Astral Plane & Astral Travel

Astral Travel and the Astral Plane
Laura Hamilton
Source : http://www.psychicsuniverse.com

Imagine traveling the globe or to other worlds and dimensions without leaving the comfort of your chair. Believe it or not this can be done through astral travel. Also known as astral projection, this is essentially an out of body experience or OBE. Your consciousness moves outside of your body and can freely travel around practically anywhere.

Astral travel can be a wonderful and enlightening experience. It will provide you with an entirely new perspective!


The Astral Plane

When people talk about astral travel or astral projection, questions often come up about visiting friends and spying on lovers to see if they are cheating. While astral travel does include earth-based travel, it is quite different. You can still see people and even spy on them, but you will find once you are out of body, your priorities will change. Spying probably won’t seem that interesting anymore.

So what is the astral plane like? Well, it’s not just one plane but comprised of many planes or layers. There are numerous dimensions on the astral with various frequencies and energies. There are places where angels and spirits dwell as well as settings with more nefarious types of beings. When starting out with astral travel, many people stay on the earthly or prime material plane. This is where you can float above your house, check out the neighborhood and even play tricks on the family pet.

As you become more adept with astral projection, you might begin to explore different dimensions. The astral plane can be very busy and interesting. You will find that the laws of physics do not apply here as they do on earth. You will float, fly and be whisked about instantaneously.

Not only is there a difference in physical laws, but spiritual ones as well. Karmic laws and the Law of Attraction work instantly. While on the earth plane it takes a while for thoughts to physically manifest, on the astral things happen immediately. So it is extremely important to be mindful of your thoughts, actions and attitudes while on the astral. Negative thoughts and deeds will come back at you like a boomerang to the head, while good and loving actions will be rewarded quickly.

The astral planes also contain many souls who are passing by on their way to the heavenly realms. Many unfortunate beings even get stuck here along the way. Some may be lost or confused, while others get caught up in the pleasures they find while hanging out on the astral.


Learning Astral Projection

Learning to have an out of body experience takes some practice, but we all have the ability to do it. Some find it very easy to do, while others find it challenging. The keys are to keep practicing, be confident and psychically protect yourself.

There are a variety of techniques available to assist you with astral travel. Some involve meditation and relaxation while others use binaural beats to get your brain attuned to frequencies to help you leave your body.

There are four simple steps you can follow when practicing astral travel.

1. The first is relaxation.
Ensure that you have a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed. Make sure you are in a positive and proper frame of mind. Psychically protect yourself. Then relax almost to the point of falling asleep.

2. Get to the hypnagogic state.
This is where your body is asleep but your mind is awake, much like lucid dreaming. You may feel sleep paralysis, where your body can’t move. Your five senses will dull and you may hear buzzing or humming noises. This means you are close.

3. Separate from your body.
This is where your consciousness exits from your physical body. You can put your focus above you or across the room. You may also try pulling yourself up and out of your body by grabbing an imaginary rope. Eventually you will be above or beside your body seeing yourself sleeping.

4. Explore.
Stabilize your awareness and explore the world around you. You can’t get lost and you will always come back to your body.


Astral travel can be a wonderful and enlightening experience. It will provide you with an entirely new perspective!

Mindfulness

7 Obstacles to Mindfulness and How to Overcome Them

By Henri Junttila

“Peace of mind is not the absence of conflict from life, but the ability to cope with it.” ~Unknown

Mindfulness has allowed me to become more aware of my thoughts and reach a sense of inner peace.

As my awareness has increased, so has the peace and joy in my life. The more familiar I have become with the inner workings of my mind, the better I have started to feel.

I came onto the path of mindfulness, meditation, and spirituality when I was 16 years old. I saw the TV-series Ed where the main character started experimenting with lucid dreaming.

That got me interested, and that is where my journey started. It hasn’t been an easy journey by any means, but I’m nearing a decade on this path, and I don’t regret it for a moment.

I’ve been through a lot of challenges, such as going through brief spurts of depression. I’ve felt like I wasn’t good enough, and that life wouldn’t work out the way I wanted it to.

