Is this Considered a Type of OBE?

[Dream_King]

Hey everyone, So I've been looking into something I've been able to do since I was a kid where it seems like I'm out of body. It's not a full blown OBE as in I completely feel like I'm there and am not aware of my body, although it has on occasion turned into that. The vividness is more like somewhere between a daydream and an actual dream. I have looked into what it was and came up with a ton of different answers, ranging from what Jung called Active Imagination, to some pagan/new age friends I've asked, most of whom thought it sounded like an OBE. I'd dismiss it as just an overactive imagination as a kid if the worlds I "visited" weren't so consistent and didn't seem to be independent of what I consciously intended. The people I encountered seemed to have minds of their own, even more so than most dream characters in LDs. That and I occasionally run into entities that claim to be parts of my personality and have told me things that are absurdly spot on about myself, things I wasn't aware of. I know this sounds crazy even as I write it but there have been too many things like that to outright dismiss these experiences as nothing but fantasy. Also, just to clarify, I'm not asking whether these experiences are real. For my purposes it really doesn't matter. To me it's just something to entertain myself when I'm bored or on nights when I can't sleep. I was just asking what label people here would apply to it.

[gab]

I don't think anybody here would dismiss your experience. After all, many are here to explore and to make sense of our own experiences. Unfortunately though, I really don't know what your experience could be called. Maybe someone else will have better understanding and will be able to help. Happy travels!

[Voldmer]

It might be what some label an astral projection. Mostly, what is termed an OBE is considered to take place in a world that is extremely similar to the physical world (so it would not be full of people not physically present at the location), whereas an astral experience may take place in a location with no resemblance to anything in the physical world. In my experience (and with my usage of terms), both an OBE and an astral projection take place in conditions that feel "real", like the physical world does. Dreams, and particularly day dreams, by comparison feel "fake". One thing I tend to use in order to distinguish between worlds is the level of overall detail; dreams have very little of this (for example: no peripheral vision), but the OBE's and AP's have it to the same extent as ordinary physical reality. But your experience might not fit into any ordinary category, and considering how little these kinds of phenomena are understood, it could very well be that many further categories will be used and accepted in the future.

[Kairos]

@Dream_King The vividness is more like somewhere between a daydream and an actual dream. It does sound a lot like astral projection. The astral plane has many different interconnected levels and sub-planes with different properties that account for different experiences. We are multidimensional energy beings. We are constantly shifting our energy states, thereby constantly changing our reality and constantly shifting in and out of possible and probable timelines. Quantum physics at play. What we experience as our reality is due to our energetic alignment. All labels aside, to me it sounds like you have the gift of spontaneously being able to shift your energy and visit other realities.

[Dream_King]

So, update on this. For a bit of background I have an anxiety disorder which has been considerably worse lately, and when it gets really bad I get tremors in my left hand. That happened today so I got myself into that same state, whatever you want to label it, and was immediately attacked by a large amorphous black being. I asked it if it was causing the tremor, to which it replied that it was. After a brief fight I destroyed it and literally the second I did the tremor stopped. So unless that was a coincidence, which is entirely possible, that could show that there is something to this. Whether it is just getting me closer to my subconscious or if I am shifting my energy to other realities like you suggested, it doesn't seem to be just me imagining things. Thanks for all of your replies!

[Dream_King]

Sorry for the double post, but the same thing I described yesterday happened today. I don't have the slightest clue how it works but if it can help get that tremor under control I'm fine with it.

[Neo Neo]

Part of this sounds like a mix of going into yourself and going to possible other worlds/realities. This would align with shamanistic experiences, because one is always dealing with oneself and is part of multiple layers of reality simultaneously. But then there are moments when one can journey into a particular layer of reality, which seems like what you could possibly be doing. This is also how shamanic healing works; the shamanic healer makes a change in either a altered state of consciousness, or a change in another layer/dimension of reality, and then healing occurs in the physical/waking life.

[Dream_King]

Yeah, that's another possibility. And it doesn't seem to be a permanent solution since the same thing happened again last night, and I was able to stop it the same way. Either way my life has gotten far more interesting in the last couple days.

[kadie]

It sounds like the stage between awake and asleep. More like a sleep disorder than anything shamanistic. Google hypnogogia and hypnopompia.