[SeLvesTr]

I just started having experiences in the last week that I assume are "out of body". Since I really don't want to break it to family and friends yet i figured I'd find an online forum to relate my experience and get other people's take on it. If this isn't the right place for this or my questions aren't appropriate please remove/move me elsewhere.

I've had sleep paralysis often since my teen years. At first it was a pretty frightening event and not something I wanted to experiencing again--feeling like you can't move or talk, strange buzzing, whirring sounds and hallucinations. Since the first couple of times I don't sleep on my back anymore as it seems to happen more often in that position. Not being on my back also minimizes the chance of seeing weird hallucinations.

Another oddity was sometimes right at dozing off I'd feel a slipping away or falling sensation which would wake me up. It didn't seem to be related to physically falling or dreaming of falling. As sleep paralysis events continued into my 20's I grew less and less scared of these experiences.

I google SP occasionally to see what other people are saying. The other day I saw a post where someone related their SP experience and another poster interpreted it as the first phase of OBE--inotherwords the feeling of bodily detachment (paralysis) with accompanying noise was the spirit about to dislodge itself from the body. The reasons given to people experience SP ranged from being ungrounded (having restless spirit, out of touch with physiology) to being gifted in OBE.

A couple days later I got the falling/buzzing sensation late at night and woke up with a start like always. I remembered the post and dozed off again. This time when I slipped I didn't resist. It seemed like I slipped down and stopped few inches from the floor, several feet from the bed then somehow I moved up toward the ceiling and looked down. I don't remember seeing my body but there were the blankets and I swear there were mice running all over my bed. That freaked me out and I woke up (the mice were gone ) and went into normal sleep.

Last night was more spectacular. Same thing happened and I let myself slip away toward the floor. I saw the edge of the wall and the legs of my bedside table like I was positioned a couple inches off the floor, then tried moving around. I was able to zip around the room a bit. I'm not sure how to describe it other than it's maybe like zero gravity and you can move in any direction but it's hard to stop if you gain too much momentum--kinda like a movie where the astronaut has boosters on his suit except that I could change direction a little better. As far as my surroundings, i was definately in my room but there were green disco type lights flashing against walls and furniture. It ended with me shooting out a top corner of the house which scared me and I woke up.

First, what is going on in these experiences exactly? Someone give me the nuts and bolts. Also, I'm wondering, what are the common reasons that someone would experience this throughout their life? So far it's been involuntary and other than being maybe more spiritual/deep than the large majority of other people I've never pursued OBE or magical activities other than say getting curious and googling paranormal topics. If this is really my spirit tugging away from my body, why? Am I being taken somewhere or is it just a lack of control and slipping around? Lastly, where should I go from here? Should I pursue it and induce OBE as if there's a purpose behind it all or could I just treat it like a neat hobby or should I be more cautious? I'm not looking for do's and don't but maybe just possible benefits for or against. Thanks ahead of time for any advice or comments. I know I shouldn't expect exact answers to all these questions but these are the ones I have in case they can be answered.

[Keyclenef]

Hi greymanic.
As you said, these are just theories but I'll try to explain some of these concepts as I understand them.

I just started having experiences in the last week that I assume are "out of body". Since I really don't want to break it to family and friends yet i figured I'd find an online forum to relate my experience and get other people's take on it. If this isn't the right place for this or my questions aren't appropriate please remove/move me elsewhere.

Good move. I'd wait how open they are to 'paranormal' events before breaking things as these to them.

