After I conquered my fears about the OBE, I made good progress. My third and fourth OBE were self-induced, not sporadic. They were also short and uneventful.

Up to then, I thought there were only two ways to leave your body: Through lucid dreams like my first two, or through practice like my third and fourth. It wasn't long before I discovered there were other ways.

01/01/80 - OBE #5
...I was dreaming that I was camping along a riverside with a group of people. We thought we were safe, but suddenly two vampires--one male, one female--attacked our camp, and the dream turned into a nightmare.

I fought the female vampire for a long time and I finally killed her. I was exhausted.

Much to my horror, the other vampire came running and attacked me. We fought long and hard, but I was weak from my fight with the female vampire. He finally overpowered me and started sucking the blood out of me. I became weaker and realized I couldn't fight anymore. I was dying in my dream! I actually believed I was dying.

Then I woke up startled, and opened my eyes. I immediately saw a hand grasping for my throat! I was fully conscious, inside my body, and it seemed as if someone was trying to kill me!

I reenacted the dream-battle in my head for a few seconds, thought I was dying again, and I was ejected out of my body like bread out of a toaster!

I sat up and turned to look who was attacking my poor body. The hand that was reaching for my throat was my own! It was loosely draped over the pillow! I sighed a breath of relief. I wasn't in danger after all. I had literally been scared to death!

I was glued to my body, but this time instead of trying to free myself I tried to control my astral self with my mind. I thought hard, "I want to go to [my brother's house]" but nothing happened. Instead, I heard my physical voice (kind of muffled) saying it in the background! I looked at my astral hands. They were gently waving back and forth....I was drawn closer to the physical body and I dropped inside and immediately opened my eyes (no blackout). I saw my hand draped over the pillow, as if it was reaching for my throat, exactly as I saw it during the OBE.

We've all heard the term, "scared to death," right? Well, this OBE sheds new light on the term. Perhaps it shows there is no such thing as being "scared to death" because the worst that can happen is that you're scared out of your body. Perhaps it means we can only die when we are ready to die. I like to think that our deaths are planned by our higher self, and there are no accidents.

In later OBEs, I discovered yet another way to leave my body. This one took me by surprise too:

05/23/80 Fri - OBE #16
I went to my math class. When class started at 12:15pm, something strange happened to me. I was sitting, and suddenly I became completely disoriented, and couldn't feel my body. It seemed as if I fell out of my body, and drifted to my left (west)! Then I came back and was disoriented and very dizzy. My dizziness wore off in seconds.

Since that OBE, I've had similar experiences in which I fell out of my body. Once I tripped and fell out while I was walking down the street! When I came back to my body, it was fine and it hadn't missed a step.

The strange thing about this type of OBE is that it happens without warning, from full consciousness. I was in excellent health each time and not on any medications. I wasn't tired during the experiences, and my body wasn't very relaxed, at least not to the extent that I normally induce the vibrations. Perhaps we're not as body-bound as we think we are!

Some researchers have gone as far as to suggest that we aren't even "in" a body at all. Perhaps our physical body is just a focus for our consciousness, and when we learn how to change our focus we can leave the body at will.

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Exercise 9 - Yoyo Visualization

This exercises uses imagination to create an astral swaying motion. Once created, you can latch onto the swaying and it will pull you away from your body. I've used this method to leave my body several times.

The exercise is this: lay down, relax completely and put yourself into a receptive mood. Next, imagine that there is a yoyo in front of you at eye level. Imagine the yoyo string is attached to the area between your eyes. The yoyo is weightless, so it doesn't fall with gravity. A real yoyo needs a pushing and pulling action from your hand, but this imaginary yoyo needs pushing and pulling from your third eye. With your imagination, push the yoyo down to the end of its string then pull it back to your third eye. As you work with the yoyo, try to work your way into a single- minded, focused state of mind.

With your mind, push and pull the yoyo about fifty times. Try to do this until your visualization is so real that you can actually see the yoyo in front of you. Don't try to count the number of pushes you give, because that may unfocus your mind and bring you out of the single-minded focus.

You may think it sounds silly, but it's one of the most successful techniques I've ever developed. If you can't visualize it clearly today, keep working on it every day until you can. When you are trying to leave your body there are very important key points to keep in mind, and one of them is realism. If you can visualize the yoyo with absolute realism, out-of-body experiences are a short step away.

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