Let’s get this part out of the way. It’s distracting you from your goal. Yes- wanting to know how and constantly looking for new methods because the first method you tried didn’t work for you is sending you chasing this illusive, magical formula which just doesn’t exist- this is a distraction.
There is no one simple procedure that works every time for everyone in all situations.
Interestingly, that’s pretty much like life. I’m going to iterate a basic protocol for accomplishing AP. Yes, I said iterate. (I say iterate because I am betting the formula I give you will be the same that you’ve already tried. (Not re-iterate. Why would I re-tell you something someone has
already retold you?)) Yes, I am being silly, sarcastic, and serious- simultaneously. Language is important, especially in AP. It is serious enough that it will have consequences once you’re
successful, so this is an invitation to be aware, not an exercise in grammatical wrist slapping. Say you were born in NYC and you’re presently staying in Texas and you suddenly AP and you say,
“I want to go home” and you end up back in your body, well, that’s because your body is
“home.” All residential areas that can be located on a map are simply a part of the terrain and though we have collectively, for the most part, agreed to the lines in the sands we have drawn, the only true boundary, in this specific instance, is your body. (Even that boundary is not so
clear, but we will tackle that monster later. (So, yeah, third row fourth seat over, I heard you, be quiet. I’m writing here.))
One of the difficulties people have in AP is that they are so caught up on this idea of
leaving their body that the word body becomes part of their mantra, “I want out of body,” “I’m
leaving my body now,” “OBE now!” “Blah blah blah body…” (If you want my body and you
think I’m sexy, come on baby let me know…) And, you wonder why you’re attached to your
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body? Yes, you will find people that can make the above statements and have success, but I
assume you are reading this because you have been using variations of the above and have had
no or limited success. This might be the reason. There might be another reason, or combination
of reasons, but consider it, test it, move on. You’re going to have to build some basic precepts, parameters, and protocols that relate only to you. Sucks, eh? Maybe you’re not all that interested in ‘you’ and so you’re engaging in AP to escape ‘you,’ which won’t happen cause you’re just
going to encounter more ‘you’ and so in order to experience more ‘you’ you might have to start
with ‘you.’ Don’t worry, you don’t have to be a complete expert in ‘you,’ but at least get your BA, BS, and Masters accomplished, because this is about ‘you’ and not anyone else.
One: In order to AP, you must at minimum cultivate the belief that AP happens,
consciously or unconsciously and or both. I don’t care if you think it’s a hallucination, a brain malfunction, a psychological phenomenon such as disassociation, imagination, lack of oxygen to
the brain, spirits eating chakra colored jelly beans, or Santa Clause chasing reindeer through
Stargates. Yeah, your beliefs are going to affect your experiences and can even block your
experience, but you got to start somewhere; you’re beliefs are not you, but ‘you’ are holding
beliefs, and I am of the opinion it is your beliefs that are blocking success. You’re not broken, deficient, or in any way lacking. AP is yours like breathing is yours. Technically, from my
perspective, if you’re not breathing, you’re in a permanent AP. If you can minimally accept that this is something that some people are doing and enjoying, then it is something you can do, too. I get it, you’re unique, special, no one like you in the world, but you are not so unique that you’re the only one in the Universe banned from being able to AP. (If you can prove otherwise, I would find that really interesting.)
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Two: immerse yourself in the subject. Don’t read one book, read dozens of books, one
after the other. Watch videos. Become an expert. Be obsessed. Call yourself Ahab and make this
your white whale. You cannot overindulge or become too fanatical. (Okay, maybe you can. If
you change your name to Mada Jeojo of the Fifth Realm of Bentrope and start recruiting to
establish a cult of Tar, you’ve gone too far. (And if you went there, don’t come back.)) The point is, you become what you think about. (You thinking about ‘you not being you’ might mean you
don’t know who you are, and you should return to the one you that is most helpful.) If once a
month you half ass your way through one of the techniques you’ve read about, your conscious
and subconscious mind which works collectively will not take you seriously and it will continue to give you the results you are getting. This is an invitation to step up or step out. (Umm, step up or stay in?) If you could have done it without serious effort or reflection, you wouldn’t be
reading this. You’d be on a cloud overlooking Benthrope.
