Flying Dreams (HT: flicker)
I often fly through the sky in my dreams. I flew more in my younger years, but I fortunately still do occasionally. I can vividly and fondly remember these dreams almost as if I really flew — almost like I am recalling “real” memories. But it seems not all of us fly. Over the years I have asked people if they have pleasant sky-soaring dreams, only to find out they are not as common as I imagined. I guess we all assume others have the same experiences as ourselves. Do you fly in your dreams? Perhaps it is my mind’s propensity to such dreams that also had me experience astral projection.
Astral projection is a type of Out-of-the-Body Experience (OBE) where an individual finds themselves completely consciously aware but separated from their physical body. Perhaps my flying dreams are what made astral projection seem interesting to me when I was in High School. I read about it somehow and decided to experiment with it. I discovered that I was very good at imagining my flying about in my astral body throughout my town and even around the country. But I always did feel like I was cheating and just using my imagination until I had the real experience years later.
Eight years after high school I was going through a year-long training program as a yoga teacher in Minneapolis when I had another OBE. One night at the Meditation Center we were doing a group relaxation mediation on our backs in a darkened room with incense in the air and the calming voice of Dr. Arya (our teacher) guiding us through the meditation when I felt my body lock up — I realized I couldn’t move even if I wanted to. Then I felt my soul drift out of my body up toward the ceiling. I actually did not know it was my soul until I turned around while I was drifting up and saw my body lying on the floor below me. It scared me. But I could not return to my body. A minute later, however, I was able to wiggle my big toe and my soul came crashing back down into my body. My body jerked and I laid there sweating with my heart pounding, but I kept quiet until the meditation had ended.
Astral Projection
After the guided meditation, our guru said that if anyone had unusual experiences during the 45-minute mediation to come and discuss them with him privately. So I did. He told me such experiences are called Siddhis (extra-yogic powers) that should be considered distractions and ignored and that I should not pursue duplicating them. He reassured me that they were not unusual.
Three years later I was in Japan and learned that the Japanese actually have a word for this freezing of the body just before sleep. They call it “KanashiBari” (金縛り, metal binding) — see the wiki article on “Sleep Paralysis“.
This post was motivated by a commenter (L. Rodriguez here ) who asked if anyone understood this experience. His experience was negative, dark and scary for him. When I was younger, I did not know how to understand these experiences. Today I look at these experiences as odd cognitive illusions, but I could be wrong.
It is interesting that some people are more inclined to have these experiences than others. Have you had any of these experiences? What do you think?
_____________
Related Post: My Supernatural Experiences
Triangulations 
I only had two such dreams, coming very close to each other when I was very young. It was an exhilirating feeling, to swoop over the treetops and rooftops, with a cool breeze through your hair and face. So real, and your heart pumping with adrenaline! But the dreams were very brief, and you wake up feeling very disappointed that its only a dream! I never experience any more since.
But I do experience many sleep paralysis. It was a terrifying experience initially when I was very young. You couldnt move and you have this dark evil spirit sitting on your chest. You scream in terror soundlessly for a while and tried to thresh around without success. When you finally utter a sound, the spell was broken and you can move again, but I would be completely drenched in sweat and fear. And the loud scream you thought you made to break the spell actually was a very soft grunt.
Over the years I learned to master my fear and actually looked forward to the occasional sleep paralysis experience. I tried to be calm when it happen and tried to project myself out of the body but never had any success. I do not believe the two phenomena is the same.
Could you suggest any technique for me to try project myself out of my body during sleep paralysis? I am not familiar with the art of meditation, though.
@ I_Married:
Thanks for stopping in. Couple thoughts:
(1) After reading your comments at Ian’s blog, it would be cool to see you start a blog!
(2) Yes, isn’t it amazing how REAL those flying dreams are? I wonder why. The memories are almost stronger than “real” experiences and just as vivid. But somehow, I remember we “know” those are dreams.
(3) I agree, kanashibari and astral projection are not the same experience.
(4) My experience has been that when there is inclining of projecting, my mind recoils. But if I relax and let go and do get cognitive, I slip into the state much more easily (not always though), but relaxation and lack of plans and expectations have been key for me. Meditation has helped me to improve the skills of relaxation and quieting the chattering, planning, calculating mind.
(5) Many traditions warn against such experiences. So though I gave advise in #4, let me say, I still wonder if there is some truth in their warnings for possibly one of the following two reasons:
a) The experiences themselves destabilize certain types of mind.
b) The pursuance of such experiences itself strengthens a certain neurosis of personality.
