There are several ways to approach astral projection and each one will produce results. However, the feel of the experience itself, the level at which your consciousness or aetheric field expand, and the level of complexity in attaining astral projection will vary. Astral projection can be accomplished through meditation, lucid dreaming, shamanic journeys, or a full-fledged out of body experience (OBE).

The key is to let visualization go wherever the subconscious wishes, to trust in letting the subconscious show you the way, and to have confidence that what you are experiencing is not just your imagination.

Through astral projection we are able to access knowledge and wisdom for our life's journey. It can assist in attaining enlightenment, to help us to remember we are spiritual beings on a human journey. This wisdom found will help us to live our everyday life as our higher self guides us. It is a venue by which we can explore the universe and our connection with it. It can also be used for healing of the mind, body and spirit.

Projecting during meditation is the simplest method. Although is can be done at any level, deeper meditative states will produce more successful experiences. First find your sacred place—the location your visualization takes you to be alone. This could be out in the cosmos, on a deserted beach, deep in a tropical rainforest, or just by a waterfall. For many, it is a location with pristine natural surroundings. You simply allow yourself to go there and take in your surroundings. Experience your sacred place as you would with your physical body. How does it smell? What do your hands and feet feel? What are the sounds? Use your 3rd eye to view the smallest details of this place. Once you have practiced and become comfortable within your sacred place, you can begin to venture anywhere you desire. We will talk about some possible locations a little later.

Projection during lucid dreaming feels more “real” than projection during meditation. A larger part of your consciousness and aetheric field reach into the other planes. Unfortunately, learning how to force a lucid dream will take practice and some skill. Once learned, you will be able to recognize you are in the dream experience, take over control of the dream, and venture wherever you desire. It is helpful to have a destination planned out in advance of the lucid dreaming, otherwise it can be difficult to control a lucid dream. If you would like to try lucid dreaming but aren’t sure how, you may want to follow the instructions provided for practicing an OBE below. The instructions will assist you in attaining a state of consciousness that can lead to lucid dreaming as well. It is also possible to shift a lucid dreaming experience into an OBE. One way is to place a symbol in your thoughts, one you relate to expanding your consciousness into the universe, then you can use this symbol to shift from a lucid dream into an OBE. For myself, the symbol of the great pyramid in Egypt does the trick. When I realize I’m lucid dreaming and wish to OBE instead, I bring that symbol into my 3rd eye. As I do this, my body begins to vibrate and I am able to OBE instead (more on what vibrating has to do with an OBE a bit later).

Projection during a shamanic journey is a specific technique used by shamans. Often there is a ritual performed in advance of the journey which involves opening a sacred circle using tools such as rattles, burning sage, and drumming. The rhythmic sound of drumming allows one to enter into an altered state of consciousness—a trance. Upon reaching this state you leave the physical body and venture into the lower or upper worlds to gain insight and wisdom, or perform healing work on others within the astral plane. If you wish to have a journey but aren’t trained in the traditional shamanic techniques, I recommend getting a shamanic drumming CD, good quality headphones, and laying down in a comfortable position. Put on an eye cover so no light penetrates and let the drumming sounds put you into a deep meditative state (or trance). Again, this may involve vibrating.