I've had sleep paralysis often since my teen years. At first it was a pretty frightening event and not something I wanted to experiencing again--feeling like you can't move or talk, strange buzzing, whirring sounds and hallucinations. Since the first couple of times I don't sleep on my back anymore as it seems to happen more often in that position. Not being on my back also minimizes the chance of seeing weird hallucinations. The hallucinations are called hypnagogic (or hypnopompic) hallucinations. What is happening is that your body is going to sleep before your mind does, and it is sending signals to your brain, and your brain is doing what it always does when you go to sleep, which is sending you visuals which would be your dreams. Except that you are fully awake. So you are consciously witnessing something that happens when your conscious mind goes 'off' in 'realtime'. Hence they are hallucinations, that is, they are little movies that are running in your head.
Another oddity was sometimes right at dozing off I'd feel a slipping away or falling sensation which would wake me up. It didn't seem to be related to physically falling or dreaming of falling. As sleep paralysis events continued into my 20's I grew less and less scared of these experiences. The metaphysical explanation is that your energy body is disengaging or expanding from your physical body and your conscious mind is 'going' with it momentarily. But because you are not relaxed enough your physical body takes over and pulls you back in, hence the falling sensation, which is more like a 'momentary change of point of view', more than a fall. But it's sudden and it's startling and it's the only stimulus that the physical body knows instinctively how to react to. So you jerk to balance yourself, except you're not really falling.
I google SP occasionally to see what other people are saying. The other day I saw a post where someone related their SP experience and another poster interpreted it as the first phase of OBE--inotherwords the feeling of bodily detachment (paralysis) with accompanying noise was the spirit about to dislodge itself from the body. The reasons given to people experience SP ranged from being ungrounded (having restless spirit, out of touch with physiology) to being gifted in OBE. I have a somewhat different theory, and I'll get into it soon.
A couple days later I got the falling/buzzing sensation late at night and woke up with a start like always. I remembered the post and dozed off again. This time when I slipped I didn't resist. It seemed like I slipped down and stopped few inches from the floor, several feet from the bed then somehow I moved up toward the ceiling and looked down. I don't remember seeing my body but there were the blankets and I swear there were mice running all over my bed. That freaked me out and I woke up (the mice were gone ) and went into normal sleep. This could be explained many ways. One is that you went through the ceiling/roof (apt or house?) and actually saw the mice in the attic superimposed on your bed and were seeing the whole shebang on one view, or it can be explained as there being sounds/feelings that could be interpreted by your brain as mice and your brain hallucinated that part.
Last night was more spectacular. Same thing happened and I let myself slip away toward the floor. I saw the edge of the wall and the legs of my bedside table like I was positioned a couple inches off the floor, then tried moving around. I was able to zip around the room a bit. I'm not sure how to describe it other than it's maybe like zero gravity and you can move in any direction but it's hard to stop if you gain too much momentum--kinda like a movie where the astronaut has boosters on his suit except that I could change direction a little better. As far as my surroundings, i was definately in my room but there were green disco type lights flashing against walls and furniture. It ended with me shooting out a top corner of the house which scared me and I woke up. Ha ha. You projected into the RTZ (Real Time Zone). The lights may have been remmants of energy strobing caused by your change in perspective.
First, what is going on in these experiences exactly? Someone give me the nuts and bolts. Also, I'm wondering, what are the common reasons that someone would experience this throughout their life? So far it's been involuntary and other than being maybe more spiritual/deep than the large majority of other people I've never pursued OBE or magical activities other than say getting curious and googling paranormal topics. If this is really my spirit tugging away from my body, why? Am I being taken somewhere or is it just a lack of control and slipping around? Lastly, where should I go from here? Should I pursue it and induce OBE as if there's a purpose behind it all or could I just treat it like a neat hobby or should I be more cautious? I'm not looking for do's and don't but maybe just possible benefits for or against. Thanks ahead of time for any advice or comments. I know I shouldn't expect exact answers to all these questions but these are the ones I have in case they can be answered. Ok, nuts & bolts and yadda yadda:
You normally project every night, but are not aware of the experience. What happens is that as you sleep your consciousness, or part of your mind that does all the logical/linear/judgemental (not in a negative way) turns off and lets the subconscious mind take over. The complete you, lives in many aspects of reality. The physical reality, the spiritual (or energetic) continuum, which can be experienced differently. Now realize it's all the energetic continuum- after all, matter is just energy as expressed in particular form. But your consciousness is present in all forms of existence, you're just not aware normally of all the ways you exist, because, well, you gotta live- and you gotta live in the here-and now or you get hit by a bus while observing atoms gyrating around you, etc. etc. But the subconscious is constantly observing what your conscious awareness receives- and it not only receives information from the physical world, it receives information from what some would call the spiritual world-or the energetic continuum, the collective consciousness, the collective unconscious, etc. [insert your favorite term here]. So, when you go to sleep your conscious mind misses the observation of what goes on in the subconscious, which is actually observing what is happening around you and inside you, possibly (and I'm inserting my own theory here) because it's happening at a different speed. The more traditionally spiritual would say that your vibrations are higher when you're in the astral. So this is what happens when regular folks sleep, and they mostly miss out on the goings on that happen all the time they're out. Some, particularly people that remember their dreams, may find themselves having dreams that are more than brain junk and/or psychological handling of events, and these are really projections that were recalled as dreams.
But there are some people "us people" that do something cool- we don't quite fall asleep at the same speed other people do- and because of that we can observe and experience what happens to our consciousness when we fall asleep- it actually changes focus or location, and if we can handle it, we can experience that change of location, focus or vibration, and experience what is known as an Out of Body experience.
Why does it happen spontaneously for some people and not others? Chances are that it's the same reason that some people sleepwalk and some people get sleep paralysis- the sleeping mechanism is not completely synchronized with the body and brain. And that can result in things like sleep paralysis, which is our waking before our bodies do, and the OBE state is similar (though not the same) as sp, but close enough to make the comparison.

