Did this happen because of Astral Projection

[VoTz]

This happened to me about 1-2 years ago. Ever since it happened I haven't tried to AP but I've been missing it. Before I start again I want to know if this is normal. By the time this happened I had been trying AP for about 5 months. I decided to go into my sisters room since its quiet and isolated from everyone to try to AP. I had been there for about 15 to 20 minutes when I started to vibrate as a sign of leaving my body. I felt me fingers out then for the first time ever I started to here static in my ear as if a radio was trying to tune in. I started to here a faint voice whispering my name, as the voice got closer more voices started to join. I waited until I heard about 8 voices or so that sounded so close they can lick my ear. I decided to open my eyes and get up. I wasn't scared of what just happened.. more like a bit creeped out but also a bit interested. I didn't AP after that because for about a week because I was busy. 2 weeks after that happened I went to the movies, I came back at around 2am and I went to the bathroom when I came out I saw a shadow walking up my stairs and to a dead end. I was a bit weirded out by that since my stairs usually creek a lot. I asked everyone in my house "why did you go downstairs? " and all of their response was "I didn't" I decided to not think much of it and go to sleep. Nothing happened on Saturday but then on Sunday I saw that shadow figure in my room next to my door and the whole night he kept appearing and disappearing. On Monday the day was going normal until 5th period when I was listening to my teachers lecture as usual then the lights go out. I didn't think much of it until I looked around and everyone was disintegrating, at this moment i am terrified. I'm too scared to move to I'm just looking around, then when I looked forward I saw the shadow that has been stalking me I was looking at him and he was looking back but.. he had no face just deep darkness. We stared for about 3 seconds then he dove at me when his face was an inch away from mine I woke up because a girl I sat next to poked me, but I don't remember falling asleep.. I don't even remember me being tired whatsoever that day. After class had ended I was still scared. I started to walk with my cousin and his girlfriend as I usually do. While we were walking i saw the same man/thing across from us probably like 30 feet away, he was looking right at me but people were walking around him like he was a normal person. I immediately turned to my cousin to start a random conversation 2 seconds later I look back and he was gone. That is the last time I ever saw him. My question is, did this thing follow me because of astral projection? And was he the voice that was in my head?

[Runeword]

i don't believe this happened to you because of astral projection. you obviously have some fear issues about boogeymen you're gonna need to face and defeat. just remember if you do decide to pursue astral projection again that nothing can hurt you. think about it, did this shadow person ever actually do anything to hurt you? the only power fear has over you is the power you give it.

[VoTz]

Thank you, this has helped me. Im going to try it today

[shadowofwind]

My 2 cents.....I agree that its not good to let shadow man intimidate or otherwise manipulate you with fear, and he's probably mostly a part of yourself. But its also true that fear does have a purpose in the scheme of things, a lot of the things that people are afraid of are actually dangerous. If you take an attitude that your heart or mind can't be injured as long as you embrace a mindset of reckless bravery, eventually you'll pay for that. Some people think that astral projection is unhealthy, that if you practice it you cultivate a kind of psychic schizophrenia, where your sense of where your thought body is gets decoupled from where your body is. And in that condition, supposedly, you become more vulnerable to being hassled by influences like the shadow guy. I don't know if that is true. I'd say I know for a fact that the standard New Age dogma about astral projection as a path of spiritual attainment is largely bullshit. If you feel uncomfortable about it, those feelings are probably as trustworthy as anyone else's on the subject, and might be worth paying some attention to. Sometimes a fear or other negative emotion changes into something more constructive or positive if you stop trying to tell it what it is and listen a little bit to what it wants to tell you. The first time I astral projected it gave me the creeps, though I can't say that's because the experience itself was unhealthy. It could be because the things I could see and hear in that condition are creepy, and those things are likely there all the time anyway whether I am aware of them or not. Subsequent experiences have each been a bit different, its largely involuntary for me and there didn't seem to be a reason to do the same thing twice. I think there's something to be said with being acquainted with and comfortable with your dark side, hiding and pretending nothing, to the extent that you can do that without feeding it.