Number three: repeat the above until you succeed. I can’t tell you when it will happen for
you. I know people who invest years into this before they get it. It’s not about the time spent or the quality of the time spent, it’s about developing an awareness. You will need to be aware of your thoughts, your emotions, and the sensations that are coming into your awareness. That
awareness starts with the recognition of the physical sensations, but is ultimately not about the physical. The physical is the springboard, the trampoline for launching, but too much focus on
the physical can be counterproductive. The only way to walk this tightrope is practice, practice, practice. It’s like going to sleep, while simultaneously learning to be awake throughout the entire process. At some point, in the going to sleep process you eventually lose consciousness. There comes a point where you simply stop attending and you’re gone. You have spent your entire life
practicing sleep differently and attending to this can mess with your developed rhythm, so much 7
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so that it can mess with your schedule, and people don’t like that, and so they choose to work on this skill only on the weekend, which is okay, but again, if it is about daily ‘practice practice practice,’ the interval of practice will be stretched out to accommodate your needs. So, practice compassion, you are where you are. This could take some time. (I am not the bearer of bad new,
I am merely giving you truth, how you interpret and label that truth is on you. Eating healthy, for example, is time consuming! Buying fresh vegetables is an almost every other day activity,
assuming you realize there are more to vegetables than lettuce, carrot, and celery. It takes work, planning, and consistency to eat healthy daily. And most of us don’t live with a chef.)
“How many minutes should it take to AP?”
Oh, my friend, don’t obsess about how long it takes to AP. It doesn’t matter that you
know someone who can blink and they’re a billion miles away, where another friend is out in
five minutes and another is out after hours. (The following antidote is analogy which I am really taking liberty with.) There is a story of an American who flew to Thailand to learn from a
famous Buddhist monk how to reach Nirvana. The Buddhist monk said, "You must meditate
with me every morning for the next five years, and study the texts I provide." To which the American argued, "But what if I meditate with you three times a day, and I study harder than any of your other students?" The monk responded: "Twenty years." Your question is a reasonable question, from a Western perspective, but thinking in terms of time frames, structures, protocols, and practice can actually reduce the chances of AP. The closest analogy is that time questions
and labels are left brain activities, and AP is a right brain activity. (That was an analogy, not an absolute, because AP requires both sides of the brain and no sides of the brain are more
important than other side of the brain, and also, we use a lot more heart than you have ever
imagined.) The problem with any analogy is that you can't make them absolute. Wanting
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absolute definitions is a brain activity, and AP is a non-brain activity, it’s nonlinear. I
recommend focusing less on specific time frames. Set time to sit down and rest and practice your techniques, but leave a big enough window where you're not worried about schedule in a place
you won't be interrupted. This means no cell phones, no music, no tech, nothing that allows your brain a way of measuring the passage of time. You can't be present in the moment if you're
watching the clock to know when you are or if you're on schedule. (Which is the metaphor of the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland.)
Additionally, you don’t want to compare your time with other people's time, as this, too,
is a brain activity which can increase frustration and or disappointment, both of which can
decrease the likelihood of AP. OMG, I am different! (That’s the biggest problem of our society is we railroad everyone through a cookie cutter one size fits all philosophy when we’re not fucking cookies! (I suppose you could fuck cookies, but that might alter the taste.)) Hurry up and relax!
is not the way to relax. Just be at peace, practice the techniques and allow whatever happens to happen. You'll get there.
Number four: change your language. I know, the book is titled “OMG I CAN’T.” (That’s
why the back of the book says “OMG I CAN” so when you lay it on the coffee table you see
your change. (That, and if you’re diametrically opposed to yourself, remember coins have two
sides, flip yourself over.)) By use of the title, I am calling your awareness to the simple fact that this thought is in your head. (We all struggle with these sorts of thoughts, so I’m not picking on you.) Changing your language is such a staple of self-help books and spiritual diatribes that it is a cliché; and it is still true: “I can’t” is a serious impediment that even a diamond pickaxe can’t break it. And there are variations of “I can’t:” “I’ve done everything and I still haven’t AP.”
Really? You’ve done everything? Did you stand on one foot while holding pink salt while saying
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“I love BB more than R2?” You have not tried everything. Did you invite me over for dinner so
that I can slap some sense into you? (Bear in mind, if you do invite me over, I am seriously going to flirt with your wife.) Iteration: you have not tried everything. But saying you “have” is also a block. Your brain is not your mind, but your conscious and unconscious minds have collectively
agreed to use the information stored there, and your language is the operating system that it uses.
