i’ve been doing this for a year (yeah, it really kind of flew by honestly… whoa…) with the goal of astral projection, i’ve only had a handful of successes, none entirely conscious in onsent
(the best was a month or so ago, i came to and realized i was seeing hypnagogics of a school, and managed to reach out and enter it and touch things, it hurt bad and made me feel weird but i used the pain to keep me inside… then… this brought me to an OBE… where i was stuck to a wall and touching something weird above my head… i woke up with my arms in the air moving around… certainly was not in REM)
so… anyway… i don’t really need to explain what i do, becuase it’s never entirely the same, counting downward, mantras, breathing… whatever…
but after say about 1-3 minutes of doing whatever it is i’m doing, usually intending to fall asleep, sometimes intending to wild… i get a sensation in my head which i can only thing is the shifting of brainwave states.
when your alarm clock wakes you up in the morning and you lie in bed so tired and so relaxed, and you don’t want to get up… this is what i feel… however, it is maybe 1/100th of what you would feel in the morning.
it’s just a small hint of it…
so what i guess is i’m in alpha and very small theta is starting up.
(most websites i find say we are in alpha when we close our eyes and are relaxed but still focused… so it must be easy to get into alpha and we must be in it almost instantly after trying to meditate… but not very far into it perhaps)
so… i did a small bit of reading about an alpha/theta state with enhanced creativity… and i think i reach this after about 5-10 minutes… what happens is i first notice hints of the “theta” feeling (recall i said it’s like lying in bed in the morning not wanting to get up, but very small in comparison) and i try and keep it there and bring it back and go deeper… while still counting, etc.
so … then there comes a second level, where the feeling is slightly more prnounced but i still retain my cognitive abilities and have not yet gone semi-unconscious… in this state thoughts are chaotic, there is still a sense of self and i am still thinking normally, but i hear a lot going on in the background of my head.
i have not really been able to direct or get information from it yet… it is not a solid hallucinatory voice, but it seems like some form of voice…
shortly after this (unless i’m stuck in a hellish limbo, this isn’t a good state to be in if you want to sleep or go deeper, as you aren’t at all tired or unfocused… i have yet been able to ascertain how it would be useful, it’s not quite deep enough to, for example, write music that you hear in your mind, I don’t think) … anywya shortly after this i first hit what I call a “gap” in consciousness… i zone out into a “daydream” by which i mean just a few random thoughts on some sort of loop that are hallucinatory in nature… such as hearing someone have a conversation or hearing some music.
i come out of it real quick… in fact, i get many of these before i reach the “alpha/theta” state, but they are a fraction of a second and my thought is never disrupted, neither do i lose consciousness… and anyway after i come out of this one, which is really the first significant one, usually characterized by making mistakes in counting which suddenly causes me to “shift” into another state, but so rapidly that it causes a “gap” and it feels like i had been asleep, though… i have a decent memory of what happened, unlike the deeper states… after i come out of this one they start ocurring more frequently and last longer each time…
then there comes a point where i get a real deep one… when i come out it’s a very peculiar state to be in, i went from “unconsciousness” with hallucinaitons… to a normal waking mind capable of analysis… HOWEVER i usually cannot remember what i was doing, if i had a mantra it has been confused and jumbled up in my head and it’s very hard to try to remember what mantra i was using, though it’s easy enough to make a new one (has it been put into short term/long term memory???) … this fresh moment of clarity only lasts briefly and i’m back in and out again.
now this is the connundrum… i don’t know what it is my brain is doing, but i know it’s not quite sleep… it’s not quite unconscious, but the strongest determination in the world, and the loudest mental matnra yelling of “focus” cannot keep me aware when i slip into these states.
but it’s pardoxical because to me it feels like i am conscious the entire time, i just don’t remember when i come out… or that it’s a completely new form of consciousness that i am not able to integrate myself into yet, so it feels like i’m “not conscious” because i have not yet … figured out how to be consciously unconscious yet.
so the problem is that, no matter how long i go in and out (sometimes i can go in and out for 30 minutes… sometimes the 30 minutes pass fast, other times slow… usually this whole excercise in “meditatoin” (napping?) is over with before 45 minutes… if not before 15-20…) i CANNOT FALL ASLEEP.
because i’m not tired.
this used to make me tired, now all it does is make me really … sullen and withdrawn and lazy when i’m done doing it, until I “wake back up” which might take 20 minutes too…
but i’m not tired, i do it at night, not tired…
and here is the weirdest part.
