The Illusion of Method (My AP "Guide")
Hey guys! I'm so sorry that I've been behind on finishing up my masterlist but I've been really busy. I was having a conversation with my friend @junfairykyu and I remembered this post and she said it really helped her and urged me to share it with you guys too! This post is to help people AP (astral project) but the same concepts apply for the void. I hope this helps everyone.
In this post I want to share an epiphany I had a few months ago regarding astral projection which changed my approach to it completely. Once I understood what I am about to explain, the amount of OBEs I had completely skyrocketed, to the point I can astral project on demand. I later found I could apply the same rule to lucid dreaming, and I started to enjoy countless conscious dreams. So this is the story of how I got to the "core aspect" of astral projection, the key to induce it effortlessly on demand. I will start by explaining the conditions whereby I came to this "truth" or "top method", and then I will develop it a bit more to ensure that its understandable. I I hope you guys enjoy the post and benefit from it. That being said, let's start!
I have been having OBEs for a few years now. A few years in which I tried many astral projection techniques, and while some of them seemed to work better than others, I always had one single desire that obsessed me to the core: I wanted to understand what was the root technique, i.e. that background cause, shared by all fruitful OBE strategies, that actually separated consciousness from the body. You know, the skeleton of all techniques. It was the deepest of my fixations, and I was compelled to find out the answer to that, I knew there was a core method, it was undeniable: if many different techniques lead to the same results, then there was for sure some hidden and shared dynamic that, if emulated over and over again, it would always produce Out of body experiences.
But it was really hard at first to understand what this hidden method was, because I was conditioned by my own results. What do I mean by this? Well, if only one technique worked for me, then it would be easy to assume "oh, that's the true and only method". But I had successful results with a wide variety of techniques, so different from each other: from tactile visualization, up to affirmations and pure desire, the ear ringing technique (using the ear buzzing sound to project) , the WBTB and many others. The challenge was in finding the single thing that united such different techniques. It seemed almost impossible!
You see, at first I thought imagination was a core aspect, but I rapidly discarded that, because many techniques dispensed with imagination. So then, imagination wasn't necessary. I kept discarding things just like that, trying to reach the substratum. I eventually thought it was pure intention, pure desire. This made sense to some extent, because all techniques required you to think actively about projection, whether you do this by imagining you project, or state it via affirmations, or whatever. It seemed like I succeeded with stripping away everything unnecessary. But then I had an spontaneous projection, which messed it all up. Not that it was the first spontaneous OBE in my life. In fact, I had a few of those during my career as an astral traveller. I was just ignoring them. Pretending that they were not there. Right when i thought astral projection had to do with a burning desire or intention, I realized that some OBEs dispensed with intention completely.
I was so obsessed with finding the key to astral projection in those OBEs I induced myself, that I was screening out those that happened involuntarily. I don't know why, but I guess it made more sense to find the how-to in the techniques rather than in...and then my mind went silent. I reached something important: a point of no-return. I realized something embarrassing: I had the answer in front of my eyes, but I kept pretending there was a hidden solution. But via spontaneous projections, the message was clear: it is not that those "spontaneous" projections weren't induced by me. NONE of my projections were induced by me! Its almost as if my unconscious was trying to tell me, via spontaneous projections, something like; "hey! its me who does it, not you".
At that point I understood the following: there is no method. We can't induce out-of-body experiences, nor lucid awareness in a dream. We don't really know how it is that the projection of consciousness occurs, or how lucidity pops up. We just get to experience it under certain conditions. All we do, really, is asking for projections to occur, while meeting the most optimal conditions for them to occur. That's the reason why spontaneous projections are kinda unconfortable for many and we try to screen them out, because they are trying to tell us about the illusion of method, and we as humans need to cling on a certain "how to", believing we are responsible for phenomena to occur. But we aren't. It is "something else" (the unconscious, the higher self, or whatever you want to call it) who kicks you out of your body, or triggers lucidity while dreaming. And when it occurs naturally, we try to understand how we did it, instead of realizing it isn't something we did, and thus opening ourselves to that same gift.
When I understood that, I began to do the following (the "no-method" method), and it ALWAYS works: I just lie down in the morning (to ensure that I don't fall asleep), close my eyes and simply ask this "unconscious" or whatever it is, to induce an OBE for me. And then I evoke this feeling of TRUST. I trust him, I trust that it will do the rest for me, because I understand that every time my consciousness escapes my body, it is this kind of higher consciousness or being who does it, not me. And this feeling of trust is the way to get rid of responsibility; in giving away this need for control and responsibility for the experience to occur, you also get rid of anxiety, fear and other emotions that boycott the outcome. So then, i just allow myself to drift with that feeling of peace, KNOWING that it will happen and I don't have to worry about it. Every time I do this, I get an amazing out of body experience. I just ask "the universe" to induce an OBE, and allow it to do its job. This same "method" (now you see why I refer to it as the illusion of method: you really don't do a thing) also applies to lucid dreaming: I just allow my higher self or unconscious mind or whatever to trigger lucid awareness for me, and go to sleep happily, knowing that it will happen.
To sum up, the answer is not in the techniques. All techniques are rituals we create to convince ourselves that we are the architects of the out of body experience, but we aren't. By acknowledging the one who DOES induce these kind of experiences, we get ourselves out of its way, we allow it to do its job and our emotions and feeling of responsibility no longer boycott the results. It is quite weird, even ironic to some extent, but it is also a relief in some way. You realize that you were never doing it wrong, because you can't do it. None of us have the supernatural power to separate consciousnesses from their bodies, its absurd. That being said, allow yourself to experience the OBE state, trusting your inner mind, knowing it will do this for you.
Exempt yourself from this responsibility and enjoy!
UPDATE: If you enjoyed the approach given in this post or found it useful, I am excited to announce that I just released an AP book on Amazon called "The Illusion of Method", which is an in-depth expansion of this guide: https://www.reddit.com/r/AstralProjection/comments/pc3ipt/my_ap_book_the_illusion_of_method_is_available_on/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