Projection during an OBE is often the most difficult to attain. The level of your consciousness and aetheric field that expand into the other worlds will be at the highest level we can hope to attain. This experience will feel very real. As real as it gets! Here is a technique you can use. Program your internal clock to wake up at a certain time. The hours between 1:00 am and 3:00 am are when we are most easily able to access the other planes. When you wake, get out of bed and get a drink of water or use the bathroom—whatever it takes to ensure that you are fully awake. Then return to bed, lie on your back and make sure you are completely comfortable. Close your eyes and begin to take yourself deeper—systematically go deeper and deeper within yourself. This is similar to the technique you would use to intentionally go into a deeper meditative state. You literally sink inside your own consciousness. As this happens, you may begin to see shapes and colors moving around inside your eyelids and very vivid 3rd eye images. Then at some point you will feel the energy of your entire body “shift”. This is a physical sensation from head to toe and once you feel it, you are ready. Allow yourself to drift off to sleep. Now, there is a chance here that it will take you too long to get back to sleep and you will lose this meditative state. If this happens, you will simply go to sleep and not experience the OBE. But keep practicing! If you are able to fall asleep while maintaining your trance, your body will fall asleep but your consciousness will remain alert. The moment your body falls asleep, you will “vibrate”. This vibration is literally shaking your aetheric field loose from your body. Imagine that your body is a cell phone that is set on vibrate and it is ringing—the sensation feels a lot like that. If you don’t just pop out of your body, I suggest that as soon as you feel this vibration you get up out of bed. You will likely think that you (all of you) is getting up, but it will only be part of you. A good test to see if your body has just climbed out of bed, or you are having an OBE, is to either try to walk through a wall or to fly. Once you are aware that you are, in fact, out of your body, you can venture out. It should be noted that going outside of your home (walking through walls) may take a few tries to learn. Also, learning to fly properly may take some practice. If you do not vibrate then you will likely experience some other indicator that you are ready to leave your body. The absence of vibrating does not necessarily mean that you can’t OBE, but you do need some indication that your aetheric field and your consciousness are ready to go.

At this point it is worth noting that there is absolutely no reason to worry that you won’t return to your body. Your aetheric field always remains connected to your human body. When you wish to return you simply return. You may also find that you return before you are ready—you may get slammed back into your body. You may even feel your bed slam into the floor when you return suddenly. Or, you may just slip back inside naturally. Regardless of how you return, you will return.

The next concern I should note is about protection. Everyone is different when it comes to their comfort level with astral projection and the level of protection they require to feel safe. For some, intention to be safe and knowing you are safe is enough. For others, they wish to have an angel/archangel/spirit guide/power animal ensure their safe journey. Still others will perform a ritual prior to travel that includes strengthening the aetheric cord between their aetheric body and their human body, visualizing a strong white light in a sort of protective bubble around them. Decide for yourself what level of protection you wish to have for your astral travels. I do recommend that you at least consider protection, have the intention that no harm can come to you when you travel and that you only wish to experience things of a divine nature.

One of the best ways you can ensure that you have a pleasant astral projection experience is to know the purpose of your trip in advance. Why are you doing it? Where will you go? How will you get there? If you project with a sense of purpose and intention then you are much less likely to be distracted by interference. If you do astral projection just because you find it entertaining and have no plans in advance, you are more likely to have experiences that are not enjoyable. When you enter the other planes you are in locations where your thoughts, fears, shadow self, ego, all parts of your consciousness and subconscious, manifest. These are the planes of manifestation. So when you bring all this “stuff” out there with you, you can accidentally manifest your fears. In other words, if you approach these planes afraid, the universe—just by the nature of the way the universe works—will manifest something for your fear to find. Creation isn’t concerned with your fears, creation is just concerned with creation. So having a plan in advance will help insure that you create what you wish to create. Also, I strongly recommend against astral projection if you are riddled with negative thoughts or emotions. In other words, if you’re having a “bad day”, stay out of the other planes. If you are deathly afraid of what you might experience in astral projection, don’t astral project and deal with the fears first. If you access the astral when you have too much negative energy in your field you may experience something called astral spiders. Don’t be afraid. These little guys are like the vacuum cleaners of the astral plane. They maintain the balance when you are sending too much negative energy out. They will not harm you, nor do they intend to harm you. Now, on to the other planes.

Once you have reached the desired altered state of consciousness through whichever technique you have decided to use, know the purpose of your trip, and have your protection, you are ready to go.

