Once you have a lucid dream, your dreams stop being pointless. Once you astral project, you realize you are MORE than this body without a shred of doubt. Below I'm going to describe my process that TRICKS you into have an out of body experience. Why do you have to trick yourself - for some it won't be necessary, but for most, the mind is not only a tool, but a barrier to expanding perception.
I've used this technique to project etherically, which means into the plane that mirrors our physical reality (cohesion), and you can use it to project astrally, which goes into planes of existence more rarified than the one that mirrors our own (the etheric plane).
The first tip I'm going to give you is, perform reality checks. What is a reality check? It's basically where you question your sense of reality every determined amount of time. Once an hour is perfect, and now with the invention of cellphones, it's even easier to do. Simply set your alarm to go off in one hour. When it goes off, look at your hands (something you don't often see in dreams) and ask yourself, 'Am I dreaming?'
Do this enough, and it will begin to filter down into your dreaming states. Kinda like watching a scary movie before going to bed and dreaming of parts of the movie, or thinking of someone/something you don't normally think of, then seeing them in your dream that night.
With reality checks, you'll soon be questioning yourself in your dreams. This will build AWARENESS. Another way to build awareness of your dreaming state, with reality checks, is to look at your hands, look at something in your immediate vicinity, and then look back at your hands, then look back at that object again. In dreams, at first, the item will either not be there, or it will morph into something else. This will cue your rational side, which is what happens when you build your awareness and enter into the dreaming state.
Second tip is to start meditating. Man I felt like I heard a collective groan from everyone reading this. I'll show you a different meditation than what you're probably thinking of, but before I do, you need to know how meditation works.
Meditation exercises your ATTENTION, which can be considered like a laser beam. Whatever you focus your attention on, INTENT follows. Intent is governed by our subconscious and is a force that controls awareness, perception, and everything in the world. Exercising your attention, builds AWARENESS which can be likened to turning the light switch on which bathes everything in light. Attention is focused awareness.
The meditation I recommend is just sitting down, whereever - there's no special poses, mantras etc. Just sit down, and stare at the darkness in front of your eyes. You can use this while taking a dump, walking on a treadmill etc. Just stare at the blackness. If you start thinking of something else, non-judgmentally, just bring your attention back to the darkness as though it were a curtain. When you can look at the darkness without your mind wondering, something miraculous will start to occur. Your awareness will GROW.
At first, this is just an exercise in attention. Pretty boring actually. It's only when your attention starts to grow into awareness do you become aware of other things. First you'll notice you're becoming very relaxed. So relaxed in fact that it starts to feel like you're entering a mental hot tub. The reason why this feeling comes about is because when you exercise your awareness, you're not thinking of the past or the future (which is mostly consisting of worry or other negative emotions). You're in essence turning OFF the mind. Quieting the incessant monkey-mind that keeps going and going, which in turns exhausts you emotionally and mentally becomes its own reward.
Another thing that starts to happen is your awareness of your self EXPANDS. It's hard to describe it, because our culture doesn't emphasize these experiences, so we don't have a vocabulary that everyone can agree on - but essentially, you start to FEEL beyond your body. You might feel LARGER like you're filling up the room you're currently in. You might notice details around the room you're not accustomed to feeling/noticing. This feeling will also allow you to pick up on inorganic beings (ghosts, spirits, angels, demons etc.) if you practice it enough.
So if you can start doing those two exercises, reality checks and meditation - soon you'll notice or remark to yourself, "what the fuck is THIS?" Most people are asleep to the reality we are in because the monkey mind makes them focus on trivial things instead of the moment which can be called THE NOW - which is essentially, eternity wrapping itself around us. With this realization, your mind's defensiveness and belief in reality starts to become moldable or fluid. This will help with having lucid dreams and in turn out of body experiences (OBE) which combines the terms etheric and astral projection into an overall term.
Now this technique or trick I'm going to describe, can induce a lucid dream and/or an OBE. The first thing you need to do is take a nap during the day, usually around 3-5/6pm. This will help you recharge your emotional energy that gets depleted by all the concentration (attention) that is put on the past and future. Emotional energy will help you bolster your attention abilities, it's the fuel so to speak.
After you wake up from your nap, try not to eat a huge meal for dinner, or watch anything emotionally charged. Take it easy and conserve energy, if that means stop watching the news, or hanging around people with drama, then try to curtail that before going back to sleep. This also means, no caffeine, or working out etc.
The next step is going to sleep around 9-10pm. If you wait to long, you'll drain your emotional reserves and your attention will be stunted to a degree. Now before you go to sleep, I want you to pick out 3 items around the room and go feel the TEXTURE of those items. Next, lay down and VISUALIZE (intentional imagination) a second layer of skin surrounding your body an inch away from your skin. Breathe into this body, surrounding white light. Fill up this body from toes to your head. Try to FEEL this second skin if you can, if not, no worry - it'll get easier with time.