I actually have had four such experiences but rarely talk about them. It is embarrassing. Makes me feel like a nut job… even though they actually happened. And since I can not prove that they happened I just don’t talk about them. However, SP and or astral projection is not to be confused with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi people who hop on their folded legs on mattress pillow-tops and call it flying. Has anyone ever seen video of this? Very funny.
Thanks for the welcome Sabio. I have been lurking here for a while now, but I needed to read what you wrote and how your community of friends respond to what you wrote before I contribute.
Your post on “Was Jesus a Coward?” was the clincher. I expected a flame war from rabid fundamentalists. I was even going to step in to tut-tut you about reading the individual gospels on their own merit without the distorting lens of christology blurring the story. Then I paused and thought this guy probably forgotten more of the bible than I even learned and held off pressing the send button. 🙂
The thought of blogging never entered my mind. There are many out there who can express what I have to say better than I ever possibly could. 😦
But back on the topic (you see I even read your policies on commenting here smile).
I will take your advice about relaxing and not having any expectations. Although I have these sleep paralysis rarely, I do know the signs of its onset. I would usually be very tired from work, have had very little sleep the previous few nights, and trying very hard to sleep but suffering from light insomnia. My heart will start to beat rapidly, and a sudden silence will permeate the room I am in. All the little night noises would vanish, noises like the ticking of my clock, the humming of the airconditioning.
Then I would say to myself, oh boy its coming, and wait excitedly. But my greatest fear is that I would not be able to re-enter my body.
I also followed your link to a comment by L Rodriguez and read your post there. I had an extremely eerie feeling while reading it. My hackles rose and I felt a sudden chill down my neck. I said wait, I never had that experience before, but I knew I did sometime in my past. Like a feeling of deja vu.
@ Ed
That is the cool thing about sharing experiences — we can compassionately let each other know we are not alone. I imagine many readers here have had these, or similar experiences. Funny, my odd experiences have made me feel vibrantly alive and not the least be like a “nut job”. I wonder if that is just my temperament or actually due to a different hold on mind and self.
@I_Married:
(1) Blogging can be a way to share your ideas and/or share yourself. Our blogs don’t have to be heavy or brilliantly insightful. Many of us just enjoy clicking on a commentor’s name to learn a little about them. So, please do consider setting up a site — you have a fun writing style and your playfulness is enticing.
(2) Yeah, instead of saying to yourself, “Oh boy hits coming” and waiting excitedly, if you just honor the physiologic changes let them intensify and drop the fear of re-entry (you always will), then it may be easier. But if you have insomnia, the meditation practice can help that — but I suggest a teacher because there are many styles and some can enhance neurotic tendencies if not fit to the person. But again, pursuing this stuff is really of no deep benefit, in my experience. But building the mind to handle it is worthwhile, I think.
Looking forward to seeing your new site ! 💡
I remember as a very small child being able to concentrate and feeling myself rise above the floor and float around the room, like I was swimming. It was fun.
I used to have flying dreams. I don’t remember the last time I had one. It’s been quite a while.
@ Leah:
So what is your theory about why you don’t have them now? Are your childhood flying dreams more vivid than others? Does your mind almost taste them as “real”?
(thanks for sharing)
The sense of “nut job” only comes when I share with the wrong people. The 4 experiences I had were amazing: awake, fully conscious in the same way as always, with bodily functions and sensations but not in my physical body.
I found a great video on TM Yogic “flying” here…
@ Ed
Ah, I get it. Yeah, a lot of folks have no experiences like this. I think a lot of “natural” atheists (atheists who were never believers) disproportionately don’t have these experiences.
Loved the hopping lotus dudes!
P.S. – put the www in your link or they don’t work. I keep repairing them. Thanx.
I have had a couple of night terror episodes (paralysis with a being standing over you while you lie in bed)but none in years. I have occasionally been deep enough in meditation to feel “trance-like” but never flew around or looked at my own body.
Hi,
These experiences sound a lot like what I’ve read and experienced as lucid dreaming – Knowing you are dreaming and having control over your dreams. If you look up lucid dreaming there is tons of info about what it is and how to do it.
It is really, really amazing, as some of you have described. I fly a lot in my dreams.
