Out-of-Body, Bizarro
Silver Cord and Boredom
Me and my wife woke up at 3am, stayed awake for 10 minutes or so, then went back to bed to try and have an out of body experience (OBE). We do this every Wednesday morning.
Yesterday I read an interesting blog post from Bob Peterson, a famous author on the topic of OBEs. In it, he compares lucid dreams to OBEs. A lot of the differences are things I’ve noticed as well, but one caught my eye: boredom.
He writes:
In an OBE, you can be bored and do absolutely nothing. In a lucid dream, events often unfold in front of you.
That’s an interesting distinction that I never tried.
So I went into my meditation session with the intention of leaving my body, coming out to the living room, sitting on the couch, doing nothing, and being bored. A strange goal, but I was curious what would happen.
After some struggle, I eventually reached the proper state of mind. I saw a dream start to fade in, but I rejected it, and returned my awareness back to my meditation.
I got out, and felt my way across the room, and out the bedroom (strangely, I felt carpet in our bedroom, which is actually hardwood). Once in the hallway, I brought my vision online – I waved my hands in front of my face, and could see a tiny picture of my hand waving in shadow.
I focused on the picture, and it became larger. I started moving down the hallway, and the 3D effect reminded me of a glitchy video playback. I made my way to the living room, and my vision was somewhat stable.
Strangely, the desk lamp was off, even though I purposely left it on. I moved the blanket to sit on the couch (and later in the morning, noticed that the blanket wasn’t in the same location).
I sat on the couch, and just waited.
One nice thing about this exercise is I became entirely lucid and aware of the moment. I had nothing better to do!
I looked at my hand, and thought to myself: wow, I really am here. I’m in it. Here I am. Usually I am so quick to do something that I don’t take it all in. It felt like I was a deep sea diver in a foreign world.
I sat there for maybe a minute or two. Over that time, my vision became more detailed, but the details were wrong. Since I was 100% lucid, I noticed the wrong details. Our bedroom door was too close, a strange color, and had a window on it – completely wrong. Our kitchen was the wrong shape. Our dining table was in a slightly wrong location.
I stood up and considered the experiment a success: I was able to sit and do nothing to the point of boredom! Now what?
I originally told myself I wouldn’t go outside, because I wanted to sit on the couch and do nothing instead – but since I finished that task, I thought why not?
The outside was completely different from our real neighborhood. The houses were different colors and in different styles. I noticed all of this in the moment because I was still completely lucid.
There was an orange cat. I walked down towards it, still not really sure what to do with my time. Then it hit me: why not see if I have a silver cord?
I have tried looking for my silver cord in the past, and never found anything. I didn’t expect this time would be any different. I reached around to my back, and to my surprise, there was a cord attached to my spine!
I grabbed it and turned around. It extended out and around our house, through the air. I started pulling on it, asking it to pull me towards my body. It obliged and I flew through the air, landing in our backyard.
I started yanking on it some more, and pulling it between my hands. I stepped on the cord and started pulling it really hard. It stretched and got thinner. It made a high pitched sound as I focused on it. It was the thickness of headphone wires, and was a bright silver – almost as if it was emitting light.
I started to think: wouldn’t it be hilarious if the stupid thing broke, and I died?! I would have to start looking around for a tunnel to go towards the light. I didn’t actually expect that to happen, the thought just crossed my mind as I was yanking it all around and stretching it.
Thankfully the cord didn’t break despite my abuse, but I did laugh at the idea, in a morbid sense.
I decided to jump back in my body before I got in over my head, more than I already was.
What a silly experience!