[Darkmatters]

Ok, so far you have one vote for "screw fear, show that dream who's boss!" and one for "Maybe you should be afraid". What you'll find if you hang around here long enough or anywhere that people discuss lucid dreaming and related phenomena is that there are some who believe astral projection and out of body experiences are real and that your soul or whatever actually leaves your body, and some who believe they're all simply different kinds of dreaming experiences and that sometimes a dreaming experience contains an elements of hyper-reality (or whatever you want to call it) that's extremely convincing and that makes those other people believe the experiences actually are real. I believe they're all just different types of dreams. I've experienced what people call OBE or out of body experience, and it felt incredibly real - when I woke I was really freaked out because I thought I had literally just exited my body, flew out through the wall into the darkness and followed three sleek black attack dogs across the yard and through a strip of woods into my neighbor's house where I floated like a ghost up near his ceiling until suddenly he rather nervously started looking toward me and asking "Who's there?" - which freaked me out and I immediately retracted along the same path right back into my body and woke up. I was utterly and completely convinced it was a real experience. Until I realized it was actually daylight outside and the man I saw in the house had lived there several years ago but not any longer. Some people would say that in astral projection we can travel through time or see things not in their physical form but as we think they should be or whatever - at that point it's starting to sound a little forced to me. So I believe it was just a special kind of dream that activated a "hyper-reality" feeling. From everything you described, what you experienced was a very common WILD or sleep paralysis thing. Many times I've had a false awakening in my bed and heard voices - often very loud or very close, and often music as well. Usually at the time I feel paralyzed - these are the common traits of this particular form of dream, and people experience them all the time. They also frequently involve a malevolent presence that menaces the dreamer in his bed but does no more, often seen as a hooded and cowled figure or an old hag or some kind of demon. Your other experience was nothing more than falling asleep in school and going into another similar experience - probably sleep paralysis and because it reminded you of the earlier one that frightened you you once again dreamed up the same figure. Nothing to worry about.

[oniman7]

Have you ever heard of somebody who was harmed as a result of a shadow man from astral projection? These things are widely enough practiced that without any negative incidences we can safely assume it's not a malign figure that can actually hurt you. I think this is a function of paying a lot of attention to it and your dreams reflecting that.

[Darkmatters]

Well actually yes - I remember Puffin once posting an experience like that. And if you remember Puffin, she was (undoubtedly still is) a total lucid badass, able to do pretty much whatever she wanted in dreams and had been through many experiences with the shadowy figures threatening her in her bed - she usually just laughed at them and went right past them on whatever lucid adventure she wanted to have that day. But once it went differently - she was laying face down and the figure pinned her down and started slowly cutting her back, and she said she could really feel it and it hurt really bad and really scared her. I think it was the first time she had ever experienced pain in a lucid, and I also believe she said it still hurt when she woke up for a while. Sooner or later just about everybody makes a post saying they actually felt pain in a lucid, and often they wake up still feeling it. I'm not sure if it's a matter of something causing actual physical pain and that comes through into the dream before waking them up (they always seem to wake very quickly after though) or what. But that's the worst I've heard - sometimes a hurt ankle or wrist or back that still hurts on waking but I think they stop hurting shortly after (at least the ones I remember reading about). Plus look at it like this - Puffin had hundreds of amazing lucid adventures in which her confidence gave her superpowers, and then only once was she pinned down and hurt by mister scarypants. If she had let herself be initimidated from the beginning by him then she would never have had all those adventures and superpowers. ** Edit: Here we go - a nice thred about pain in dreams: http://www.dreamviews.com/general-lu...ml#post1835149 ** 2nd Edit : Oh, come to think of it, I've experienced pain in dreams myself. I have a bad back and if I work it too hard I'll get spasms which really hurt - sometimes it happenes when I'm sleeping, in which case I'll dream of something crushing me around the midsection - several times I dreamed of a big king-kong style gorilla picking me up in his hand and crushing me. This is why I'm convinced that often dream pain is just real pain that causes you to dream up a reason for it. And often if a person is woken abruptly from a dream they'll go into SP and see Mr. Scarypants and feel his wrath.

