoying stuff. That’s how your mind works when you first start trying to listen to your subconscious. Your mind keeps trying to interrupt.

So you have to learn to just SHUT UP AND LISTEN. This is a passive state of mind. You shouldn’t be thinking, “Ok, gotta be quiet, gotta listen… ok be quiet… time to listen.” No. Just like in a normal conversation, you have to drop what you’re thinking, and start taking in what the other person is saying. Same idea here. Shut your mind up, and just wait and listen for a response.

A lot of people get to this step, and don’t hear anything. Chances are you won’t hear a voice, so don’t wait around for one. If you’re just starting out, instead of waiting to hear a voice, listen for an emotion. We’re used to listening for words, or talking, or something vocal. Take that same action of listening, but instead of listening for words, listen for an emotion.

Your subconscious mind is going to deliver an emotion to you. It’s one big lump of solid emotion. No words attached. Sometimes pictures and videos will be attached, but when you’re just starting out, chances are it will just be a big emotional turd.

This emotional turd is the response. Now, when you feel this emotion, it will pass by pretty quickly. Even the longer responses pass by in just a few seconds. The quicker responses pass by in a second or less. If you’re listening for that ball of emotion, then you will feel it enter into your awareness.

If you don’t feel any emotions, or it passes by to quickly, then just ask again. And again. And again and again and again. Keep asking. Your mind will start to whine and complain about how annoying it is to keep asking the same question over and over again. Keep asking. You’ll tire your mind out eventually :-). That little voice that complains is just a little bitch. Show that bitch whose boss. YOU ARE BOSS. Not that whiny voice. If you demand an answer, and refuse to think about anything else until you get an answer, then you will be delivered an answer. The louder you ask, the louder it returns. By “loud”, I don’t mean the volume of your internal voice. I mean the amount of energy you put into it. And by asking the same question over and over, you keep adding more and more mental energy to the same question.

Once you receive an emotional response, you can either take this emotional ball as the answer, or you can try to translate it into words. I personally like to translate it into words most of the time. Sometimes the emotions are too complex to translate into words, so the best I can do is to translate it into pictures, or experiences I’ve had in the past. And sometimes I can’t translate it to anything… I’m forced to just deal with the pure emotion. No problem.

Think of this emotional ball as a meal that you’re digesting all at once. You can taste everything in one instant. You can taste some chicken, some mashed potatoes, some french fries… all at once. Now, if you want, you can pull apart this taste, and experience each taste by itself. Or you can just take one big gulp. With the emotional ball, you will feel a dash of happiness, some alertness, some laughter, some guidance, and a bunch of other emotions that simply don’t have words. All at once. Pull it apart if you wish, and try to find the right words for the feelings… or just take the response in one big gulp.

Don’t think about it too much. A lot of this is emotional in nature, and if you become over-analytical, then it sort of defeats the purpose. You should have an analytical side, and an emotional side, both working together. Don’t let the analytical side dominate, and smother the emotional response.

It is a strange process to describe. However, it can be learned. I know this - because I learned it myself :-). When you first start off, there is going to be a lot of uncertainty. Don’t worry about it. It took me a good month to start getting something going for sure. Once you get over the initial uncertainty, then it becomes easier, because you can pinpoint what you need to work on. When you first start off, there will be a lot of confusion over whether you’re making the answer up yourself, or whether it’s coming from your subconscious. It’s ok to be confused. Just keep practicing, and it’ll become more clear as time goes on. Don’t let the temporary confusion stop you from continuing. You will work through it if you keep at it.

As you become better at this listening process, you will begin to notice a lot of mental functions that you didn’t even realize you could perform. When I look at what goes on inside my head, it’s not just thoughts. It’s not just words. It’s an entire universe of acrobatics using pictures, emotions, experiences, colors, voices, metaphors, structure, thought patterns, belief systems, pathways, translations, and a bunch of other functions that have no words. I didn’t use to be like this. I’ve come to this point with a lot of practice communicating with my subconscious, and watching the internal working of my mind.

Keep practicing, and keep asking questions :-).