For more information on the terms I've touched on, go to the AD Pedia and look up "Early OBE experiences" to familiarize yourself with some of the concepts that they include.
I also recommend you read the stickied thread "your first conscious projection" (it may even be in the AD Pedia) and you'll find some things there that you will recognize, and some you won't.
Welcome again to the forums.

[SeLvesTr]

Hi greymanic.
As you said, these are just theories but I'll try to explain some of these concepts as I understand them.
Originally Posted by greymanic I just started having experiences in the last week that I assume are "out of body". Since I really don't want to break it to family and friends yet i figured I'd find an online forum to relate my experience and get other people's take on it. If this isn't the right place for this or my questions aren't appropriate please remove/move me elsewhere.

Good move. I'd wait how open they are to 'paranormal' events before breaking things as these to them.

I've had sleep paralysis often since my teen years. At first it was a pretty frightening event and not something I wanted to experiencing again--feeling like you can't move or talk, strange buzzing, whirring sounds and hallucinations. Since the first couple of times I don't sleep on my back anymore as it seems to happen more often in that position. Not being on my back also minimizes the chance of seeing weird hallucinations. The hallucinations are called hypnagogic (or hypnopompic) hallucinations. What is happening is that your body is going to sleep before your mind does, and it is sending signals to your brain, and your brain is doing what it always does when you go to sleep, which is sending you visuals which would be your dreams. Except that you are fully awake. So you are consciously witnessing something that happens when your conscious mind goes 'off' in 'realtime'. Hence they are hallucinations, that is, they are little movies that are running in your head.
[quote:6t3km9qt]Another oddity was sometimes right at dozing off I'd feel a slipping away or falling sensation which would wake me up. It didn't seem to be related to physically falling or dreaming of falling. As sleep paralysis events continued into my 20's I grew less and less scared of these experiences. The metaphysical explanation is that your energy body is disengaging or expanding from your physical body and your conscious mind is 'going' with it momentarily. But because you are not relaxed enough your physical body takes over and pulls you back in, hence the falling sensation, which is more like a 'momentary change of point of view', more than a fall. But it's sudden and it's startling and it's the only stimulus that the physical body knows instinctively how to react to. So you jerk to balance yourself, except you're not really falling.
I google SP occasionally to see what other people are saying. The other day I saw a post where someone related their SP experience and another poster interpreted it as the first phase of OBE--inotherwords the feeling of bodily detachment (paralysis) with accompanying noise was the spirit about to dislodge itself from the body. The reasons given to people experience SP ranged from being ungrounded (having restless spirit, out of touch with physiology) to being gifted in OBE. I have a somewhat different theory, and I'll get into it soon.
A couple days later I got the falling/buzzing sensation late at night and woke up with a start like always. I remembered the post and dozed off again. This time when I slipped I didn't resist. It seemed like I slipped down and stopped few inches from the floor, several feet from the bed then somehow I moved up toward the ceiling and looked down. I don't remember seeing my body but there were the blankets and I swear there were mice running all over my bed. That freaked me out and I woke up (the mice were gone ) and went into normal sleep. This could be explained many ways. One is that you went through the ceiling/roof (apt or house?) and actually saw the mice in the attic superimposed on your bed and were seeing the whole shebang on one view, or it can be explained as there being sounds/feelings that could be interpreted by your brain as mice and your brain hallucinated that part.
Last night was more spectacular. Same thing happened and I let myself slip away toward the floor. I saw the edge of the wall and the legs of my bedside table like I was positioned a couple inches off the floor, then tried moving around. I was able to zip around the room a bit. I'm not sure how to describe it other than it's maybe like zero gravity and you can move in any direction but it's hard to stop if you gain too much momentum--kinda like a movie where the astronaut has boosters on his suit except that I could change direction a little better. As far as my surroundings, i was definately in my room but there were green disco type lights flashing against walls and furniture. It ended with me shooting out a top corner of the house which scared me and I woke up. Ha ha. You projected into the RTZ (Real Time Zone). The lights may have been remmants of energy strobing caused by your change in perspective.
