One Saturday afternoon, when I was taking one of the courses by Belsebuub, I took part in group practices with the aim of astral projection.
Experiencing the Power of Sound
Listening to Music
We started with music and listened to a few classical pieces. It was really beautiful music, and I sensed while I was learning to listen to these classical pieces of music in a more conscious way that I was able to perceive the melody, tone and sounds in a new more meaningful way.
Chanting Mantra
Following that, we then chanted the mantra O, related to the heart. I focused my attention on the sound and tried to feel it in my heart area.
My mind wandered off a few times but because I wanted to experience the effect of this sound and was very interested in seeing how these practices would unfold together, I was able to bring my focus back more easily to this beautiful sound that was permeating the room and also within me.
I really enjoyed the experience of this mantra and just wanting to be focused through it. The sound coupled with the focus on the sound helped me to feel my heart area and I could feel a stronger sense of my heart beating.
I felt very uplifted and inspired by doing these two practices, and I could definitely sense a great awareness of my heart beating and of having a clearer perception of the room and everything around me and also of my inner state within me from that experience.
I also had a heightened feeling towards wanting to experience spirituality and to having a closer spiritual connection with divinity, and I began to see that doing these practices were really spiritually uplifting.
Learning about my Heart
This next practice was actually going to be a focus on our heart and I realised that I didn’t know much about my heart or ever given it a second thought of how my heart was, so it was really helpful to listen to the instructor guide us through a general overview on how the heart works.
The way the instructor explained it and having had the practices we had done so far, it was very easy for me to visualise the process and it made me very keen to see if I could learn how my heart functions and feels for myself using conscious investigation.
I had a lot of enthusiasm at that point and a real desire to understand more about how my heart actually works.
I started with the beats of the heart and then I moved towards focusing on the beat of my heart as though I was seeing it from within my body.
I stayed with this focus for a while trying to also learn at the same time how visualisation works because sometimes I would focus with this mental way and I’d lose the visualisation and the focus on the heart beats, so it was a bit of learning to see how to perceive my heart consciously rather than just having a mental image of it, it really was a different way of seeing that had a depth and reality to it, not just a mental image.
Because I was so concentrated I began to feel the beginning sensations of sleep which I knew were part of my astral body separating from my physical body, and at those moment this ‘fear of the unknown’ within me would rise up in me when I thought that I may be getting closer to an astral split.
This fear of the unknown had definitely held me back in experiencing the astral split but I knew that it was something I could overcome because I had already been working towards understanding it with the self-discovery techniques I learnt from Belsebuub’s other courses.
Interestingly through this conscious visualisation of my heart, I also gained some understanding of how fear affected the workings of my heart as I saw how my heart responded each time that the fear arose and it helped me to have even more determination to overcome it.
It was only a short 20 min practice and yet it was a great experience not only learning more about my heart beating by trying to perceive it from within my body rather than just feeling it from the outside, but also to learn how conscious visualisation works.
I went home that day with a lot of enthusiasm and I was very moved by these practices and how they had helped me to have a greater care and insight towards my own heart.
Projecting with a Concentration on My Heart
I really wanted to make use of this enthusiasm, motivation and the experiences I had just gained and so I tried the concentration on my heart again the next day. I made sure I relaxed my body completely from head to toe. I then took my focus to my heart and concentrated on its beating as I just lay there in bed, just feeling it beat.
I then moved my focus to try to perceive it from within my body, using the physical sensations to help me to see my heart and how it may be working and what it looked like as my heart was beating.
Using my concentration and visualisation I imagined and felt the walls of my heart with my hand and explored its shape and texture. From there I took my focus to go inside my heart to see what it looked like inside the chambers.
I went down the arteries of the heart and inside to feel the powerful flow of the blood and its circulation through the veins. I kept going over and over these different aspects of the heart, each time to gain more understanding of how my heart works.
My concentration was fired by this natural interest and that helped me to keep my focus and explore naturally without any force on my mind to stay concentrated.
I dosed off into sleep a few times, but I kept coming back to the concentration and visualisation of my heart.
In one of the moments that I fell into sleep I found myself awake in a different and alert way and I was standing up, but when I tried to move I was back lying down in my physical body.
After a few attempts to go back into what I sensed was my astral body and coming back to my physical body, I realised that I was trying to move in the astral with my mind. I was trying to think myself to move and it occurred to me that was why I kept coming back into my physical body.
So by this going back and forth from my astral body to my physical body I realised that I had to stop thinking about moving and walking and somehow learn to use my astral body.
So I decided to just go with the body I ‘felt’ I was in. Using this feeling sense I returned to that feeling of my body standing up and then very naturally moved my arms and legs as I would normally do in the physical and I began to walk to my bedroom window.
I knew that I was in the astral, I could sense the environment was the astral intuitively and I decided to take a jump and see if I could fly, then I flew out of my bedroom window and down the street.
My experience didn’t last that long in the astral plane, the experience of flying was exciting and because of that excitement I woke up back in my body shortly afterwards, but I was so very happy to have had that experience in the astral and also having learned valuable insights over those few days of trying to explore astral projection through concentration and visualising, through the power of sound using mantras and listening to music that has special connection to the heart.