[shadowofwind]

Darkmatters: I think everything you're saying about astral projection is true, in the sense that it really is a type of hallucination or mental projection, as you describe. Where I no longer agree is in the assumption that because you understand that aspect of it, that must be all it is. You understand it as far as you understanding goes, then after that you just don't know. In that regard I agree with you that beliefs that a lot of people have about the nature astral travel are made up. But its possible to have experiences that don't fit the "its all in your head" hypothesis, and which leave objective evidence. Not merely pain, but actual strange injuries, or objects moved around that can't plausibly be explained by sleepwalking or memory malfunction. Then you have to admit "I don't know what the hell astral projection is". And then its kind of hard to be sure about what another person should or should not fear. I'm personally not afraid of astral projection, I just can't say what someone else should think about it when I don't understand it myself. Your experiences are of course different than mine, so your view is a reasonable one to express.

[Darkmatters]

Yeah, I agree with everything you said as well. I suppose I'd say I'm skeptical on the issue, but unless/until I have some reason to believe I'd be foolish to. If I would experience some of what you seem to have experienced I'd probably feel the way you do about it. Hell, I read all the Castaneda books and for a long time I really wanted to believe in things like AP and OBE etc. But nothing in my experience has enabled me to believe yet. And until something does I don't want too much openmindedness to hamper me in my lucidity quest (I already have too many other things doing that! ) Oh, also if I had noticed this was in Beyond Dreaming I probably wouldn't have responded at all!

[oniman7]

Sure, but we accept that as a condition of a lucid dream. I had a fever dream where I was laying on a hospital bed and any time I shifted I would get shocked. I woke up in pain, but I think I had pain from the sickness and it affected my dreams, not the other way around. I don't think we've ever heard of a figure from astral projection following somebody into the world and harming them. Best to treat it as a recurring nightmare figure and the methods we would usually use for one of them.

[Crashyy]

No, you're not the only one. The same thing happened to me aswell (and also to a few other people I know). After my first lucid nightmare and sleep paralysis experience, I saw a shadow person aswell. I saw it moving fast out of the corner of my eye. At first I thought it was just the shadow of my mum or brother. So I asked them and they told me they were downstairs all the time. It freaked me out at first but I wasn't afraid. I started seeing the same shadow person a few times a week. But at some point I ignored it completely. And it disappeared, so I haven't seen him since. I know alot of people on this site are quite sceptical. I believe they exist. But they can't harm you. Here's some more info about it: Shadow people - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia You should just try to ignore it, don't be afraid. And try to raise your your frequency vibration by doing things you like, do stuff that makes you happy and just be positive.

[Darkmatters]

As with ghosts, most scientists are extremely skeptical about the existence of shadow people. It seems as if the phenomenon can be attributed to a mix of pareidolia (the tendency to see patterns everywhere) and the low-resolution nature of peripheral vision. Hypnagogia, the unusual mental state between waking and sleep, is also known to produce hallucinations of person-like entities, accompanied by feelings of unease and lack of control. Many skeptics assert that hypnagogia is likely responsible for most reports of alien abduction, so shadow people would just be another phenomena attributed to that hallucinatory state. Until a convincing video of shadow people is produced, it seems unlikely that the effect will be taken as anything genuinely supernatural by most of the population. Source

[shadowofwind]

Might be interesting to know if the people who experienced shadow people experienced their "astral body" going back into their physical body at the end of the astral projection experience. My speculation is that maybe their conscious perspective jumped back when they woke up, but that the tactile "where my body is" thought/feeling remained fragmented. In other words, the shadow person is a continued astral projection, viewed from a third person perspective. The creepy/scared/not-too-bright character of the shadow would fit this, because as a fragment or projection of your mind there's not much to it besides the thought that you had when you were astral projecting, which is a tiny portion of your personality. Maybe many of the 'ghosts' that seem to inhabit older houses are like this, though not necessarily created through exactly the same kind of thought. When I astral projected, I very clearly "went back into my body". (I don't think I was ever actually out of my body, or that I quite have an astral body, I'm sort of talking metaphorically.) And I had no shadow people experiences. I did several years later have some remarkable experiences with something like a tulpae, which is why I think this stuff is partially real. But I think a similar kind of fragmentation occurs whenever somebody desires/imagines something that's disconnected from the reality of their life. Eventually events occur which allow it to be completed in some sense and reconcile itself with the rest of yourself, so it doesn't persist forever as a separate shadow. I'm traveling, at the airport currently typing on my phone, so if you reply I might not get a chance to respond until later in the month.