Hi everyone, I'm Bobby. This is my first post here! I've never posted anything like this before but I'd just like to share a short part of my personal journey. I hope people can relate and find it useful. If anybody wants to chat about the topic please leave a message.
When I was about 20 I started to have a horrible time trying to sleep. Every time I closed my eyes my body would vibrate like a jet plane taking off. It was overwhelming and so intense. I had no idea what was going on. The sound in my ears was also overwhelming. Sometimes it would sound like a plane taking off, other times it would be an extremely loud ringing or chatter in English or other languages that I didn't understand which was really weird. Sometimes it was a voice talking to me and sometimes it was music, but it was like really loud surround sound in my head. It was never a song I've heard before though. It was either created in my mind or from somewhere else.
I would see all kinds of things from images of things, places of earth, the stars, other planets and faces of people from human to non-human. I would also see things in motion, like short video clips of all kinds of things.
I was also having horrible experiences while trying to sleep, I was falling asleep and instantly waking up completely paralyzed. My eyes would open and there would be this black figured man and the end of my bed and he'd always walk up to me slowly, wrap his hands around my neck and begin to choke me. This would happen up to 20 times a night.
I was terrified. I thought I must have a brain tumor or something awful. I felt very alone as I thought I couldn't tell anybody out of fear of looking crazy. I figured I was the only person in the world having these experiences. I never thought about searching online about it before as I was sure I wouldn't find anything. To my surprise I came across something called sleep paralysis. Sleep paralysis is the strange phenomenon of your mind waking up before your body. I was really happy to find out I wasn't the only one having these experiences and that my mental health was fine. Knowing exactly what was happening to me made me way more relaxed. I was surprised to find out that it was happening to thousands of others around the world. What I found out was that it my my mind creating these experiences out of fear. So now that I understood that it was my mind creating this experience out of fear, then I could quickly put an end to it.
What usually happened to me was that as I started dozing off to sleep my mind would suddenly realize what was happening, freak out, and fight to get out of the abnormal feeling and wake my body up. So that night as I was drifting off to sleep, the same old thing happened. I opened my eyes and saw the figure standing there but this time I remained calm as I knew the man was a manifestation from my own mind. He walk over as usual and put his hands around my neck but this time instead of freaking out I just remained calm and decided I would just try and observe the experience calmly.
I realized I could breathe absolutely fine. It wasn't his hands choking me that caused me not to breathe at all, it was simply just me panicking. As he stood over me choking me and I just lay there calming breathing, I felt no fear for the first time in a long time. After what felt like a few seconds the entity seemed to realize I wasn't fearful any more and his power over me had gone and he just vanished like smoke. That was the end of that, I never had that experience ever again.
Shortly after that episode I ended up calling in to see a doctor where I found I had slightly high blood pressure which seemed odd as I was only about 20 years old. He said to come back in two weeks and if it's still the same he could prescribe me some pills to help.
I hated the idea of taking pills as I struggle to swallow them and just don't really like the idea of been on them. I turned to the internet again to search for natural ways to lower blood pressure. As I searched for a few days I kept coming across meditation, so I began looking in to it. There were so many ways to do it and it was all a bit confusing, so I just decided I would sit down with my legs crossed and put my hands on my lap with my fingers intertwined and try to clear my mind and think about absolutely nothing.
At first it was difficult to clear my mind but after only a few days my mind started to calm down. I heard about meditation for years but I always just assumed it was used for religious reasons and I never thought it would be a tool for me to use. It turns out meditation is the most simplest thing in the world. All you have to do it sit down and clear your mind and be the observer of your body, mind and surrounding. Sometimes I like to let my mind roam free and just observe it and see where it goes, I wont participate though, just simple observe.
I suddenly realized there is a lot more to meditation then I ever imaged. Here are some things you can do during a meditation session.
Take your consciousness deep in to different areas of your body. Feel around and get to know your body on a deeper level. Try and feel the connection.
Try to completely empty your mind. Every time a thought pops up don't panic. Simply mentally slide it away like closing an app on your smart phone and continue the process. Once you completely empty your mind you might start to see images, faces or even voices, but again don't panic, just go with the flow and relax.
Try to feel and expand your energy. After you have been practicing for awhile you can begin to try and feel your energy (or it might just happen naturally). Once you can feel it, try playing with it. You can imagine in your minds eye that the energy is expanding out from you. First you can try and imagine your energy is filling the room your in. Then the house, then the street and so on. Don't over think it though, just play around with the feelings. This can help with astral projection.
Think healing and positive thoughts. I believe thoughts manifest and you can think yourself into good or bad health. Every time I get a cold I will go into a deep healing meditation and my cold will just disappear. Try imagining every time you breathe in you are breathing in loving, healing energy and every time you breathe out, you are breathing out the bad energy from the cold or flu. You can also imagine in your minds eye a bright loving, healing white glowing light surrounding your body. Breathe deep and calmly.
Try and feel the connection with humanity. Imagine being in other peoples shoes. Think deeply about how every second of a humans life makes them who they are. If you met a rude or angry person recently don't get mad with them, think about what must of happened to them to make them this way. They probably had some difficult times in life as most people do. Try to feel compassion and a connection. You will find if you turn your negative thoughts about people into positive thoughts you will feel lighter and happier.
Try to feel the connection with animals and nature. Try and imagine experiencing the life of an animal. What would their level of consciousness be like? What feelings do they feel? This may be hard for some people to get into deeply but it is worth a try. On my own personal journey I made the choice my body didn't need to consume meat any more but this was my personal choice after feeling my body and my connection with nature and animals. Maybe you will have a different feeling. I simply felt this was the right choice for me and my body.
Imagine in your minds eye, feeling objects. I will often imagine that I am holding and feeling objects around my house or elsewhere. Try really hard to imagine in your mind how things feel. Can you mentally touch your table and feel what the wood, glass, plastic or metal feels like? Imagine rubbing your hand down your window, try and imagine exactly how it feels. Once your mental feeling feels exactly like the physical then your making good progress. This also helps a lot for astral projection.
Put your hands out in front of you kind of like a prayer position, but leave some space in-between your hands. Focus your attention into your third eye area and try and feel the energy. Once the energy feels extremely strong, try to slowly separate your hands further apart or make circle motions like in a tai chi style. This seems to help me with astral projection too.
Try and test your memory. Try to go deep into your memories and remember old memories buried deep inside your subconscious. You can also try the same thing with dreams. You will find you can remember old memories and dreams that you thought you completely forgot about.
I heard people say don't meditate when you are tired but I realized that by meditating when I'm tired I kept dozing off to sleep and because I was sitting up my body would jolt me awake as I got the feeling of falling. I started to notice that every time I was dozing off to sleep in bed at night I would get the feeling of falling like while I was meditating when I was tired. This would wake my mind up extremely quickly as my body stayed relaxed and asleep which would send my into an instant astral projection.