Tag Archives: Balance

A Thought on Retaining Consciousness in the Non-physical

Tajtas, on the Astral Pulse asked the question, “Ive been trying so hard to get it past 25 seconds… When I realize im dreaming I start drifting away and then I woke up. Has anyone have had a LONG lucid dream, dozens of minutes? Is it possible hours or days?”.

The_One made a nice response, “I’ve had this problem. It’s quite simple when you think about it. Don’t get excited, concentrate on a animated character (can be any thing). As, don’t think “I’m about to wake up because I’m lucid”. (Easier said than done).
I’ve substained a dream for so long doing this, I got worried that there was something wrong with my body. As over doing this will pull you out of lucidity and back into the dream.
Hope this helps.”

This got me thinking about why something like that works… I wondered if the effect of how we initially Phase into the non-physical can provide us with a clue about how to REMAIN in the non-physical.  We know that there’s a fine balancing act that must be done to Phase… you need to work at balancing your consciousness so your mind retains, at least, a single thread of consciousness.

Generally, we do this by keeping our minds active in some manner… in the case of the “Noticing” exercise, it’s placing our conscious intent within the blackness behind our eyes and noticing the changes of that which we’re seeing.  In the “Rundown” exercise, we’re placing our intent within the visualized scene that we’re creating with our imagination.

Well, what if, while we’re in the non-physical, we do this act in reverse?  When you feel yourself beginning to lose the non-physical consciousness, begin immediately placing your intent on something within the non-physical, in essence it’s allowing you to focus your intent more INTO the non-physical and away from the physical, which is where your intent seems to be going when you’re slowly in the process of waking up.  In other words, bring your focus/attention to something on or around you in the non-physical.  It’s kind of the same act as increasing your awareness from Lucid to Astral in the first place, except you don’t need to ask yourself any questions.  Your goal here is to give your non-physical mind something to focus on so it ignores the physical reality sensations that it’s slowly beginning to perceive.

A lot of people say to look at or rub your hands together.  I believe I now understand why that works… because it’s giving you something to focus your mind on that’s away from the physical senses that you’re beginning to feel.

From the point when I begin to feel that I’m waking up to the point when I actually do wake up… seems to be anywhere around 5 – 10 seconds.  So, perhaps it’s best to not even wait for that signal to happen and just do this exercise every minute or so, because once the signal occurs, it doesn’t take long before you’re back in bed wondering what happened.

Clearing Your Mind

I just posted this over on the Astral Viewers forums, and I figured I’d put it here as well.  It’s a question that a lot of people ask… how exactly does someone clear their mind?  :)

The Astral Viewers

The point isn’t to “clear” your mind.
Doing that is a very hard thing to do… and I consider it to be overboard for projection.

What you want to do is quiet the “surface thoughts”.
These are the thoughts that you randomly have throughout the day as you’re going about your business… “Hmmm what should I make for dinner tonight?”
“Oh that girl has a hawt butt.”
“I hope <so and so> doesn’t happen later!”

Those are “surface thoughts”.  When you’re meditating, they can account for thoughts like, “am I doing it right?”… or “I don’t think I’m asleep yet”.

Those are the thoughts you want to “clear”.

You do by catching the thought before it has a chance to completely form.  You do this as a process.
Let’s take “am I doing it right?” for example.

You might miss catching it first and the whole thought gets out.
Next time it’ll be “am I doing it….”
Then “am I do….”
so forth and so on until you just get down to “….”
Then eliminate that as well.

It takes a bit of practice, but it’ll help your projection practice a lot.

What is Grounding and Centering Yourself?

What is Centering?

Centering, refers to your mental and physical state. Centering means to calm your emotions and slow your mind and your breathing to a point where you can ‘feel’ a lot more going on around AND inside you. It’s like a state of alertness, but really relaxed at the same time.  It’s described as “Mindfulness”.

For things like Astral Projection, it’s VERY important to always remain centered.  This means keeping your thoughts and most importantly your emotions in check at all times.  Staying “calm” is centered.  You can practice this throughout your physical life… for example, say someone cuts you off in traffic?  What’s the usual response you might give?  You sit there in your car mouthing insults into the air, you might even flip the person the finger.  At this moment, you’re the exact OPPOSITE of centered.

Realize that anything you do, however you react isn’t going to change what happened.  Take a deep breath if you have to, count to 5 and then just accept what happened and allow yourself to release it.  This is the act of centering yourself.

For meditation purposes, to center yourself breath in for a count of 5 (or however long it takes to slowly fill your lungs), then out for a count of 10 (rule of thumb is twice as long as the inhale)  You’ll know when you’re centered when you feel calm and at peace.

It’s a pretty self explanatory experience really.  If you’re not sure what it feels like, then you haven’t reached it. It’s really not hard though. Just don’t “TRY” too hard and it will come. Now you can Ground yourself.

What is Grounding?

Grounding is a term used mostly in conjunction with energy. Grounding means to get rid of the excess energy in your body and provide a path for new, clean energy to come through. It’s important to always have a good flow of energy coming in and going out when meditating and doing any energy work.

Most people Center themselves before they Ground themselves. It’s just a logical way to do it. First you calm the energy, then you move the energy.

How do you Ground your Energy?

This is a very simple exercise to ground yourself that can do almost anytime you want if you’re feeling unbalanced or anxious or just beaming with extra energy that you have no current use for.

Sit down, close your eyes take a DEEEEEEP breath. Exhale slowly. While exhaling visualize a root system growing downwards from yourself. Visualize it growing down towards the earth farther and farther until it reaches the earth below you.  If you’re in a high rise or a higher floor of a house, you’ll need to visualize this until you feel you’ve reached the “earth” below you.  When you feel the connection, visualize your old energy moving down that root system and then new energy coming in through the top of your head. This will provide a nice even flow coming through your body to aid you in any energy work you intend to do.