In every one of these cases I let my thoughts run wild. I started focusing on the negative instead of on the positive, and I think many people have the same tendency.

So there have been both ups and downs, but in the end they have all been there for a reason. And with each “bad period,” I’ve learned more and more about myself.

I’ve learned more about what works and what doesn’t, and they have all been blessings in disguise.

I have wanted to give up many times, but I’m glad that I kept going.

Truly living in the present moment isn’t easy, but it is highly rewarding. The best way to move forward on your own path to “here and now” is to understand the potential obstacles and plan in advance how you’ll deal with them.

1. Mindfulness takes ongoing effort.

Mindfulness takes a lot of work, but the good news is that the longer you practice, the easier it gets, and the more joyful your life becomes.

At first, your thoughts will be in chaos, and everything will seem out of control. Your situation will feel helpless, but the more you focus on being fully where you are, the easier it will be to find peace of mind in the moment.

Mindfulness is best practiced throughout your day. It’s not just for when you sit down and meditate. Focus on being mindful of your thoughts when you’re doing everyday tasks and it will be easier to remain mindful when things get tough.

2. There will always be distractions.

When you’re on your journey to becoming more mindful, it seems as if the universe starts throwing stuff at you just to give you challenges.

The distractions could be problems in your life, drama in your relationships, or old negative beliefs popping up from your past.

These are great opportunities to practice present moment awareness. They will help you become stronger, better, and more in tune with yourself. The problems and challenges we face are teachers in disguise.

They are there to help you grow and to realize who you truly are.

3. Progress doesn’t always come quickly.

Progress may seem excruciatingly slow. There will be times when you attach to things and situations that you want, which will make it difficult to be fully in the present moment. It’s impossible to be mindful when you’re dwelling on the past or obsessing about the future.

We all do those things sometimes. I’ve experienced it countless times in my own life. The more I want something, the more I fixate on not having it and wanting to get it.

Once I release the attachment and focus on being grateful for what I have in the moment, my life seems to shift, and progress seems to happen naturally.

4. You may want to give up.

Like with any worthwhile journey, you will feel like giving up and throwing in the towel multiple times.

But it is during the times when you feel most frustrated that you are often on the verge of a breakthrough.

Our lives are very similar to the seasons. We go through cold, dark winters, and joyful, expanding summers. It all comes and goes. It’s the ebb and flow of life.

When you realize that the challenging times are there to help you grow, you will automatically feel more peaceful and relaxed.

5. Your goals may challenge your mindfulness.

Having goals is fantastic, essential even, but when you become overly attached to them, something bad happens, just like we talked about above.

You know that you’re too attached to something when you start feeling frustrated, angry, and negative.

Attachment muddles our clarity. You’re likely pursuing your goals because you believe they will make you happy. Remember that when you start letting your goals pull you into a stressful state of mind. If you focus on the good things around you, you’ll feel that happiness that you think you need to chase.

This will make you much happier in the long term, and, of course, right now.

6. You might forget that the journey is the destination.

Most people miss the fact that the reward is in the journey. Have you ever noticed that when you reach a goal, it’s not as exciting as you thought it would be?

Sure, it feels great to hit a milestone, but if you do not replace that goal with another one, you will soon find yourself feeling unfulfilled.

That’s because we are goal-seeking mechanisms. Humans need goals so they can have a sense of purpose and fulfillment.

It is in the journey that we learn, grow, and become better. When you’re practicing mindfulness, remember that there is nowhere to arrive at. If you focus on what is going on right now, the rest take care of itself.

7. Sometimes you’ll want to be anywhere but in the now.

Even the most enlightened masters on earth have to deal with difficult situations and chaotic thoughts. The difference is they have learned to accept the moment for what it is.

When you do this, you become the guardian of your inner space, which is the only way to feel good inside and find peace of mind, right now.

Photo by Sigi K

Mindfulness of Feeling, or Recognizing the Feeling Tone of Experience

by Philip L. Jones
In his book, Touching Peace, Thich Nhat Hanh has said "Peace is all around us - in the world and in nature - and within us - in our bodies and our spirits. Once we learn to touch this peace, we will be healed and transformed."