Next I want you to visualize yourself in full control of this second body, and let it either float up out of your body towards the ceiling, or roll over out of your body. The more awareness you build, then you won't even need the rest of this technique, you'll simply PROJECT out of your body. But for most, visualize yourself in that body, going around to the three objects you chose previously to going to bed. Go over to these objects and try to recreate the tactile sensations that happened when you touched them before you layed down. Recreating this sensation will help PULL your awareness out of your body and into your second subtle body.
It's ok if you find yourself splitting your attention between being in your body and your visualized self out of it feeling these items. With practice, the split will lessen until it becomes stationary in this OTHER body. After you go around the room and touch these items - which takes about 5--10 minutes, in your etheric body, go back to your physical body and lay back into it. Next just fall asleep.
Usually what happens is you've already created this body, gave it energy via awareness that you pulled into it feeling the items around your room - what should happen is you'll just POP OUT! If you don't have enough awareness because it's not built up, or you decided to emotionally drain yourself to a small degree, then you'll probably have a lucid dream and then realize you're dreaming.
If you become lucid that you're dreaming you can TRANSFORM the lucid dream by intending/desiring to be next to your body. That will usually pull you into your current room where your body is laying. Technically this is etheric projection. If you get to close to your body or panic, you'll snap back into your body. The trick is to stay away from it enough where you don't snap back in.
If you found yourself just popping out after falling asleep, then you can explore your surroundings. I used to go throughout my house, watch what my family was doing. I was able when I was younger and lived with them, see what shows they're watching, and going back into my physical body, come out of my room and see them watching the exact same show/movie I saw them watching out of body.
The REAL test is putting a shuffled deck of cards in a specific spot and trying to see what card it is out body and then going back into your body and see if it's the same exact card. I used to do this all the time.
If you have any questions, let me know down below in the comments. I know this sounds like a lot of work (which it is), but becoming aware and waking up to this reality can be the most rewarding experience you can ever have. It literally opens up your Life...
I have had OBEs and lucid dreams, but I haven't had to do any technique for it. However, for me it is something that happens randomly and I don't control when it happens. I appreciate the advice on how to trigger/control this.
It all begins with sleep paralysis or night terrors for me. Sometimes during my sleep I feel intense pressure in my body, as if I was traveling at the speed of light across the some vast infinite distance. The more I let it happen, the more intense it becomes up until the point where I feel I am going to die, but I never do.
Then it stops, and I find myself laying in my room in the position I fell asleep in and I begin to float off my bed. However, I cannot control the floating, it is extremely difficult for me to control any part of me, I feel like I'm just floating through walls, floors, and ceilings.
Another aspect of this is the fear that settles in. Oftentimes I can feel, hear, and/or see other entities in the room. Sometimes they touch me (not inappropriately) like touching my hands or getting really close to me or getting on top of me. I have still not managed to control this fear. One of the scariest things for me is I don't really know what I'm going to see or experience during one of these episodes, sometimes there is nothing and I just float around but other times I sense strange entities in the room with me.
During these episodes I know that I am having an episode. I also know how to wake myself up, but it is difficult and uncomfortable to do it, though if the situation is scary enough I will force it. If I do experience an episode and wake myself up, I cannot fall back to sleep immediately or I will very likely go right back into it. Generally I have to keep myself awake for at least 15 minutes or so.
These sleep paralysis/night terrors have led me to lucid dreaming in a few occasions. Since I am aware I am "sleeping" and I am aware I am having an episode. Sometimes I can WILL things to change in front of me, though usually when I begin to change things at will the dream ends much faster, it seems like my lucid dreams have a short lifespan so to speak. Kind of as if I had mana and it was running out and when the mana runs out I wake up and try to get back into the lucid dream but can't.
These have been my experiences with OBEs and lucid dreaming. I find it difficult to control but I have experienced them since I was a child. I don't know what those other "entities" are, but some of them are very creepy. I also understand why people feel as though they have been abducted, if it is my own mind doing it, it feels extremely real and as if those creatures are not a part of my mind at all but completely separate.
ahh yes, sleep paralysis, I used to have that as a kid more than I do now, but I understand the level of terror. The trick is understanding that it's a natural part of the process that your body goes through so you don't react to things in your dreams. Consider it a short ride before you get to experience wonderment. In fact, you're lucky - most people struggle to get ANY reaction or experience to OBE's - you however are on it's doorstep.
As far as not being able to control your movement - you need to learn to intend things, but you can only do that if you have enough POWER to do so. This means watching your emotional reactions, conserving your attention. Doing so not only helps you store enough power to intend, but it also sends a message to your subconscious that you want to CONTROL your movement and experiences. Soon or later your sub has to give in and acquiesce.
As far as spirits go, I get that 100%. A few things you can do is smudge the room with sage or frankincense and/or myrrh - copal and Palo Santo also work great. Smudging is exercising your intent, in addition to setting the stage for your mind to expect these experiences. Kinda like putting on your work boots or getting into your office - you're all business now. I also recommend wearing black tourmaline - very protective stone (and inexpensive).
Also visualizing white light and praying (also exercises your intent) also helps as well. Let me know if you need any pointers etc.
You are where most people WISH they were - you just need to store up more energy, define your boundaries and you'll be off exploring greater more fulfilling features of your life.