The Astral Plane is the plane closest to the material plane. This is the first plane you enter when your aetheric field reaches out. You access it regularly during the sleep and dream state. This plane can be used to visit or meet up with someone in this space and time (word of warning: never EVER enter someone else’s dream unless you have their permission). This is also the plane to use for going back in time and doing some past life exploration or learning about ancient civilizations. You would also use this plane to explore someone’s field, to either gain insight into the health of their field or body or to perform some healing on those areas. You could also perform work related to the removal of entity attachments. There is no need for instructions on how to enter this field as it is naturally the field you enter first. If the purpose of your trip is to gain wisdom, then don’t use this plane, there are no wise beings here. However, there are plenty of not-so-wise beings here that are more than willing to pretend to be wise masters and give you bad advice just for kicks.

The Upper Planes (or upper worlds) are where you would go to obtain wisdom. These are the locations of the ascended masters, archangels and angels, teachers, and your higher self. To access these planes you have to go above the astral plane. Pick a location that you are familiar with on the material plane—a location that you don’t have any trouble visualizing or won’t have any trouble getting to when you’re astral. The top of a mountain is a great example. From this location you will transcend the astral plane and go up. Manifest an elevator or a rope or staircase or whatever you wish to use to take you up. As you go through the levels you may see the astral plane as cloudy or foggy, then as you transcend into the upper planes you may see yourself going through the colors of the chakras or the colors of the rainbow. You may also see something completely different. Whatever you see, it should show you the levels you are arriving at or passing by. Which level you stop at should be determined by your subconscious. Let your intuition tell you when to stop. Once you arrive at the desired level, state your purpose there. In other words, ask a question. Make sure you know what your question will be before you go, and really spend some time forming your question so that you get to the source of what you want to know while leaving the answer open enough for them to give you wisdom. Answers are rarely as simple as yes or no. And even if they are, the teachers won’t just give you the answer. They will give you wisdom in the form of symbolism, actions and words so that you can discover the answer yourself. Now, once you state your question you should turn over control of your experience to the masters, angels and teachers. If nobody shows up, state your question again. Eventually someone will come. What happens from this point forward is ALL part of the answer. Who shows up, how they are dressed, the colors, sounds, scents, everything that they show you, and of course everything they say, is a part of the answer. It might all make sense to you then, or it may take you some time to really figure out all of the meaning in the answers and symbols. When you sense that they have finished answering you, thank them for their assistance and go back down the same way you went up.

The Lower Planes (or lower worlds) are also where you would go to obtain wisdom. These are the locations of the healing spiritual beings (that work on us when we sleep) and the animal spirits. When you go to the lower worlds you gain the wisdom you seek from the animal spirits. Travel to the lower worlds is very similar to the way you access the upper worlds. The difference is, you’re going down. So pick a location that you are familiar with that you can use as a jumping off point or diving point to go down into the earth. It may be a tunnel of some sort. Or you could dive off a waterfall and go down through the pool of water below. Lakes also work very well. Just dive in. Once you dive in, you keep going down. It may seem like a sort of wormhole. Where you stop, again, is up to your intuition. In the lower worlds you are likely to find landscaping that looks similar to what you would see on the surface of the earth but with their own unique characteristics. When you state your question, it is an animal that will come to you. The type of animal is important (you may wish to look up what they represent as a totem medicine when you return). Again, everything that happens from this point forward should be left to the control of your guide, and everything that happens is part of the answer to your question. When your animal guide is done answering you, be sure to thank them, then return the same way you went down.

How do you choose whether to go up or down for the answers to your questions? Again, I suggest that you let your intuition guide you.

There are too many locations that we can travel to for me to attempt to list them all here. But this is a good list to get you started. As your consciousness evolves you will likely be drawn to higher and higher planes. You may encounter councils of elders, be taken to other locations by divine spiritual beings, and discover other wormholes that take you to hidden worlds. Have some fun exploring! You might be surprised at how much you have to learn from the spirit world. Safe journeys!

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