I cannot… consciously… will myself into sleep, but at some point, after going in and out… there does come a point where i fall asleep… and i’m not sure HOW i fall asleep, i honestly don’t remember what happens.
on a good night, it seems like i can get “deep” 3 or so times, and i’ve thought to myself “after a few more, you need to stop and move around a bit… so you dont’ fall asleep… so you can WILD…” but somehow… BOOM… it’s morning (no not literally boom… there’s just no memories of what happened) and i remember thinking "you’re going to finally really enter hypnagogic sleep… you’re right on the edge, so close… so you need to make it’ but then i don’t remember a thing after that…
so i don’t understand…s ometimes i can manage to get a WILD… sometimes i just end up eventually waking up a few hours later having had a dream or two.
but it’s weird, in a way i am consciously putting myself to sleep, because i’m playing with these sleep gaps… and i realize i am going to end up being asleep soon…
but in another way, nothing i can do can push me over the edge into sleep, can make me stay in these gaps of what i assume to be theta brainwave activity… and yet, despite this, i succeede, often times, in falling asleep using these methods, i dont’ have to stop using them, i just feel them and …somehow i’m asleep.
but… this is hard to explain, it’s not like I am going to sleep, there is always difficulty… the memories don’t exist
i cannot say i successfully induced sleep if i don’t remember what happens after the last gap, what happens after I think “wait one or two more gaps and get up for a few moments, we want to WILD”… i don’t know how i’m doing it.
it doesn’t always work, sometimes i have to stop… it rarely if ever works during the day, ic an’t ever fully sleep and fully take a nap.
but often times i do, but because i don’t know how, or why, or under what conditions, cannot map out the process in my head, because i don’t remember what happened…
it’s as if i do not consciously induce sleep, sleep just decides to come.
… i really don’t understand at all… you know… it’s not like… blackout… bam i’m in paralysis… it’s like… blackout, next thing i know i’m dreaming (except not lucid) so that when i do finally wake up… you know… it’s like… well how did i fall asleep? When did I fall asleep?
i really wish I had an EEG or could volunteer for sleep resarch… I can put myself into these states so quick… they aren’t profound, but there is a shift… in my head… very light, then deeper and deeper until it overpowers me and i go into unconscious hypnagogics… and sometimes i can get there in 5-10 minutes… though the deepest takes a few dips into the gap before i get REAL deep into hallucinations and the time i stay in is long.
…
god… i’m not sure… what to make of any of this… i want to know whati’m doing, i want to know what brainwave states i’m entering… i want to know why i can’t consciously look at and remember hypnagogics at night, but can in the morning (the hypnagogic state isn’t really REM…) … i want to know how I relax myself to the point of letting my body voluntarily go into paralysis before I fall asleep.
there has to be something somewhat abnormal about my brainwaves when i’m doing this… I mean… because I’m not sleeping… at all… most people, the first time they hit what I call a “gap” they would never come out, they’d go through their sleep cycles… not be… it’s like I go through the stage 1 sleep (which isn’t entirely unconscious) over and over again, until my brain has had enough… then… finally, after being fully conscious, i eventually transition into unconscious sleep and into dreams.
or something.
i don’t know what i’m doing… i’m no more or less tired than usual, it doesn’t disrupt my sleep… or anyting like that… it’s just…
i want to WILD… at will… and I go so deep i know that if i were conscious in these states it would only be a matter of holding onto HI long enough to enter them, which is really easy… but i’m not conscious when I see the HI… so…
i don’t know.
this post is epically long… i hope it’s of value to someone… i’d really like it if Jeff or Pedro could maybe contribute, as they are more along than I am, and maybe they went through something like this.
Now i’m going to go read a chapter or so of my overdue LD book and try to WILD… no school tomorrow…