Thank you for sharing this. The heart is so interesting to me, especially since it can connect us with the divine. I’ve been doing the mantra O in the mornings because it feels like a moment spent with my divine mother. And I want to see if I can feel her guiding me.
It’s also interesting that you got an insight into how fear affects the heart. This feels true to me. I mean that negative emotions can have an effect on the heart. It makes me want to take better care of it. And take better care of myself.
I know how you feel Anne Linn, the heart is such a powerful place within us where it seems that so much can be experienced and explored and thanks to Belsebuub in an multi dimensional way too. I suppose we don’t really tend to be concerned about our health generally until something goes wrong and than its all too consuming and that can be all that we centre our lives upon. I used to suffer from panic attacks and I’ve never experienced such intense fear and pounding of my heart as I did then, and even though I knew it was because of fear, I didn’t see how it affected only that the fear would make my heart beat fast and hard. I think that takes a great toll on one’s heart to live in such intense fear, but with lesser fears but still noticable it also feels like to me like a small consistent wear on the heart nevertheless.
I really find it very interesting to learn how the ego states affect my health and self observation has been very helpful in seeing that, and looking how I respond to life through those techniques like retrospection and analysis of the ego and looking into dreams. Not saying all health matters relate to that, but just seeing ego states and being aware of what’s going on internally helps me to see the ripple effects in a more defined way.
It was very nice to read this detailed article Layla. I felt uplifted by reading about your gentle enthusiasm and interest and how that allowed you to learn about all these things and gain that wonderful astral projection experience.
I’ve also seen how if there is a natural interest and love for something, something I genuinely want to learn or investigate, it doesn’t take forcing the mind to keep its focus. Then there are also not so many expectations or disappointments in what did or didn’t happen, because you just want to learn and see what happens. The difference between this almost loving resolve and the forceful, unhappy approach that comes from lower states is striking. It makes me want to reflect on my approach to spiritual practices and bring more love to what I do.
I think that’s a good comment Laura to be open ‘to learn and see what happens’. I find I need to go back to that very simple and yet honest and down to earth approach of just being open to learn and then learn as things unfold. Not aiming for a result, a finish line, a perfection, an idea etc, but just want to sincerely learn. It so funny how I’ve found that I can be disappointed by an experience not turning out how I imagined it should have been or how I should have been better concentrated, more aware etc, and missing the incredible learning that was naturally in the unfolding of that experience, and then on top of that I also don’t see the learning of how the disappointment is showing me about an approach that is saturated in the ego, its almost like pride hijacked the experience and wonder where was I?
Wow, so many practices. You must have built up a lot of strength and concentration by carrying them all out back-to-back-to-back!
Having that natural curiosity in exploring the heart sounds beautiful. And even if it made for a brief experience, with all the energy that went into that experience, it sounds like a very memorable and special experience.
In your second last paragraph, you mentioned “… and listening to music that has a special connection to the heart.” Did you just mean that spiritual music in general has that connection – or was there a specific piece of music that you listened to, that you feel helped you connect better with the heart?
Hi Layla,
thank you for sharing these insights about the heart. I’m very curious as to what you saw about how fear effected it! It makes me think of how in ancient Chinese medicine the heart is seen as the ‘void’, the place that links us to our spirit, and as a clear, calm lake – or that this is how it should be, but that anything that sends ripples through it or clouds it is the beginning of trouble in the whole person and body. I loved looking at the anatomy of the heart, and learning how little electrical pulses travel through it making it contract, like a little sheet of lightening when seen from within the heart’s chamber. 😉
Through the practises I’ve been introduced to in Belsebuub’s courses and books, the heart has become such a rich source of mystical investigation and nourishment for me. Though before I knew about “following your heart” and had a sense of what that meant, the different mantras, visulizations and concentration techniques that stimulate the heart’s innate spiritual energy or help get insights into it, have become primary tools of mystical contact and self-reflection. At one point the ‘heart forest’ practise, where you explore a beautiful forest within your heart and meet a woman in there, became so vivid for me I realised I actually was communicating with my divine mother in this way. The sense of being able to turn to her and talk to her was quite life changing.
Reflecting on this made me remember how essential it is to develop our relationship and contact with our divine mother, and of course – through the heart is the way to do it, being her domain. So reading your experiences with the heart has helped to refresh my inspiration to stay as close to her as possible. Thank you!
Hi Ella, some lovely experiences and insights you’ve shared back 🙂
For me when I felt that the fear was having a negative effect on my heart’s health and it felt like I gained an insight that it was hurtful to my heart on a physical level and afterwards I felt like that I need to take greater care of my heart against these negative emotions.
