From: no-mail@hotmail.invalid   
      
   I'm 37 and have been trying off and on for years to have an OBE, and last   
   night I think I might have discovered why I've been having such a big   
   problem with it: I was trying to have the OBE.   
      
   Last night I decided I was just going to try relaxing and just seeing what   
   happens without trying to force anything and without trying to influence   
   what was happening.   
      
   First I put on a CD that I always play to relax.  It was 2002's CD called   
   _River of Stars_.   
      
   I just lay in bed on my back and felt the sensations and acknowledged them.   
   I figured that since we supposedly go out of body every night when we   
   sleep, I'd work on simply noticing and acknowledging all the feelings.  I   
   made it a point to try to "look" at the blackness behind my eyelids and   
   observe the faint, dancing patterns.  I felt a sort of fuzzy feeling around   
   parts of my body as I relaxed more.  Eventually I started feeling kind of   
   "charged" all over, kind of like I was in a mist of menthol, but it wasn't   
   cold.  It just had that evaporative feeling.   
      
   Occasionally I had a little itch and I did reach up to scratch it without a   
   significant interruption in this relaxation process.  I simply took care of   
   the itch and fell back into this relaxation mode without a problem at all.   
      
   I kept noticing blockages whenever I'd try to "test the waters" to see if I   
   was far enough along to have an OBE.  But whenever I tried to eject myself,   
   it was like I was up against an iron wall.  I couldn't will anything to   
   happen.  I was reminded of times when I have awakened from sleep and I was   
   able to see through my closed eyes.  Of course, that's really cool, and I   
   would immediately think, "Oh wow!  How cool, and what's this I'm seeing?" I   
   would try to bring it into focus, and that had the opposite effect of   
   causing the image to fade.  Horribly frustrating because it seems like the   
   logic of astral mechanics works backwards -- at least the very small amount   
   of it that I've experienced so far.  Perhaps during a full OBE, when I will   
   myself in a direction, it will happen.  I know in the flying dreams I've   
   had where I was able to simply bound effortlessly over buildings, levitate   
   over power lines and whatnot, I woke up from these dreams knowing how to   
   fly.  I actually put my mind in the "fly straight up" thought form, and   
   while I did feel something inside, my physical body is still firmly planted   
   in my computer chair.   
      
   Anyway, to continue with last night's experience, I continued relaxing and   
   noticed a pressure kind of between and a little above my eyes, sort of   
   between my eyebrows but a little bit lower.  This is a pressure I had felt   
   a lot.  Sometimes I feel it when I'm listening to Coast to Coast AM and I   
   try to visualize something a guest is describing.  So I let this feeling   
   develop as it would.  It got more intense and started to throb and pulsate   
   a little bit.  It seemed to want to spread.  I found myself trying to   
   spread it to where I thought it might go, and found that was causing a   
   gentle, but firm stress.  I knew I was trying to manipulate the forces of   
   nature in my body again, so once again I relaxed my intention and let the   
   feeling develop as it would.  What happened next wasn't frightening, but it   
   was surprising.  It felt like some kind of etherical or bodily energy was   
   trying to push through from that place on my forehead to my chest.  It was   
   like it was in a bottleneck or finding some kind of blockage.  But it broke   
   through and with a mild sense of startled surprise and a sort of feeling   
   like you get when you're driving down the highway at 60 miles per hour and   
   go over a gentle hump in the road.  When you come down the other side of   
   the hump, you feel a split second of weightlessness.  I felt that   
   sensation, but it was only in my chest.  This was followed by an increase   
   in the full-body "evaporative" sensation I mentioned earlier.   
      
   I eventually became so relaxed that I noticed I was making an effort to   
   breathe.  It felt like my whole mind was focused only on keeping my   
   physical body breathing.  This felt odd, but it felt like I had reached   
   another hurdle in my quest to go out of body.  I felt like I should relax   
   more and stop making myself breathe -- to just let my body breathe on its   
   own.  So I tried.  After only a few seconds, I felt a heaviness in my chest   
   that wasn't pleasant at all, but it was accompanied by a lighter sensation   
   in my extremities.  I tried not to breathe, but I'm not as young or as fit   
   as I used to be, and I don't feel like I can hold my breath as long as I   
   could in the past--though as relaxed as I was, I probably could have held   
   my breath for at least a minute.  I tried four or five times to stop making   
   myself breathe, but the feeling that my body was starved of oxygen forced   
   me to take in a huge gasp of air.  But from what I've read, this heaviness   
   on the chest is often accompanied by the Old Hag syndrome where people wake   
   up paralyzed and find an old hag sitting on their chest, keeping them from   
   breathing.  I certainly don't want to see that, but I do want to have the   
   OBE.  I've awakened in my room before to find what appeared to be   
   "entities" in the room with me, and I can personally attest that there is   
   no horror greater than opening your eyes from a peaceful slumber to find   
   total strangers in your peaceful sanctuary walking straight toward you.   
      
   Anyway, back to the near-OBE experience.  I felt like lying on my back was   
   problematic.  I felt like maybe the pillow under my head was causing my   
   neck to bend at an odd angle during deep relaxation because I felt sort of   
   choked there, and I could tell it was physical.  I know body position can't   
   affect OBEs if we have them all the time spontaneously, so I might be   
   better off having one lying on my side or on my stomach in the position I   
   normally get into to sleep.  I never normally try to sleep flat on my back.   
   It's just so uncomfortable after about 10-15 minutes of lying like that,   
   but it's fine for the early stages of relaxation.   
      
   This, besides the couple or three times I've had spontaneous projections,   
   is the most progress I've made, and I've done it all in one night by simply   
   relaxing and allowing nature to take its course.  I'm going to try this   
   method again after I send this message.  I'm going to wait for the   
   relaxation to become so advanced that I find myself back where I was last   
   night -- trying to figure out how to turn off the conscious effort to   
   breathe and to let my body do it on its own.  It's going to be difficult, I   
   think, because breathing is one of those weird things that I know I do when   
   I'm not thinking about it, but as soon as I think about it, I have to take   
   over breathing manually until something else distracts me and I forget   
   about breathing again and it starts happening automatically.  The challenge   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)