What keeps us from seeing that peace is all around us? It is our tendency to get caught in our experiences. We get caught in our experiences because we don't see their true nature. We see our experiences as being permanent, satisfactory and as having a solidity to them. Through the practice of insight meditation we begin to investigate our experience so that we can see for ourselves what is true about our experiences and how we get caught in them.

In the first section of instructions we learned how to ground ourselves, how to settle ourselves and develop concentration using the sensations of breathing. In the second section we explored opening to the body, to physical sensations and we discovered a number of insights about how we relate to them. We also learned experientially how insight practice is different from concentration practice. As we move to different aspects of our experience, we begin to focus on more and more subtle experiences. Sometimes they may be easy for us to see, at other times quite difficult. It mostly depends upon how much concentration and mindfulness we have been able to develop at any particular moment. During this section we will explore mindfulness of feeling and then look at working with distractions.

MINDFULNESS OF FEELING

In the tradition of Insight Meditation, feeling refers to the tone of an experience, whether it is pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. Although in our society we often use the words "feeling" and "emotion" interchangeably, in insight meditation they are distinct. Feelings are part of our automatic response to sensory input through any of the five sense doors or through thoughts. Emotions are much more complex and involve moods, such as anger, desire or joy, as well as physical sensations and thoughts, often stories we tell ourselves. Feeling is actually part of the foundation upon which emotion is built, so developing some ability to be aware of feeling allows us to be less reactive to emotions as well.

It is important to be aware of feeling because this is what keeps us hooked into our conditioning. We are conditioned to react to pleasant sensations with sense desire and attachment. We want more of the pleasant feeling and believe that more will make us happy. We are conditioned to react to unpleasant sensations with anger, fear and aversion. We want to get away from the unpleasant and believe that doing so will make us happy. A neutral feeling is often un-noticed. However, we may experience aversion, in the form of boredom, to neutral feeling. This may then give rise to other mind-states that undermine our meditation, such as sleepiness, searching for something more exciting, or getting caught in a conversation in our mind. The constant effort to get the pleasant and to avoid unpleasant and neutral keeps us from finding that peacefulness comes from simply being what is present in our lives in this moment, whether things are pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. Mindfulness of feeling begins the process of de-conditioning these patterns of reactivity.

The key way of working with feeling is through mindfulness. Simply being aware, in a non-judgmental way, of whatever comes into awareness. Simply being aware of whether it has a pleasant, unpleasant or neutral feeling tone. As we practice mindfulness of feeling, we begin to see for ourselves how our reactions to pleasant, unpleasant and neutral experiences dominate our lives. The ability to recognize the feeling of an experience allows us to break our identification with it, to become unstuck from the experience. We can begin to see it as just an experience that is happening rather than "my experience" or "me." This awareness of how we react creates the possibility of responding to feeling with more flexibility and appropriateness for each situation rather than simply reacting based on our past conditioning.

Instructions for Mindfulness of Feeling

• Begin your meditation as previously instructed using the breath as the primary object of meditation.
• If a sensation or experience in the body is strong enough to pull your attention away from the breath, allow your awareness to rest in that sensation.
• Notice whether the experience is pleasant, unpleasant or neutral.
• As different experiences become predominant in your awareness, continue to notice the feeling quality of each experience, and your reaction to it such as holding on, pushing away or becoming bored.
• As you meditate with the feeling quality of experience, notice whether it is something that lasts, or whether it is something that comes into awareness, is present for a while and then dissipates.
• If you become lost in thought or sensations, when you notice it look back at the thought or sensation to see whether it was pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. This will help to reveal how the mind gets caught in reacting to the feeling-tone of an object of experience. Then, gently return your attention to the breath and continue with the instructions above.
• If you ever feel confused about what you are experiencing or what you should do, simply return your attention to the breath.
• Continue with the practice of mindfulness of feeling until your meditation period is over.
• After your period of meditation, you may find it useful to reflect on what you have noticed about your experience. Here are some questions to explore as you reflect on your experience. Does every moment of your experience have a feeling-tone, either pleasant, unpleasant or neutral? Is there actually a tendency to hold onto the pleasant, to push away the unpleasant and to be bored by the neutral? If you bring mindfulness to a pleasant experience does it last or does it come into awareness and then leave? How about unpleasant experiences and neutral ones?
• During the day, spend some time noticing the feeling tone of your experiences and how you react to them.

