Monday 21 December 2009

Are you a friend of the hidden society?

Yay, it's nearly Christmas now. I'm looking forward to going to Norway and spending some time with my family there. Exams are well over and they went well. I feel a bit weird about things though. This vacation didn't come as that big an elation as I had hoped. I still have two days to prepare for the trip to Norway, and I need to buy one more Christmas present as well as wrapping up the other gifts I bought.

This may sound weird, but I'm actually looking a lot forward to going to Australia, if I'm accepted. I miss the different culture from my old school. Talked on the phone today with a girl from my old class who studies in London. She told me that they have a very different mentality there. Plus they're all my age. It should be the same in Australia.

Another reason I want to go, is that I'm a bit tired of some people at my university. And two of my friends seem to be considering switching courses and taking medicine instead. I really hope that they decide against it. With such a small amount of people in our course it's bad if people switch. I already had two other friends change over to medicine, and there's a limit to how many personalities that I can become friends with.

Events these past many days: Not a whole lot. Went to a nice dinner with a group from my university this Friday. And yesterday went to the annual Christmas dinner of our bar group. I got very drunk, and had lots of fun. I was one of the last three people to leave =). I remember really weird things happening. Like a Christmas tree suddenly appearing on top of a guy's head at 2 o'clock in the night, and dancing around in our university canteen singing Christmas songs. I'm a bit sad that there were some girls who could all remember my name and even though they told me their names too, I just couldn't remember when one of them asked me later. She got quite upset at that, and I was like "argh" afterwards. I don't like when stuff like that happens.

There's been a lot of snow here these days. It's nice when the wind isn't blowing, but it becomes way too cold when it is. A few days ago I experienced something really weird. A kind of midnight sunshine. But the light didn't come from the Sun. It was kind of really bright, golden moonlight being reflected by the snow. At 3 o'clock in the night it was brighter outside than it is during the day. It was really weird and cool. I just sat in my room and watched it for almost half an hour.

I also had a strange and exciting experience. I was once very interested in the phenomenon of astral travel, and still am to a lesser extent. Astral travel is a type of out-of-body experience. It involves you consciously deciding to "separate" from your body before falling asleep. If you can do it, you can travel around in a kind of parallel plane called the astral plane. Here you can fly, teleport and move through things and stuff. It's said to be a really impressive experience. Well, whether you believe it's a real plane or not, there's substantial evidence that the phenomenon can be experienced. And I really don't care whether it's just a hallucination or a real out of this world magic thing.

There exist a number of techniques out there to reach the goal of actually leaving your body. By leaving your body, it's not literally stepping out of your body, of course - it's more like your consciousness leaving your body and being free. It's said that your consciousness takes the shape of a silvery body much like your own (but with some minor differences) and that it's attached to your real, physical body, through a silver cord attached to you. It might seem dangerous, but really, it's not. The minute you start worrying about if it's dangerous, or if you can't get back, you re-enter your body and wake up.

I've had very limited success with these techniques in the past. Actually no real success to be honest. I always end up falling asleep when using them. I have had episodes where I just accidentally entered states that are "pre-astral travel" though. These are really weird. I've had two types so far. In one of them you suddenly can see the room you're in even though you know your eyes are closed. You can't really move either and it's as if you have no body. You aren't asleep, but not awake either. It's sort of like a mix between the two. I usually wake up pretty quickly from this, and afterwards curse myself because I didn't use the chance to advance the state into a real astral projection.

The other state is kind of scary and I have only tried that a very few times. In this experience you suddenly see very clearly around you, as if your eyes are open. But you can't move at all, and it feels like there's a heavy pressure everywhere around you. It might seem like you're not breathing and it feels like you're fainting non-stop. It's a feeling of very light-headedness and not being able to do or say anything. The first time I had this experience I wondered if I was dying or something, and it was really scary. Panicking is what makes me wake up those times. The really weird thing comes when you open your eyes and see exactly the same as you saw when you had your eyes closed and as you slowly realise you can move yourself again.

A few weeks ago though, I third kind of experience, and that's the closest I've ever come to an astral projection. I had taken a midday nap. And for some reason the dream was EXTREMELY lucid. I was very much aware of myself and my mind wasn't clouded like it usually is, when you're dreaming. I remember running across a huge field with a really bright and warm sun shining above me. I see everything in great detail, feel the warmth as if it was real and I can hear my footsteps perfectly. I actually thought that inside the dream. I knew I was half-asleep, and that my mind was slipping to the state of becoming unaware it's a dream.

But suddenly I came to a cross-roads. I had the choice of taking the right path into a cool, dark forest (it didn't feel scary at all though), or the left past into a bright, sunny village. I instantly think: "I'm going to go into the forest because I love dreams taking place in forests - plus it's what I should do". But then suddenly I decide to go to the village instead, because I feel really happy in the sunshine. I'm pretty sure, that if I had chosen the forest, I would have lost myself in the dream and slipped away from this lucid state.

As I turn left a thought suddenly occurs to me: "This is about time to go astral travelling". The instant I think this something REALLY weird happens. Suddenly my viewpoint zooms away from the ground and I watch myself standing in the field from really high up. Then it becomes really dark, and it doesn't feel like I'm dreaming any more. I'm still asleep though. Then suddenly I reach the stage that comes right before you leave your body. You feel something called the "vibrations". There's a lot of talk about how it feels on the internet. I can't really explain it. It's sort of like a very real tingling sensation in your whole body - as if it was charged full of electricity. When I started feeling that, I thought: "Shit, I'm not prepared for this - it's actually happening". And then of course I became scared, and opened my eyes. I cursed myself for letting yet another chance pass me by and then tried to reach the state again but failed.

It's funny that I always have these experiences during afternoon naps, and never at night. It's probably because it's much easier to reach that half awake half asleep state, when you're not mentally prepared for a full night's sleep. I hope that one day, though, I'll succeed in performing a full astral projection. I think it depends a lot on luck for me. I'm very bad at visualising, and a lot of the techniques normally used for inducing the heightened state before sleep requires you to imagine certain images in your head. And I just can't seem to do that.

Well, that'll be all for today. Hopefully I'll start updating this blog regularly again, now that I'm finished with that insanely intensive course. Lastly, I'm giving you a picture to think a bit about. It's not a faked photo, and the English translation accurately reflects what is written in Japanese next to it (I translated it just to check). And no, hehe, it's not a joke or some kind of theme park attraction.