Awesome Caroline’s Burning Question: “I’ve been reading and loving your blog since January and I can’t begin to tell you how much you and your blog have helped bring on my LOA education and spiritual self.  It’s been amazing.  So amazing in fact that I’ve had a few unusual experiences…!

Last week I was laying on the sofa watching Bill Hicks on YouTube (this seems relevant somehow) and I drifted off into a kind-of sleep.  However I could still hear and was aware of everything that was going on around me and ended up in a state of sleep paralysis.  Then I could feel my whole body kind of buzzing and I could feel a strong pull out of my body. I resisted at first as I thought that maybe this might be death and I wasn’t ready for that (my main reasoning being that I didn’t want my roommate coming in and finding me!), but then something told me that it was okay and just to go with it.  What happened next was just unreal.

I could feel myself getting higher and higher and then I could see my house from above, and then the stars (this sounds even crazier when I write it down!) and then I could see a kind of infinite black with lots of random colors in front of me.  Next thing I was back in the room where it had all started, but I was so giddy about this new form that I was jumping around the room, managing to float and I could still see myself on the sofa. 

When I was back in ‘me’ again, I was still in a state of sleep paralysis and it took longer than usual to bring myself out of it (I used to get sleep paralysis a lot so it doesn’t scare me anymore). 

Afterwards I was just dumbfounded as to what happened and as the days went on my ‘rational’ mind (or my filters?) kept trying to convince me that it was just a dream.  But I really did feel like it was real.

So I guess my question is, what do you think of the idea of out-of-body experiences?  And is there a way to purposefully experience this again? Or am I just going crazy?”

Dear Awesome Caroline,

Nope, you’re not going crazy. Or, at least not in my book. You know, for whatever that’s worth…

“Out of body” experiences are actually more common than you may think. And yes, what happened was real, you didn’t imagine it, and it wasn’t a dream (although, let’s not dismiss the importance of dreams just yet).

But what exactly is an out of body experience, do we have to be scared of them, and can they actually benefit us somehow?

What an “out of body” experience actually is

Right. I want to start off by warning you that my explanation of what “out of body” experiences are may differ greatly from what you may have read by others. As always, go with whatever explanation resonates most with you. All I can offer you is my own truth, what I’ve come to know based on my own experiences.

The first thing you have to understand is that you don’t actually leave the body. Your body is not some kind of vessel that contains your soul, spirit or non-physical self. Your body is a part of you, an extension of you; it is contained within the soul rather than the other way around. We, Who We Really Are, focus part of ourselves into this Time/Space reality and create a physical representation of our energy within it. That’s the body. It’s not an inanimate puppet that you fill up with your consciousness. It IS your consciousness, or at least a part of it, manifested into the physical.

So, when you “leave” the body, you don’t actually exit it, you just shift your focus from the physical part of you to the non-physical part of you. You will experience as much of that non-physical self as you’re able to, but in most cases, people feel much more freedom than they normally do. A lot of people float or fly, can change location at will (you just think it and there you are), act outside the laws of physics, and can even manifest anything they want instantly. These experiences have also been called “lucid dreaming” and “astral travel”. Keep in mind that there are different levels of this experience, some more surreal than others, depending on whatever the individual wants to experience and is ready for. But in essence, it’s all the same thing.

Is it dangerous?

When I was a teenager, I first became interested in astral travel. I read every book I could find on the subject, which wasn’t easy back then (we didn’t yet have the internet. I know… I don’t know how we did it, either…). I had to buy my books from a normal bookstore, which meant heading to the shameful section in the back of the shop, where they kept the books on energy healing, Satanism and, probably porn. All that esoteric stuff didn’t go down too well with the masses back then. But, I persevered and did my best to ferret out whatever information I could.

The books I read all warned me about the dangers of astral travel. Evil entities could take over my body while I was gone, they said. I should take measures to protect my empty and defenseless vessel. They had various measures to do this, from using crystals, to incantations to calling in guides and angels. But the message was clear: the non-physical is full of monsters who can’t wait to come and take over your body. This is the stuff that horror movies are made of.

Then, of course, came the warnings that you could get lost in the astral plane, but that as long as your astral cord was connected to you and your body, you’d always be able to find your way back. Cut the cord, though, and you’d be shit out of luck, floating around in the ethers forever. Buwahahahahahaha.

This, I’m happy to report, was and still is a big load of bullshit. And yes, I know that many people still believe this stuff today. That doesn’t make it any less bullshitty.

Why do people believe this stuff?

But, if there really is no danger, you may be asking, then where did people get this crap in the first place? Well, here’s what you have to remember: people will attract whatever experiences match their vibration. This doesn’t change just because you’re dreaming or in the non-physical. In fact, these states actually make it easier for you to see what’s really going on, the stuff that you’re often ignoring during your “waking” hours.

