I’m just a guy who is fumbling his way through all this, learning how to do things, and gradually getting better at it.
Childhood Lucid Dreaming
Sleeping was not a lot of fun for me as a kid. I constantly had nightmares that shocked me awake. I’d feel the presence of a being, real or imagined, and lie awake, staying completely still, hoping it won’t see me move and trying to go back asleep.
At other times I would feel myself getting poked, or losing my balance while lying down going to sleep as if stepping off a curb to find nothing under my feet.
I sleepwalked. I would fall asleep in my parents’ bed, which was more comfortable than mine, and my mom would lead me downstairs to my own bedroom. Sometimes I was awake, and other times all I knew was I would go to sleep in their bed and wake up in mine. One time I didn’t lie down. I sat on a stool in the kitchen, and my mom came down later to turn on the coffee pot and found me there. She led me to bed again, and again instead of lying down I pulled a strange assortment of clothes out of my dresser and walked upstairs to the bathtub in their room. I was confused and scared. My mom recounted the event, and all I could remember was sitting on the kitchen stool in the dark, scared at how I suddenly woke to find myself there in the darkness and trying to go back to sleep.
Those issues started to go stop when I started to become semi-lucid in dreams. I learned how to manipulate the environment by force of will, becoming calm, confident and expectant of the result I intended in order to make it happen, whether it was flying, jumping around to the tops of fences and hills, or making objects appear in my hand. I learned that my actions in dreams had very little to do with the physical-like movements I made and more so to do with my mental state.
Every morning when my mom would wake me for school, her footsteps in the hallway, or at least the sound of her opening my door, would wake me. I have always been a light sleeper. Not one morning. I wasn’t responding, and she had to come over and shake me for a moment to get me to wake. My experience was that of being elsewhere and suddenly being sucked upwards for a moment until I was finally back in my body and could wake.
Non-Physical Reality
My main focus from the beginning has been to work towards contacting other beings, human or otherwise, through a projection. Robert Monroe describes successful experiments with participants contacting each other in Journeys Out Of The Body, Tom Campbell in My Big Toe: Awakening, and if I remember right, The Phase by Michael Raduga. But pretty much any books on the topic of lucid dreaming / out of body experiences will mention this type of thing.
I have always been familiar with the concept. Most of us have heard of patients on operating room tables recounting an experience of floating above their body and observing with accurate detail things like the color of a nurse’s mismatched socks.
The concept of nonphysical reality has never been foreign to me. I’ve always assumed psychic abilities are accessible to anyone with the right training, even if some professional psychics are not legitimate, and that our thoughts and emotions have ways of connecting with others beyond the pathways of physical reality. I won’t go into my experiences with that type of stuff here, but the point is I have not approached any of this with a pretentious skepticism that so many people get comfort out of. My standpoint is it exists and I’m going to figure out how to do it or die trying. If your intention is to try to prove or disprove anything, you’re wasting your time.
Recent Explorations
To assist in successfully projecting I have been using various techniques that I describe a elsewhere on this site and will keep expanding upon.
I started off by walking around my apartment, checking outside, or searching around whatever environment I found myself in the projection. That was not fruitful. I ran across many “people”, but I felt no soul behind them. They had dead eyes that I did not feel were really looking at me, even if pointed in my direction. I assume they were dream characters I created.
Even flying over long distances, over hills, until I hit the ocean, did not help me find anyone.
The right type of movement, then, is not to do with traveling a distance in a dream world but a matter of projecting into a different dimension. Starting off in my own dream world is fine, and from there I should be able to do something to move out of it. However interesting it may be, a private reality is not as useful as an objective reality with real places and beings.
As of writing I’m starting to bring most of my consciousness into the projection. That is, I’m starting to have full recall of my physical life, the approximate time of night, the people I know, the few things on my list I intend to work on in the next projection, and clear judgement about the reality of the environment and dream characters (so far, all just characters, with the possible exception of Rachael for a brief moment).
In other words, if the projection is good, I’m fully integrated, and there is no difference between the “me” in physical waking life and the “me” in the projection. I’m just as thoughtful, alert, and carry the same intentions and memories. Basically, I feel the same.
This was not always the case. It took some work. I would be lucid but then get lost in a dream. I would remember my intention to draw the sigil but couldn’t remember the whole sigil. Etc, etc.
I credit progress to identifying and reflecting on the issues I was facing in the projections, asserting my intention to fix each one by becoming more fully there, calmer, grounding myself better with my feet, or whatever the best route seemed to be.
The other thing that has helped me tremendously, and that I highly recommend, is to join or start a local group with people who share your goal of developing your projection abilities and have experiences of their own to share. This will keep you focused, encouraged, and entertained! Meetup is good for this. I am a member of the Lucid Dreaming & Out of Body Experiences group that meets in the San Francisco bay area.