In my dream I asked someone, “Is this real or a dream?” And they somberly told me, “This is real.” “No, it isn’t!” and I went flying off the porch around the neighborhood. There are ways to stay asleep once you realize you are dreaming – anyway, there is a lot of info out there if interested.
A year or three ago, I came across an article by a British scientist(s?) (I have forgotten the details) about why we dream. His (or her or their) thesis was that our dreams are like a computer simulation to train us to react in certain life or death situation and how to handle things if it happen.
On reflection, I think there is some truth to it. There are a lot of crimes in our part of the world. So some of my dreams have criminals trying to enter my house with guns. I would react by trying to grab the guns in my dream, and then I would wake up in cold sweat. What the heck am I doing? I would think to myself. I should be grabbing all my family and trying to rush them out the back door!
There are also lots of snatch thieves in our area who would drive up behind their victims in their motorbikes, smack their victims on the head, snatch their purse, and drive off. A lot of my dreams would have some situation of motorbikes coming to me at various angles or in narrow alleys or wide streets. I would wake up in the middle of the action petrified. But later, when awake, I would walk with more awareness, and position myself at certain angles around my wife when we stroll down streets or alleys.
I guess young children do not have to deal with these unpleasantries of adulthood, so all their dreams are of the unspoilt kind, like flying!
Just a thought Sabio!
@i_married: I just wiki’d night terror and sleep paralysis and they may be the same thing with different names. It looks like most people just stop having them eventually. Maybe a dream-catcher or visualization as you fall asleep that the dreams will be happy would help? They are so rare that I personally would hesitate to recommend psych meds unless they were really frequent and intrusive.
@Earnest
Your being standing over you sounded exactly like my being sitting on my chest.
And no, I am not that bothered by these dreams to seek pysche help. In fact, I look forward to these experiences, rare though they be. 🙂
growing up i had awful, horribly nightmares. these were really bad until my mom told me that i can control my dreams when i was around 8 or 9… that when i’m being attacked by something i must first realize that it isn’t real, that it’s a dream, and then think of a way to solve it. largely, it was through flying away that this was accomplished.
i didn’t know until later, say in my 20’s that this is supposedly impossible. it is a concept called Lucid Dreaming that supposedly can’t occur in the deep sleep where dreams do. but yet, i can. i also have some strong Deja Vu feelings and even some dreams where i can’t control them. usually this is dreams where a dead relative appears or in the recurring dreams i have (subject for another post).
dreams are important to me. but what do i know, i’m a irrational theist 😉
I had many flying dreams as a child. I flapped my arms to fly in most of them. Some I can still remember tiny glimpses of.
I think you’re right about the part that naturalists generally don’t have mystical experiences – I don’t recall having any paranormal-like experiences.
However, I did have multiple cases of sleep paralysis when I was a child. Most of the time, it happens when I’m half-asleep/awake. However, there have been cases when I was fully awake (trying to sleep), and it still happened anyway.
Strangely, I never got freaked out by sleep paralysis. Maybe slightly scared the first few times, but that’s all. Perhaps my parent’s teachings that sleep paralysis are just a natural occurence helped.
And I don’t know if anyone here can do this, but I seem to be able to recreate sleep paralysis. Sometimes, after I break free from a paralysis, I will just lie down there and close my eyes, and a moment later, I’ll get paralysed again. Weird.
@ MaryLynne :
Indeed, “lucid/vivid dreaming” is something I have experimented a lot with when I was younger. Again, I think training helps but that some people are more predisposed to these possibilities. And, there are potential risks at lucid dreams — again, I will post on this later.
@ “Married” :
Dreaming apparently evolved as a memory and learning method, as you said. But like many more things in human cognitive abilities, we read much more into them and coopt them for other activities — ah the colorfulness of human culture !
@ Luke :
Theists and NonTheists alike share the similar potential experiences, it is our way of interpreting them that differentiates us on that spectrum. Also, on my site I try to emphasize that people can be selectively “irrational” for other gains. ALL of us are vulnerable to sacrificing rationality — and it is sometimes a worthy sacrifice.
@ Mike:
I have never been a flapper ! 😉
But about half of the fliers I meet are flappers, the rest of us are like superman. I wonder if that is a brain thing too or TV.
@ Darren:
You are touching on a main point of my blog, but let me clarify !
I am a naturalist AND I have mystical experiences. My point is that naturalists who DON’T have mystical experiences condemn not only the theology (philosophy) of mystical sorts but also their experiences as delusional. This is going too far. I think these abnormal experience need not be just spandrels (re: Gould) but perhaps are useful. Do you understand why I feel this distinction is important?