WORKING WITH DISTRACTIONS AND DIFFICULTIES

Insight meditation is a practice of opening up to your experience, a practice of opening your heart and seeing more clearly what is true in your life. It begins with being open to and compassionate towards yourself. As you develop some concentration, you may begin to notice thoughts or feelings or sensations that pull your attention away from your object of meditation. You may perceive these experiences as difficult or distracting. However, the rule of thumb in insight meditation is that nothing is a distraction. Instead, everything is a potential object of meditation.

Try to meet these "distractions" and "difficulties" with kindness, without judging them as good or bad. You may find yourself wanting to avoid certain thoughts, feelings or sensations, or you may find yourself wanting to hang onto them. Simply be aware of the desire to avoid or to cling, meeting those judgments with kindness as well. Being mindful of the feeling tone of an experience can be helpful in getting disentangled from it and seeing it more clearly.

Working with Physical Sensation and Feeling in Daily Life

What we have been practicing is one of the tools in this practice. So far we have worked on three tools: mindfulness of the sensations of breathing, mindfulness of physical sensations and now mindfulness of feeling. When you practice on your own, you can use these tools in two different ways. First, you can focus your attention on one aspect of your experience to develop a more comprehensive understanding of it. Second, you can use whatever tool is appropriate as different experiences arise into awareness.

In your daily life attempt to use both approaches. Take a day to just be aware of the feeling tone of your experiences and how you react to them. Then on another day simply try to bring mindfulness to your experience when physical sensation becomes predominate or when you notice the feeling tone of an experience.

I am

"When the mind settles on the mountain, it becomes the mountain" ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Determined. Focused.
As each distraction comes up,
like a leaf, in the stream
it is carried away by the ever cleansing water.

The water is my blood and
my body is the river.
I feel the movement within me.
I don't want to run or paddle up stream.

The urge to resist the current is strong.
Stronger is my desire, finally, to let go.
Following the river where it naturally flows, I find myself
at home within me.

I Am as sure as a mountain of my uncharted days.
All this certainly stirs within me, and I become what I already am.
Steady. Free.

~ Melissa Smith

Preservation

Photographs

For photographs, you can put them either in bioriented polypropylene (BOPP) sleeves, polyester (Mylar) sleeves, or Glassine photo sleeves which are pH-negative and archival and made of nonplasticized paper.  All of these should be fine, for they do not react with photographs.  When using sleeves, you will need the backings to support the photographs.  The backings have to be acid-free board or thick paper.  You can find the backings at the same place where you find the photo sleeves.  You can also use the backings or boards for scrapbooking, since the materials for scrapbooking is usually acid-free.

You can also put your photographs in the photo storage boxes.  Just make sure that they are lignin-free and acid-free.


Pencil : Sketches & drawings

For pencil sketches and drawings, you will need to spray fixative onto the drawings.  Don't buy anything that's cheap.  It is critical to use non-yellowing, good quality fixative.  Since they are pencil works, choose matt finish clear fixative.  I am not saying that you cannot use glossy finish.  Basically, pencil drawings are meant to be non-glossy and non reflective.  We don't want to give the pencil drawing a different charateristic. However, if you like them to be shiny, by all mean, use glossy finish.

Buy PH-neutralizing spray, make-acid-free spray, or de-acidify spray.  I don't remember the names of the makers.  However, you can find it in retail store now.  Spray de-acidify spray on the BACK of the drawings, NOT the front.  This will make acidic paper acid-free.

After everything is dry (they dry in no time), you can put them in the photo sleeves i described in the paragraph above.  After these procedures, your drawings should last generations without a slight change

source : online

Love

“Our love must not be a thing of words and fine talk.
It must be a thing of action and sincerity (1 John 3:18).”

 Bible quotes