First, what is going on in these experiences exactly? Someone give me the nuts and bolts. Also, I'm wondering, what are the common reasons that someone would experience this throughout their life? So far it's been involuntary and other than being maybe more spiritual/deep than the large majority of other people I've never pursued OBE or magical activities other than say getting curious and googling paranormal topics. If this is really my spirit tugging away from my body, why? Am I being taken somewhere or is it just a lack of control and slipping around? Lastly, where should I go from here? Should I pursue it and induce OBE as if there's a purpose behind it all or could I just treat it like a neat hobby or should I be more cautious? I'm not looking for do's and don't but maybe just possible benefits for or against. Thanks ahead of time for any advice or comments. I know I shouldn't expect exact answers to all these questions but these are the ones I have in case they can be answered. Ok, nuts & bolts and yadda yadda:
You normally project every night, but are not aware of the experience. What happens is that as you sleep your consciousness, or part of your mind that does all the logical/linear/judgemental (not in a negative way) turns off and lets the subconscious mind take over. The complete you, lives in many aspects of reality. The physical reality, the spiritual (or energetic) continuum, which can be experienced differently. Now realize it's all the energetic continuum- after all, matter is just energy as expressed in particular form. But your consciousness is present in all forms of existence, you're just not aware normally of all the ways you exist, because, well, you gotta live- and you gotta live in the here-and now or you get hit by a bus while observing atoms gyrating around you, etc. etc. But the subconscious is constantly observing what your conscious awareness receives- and it not only receives information from the physical world, it receives information from what some would call the spiritual world-or the energetic continuum, the collective consciousness, the collective unconscious, etc. [insert your favorite term here]. So, when you go to sleep your conscious mind misses the observation of what goes on in the subconscious, which is actually observing what is happening around you and inside you, possibly (and I'm inserting my own theory here) because it's happening at a different speed. The more traditionally spiritual would say that your vibrations are higher when you're in the astral. So this is what happens when regular folks sleep, and they mostly miss out on the goings on that happen all the time they're out. Some, particularly people that remember their dreams, may find themselves having dreams that are more than brain junk and/or psychological handling of events, and these are really projections that were recalled as dreams.
But there are some people "us people" that do something cool- we don't quite fall asleep at the same speed other people do- and because of that we can observe and experience what happens to our consciousness when we fall asleep- it actually changes focus or location, and if we can handle it, we can experience that change of location, focus or vibration, and experience what is known as an Out of Body experience.
Why does it happen spontaneously for some people and not others? Chances are that it's the same reason that some people sleepwalk and some people get sleep paralysis- the sleeping mechanism is not completely synchronized with the body and brain. And that can result in things like sleep paralysis, which is our waking before our bodies do, and the OBE state is similar (though not the same) as sp, but close enough to make the comparison.

For more information on the terms I've touched on, go to the AD Pedia and look up "Early OBE experiences" to familiarize yourself with some of the concepts that they include.
I also recommend you read the stickied thread "your first conscious projection" (it may even be in the AD Pedia) and you'll find some things there that you will recognize, and some you won't.
Welcome again to the forums.[/quote:6t3km9qt]

Just fascinating. It's great to touch base with someone who can help me start to make sense of all this. Your post confirmed a few thing's with lots of new info. I look forward to checking out the info you mention and going further. Thanks much for your time and care.