The good news is, no matter what language or variations there of you are using, it is better than Microsoft. The bad news is, it’s better than Microsoft. You get what you put in.
Number five: stop focusing on results. If you accept number four and you’re saying,
“okay, okay, I will try,” then you just fell for the next fail. I’m sorry you don’t want to hear this, but I have to refer you to my personal Guru. Yoda: “No! Do, or do not. There is no try.” You do the practice, you do the techniques, and you stop obsessing over results. Obsess about the
subject! Don’t obsess over results. Stop it. (Go to youtube and watch ‘Stop it therapy.’ (If you need help in your search, add Bob Newhart.)) Result orientation is an instant success killer. PS, there is no instant success. Okay there is. It’s lightening and lottery rare, and given a large enough population you will hear rumors of success, and with sixth degrees potential separation
from Kevin Bacon, it might even hit near home, but that doesn’t mean it will happen to you, any more than Kevin is going to drop by and say, “Hi, John, want to have lunch with me?” (Sure, is
your wife coming,) so plan your life as if luck isn’t a factor and start working towards your goal.
(Oh, and yes, Kevin, I would love to.) Get your hands dirty. (Umm, that is a metaphor, by the
way, which means if you are getting your hands dirty trying to AP, you’re probably not doing
something right. Paper cut turning pages, maybe. Dirty hands? I’ve not heard of anyone bringing back psychomagnotheric slime. (Except that one time, but I never talk about it. (This is not
talking about it.)))
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For more on self-talk, check out “what to say when you talk to yourself” by Shad
Helmstetter. Read it. Commit the principle to memory. Download and read the free PDF that
summarizes the book. Out of all the self-help books I recommend to clients, friends, and random strangers, this is the one piece of advice that I always recommend, because it enhances the power you’ve always had. (Unlike Glenda, I’m not waiting to the end of the story to tell you that you have the power to go home. She’s lucky I wasn’t Dorothy, or there would be some Ruby
imprints on her ass.) The theory is this simple: if you’re in my area and can afford me as your therapist/guru, you get what, maybe an hour a week? But you are with yourself 24-7! I can
therapatize you, hypnotize you, EMDRize you, REIKI you, Tantra-ize you, biofeedback you,
neural feedback you, worship you, pray, poke, threaten and or plead with you, but if you don’t
ever interrupt and change your own inner dialogue, you’re pissing your money away. And if you
can’t get to that part of the equation, philosophically and ethically I have to cut you off. It would save us both time if you would just cut me a check and mail it in and you imagine that I am
actually remote fixing you. (If your first thought is, “where do I send the check?” I was being sarcastic, but send it through the publisher and write donation on it. If your first thought was,
“I’m not sending you money, dude!” yay you! You’re healthier and stronger than you thought.)
Hypnosis works. Everything is hypnosis. What you say to yourself every day is hypnosis.
If you tell yourself a hundred times a day that “I astral project” you will AP. It is that simple.
This does not mean if you buy the book “The Secret” you will suddenly get everything you
desire. I am most likely going to diatribe about that later. (Or should that be another book,
“OMG: I Can’t Secret!”)
Oh, finally. Once you got the protocol down, which ever protocol you are most
comfortable with, to the point you can practice it in your sleep, stop intellectualizing and drop 11
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into your heart. You cannot ‘think’ yourself out. You need to be experiencing, not thinking. As you’re experiencing, you will notice things like, oh, tingling in my leg… you are now back into thinking mode. You might experience, this feels warm, or I feel good, what is this sensation, is this it? You’re thinking. Western world really doesn’t like to ‘feel’ and it’s a hindrance to the process. Practice mindfulness. Turn the radio and TV off for a couple hours and enjoy the
silence. If you feel uncomfortable, explore why you feel uncomfortable, because whatever it is
you’re trying to distract yourself from, that’s exactly what you’re going to meet when you AP,
and so if you don’t want to meet yourself now, in silent contemplation, how do you suppose you
will convince yourself otherwise when you go to practice your AP?