Actually, that’s what I was trying to say when used the naturalist. Guess it’s a semantics problem.
I’ve had one flying dream, somewhere during elementary school, and it was really more of a “swimming through air” dream. My dad says he gets them a lot, though not as frequently as he did when he was younger. He is pretty much a natural atheist (really more of a natural a-lable-ist), so is an exception to the theory that naturally secular people are less prone to them.
I know I grasp and stretch a bit to bring up the Hero’s Journey whenever I can, but I think there is a close enough tie-in here (bear with me 🙂 ):
In many, many hero/quest stories, there is a decision-point where the lead character has a choice of staying in the transcended realm or returning in order to perform duties in / ‘make right’ the natural realm.
Because these dream-like-states of flying and paralysis are common-enough experiences, is it really that surprising that we project these moments into spiritual accomplishments, or even just cool interesting things to explore/understand?
(btw, I have lots of flying dreams. Only when I first saw the movie Waking Life, was it revealed to me that I could steer… so much fun! And recently at a meditation workshop I had a brief moment where “I” certainly wasn’t in “my body”. But, I don’t dare say I have a full understanding of what happened.)
Both I and my Dad can fly (but not my Mum or wife). I’ve been a flyer since as young as I can remember. I am also a lucid dreamer, am aware when I am dreaming and have a reasonable amount of control over my dreams (both what I do and the content / story of the dream itself). I am able to change the topic of the dream, shut down bad dreams or wake myself up, for example.
I’ve had dreams of flying above myself, looking down (i.e. classic OBE scenarios). And I often have an awareness of being unable to move (in fact, that’s a good technique to wake myself up – I force myself to move, much as your big-toe).
I’ve never considered it supernatural though. And I’ve never experienced it as if waking.
It often happens as I fall asleep though, and I can usually prime myself for such an experience before drifting off. I have more conscious control over what I dream in those circumstances.
I could imagine how it could be confused for being awake. But at least to me I have experienced a spectrum from ‘realistic’ OBEs through to fantasy flying dreams, so I can also see how they are types of the same thing.
My assumption is that other people’s OBEs are similar, but I have (obviously) no evidence for that!
@ Ian
I don’t consider them supernatural either. But that is generally how they are thought.
Of readers who commented, only Darren has not had these experiences. I think this site has already scared away the Atheists who think that just having these experiences shows a person to be delusional.
@Andrew
I liked the Hero analogy.
@ CRL
Has your Dad had OBE — that is what I am referring to?
Oh. Not to my knowledge The comment thread seemed to have redirected to flying dreams, and I didn’t read the original post very thoroughly.
“Have you had any of these experiences? What do you think?” (Sabio)
I have but I am late to the convo so I wont waste anyone’s time with a long late comment.
I have had these ‘night terrors’ thing that was mentioned. However, being a very curious mind, I had to know what it was.
In the midst of having one of these night terrors (maybe 22 at the time) I awoke myself. I found myself in a mid state of sleep where your body shuts down and your hearing is in the midst of sleep and awakeness. I was feeling a sense of dread – but the dread had nothing to do with ‘evil’ but with being in a state I had never known existed (this was all new to me)…mid sleep but consciencsly awake.
The fear of this is attributed solely to having experienced a state of sleep and awakeness foreign to our experiences in life in general. It’s also connnected to a fear of the dark, or other paranoias at play within our minds about some of our inner fears.
@ Society
Glad you kept it “short” 😆
So, you have explained this unusual experience in naturalistic ways, but have you had experience that you explain in supernatural ways?
Thank you for bringing up this topic, Sabio. I have never had OBE’s, but I’ve heard people talk about them. I thought they couldn’t all be lying.
I think the trick, for we atheists, is to realize that OBE’s are a natural phenomenon, as opposed to supernatural. Our brains seem to have powers that most of us are unaware of.
For instance, I have vivid dreams, in colour, in which I talk to folks I’ve never seen. Yet their features are clear, and I see them on streets with buildings I’ve never seen before. And it all looks as vivid as in a gigantic movie screen.
Anyway, I think weird stuff does happen.
@ Sabio: love the spandrels/Gould reference, I didn’t know you read that article!
If OBE’s are spandrels, perhaps we can still appreciate them as beautiful diversions.