So, if you have a lot of fear, a lot of beliefs that the world is a hostile, dangerous place, you’re going to have that mirrored back to you in the physical and the non-physical. You may actually see “monsters” and “evil” entities. The line between symbolism and reality is blurred. You can draw all kinds of things to you if you’re a match to it. And while some of these representations of energy can actually be angry, vengeful or intent on doing damage, they cannot even enter your reality unless you allow it. Just like with people. The techniques for combating these types of entities are nothing but permission slips – tools that allow you to take control of your energy. When you send love to a “monster” (which would be a representation of your fear), for example, and it vanishes, you’ve just seen the effects that putting yourself into a state of love, the love vibration, has on your reality. You’ve just experienced your power. You didn’t have to protect yourself from the monster, you just had to make the choice to vibrate at a frequency that didn’t include the monster or anything else unwanted.

When someone with a fear based belief system astral travels, they’re going to have those fears mirrored back to them. They may then feel the need to warn others of the dangers of their experience, but this is no different from when people warn you of the dangers of the physical world. Don’t go to Egypt, you’ll get robbed. Don’t travel to South America, you’ll get kidnapped and you’ll wake up in a bathtub full of ice, without your kidneys. Don’t go outside with your hair wet, you’ll catch your death. Don’t quit your job and start a business, you’ll fail. Blah, blah, blah. All you’re hearing about is how other people have experienced their own fears.

When you understand that you create your reality, that your reality, no matter how you’re experiencing it, is merely a mirror of your vibration, you’ll understand that there really is nothing to be afraid of. If your non-physical reality is showing you something, it’s the same as any other manifestation. If it’s unwanted, you’ve got some vibrational cleaning up to do.

But you cannot be invaded (your body is a part of you, it cannot be taken over by someone else in the astral any more than a physical person can steal your body by slipping into your skin while you sleep), and you cannot lose your way. The sleep paralysis, by the way, is simply your body’s response to your shift in focus. It’s totally normal, quite usual, and is nothing to be afraid of. You may find that it diminishes over time and as you have more experiences. Just accept it as part of the transition of focus.

You can’t get lost

In my post about Time Travel, I wrote about an experience I had that took me outside of time. That same experience was actually about something else though: showing me more of Who I Really Am. I expanded my consciousness out to all that is (or at least further than I’ve ever gone), to the point where my conscious mind could no longer keep up. I became the mountain, I became the air, I became the Earth, I became space. And then I blacked out. I have no doubt that I kept going, though, expanding my focus ever outward. When I “came back” into my body, I had a brief moment of fear, the feeling that I might’ve gotten lost. And then it hit me – the actual, experiential knowing that I could not have gotten lost. Because it was all me. Every single molecule was me. And just as I could choose to focus myself into the mountain or the ant, so could I choose to focus into my body. But because it was all me, I couldn’t lose my way anymore than I can lose track of my big toe.

There was no way to “get lost”. And there was no danger from anything or anyone, because it was all me. It is all me, at least in my reality. In your reality, it’s all you. This is also why you don’t have to be afraid that you’ll die when you “leave”. You’re not going anywhere, you’re just shifting your focus. I know, this all sounds great, and there is a huge difference between knowing something theoretically and having actually experienced it. This is why you’re having your OOB experiences. Because through them, you come to an understanding that reading a blog or a book or watching a Youtube video will never give you.

So, why do we have “out of body” experiences?

These non-physical experiences are a way for you to get more first-hand knowledge of Who You Really Are (like everything else that happens in your reality, by the way). You get a different perspective, a different understanding of what your word really is. When you see the fluidity of your “reality” in the non-physical, for example, you can understand that this same malleability or impermanence applies in your normal, waking state, as well. If you just allow it, that is. You can begin to understand, experientially, that it’s possible to step outside of time, that things are never set in stone (not even stone. Ha.), that the physical body doesn’t work the way we thought it did (it’s an extension of our energy and can change and shift and heal instantly), that we are not powerless subjects of some outside force, but rather powerful creators with nothing to fear.

You can use these experiences of train yourself to see reality in a whole new way, not as a fixed construct that you live within, but as a flexible, fluid matrix, at your disposal.

Manifesting more OOBs

Deliberately manifesting more “out of body” experiences is like manifesting anything else. Set your intention to travel in the astral, explore why you want to do so, make sure your reason feels good, and trust that whatever happens will be leading you down the path to what you truly want. If that includes more astral travel, great. If not, great, too. Just be open to what comes next, without specific expectation of how what you want will come about.

Bottom line

More and more people are going to be having experiences such as astral travel, lucid dreaming, or whatever else you want to call it. As we awaken to Who We Really Are, we will have whatever experiences will help us come into that understanding. For some of us, that means shifting our focus temporarily to outside of our bodies, so we can literally experience ourselves from a new perspective. Others are participating in different perspective-shifting events, such as sensations during meditation, meeting dead relatives in dreams or even during the awake state, increased intuition, animal communication, an increased connection to nature, and a whole host of others.

Your awakening is a very individual thing and whatever you’re experiencing is designed to increase your understanding in a way that you can accept. So, if the whole idea of an OOB scares the crap out of you, don’t worry. That may well not be your way. But, the bottom line is that there’s never anything to be afraid of. The fear based messages had their place, but their time is over now, at least for a huge chunk of the population. Explore your manifestations, whether they be physical or non-physical. Trust that you are being shown the way towards a much deeper understanding of Who You Really Are. Understand that this is all part of your own, personal awakening. I don’t know about you, but I find that so exciting, I could just jump right out of my body. Ha.