I am in the last weeks of the Practical Astral Projection Intensive offered by famed astral projectionist and author of Astral Dynamics: The Complete Book of Out-of-Body Experiences Robert Bruce. 

We had been asked to observe our hypnagogic imagery (visions that come to us when we're in between sleep and wakefulness) at night before we went to sleep. So on this particular night I was observing the darkness behind my closed lids when I begin to feel a lot of vibration / pins and needles over my whole body but especially in my hands which were clasped over my stomach. 

Vibrations are a known precursor to astral projection or out of body experience and a sign the course has taught us to look for. In the beginning of the course (and at periods throughout my life) I found the vibrations a little overwhelming but at the time of this event we were several weeks into the class and I had learned how to relax into them. And so I just let myself experience the sensation. 

As relaxed I began to feel my vibrating hands lifting slowly but steadily up into the air. I knew my flesh and bone hands weren't lifting because I was motionless and relaxed (and not making any effort to move) but I really couldn't feel them - I was aware of my vibrating floating hands, instead. Or, to be more precise - as I remember it, they were still vibrating, but I am quite sure that these vibrating (or energetic hands) were floating. 

 I didn't try to force anything else into happening and then the hypnagogic imagery came back and I saw a desk - possibly my own but with different items on it (I think) - from the perspective of the person sitting at it. I have a vague memory that it had interesting things on it - possibly a crystal ball which I do have but not on my desk. I also had a sense of a room beyond that but it seemed dark.

Unlike my usual clear and bright hypnagogic imagery this visual was muted and dim but there was detail and it seemed fairly real. Also, I noticed that it was 'to scale' whereas most of my hypnagogic images seem quite small - for reasons I don't really understand. 

Seeing the desk seemed to signal the end of the experience - possibly because, as I recall, my hands were no longer vibrating - so I turned over and jotted down what happened in my dream journal.  And was too excited to go back to sleep for some time!

Spring is less of a revelation this year than it has been in others. The mild winter was perhaps too kind to Pennsylvania. There was no snow to speak of. No long stretches of low temperatures.

I have always been a fan of seasons. To me, each has its own energy and winter has the energy of air. It is a time for realism and clear thought. At some point over the course of the season, I stop and take stock of things and I didn't do that this year. I'm not sure why but I suspect that in the absense of hard wind and frozen ground, I may have missed my trigger but maybe that's okay.

If winter holds the energy of introspection, spring hold that of action. And there is a fast paced decisiveness to action - a rapidly unfolding plan which makes us think upon our feet and rise above our situation. I am blogging very briefly this week, taking advantage of that amazing energy!

“The principal point of their doctrine is that the soul does not die and that after death it passes from one body into another..... the main object of all education is, in their opinion, to imbue their scholars with a firm belief in the indestructibility of the human soul, which, according to their belief, merely passes at death from one tenement to another; for by such doctrine alone, they say, which robs death of all its terrors, can the highest form of human courage be developed.”