@ Earnest
For some they are beautiful, for some they are terrifying, for some they are yet another attachment for self-obsession. They are only another experience upon which we dance.
(btw, I read about spandrels in Gould’s books — not sure which article you are referring)
@ Lorena
I agree, all events are natural. But then I am an enchanted naturalist! 🙂
“but have you had experience that you explain in supernatural ways?” (Sabio)
Supernatural sounds so fishy…I would say in spiritual ways (and even that sounds a little spectacular). I would say ‘yes’ there have been experiences I would explain in those ways (to the chagrin of some here I think).
I also had dreams of flying, but they are just dreams and they can be seen to represent some thoughts I was having.
@ Society
But this is the interesting part. I have devulged all sorts of experiences that a “spiritual” person may interpret spiritually (or supernaturally), but I don’t. The question is, “What unusual experiences have you decided are Spiritual and you have excused from possible Naturalist explanations?” Please share.
“he question is, “What unusual experiences have you decided are Spiritual and you have excused from possible Naturalist explanations?” -Sabio
understanding language as metaphoric/parabolic/truth-unrelated-to-fact we see that the historical fact is couched in language which “muddies the water” and is concerned with getting feeling and fact communicated. it’s a fact that i have dreams where i fly and i’m able to control, what that means however is up to my interpretation. how i communicate it to others will more than likely be an unconscious mix of both.
Hey Luke,
That question was for Society.
You seem like you are trying to play the post-modernist game and stop conversation. I am trying to understand how Society sorts his world and understands his experiences.
Would you like to list your “supernatural”, “spiritual”, “unusual” experiences which can be interpreted lots of ways. I have made a list of mine.
Is it a fact that demons ran into pigs, the red sea parted, water was turned to wine, dead walked the streets or Benny Hinn heals and my patients with cancer should travel to one of his meetings?
Language matters. Post-modernism should not be used as a cloak.
@ Society, Luke, Sabio: my supernatural experiences generally come from my Spackle God. As Sabio alludes to they can be awesome/blissful/terrifying/just plain bizarre/some combination of the above.
Sometimes I think it’s harder to define a given experiential item to be from any particular source than it is to declare an electron to be a wave or a particle but not the other. The fact is that the electron exibits features of both depending on the observational technique.
To assign an experience to either a celestial, a demonic or a random neurotransmitter source may indeed be arbitrary.
@ Sabio: you have obviously read much more Gould than I have!
@ Earnest
We can observe how a wave behaves and how a particle behaves, thus with the photon, the mix of metaphors was useful.
But I feel your analogy is weak because though we know can observe natural phenomena, supernatural phenomena have no laws, can not be observed etc…
The supernatural is imaginary.
Never had an OBE, and not sure I want to! I have, however, had many flying dreams. The thing that interests me is that I also frequently had them while younger and now have them seldom. I also used to dream about jet crashes (many years prior to 9/11), and they were the evil twin of the flying dreams. It’s time for a session on Freud’s couch, perhaps.
Well, it seems flying dreams are common — even to people who don’t have OBE. So I guess my flying dreams were not part of the package.
I am interested in the OBEs, however. Just two nights ago I had an episode of “sleep paralysis” that was simply terrifying. It wasn’t an OBE, just an episode of being stalked and unable to move, or even to turn to see who was stalking. I was awake when it happened (somewhere around 2 a.m.). Or, maybe like your analysis of OBEs, I was not really awake but just believed I was.
“The question is, “What unusual experiences have you decided are Spiritual and you have excused from possible Naturalist explanations?” Please share” (Sabio)
Only a few, but they are for me, and not for this blog to be examining. When we banter we will banter of these things – to me they are important is all that needs to be known.
That being said, I am pretty much a naturalist that holds out an opening for the unexpected.
@ Society: OK
I’m a bit late chiming in, but I had a fair number of flying dreams as a kid, and the thing was that the way to fly was different every time, so I had to figure it out first. One time it was like superman, another time if I held my breath and concentrated I could hover, another time it was a ball of force I could move around, and if I did it wrong I’d crash into things. Another time I was very nearly weightless, and floated around like a feather, pushing gently off of things (and drifting to the ground if I didn’t push for a while).
I haven’t had any dreams like that for a while, but I had a few lucid flying dreams about four years ago (late teens).
I was brought up atheist/agnostic. I don’t think that makes me a ‘natural’ atheist but rather a birthright atheist in the same way that one can be a birthright Quaker or something.
