My personal theories on why some can't AP

To name a few that come to mind:

Fear of letting go of control (#1 reason IMO)
Fear of the dark (I personally need complete or almost complete darkness)
Lack of discipline
Lack of focus
Lack of interest
Inability to stay still
Fear of the unknown
Doubt (sometimes)

Scuse my dumbassness, what's AP?

Worry that the body will switch off its autonomous responses and stop breathing. A rather large subset of #1, perhaps.

one of my early attempts at AP resulted in something like what you described, MA... rather like sleep paralysis, which can be quite terrifying, especially whilst one is still lucid.

Actually, if a person was taught how to achive Astral Projection during their childhood and up to 17 yrs old or so...it would have been the norm...and not fear to do it..

However, it is rather difficult to do it past 17yrs old and more...the mind set or the ego has been shaped and conditioned to whatever society believe in general...

I agree. Its very easy to let society's ways and beliefs suck you in to create a complexity that is pointless.

I have complete confidence astral projection will work and I'm 27. What I don't have confidence in is myself. My adhd riddled head will never allow to stay focused on one thought, this is the same reason I have never been hypnotized even if I really want to be.

Some would say I have a natural immunity to mind control.

Oooooh, I have a new topic to post about!!!

-ADHDsux4me

Originally posted by MaskedAvatar
Worry that the body will switch off its autonomous responses and stop breathing. A rather large subset of #1, perhaps.

Why "worry" about things such as this? Worry in itself can have more impact(negatively) on your body and your breathing let alone worrying about how your body reacts to an out of body experience.

I do agree with the list Questor presented Also any kind of sleep disorder can affect when and if a person has OBE's- not to mention drugs of any kind that the person is taking or abusing.

I tried it, wasnt successful but I felt close. Wasnt scared at all. I felt numb all over and felt this cooling yet hot sensation all over my body and face. I was twitching a little bit and kept my breathing at a steady constant pace. I was like this for about 20 minutes but nothing happened. I didnt doubt at all but I was really anxious as to what it would be like. I wasnt scared. But I dont want to try it anymore because I dont really want my body open to anything else that may be lurking around. Plus Im very happy with normal in body life.

Well I 100% believe in AP and am totally unafraid, yet I still cannot achieve it. I've tried for at least 2 years every damn method there is and even tried to come up with a few of my own, all to no avail. I've gotten close ONCE when I wasnt even trying, I woke up suddenly from a mid-day nap in between classes and just felt completely seperated, like my consciousness was a few feet above and forward of my body. Once I realized what was happening I got too excited and that ended that experience. So frustrating...

Some of those reasons are actually why I can't do it. I suffer from anxiety and depression, so letting go of something and finding courage to go into the 'unknown' is not easy. I have come close to getting 'somewhere' in my meditation, but a whole fear comes over and I have to stop.

I should clarify something about fear. I wasn't implying that I don't get fearful.

BUT since my curiosity outweighs any fear I may have about AP, I was able to do it in spite of it.

Sleep paralysis is a prime moment to initiate the AP process. All it is, is that the mind woke up before the body did IMO. So mind awake, body asleep is ideal for AP. Initially, it can be a daunting feeling & plus there are often what some people refer to as 'astral wildlife' present. But you do get use to these things the more you encounter them. 99.9% of the time you don't really need to worry.

It isn't safe here, not physicly, so how can it be safe to leave your body unlocked, when it isn't even safe to leave your house or car unlocked?!

When you astral project, you are leaving your body, literally. The only difference between that and dying, is that when you die you can't go back inside your body and animate it.

I learned about mirror style scrying when I was very young, thankfully the book I read about it in warned well about astral worlds all being false anyway - they are merely thought constructs built by other people's minds and beliefs. Reality is complex enough and people are not honest enough, without adding invisible astral bodies floating about influencing anything. They'll all end up being lost as wandering ghosts when they die, cause they won't know any other world.

or to put it another way, what is the point of AP?,

if you were a racing arcade game, and you became aware that you were a racing arcade game, and your soul moved out from your circuits and viewed yourself as a machine - well then what? so you know you have a soul, and you know that when you die it is not the end. That's the point of AP, it is for people who forget that is the essence of their true selves that comes to this world to animate a body for a specific purpose, AP is meant to remind people of why they got born here, or why they came here.

I just mean that some people get excited and think they are powerful because they can do RV for example, but all you are really doing is like the view changer in the arcade racing games - you see yourself from different angles - what I'd say to them is, so - the part of you that you are using to view those other angles of yourself with - what does that part of you look like? And then what does that part that saw the other part look like?

It's pointless! you can do that zoom-in and zoom-out and look ahead etc for infinity, it doesn't have an end. It's just proof that you exist before you are born, or whatever, and that you will still exist after you die.

btw, what I meant about it not being safe to AP - I think it is something that everyone can do to begin with, but most of them return to their bodies (say at school starting age or before that) and find that they have been doing things that they did not do!

So people tend to learn early on, in such traumatic circumstances so as to bury those memories well away, that if you do AP then some thing will use your body to do evil things - or, just use your body to try and steal it so they can be you without having gone thru the process of what it in fact takes to get in here*, and that that same thing will then be controlling other bodies, who it will use to try and blame you for what it was using your body for.

I've seen that happen loads, and it happened to me a few times when I was about ages too young to remember up to sort of teens, but it was mostly only very young that it happens.


* part of the reason this world is so messed up is that that which ruined it has never come back out of here, so a lot of new souls that come here are pushed out of their bodies when they are very young, and the ones that caused the trouble to make this world have suffering and pain etc in it to begin with, take over those bodies and begin to corrupt the new souls that have just come in.

Has anyone here tried it with success? I'm wondering what kind of sensations you experience when it is happening.

When I was a kid, and up to about 17 or 18, when I was laying in bed before falling asleep, I would get this weird sort of vibrating sensation in my arms, chest and shoulders, and then it would move up to my head and scalp. I also sort of had the weird feeling of being lifted or supported. A sensation that is very hard to put into words. I wasn't trying to achieve any kind of astral projection or anything but it scared the hell out of me because I thought maybe that was what was happening. So I shook it off and it would stop. Others told me it was just what happens before you fall asleep. Hmmm.

Of course, now that I am interested AP etc. , it doesn't happen anymore.

When you astral project, you are leaving your body, literally. The only difference between that and dying, is that when you die you can't go back inside your body and animate it.

Now, that depends on what theory you believe in.

I've found that actually depends on whether or not you do things while you astrally project, that you know you should not do, so then you try and pretend like it is an inner journeying thing.

It's outer. See the many examples of shamans - there needs to be a trustworthy person around, or no-one to know when they are doing it, because they are unconscious and completely out of their body.

Ketamine can do that, at doses lower than the medical doses, because it stops you from feeling the inputs to your body.

I feel as it is two places at once...

[edit on 6-2-2005 by Yngwie]

stress...inability to relax
and definitely the fear of the unknown, all the what if's

Originally posted by magestica
Worry that the body will switch off its autonomous responses and stop breathing. A rather large subset of #1, perhaps.

Why "worry" about things such as this? Worry in itself can have more impact(negatively) on your body and your breathing let alone worrying about how your body reacts to an out of body experience.

The "worry" might be generated by the undetermined consequences of cessation of breathing when the breather has several thousand things remaining to be done as a corporeal entity and will be unable to do those things in some astral state. To not "worry" would in effect be quite irresponsible.

In any such things the "worry" might be alleviated by light supervision.



[edit on 6-2-2005 by MaskedAvatar]