Tuesday - Fell asleep quickly during the relaxation exercise.
Wednesday - Drifted in and out of sleep for about half an hour during the relaxation exercise. I think that's a step in the right direction. The goal seems to be to relax and drift down toward sleep, but without actually going to sleep.
I also remembered something from high school. I swam competitively with the Albany Starfish. The coach was a brother at a Catholic boys' school in Albany. I'm sure he had a last name, but all I can remember is that we called him Brother Charles. He regularly had us do a relaxation/self-esteem exercise where we would all lay on the pool deck while he led us through the same relaxation process. He would use a monotone voice, tell us to breathe slowly, and on every exhalation tell us to relax part of our bodies. He'd start with our feet and move up to our face. Once we got there, we were supposed to visualize ourselves swimming our best event and winning. Part hypnosis, part confidence-building, I suppose, but awful similar to what I am supposed to be doing with this latest exercise from the book. I hope I'm not just learning how to hypnotize myself into believing whatever I want to believe. Why work on an OBE? I can visualize myself on the beach drinking Pina Coladas!
On the other hand, I promised myself I wouldn't be cynical about this, or over-analyze it. I'm not going to read any further tonight, because I've had a couple of beers and probably wouldn't absorb anything. I'll do the exercises, and probably continue on tomorrow or Saturday.
I didn't post anything Sunday. Saturday night's chapter had more introductory matter and a little religious information. I'm still doing the "warm-up exercises" from the first two chapters.
However, in the third chapter, the author described an experience that had a lot in common with the dreams I described when I started this. He talked about uncontrollable vibrations, a roaring in his ears, and some visual effects. I never had any visual effects, and as far as I'm concerned my vibrations were controllable (not that I could start them, but just that I could stop them), but I did have the loud roaring in my ears. It slipped my mind when I was originally describing what I remembered, and now it probably sounds like I'm just creating memories to have something in common with the author. Oh well, believe what you want - it's my weblog!
Unfortunately, I was a total failure at the exercise in this chapter. I kept falling asleep. I need to work on this, and I might stay on this chapter for another day or so. We'll see how I do tonight with the exercise in relaxation.
I read the beginning of the book last night. As anyone would expect, the beginning has more of an introductory sense to it. Why would you want to do this? Is it safe? Things like that. The first chapter ended with an exercise. I've been doing the exercise a few times today - basically convincing myself that I can have an OBE, and reminding myself to have an open mind and go along with stuff.
As I read that last paragraph, I am wondering to myself whether I'm going to cross a line between reporting on my progress as I read the book and summarizing the book. I don't want to summarize the book, since that would be too easy and possibly a little illegal. Certainly, it wouldn't be fair to the author to pull out the important bits of the book and post them here so that the dedicated readers of this blog would never have to buy the book. Unfortunately, the first chapter isn't going to cause me to have any exciting initial steps. That's probably true of most of the first few chapters. I'll try to stick to my personal experiences.
I think I read a lot. Science fiction, murder mysteries, legal thrillers, technical textbooks, almost (but not quite) anything. Lately, I been reading a couple of "Management 101" type books and a few of my Mom's hand-me-down mysteries, one of which has a bad guy who can leave his body and actually manage to have a little physical impact on the place he sends his soul/mind/astral projection. It was a fun, escapist novel, one of several I've read in between lame attempts at maintaining my focus on the latest "management-for-guys-who-never-planned-on-managing-people" book.
So, I've read a bunch of novels lately. And I don't want to read any more management books. And the next technical book on my nightstand weighs in at a daunting 1300 pages (keep the ice pack handy in case I fall asleep reading this one - I'm going to get a bruise on my forehead). Maybe I'm looking for something a little different to read.
The last novel (with the out-of-body bad guy) reminded me that about 15 years ago I started having this weird dream. I haven't had it in about 6 years, but I would have it maybe 3 or 4 nights in a row every few months. In the dream, I would start vibrating. Just a little tingling at first, but it would get stronger, and pretty soon I would feel like I was really vibrating pretty hard. It's hard to describe. I'm not talking about shaking the bed. It was more of an electric razor feeling (but without the noise) that went from head to toe. I'd wake up (or, more likely dream that I would wake up), and try to stop it. It took a little effort, but I could always stop it. Then, if I relaxed a little, it would start again, but while I was awake (or dreaming I was awake). There was always a little bit of fear or anxiety that if I didn't stop in time, some unspecified bad thing would happen, so I always stopped it.
In the daylight, the memory of the vibrating would be very vivid, but the light of day also has a way of clueing you into the concept that it was just a dream. A recurring dream, sure, but a dream. Eventually, in the late 90s, I decided that the next time I had the dream, I was going to let the vibration get stronger just to see what my brain would do with the dream. I never had it again.
One last bit about the dream - I was in my late twenties when it started, and in my early thirties when it stopped. It wasn't some bizarre puberty thing. There wasn't any serious stress in my life at the time. I wasn't living in a house at the end of an airport runway. No drugs (some beer). My bed doesn't have a slot for quarters.
Let me tie it all together so I can go to bed. The novel with the astral-travelling bad guy. No more technical books at bedtime for a while. Can't do the management books for a while. A little bit bored with mysteries and thrillers right now. The memory of the vibrating dream. I am about to start a book that purports to help you achieve an out-of-body experience (OBE for the rest of this blog). I plan to chronicle my attempts at having an OBE in this blog.
Stay tuned.