Labels are only helpful as they help us understand, eh?
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Astral Projection is such an awesome phenomenon that brings so many people together. My experiences with OBE’s have been life changing and I would have had a lot more issues when I was younger if I couldn’t escape in the evenings.
Thank you for this post.
Shawn
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I am so glad I stumbled across your post. I’ve noticed something about myself recently that I really want to look into, and maybe you can help me figure it out a bit more because of your experiences. I don’t like to talk about it because the wrong people would think I’m crazy, but I think you’ll get where I’m coming from.
What I can do seems to be similar to Astral Projection, only my experiences are a bit different. Sometimes my spirit leaves my body without my consent and I don’t realize that I left until I return, suddenly aware that I’ve been absolutely motionless for several minutes straight. However, it is mostly something I do willingly when I’m exceedingly unhappy or if I feel sort of empty and want to “get away” for a while. Another thing that doesn’t match is that I am not consciously aware that I’ve left my body in the moment, that comes later. I don’t even see where my spirit went to most of the time, except for strange occasions when I’ll remember a memory that doesn’t seem to belong to me, or while dreaming I’ll be in a real, vivid place that I’ve never physically been before, but it will feel like a memory (both of which happen within a day or two of my OBE).
I once shared a dream of mine to a friend and she was shocked, because I’d described a house she used to have in Vienna; a place I’ve never been to. I had spent the night with her a few days before and left my body while we had been hanging out.
Is what I’m experiencing Astral Projection, am I simply prone to AP, or do you think it’s something else? I really don’t think it’s insanity, and I hope you don’t either. If you have any advice or wisdom on this subject, I’d be THRILLED to hear it. Thanks 🙂
@ Eicho
I am not really sure what to make of those. One thing I know for sure, the brain can have many illusions that give false appearances of spirits and such. Even a healthy brain. I would check with professional people if severe unhappiness is what triggers these because depression and other conditions can stress the mind to have illusions.
Either way, I would not focus on them but focus on healthy relationships with others and yourself. Hope that helps.
During astral traveling, it is possible to see never-before-seen places or astral air carriers, and even to meet friends, family members, and relatives who may have long been dead. through astral projection, people is capable of doing things that are normally unrealistic in the physical earth, such as walking as a result of doors and walls. its said that even those with disabilities will have proper, complete body on your astral plane.
@ Albert
There is not evidence whatsoever to support that we can visits dead family, friends or even more. There is lots of evidence that people can fool themselves into believing lots of things. But without evidence (and these experience are ripe for easy testing), then people should rightfully going on ignoring it and any website pointing folks at how to learn it.
When you said that the first time you had the experience and you wiggled your big toe to get out, that astounded me. I had that happen many many times when I was a teenage and I wiggled my toe to get me out of it too. It still happens out of nowhere and I am trying to either wake my self up by telling myself to wake up and go into dream state and fall completely asleep.
Don’t know how I can help u other than saying that it is a spiritual experience and should not be excused so quickly. I am trying to learn to astral travel and can quite get there.. starting meditation on my own and trying to comunicate with my spirit guides and also want to learn to move objects with my mind. All of these things that I want to do requires a calming of the mind so if u have any tips for me it might help. I also had flying dreams when I was younger, remember flying right above the ground and up above power lines, reoccuring vivid dreams. The reason I think that people have lost these abilities is because they r not innocent anymore and they don’t see the world how they did as a child. People are not in touch with the simple things in life anymore. They don’t take time to slow down and feel the energies of themselves or the things around them.
Thanks for your site it has helped a little. I have experienced sleep paralysis for years now, I am usually stuck in my body , paralysed with some nasty (or I feel scared) entity pulling me or bouncing on my bed etc. I have learnt to pray myself out of this . Last night however, I was fully aware that I was indifferent relationships . I knew these people some intimately and it seemed sort of parallel. I was aware of this life and had to keep saying my partners name to bring me out of it . I don’t understand it at all but I knew them as well as my partner . I then became aware that I was in the air above the village my mother lives and it was snowing. It is not snowing there though , I focused on my feet and was able to soar . I was flying above streets I had not walked down befor. I then knowing I was having an OBE decided to go high , I was able to soar high above and look down on the beautifully landscape . I was so excited and aware of this experience and that it was OB that I started heading through the streets to my mothers house. As I was getting closer I was not able to get high and everything started to stretch inc the trees , I then woke up. Any advice this is my first OBE and I know nothing about them , thanks
I’ve had many dreams where I was “flying”. Most of these sleeping dreams were pleasant while sleeping and when I remembered them when I woke up. But some dreams where I was flying were spooky. Sometimes people were chasing me and I was flying away or there was some dark aspect to flying.