I mentioned above in my reply to Anne Lin that I used to have panic attacks, which also caused my stomach to churn intensively. It was debilitating state to say the least but thankfully through learning about self knowledge through Belsebuub’s work I overcame panic attacks within about 6 months to a year from the time I started to practice the self knowledge techniques. Because of the huge panic attacks when I first heard about astral projection through heart concentration in astral courses I would try them very hesitantly because I had associated the strong heart sensations with panic attacks, even though they were different, and I’d pray to my divine mother to end the practice because of that fear. When I look back at that now I laugh to myself, especially since the heart concentration became the first way I actually learned to astral project with, and it was the one practice that I felt most strongly attuned to because it seemed the most natural way to experience leaving my body, despite those initial intense fears. Its feels so liberating to not have let those panic attacks to have taken over my life and taken over the potential to have an OBE.
I have also found that the best practices are the ones done with a gentleness and a genuine interest to explore. It brings me much joy when I reach a natural interest in the practice. There is a natural focus, and a calming of the physical body, and it somehow seems to be conducive to experiencing spiritual states. Thank you for sharing your experience with the heart concentration.
Thanks Aleksandr for sharing your comment, and how you’ve approached it – it had a lot of joy in it that I could feel in your words 🙂
What an intensive series of practices Layla, thank you for sharing! It is often difficult to muster this genuine sincerity and uninterrupted focus in our practices, but it sounds like you really had a great time exploring your heart and gained some great insights. I really like what you discovered (and felt) about how fear alters the way our heart works. It is one thing to know it theoretically, and quite another to actually experience it and feel the remorse for what we are doing to our heart.
I also liked your description of how you could intuitively understand the difference between imagining to move in the astral, and actual moving in that dimension. I am sure it helped you a lot in the future to not fall into the same trap and be able to move there naturally.
Yes it did Lucia, It helped me to get a feel for the astral plane which helped me to know I was in the astral in other experiences when I’d find myself there when I’d coming out of a dream or waking up lucid there, and I think that intuitive feeling is part of that knowing too.
Those practices weren’t intensive in terms of hard in any way, but more like it was like getting a motor starting and getting the momentum to gather. or to say more like how it felt, it was like tuning in, through sound and resonance and concentration.
Doing mantras in a group with others can be amazing I find. When I first found out about mantras I was doing them on my own for a long time and that was all I knew. I remember the first time doing mantra together with a group, in a practice room, it felt so amazing and I had a smile on my face. So I can see how that combined vibration and atmosphere can help a lot.
I liked how you described more of the whole process of practising. It’s not as simple as just laying down at night—try a technique—have a great astral experience. It’s not really like that and there’s a lot of effort, exploration and preparations involved most of the time.
I forgot about that variation where you feel the walls of the heart and all that. I’d like to to try that again.
I hear what you say (although I find it often difficult to ‘find’) that the true natural interest brings about the best concentration. Rather than lukewarmly trying to put my mind on to something, which for me just doesn’t have the staying power in the practice to break through the waves of the subconscious that come my way. Also training of our concentration seems very important to make it through.
When you mentioned training of our concentration Karim it reminded me of this experience I had earlier on when I was learning about astral practices and concentration.
I had this experience where I sat down to try a concentration on a candle and I ended up playing ping pong with the thoughts, and my mind was scattered in so many thoughts that I finished the practice with that ‘Hmmm’ feeling ‘that was not good’. So I thought I got to learn to concentrate my mind and I decided that I would try what Belsebuub talks about leaning to being concentrated on the things that you do during the day.
As it happened the next day my manager at work said that there wasn’t much work that day, but if I wanted to there was a really boring job of data entering information from questionnaires over and over again. Most people including myself would think a job like that is so mundane, but because I had decided I would build my concentration on what I was doing during the day I was actually excited at the offer. Anyway I sat there day after day that whole week trying to bring my mind back to what I was doing, as I typed words after words into these spreadsheets and I saw the same ping pong thought actions going on, but I kept coming back heaps of times throughout the day, just to try and be there in what I was doing instead of drifting off in the pulls of thoughts and daydreams. It didn’t seem like much was happening in terms of being more concentrated, as it was a like a big tug of war between me and the thoughts all that week, but I was seeing I was able to remember to come back to being focused more often and to remember to be aware more too.
At the end of that week, on that Friday evening, I sat down to do a concentration practice in a class environment in one of Belsebuub’s courses, with no aim in mind other than again to try to learn to be concentrated and I was shocked to see the difference in my ability to concentrate compared to that last week. As I began the concentration practice and directed my focus on the object my mind was focused like an arrow on a target. Funny as it sounds I was genuinely surprised because I didn’t think much was happening other than a constant tug of war battles with thoughts, but all those small instances and hard going efforts to bring my mind and my awareness back to what I was doing had amounted to an experience of being able to be really concentrated.
What stands out the most from that time was the experience of making the effort to come back to the moment and be there with the thing that I’m doing, and how its not the outcome that I was focused on achieving but on going through the actual training each day. Funnily enough It’s inspired me to pull up my socks, so to speak, in just retelling this experience. 🙂
BTW I wanted to mention that I did use the inner elimination of the ego technique to clear the thoughts and also many emotional egos that I noticed more so too that week, like eratic rushing to get things finished, fear of not getting through it faster and many things like that.