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Chapter 2 Chakras, Third eyes, and pineal glands
If you’re worrying or even remotely wondering about your chakras, third eye, pineal
gland, or even your navel, STOP IT. No, really, stop thinking about it. It’s irrelevant. Being able to AP has very little to do with it. (Okay, yes, it has something to do with it, but not what you think it has to do with it, and if you’re that technical about things, well, STOP IT.) It doesn’t matter if they’re open, closed, blocked, pulsating, dancing a jig with the leprechaun at the other end of the gold pot. Look, there are lots of people who AP who don’t even have a clue what
these things are. Especially kids. I was AP(ing) as a kid, I didn’t know anything about chakras until maybe my late teens, and I didn’t have any difficulties with AP until I started messing with that stuff, and when I left it alone, everything went back to normal.
Think of it this way. Does it take concentration power to get your liver to filter your
blood? How many hours a day do you stop and consider your kidneys? (Really? Never? But
they’re feeling vulnerable and ignored.) Does paying them attention (or not) change the rate of how fast your bladder fills? Do you have to think to pee or poop? Yes, but only because you
trained yourself not to pee and poop whenever the urge presents itself, and I and the rest of the potty-trained world are really grateful you have mastered this skill. (I am emitting truck-loads of compassions for those who have not and or have had accidents. For a teen or an adult, a miss in this area is probably one of the biggest most embarrassing episodes we can have in life. We
laugh because it’s uncomfortable for us, but only because we also recognize just how much
shame is attached to this. Be at peace, my friend, it happens to all us, eventually.)
“Does it matter if your chakras are aligned?” NO. If this were true, anyone with scoliosis
would not be able to AP. I know folks with severe scoliosis and they AP just fine.
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“Does it matter if my pineal gland is calcified?” NO, please, stop it. You are not your
body. “But, how do I know if my pineal gland is calcified or not?” Sigh. If you are 18 or older and live in the US or Europe, and you have brushed your teeth at least once, or drank water from the tap, or eaten junk food, your pineal gland is calcified. Get over it. “Can I de-calcify my pineal gland?” Please, please, pretty please, let this go. Yes, sure. If you can take a placebo and cure cancer, and science readily admits this is a possible, so much so that they have to rule out the placebo effect in double blind drug trials, then yes, hypothetically you can alter your body in a multitude of ways, but you will be spending all of that time with your body in your body, and not in AP. Look there are legitimate medical conditions which affect the pineal gland, one of which, pineal cysts, could require surgery and or removal of said organ. People continue to function
after such surgeries. There are also genetic conditions, such as mutations in the PAX6 codes,
which can cause a person to be born without a pineal gland. Though, with any missing part of the brain, there can be complication in physical life, but missing the pineal gland did not stop the humans experiencing life, and they were able to function socially and make connections. But if
you insist that everything has to be perfect before you can AP, you will never AP, because no
body’s body is perfect. (Okay, except hers, I’m with you on that, but it’s a distraction.) No body is perfect until you die and you have one long permanent AP, which sort of begs the question,
“how the fuck are you doing that without a pineal gland?” Consider all the cells that have come and gone in your life time, are you more or less because of their presence or absence? Absolutely you are. And if your body is okay letting go of things, so can you be. Let go.
“I have been meditating for months now trying to open my third eye and I still can’t AP.
Can you help?” Yes. Stop thinking about your third eye being open or closed and practice your
AP techniques. “But doesn’t it have to be open?” Do your physical eyes have to be open to
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navigate your bedroom? No. Does it help? Of course. Especially if you have toddlers leaving
random toys about, or someone recently moved the furniture. Look, your third eye will open and
close as it needs to when it needs to without you having to attend to it. When you run a
marathon, you don’t have to specify the rate at which you want your heart to beat. It steps up to the task and increases the rate accordingly. Trust me, if you were required to put forth conscious mental effort to keep your heart beating, you would risk death every time you went to sleep. Can you affect your heart rate by thinking? Absolutely. You can also open and close your third eye
by thinking. Did you just say “My third eye is now open?” There you go. Move on. “But what if
I just meditate concentrating on my forehead?” OMG, please let this go. No wonder you can’t
AP! You’re obsessed with your head!