I’ve not usually seen these experiences as something anything more real than my other dreams, that vanish when I awake. But the emotional impact of these dreams can change me for minutes, hours, or days after the dream.
Most of the “spiritual”-phenomenal experiences that I took seriously were inner perceptions of light and sound. I was taught by a yoga-meditation teacher that the astral body has chakras or spinal centers. And, the meditator can sometimes hear or see these chakras.
In Feb 2014, I posted one possible explanation for the vision of “light” inside. See my post Seeing Lights and Stars In Meditation Similar To Visions Caused by Sensory Deprivation http://skepticmeditations.com/2014/02/28/seeing-lights-and-stars-in-meditation-similar-to-visions-caused-by-sensory-deprivation/
If you have any suggestions or have written about these kinds of “spiritual” experiences (internal “formless” sounds or lights), please let me know. That’s what I’ve experienced and your post above triggered my memories and thoughts about them. I’ll try to collect my experiences and post on my blog about these lights/sounds.
Always enjoy reading your blog and comments. Thanks
@Scott,
Thanx for sharing. Here is a light experience I also had:
BTW, the astral projection experience I had while I was wide awake.
I am now on a journey to understand my childhood. I am not finding much information on what I experienced except here in this thread. I wonder if anyone out there can help me put a name to my experience.
I am now 23 years old. As a child, I grew up with my single mother who lived with severe chronic depression. She would not get out of bed for days and I could hear her crying every day. So it was usual for me to roam around alone and I was used to being alone/imagining.
I have a specific memory that I have had to come to terms with as an adult that it wasn’t real. I believe that I was 6 years old. It was a particularly bad day for my mom and I ran to my room to not hear her crying/yelling anymore. I must have fallen asleep at some point but my memory feels like it really happened to me. I climbed out of my window and jumped down and began to run. Soon, my feet were stair-stepping into the sky and I began to fly. I was scared at first and I held onto the siding of the trailer and I clutched it, screaming. Then, I got the hang of it and began soaring all around my house. I flew freely and felt alive, I was laughing and playing. It was extremely fun!! I then decided after what seemed like all day to come back in. I went on about my day and never once questioned that it really happened to me.
I began doing this often. I started realizing that it was when I went to sleep I could fly, so I never had trouble going to bed. So much that I’ve read about astral projection and such says that it’s mostly about time travel or going crazy places like space or other countries you’ve never been or something, but mine was always very simple- I would fly to my grandmother’s house or over the roads and watch the cars- careful to not let anyone ever see me. It was not until I was in high school that I started to question what was happening to me.. The frequent dreams were from 6 y/o-18 y/o. Then they started to fade slightly as my “real” life began to become less chaotic.
I also have extreme cases of deja vu. Which is an extremely hard thing to research and understand. I could fly places in my dreams and know every single thing about that building and home. I would fly into acquaintances’ closets or bathrooms or kitchens.. and later in life visit them somehow and know that I’ve been there. Or restaurants I had never been to or experience smells or a meal. I also had several experiences of stepping into someone else’s dreams. I was not a “dream-like” figure or misty and angel-y.. I was myself. And it was the most natural thing in the world for me to be doing all of these things.
I would also feel when someone was hurting and comfort them, but they couldn’t see me and I would fly away. I have also always felt an extreme feeling of “understanding” people and feeling/seeing their “light” or something. I don’t really know how to describe it but I can feel their spirit when I meet them.
However, the majority of my dreams I would just soar. It was a complete release. I would just soar above everything and feel free. I never told a soul that this was happening to me, ever. I was afraid that if I told someone that my power would be gone and I couldn’t leave anymore.
Now I am understanding more and more how my flying was directly connected to my childhood stress and trauma (that I will not go into here). I believe that it was God-given. A way to escape and cope with the chaos going on around me. I have not had a flying dream in four years- since I met my now husband. His ability to make me feel completely and totally safe and free means I don’t have to escape anymore- I am already free in real life.
Does anyone share any of these experiences? Does anyone know where I could turn to for more information to understand this? I would greatly appreciate any information.