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Mind Awake Body Asleep

Probably the most important skill you can develop in your meditational practices is the ability to find the state known as mind-awake-body-asleep. Of course, you hard-core meditators out there won't need to hear this. But anyone starting out may not know.

Now, the mind-awake-body-asleep mode is the stepping stone into the realms of the mind. When you learn to reach the border of sleep, keeping your mind awake as your body tumbles over the edge, you will find yourself going into a medium-to-deep trance state. This is where the real magic happens. In a light trance, you feel nice, you feel relaxed. In a medium or deep trance (and this is true for both of these), you will find yourself feeling almost a blink in consciousness, followed by a deepening of your light trance symptoms. Your conscious state will increase, and your awareness will become much sharper.

This feels like a sudden "VOHHHMMMM". Your relaxation will double, and just laying there will begin to feel almost rapturous. Once your body is fully asleep, or even if you're just very tired, hypnagogic imagery may arise. This is a state of mind's-eye visuals, often geometric patterns and blits of light, that occurs as you drift off to sleep, or sometimes after your body has fallen asleep. This state is the jumping-off point for out-of-body and astral experiences, as well as deep meditation. Don't get carried away by the imagery, just as you didn't allow yourself to be carried away by thoughts before.

I've been using some great tools for achieving these experiences, and perhaps these tools could be used to learn to control the mind at the edge of sleep. But I think the best way to learn this simple but very important skill is just through unaided practice. As you drift off to sleep at night, when you're not exhausted, put yourself in an observant state. Keep an interest in your visual field (I know, I know, it's all dark - but that changes!). Keep an interest in your hearing. The closer to the edge of sleep you go, the more your visual field and hearing will begin to pick up things that aren't going on in the physical world. This may be surprising at first. For me, I would often hear things that would cause me to snap my attention, waking myself up. This would be conversations, noises, a radio, a TV... and as soon as I lurched up to see what it was, it was gone...

Once you get used to these effects, it becomes easier to use them as an aid to not falling asleep. Keep watching (not staring - straining yourself will make your body unable to fall asleep) the darkness, noticing that your natural relaxed state is with your eyes looking slightly up, at about a 20 degree angle. This is actually the third-eye viewing state, and the hypnagogic imagery will eventually arise from your third eye.

Finally, when you are under deep but still conscious, the hypnagogic imagery may fade back out (giving way for you to use an exit strategy, or even a wait-it-out strategy, for astral projection or out of body experience), or the hypnagogic imagery may enlarge and surround you, in which case you may find yourself inside a lucid dream, or even on the astral plane. Either way - two very cool places to be.

It's time for me to go lie down. If you want to check out the resources I've been playing with for easy astral projection, out-of-body experience, lucid dreaming, psychic development, etc, then check out the new Online section of my Resources page, HERE. Click MindSync, and look at the diverse range of products they have. Most of these are a $19.99 download, and you can burn a CD or listen on your computer right away.

These are EXTREMELY powerful, the best binaural programs I've ever used by far. For instance, the astral projection program works like this: your conscious waking mind is entrained down to a certain combination of frequencies over the first 8 minutes. Once you reach that combination of brainwave frequencies, one of three things WILL happen. 1) You will fall asleep (if you aren't great at the mind-awake-body-asleep mode yet, this will happen - but with 8 minutes per practice, this could be a great way to teach yourself very quickly!) 2) You will become anxious and note yourself rising back up in brainwave frequencies (this would feel like nervousness causing you to come out of your relaxed state. I haven't had this problem, but I realize that some people who are new to meditation and out-of-body practices can become fearful when it's about to occur). 3) You will project astrally.

Now I don't know about you, but that seems to present pretty damn good odds for success to me. The folks at MindSync (or World of Alternatives) are very responsive and offer a full money-back guarantee if you are not satisfied, so give it a try. After trying one of their programs, you will see for yourself how valuable they are. Give em a shot!

Have a good night - I'll be back tomorrow!