Practice compassion. Breathe. Here is probably where we as humans get caught up. WE,
meaning me, too, sometimes, identify a soul location in the body, or, a center in which the I-ness resides. Most of the time that assumptions lies at a focal point between the eyes, because we
mistake our vision for us. It isn’t. That is just the frame of reference we’re using to navigate the world. (Believe it or not, ask most people where they reside and they will say in their brain,
while pointing to their heart. Ummm.) There are studies using virtual goggles and or fake body
parts where scientist have been able to move the I-ness to somewhere other than our normal ‘set points’ of reference. Scientist refer to this as “dissociative states.” It does not necessarily mean what they think it means, or maybe even what you think it means. (It probably doesn’t mean
what I think it means, either. I own that.) I do not dismiss or argue the findings. I love science.
But there may be more here to explore. We’ll come back to that in a moment. I want to go off on a tangent and then tie this part in.
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There is a study you can find on the net where scientists took a person who proclaims to
be able to AP at will and they stuck her in an fMRI. They didn’t coerce her. She volunteered. So, they recorded her brain while she was reportedly out of her body and they found that her brain
was doing stuff. Really? What, did you expect it to do? Shut down completely? She isn’t doing a near death experience, she is APing! I tell my computer to calculate Pi and go and get a cup of coffee, it doesn’t stop computing while I’m not attending it. The body still breathes and has heart and organ functioning, which could mean autopilot, but it could also mean, even though we are
away, we are still attending to our body. (Conversely, no one ever argues for AP or Near Death
Experiences being validated when science says brain function has stopped, even though the
person, on being revived, says there was still stuff going on. Seriously, you can’t have it both ways.) Every culture throughout time that has reported AP have addressed a cord connecting our
AP bodies to our physical bodies, so we’re never not in communication with the body. Now, the
brain scan is interesting. I like it. The scientist have validated something is happening, but they reduced the experience down to a self-induced hallucination. The biggest problem I have with
the study isn’t their conclusions, but the fact they only used one person. That’s not science. By science’s own rules, you have to be able to repeat this in other labs with other people. You can’t do science with only one example of a phenomena, because if this now valid, can’ we conclude
there is more life in the Universe just on earth, even though ‘science has only seen it on one
planet?’ I am not being sarcastic on that one. Seriously, there is life out there. The absence of data does not preclude the absence of data, and a study of one isn’t a study. (I mean seriously, scientist used to argue there were no planets around other stars, Sol and her planets were special.
Every star we seem to look at now suddenly has half a dozen minimum.)
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As to their conclusion, I am a little more compassionate because they are using the
medical model. The medical model, the materialist view of reality, requires that all human
functioning be reducible to a physical modality. Their point of view is that the conscious
experience of the world, both external and internal, ‘your real life and your imagination,’ are all the results of physical, biological, chemical, and electrical activity. Nothing outside of this exists.
If you believe this to be true, not only is AP a hallucination, but so is your conscious and
subconscious life, and when your body quits, so does everything else, for you. You can still AP
whether you believe this or not, but you may not put the energy necessary into developing this
ability if ultimately you think of it as just another way of getting high, to break with the hum drum of everyday life. I’m not here to convince you that there is more to life than the physical performance of your brain and body. There are volumes of material to sort through and I will
trust you have the ability to navigate it on your own and draw your own conclusions. If you don’t have that ability, but you had the wherefore all to read this book, just know it isn’t relevant to whether you enjoy an AP life or not.
If you want to know more about working with chakras and your third eye, because you’re
not buying my philosophy and recommendations to ignore it, then there are a multitude of
sources for you to explore. Quite frankly, there is so much written on this subject, much of it contradictory and conflicting, it could theoretically take a life time to sort. I wish you luck in that. (If you want a recommendation, I highly recommend “psychic sexuality,’ by Ingo Swann.
(If you do not know Ingo, you’re not doing your homework.)) If you insist, I would hesitantly
recommend learning to ground yourself and start working with roses. It won’t hurt you to be
grounded and consciously working on flow can have benefits. With all things that sort of reflect or achieve therapeutic outcomes, though, be aware that things in life can get worse before they 17
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get better. This is not me telling you to avoid this work. Self-work is the most important work you will do and may be the reason you are here. What I am saying is, if things don’t go the way you imagine them to go, well, it’s not because you were not successful in accomplishing your
stated goal of opening or closing chakras and third eyes. There still may yet be another reason that you haven’t AP. (But if you insist on this, you’re making an argument for materialism, just subtler.)
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