was no one that I could talk to about these things in my local village. Would you? Can you imagine it? ‘What a lovely new dress…by the way, I am trying to leave my body by a series of meditation techniques…’ You get my point! People would think I was crazy…perhaps I was, or maybe I still am. I still find it a little hard to share the personal things that I was trying out at that time. But it’s important for you to understand who I am.
Although much of what I am telling you might sound a little bizarre, believe me, everything happened exactly as I am explaining it. Through all this time I always felt as if I was being guided in some way. It wasn’t just a random series of paranormal experiences, I felt as if I were being guided by a higher source. My angels and guides were with me every step of the way.
‘Let Jacky try a little of this, and a little of that,’ they seemed to say. With each experience I went out and read about what had happened and what was continuing to happen to me. I explored the subjects and investigated each paranormal experience by chatting to people on the internet. The internet was my lifesaver. And these things just seemed to ‘drip’ slowly into my life, a bit at a time. In the meantime I was hot on the trail of the out-of-body experience.
Could I learn how to come ‘out-of-body’ on purpose? Was this the opportunity to begin to control some of the things that had always happened to me? I started asking questions about how other people had experienced out-of-body travel, or astral projection, as it was sometimes called. I realized that for some people there were different types of experiences.
Some websites explained that we have several different spirit bodies – layers of energy bodies, each becoming finer and finer. These faster vibrating bodies enable us to travel to higher spiritual levels. Perhaps, I figured, this is what Jesus was talking about when he said, ‘In my father’s house are many mansions.’ Maybe these different astral planes represented the different mansions. I read about people who’d not just flown about their bedrooms in their spirit body, but had travelled to different heavenly realms and even different planets. I was intrigued and I wanted to do this too. I started to keep a journal of my experiments.
Some people had begun as I had with a spontaneous out-of-body experience (OBE). This might have happened during ‘a time of crisis, illness, grief, tiredness or during an accident’, I read. Well, I guess I’d been ill before as I was taking medicine at the time of my own first out-of-body experience (although hardly what you could call a serious illness), but I wanted to learn how to do this without being ill just the same. There were many different techniques that people had tried with success. The idea was to get your body as close to sleep as possible but to keep your mind awake. ‘This would enable someone to lift out of their physical body…’ I read.
Have you ever heard yourself snore? The body appears to paralyse when we dream (a natural phenomenon). The methods of creating both an out-of-body experience and a lucid dreaming state (where we are dreaming but aware that we are dreaming) had similar techniques. I wanted to be able to hear myself snore; to know that I was asleep whilst my brain remained active and aware. This stuff seemed crazy but I wanted to try it so badly.
It sounds unbelievable but these internet people were convinced you could lift your spirit out of your body on purpose. Was this a natural ability which humans had somehow forgotten how to do, or was this ‘paranormal’; above and beyond ‘normal’? Either way, I was determined to have a go rather than hang around waiting for the next thing to happen to me.
As soon as the girls went to school the next morning, I planned my day. Technique number one involved falling back to sleep with your arms up in the air. How weird was that? As soon as you began to fall asleep your arms would drop and instantly wake you up again. The idea was to get closer and closer to this ‘edge of sleep’ without losing consciousness completely.
I spent hours doing this technique and eventually was able to reach what some people called ‘the vibration stage’ (where your whole body ripples as if you were receiving a mild electric shock). It wasn’t as unpleasant as it sounds. I was creating some type of psychic phenomenon in my body and I was doing it because I wanted to – I was in control…well, sort of!
Spirits had been visiting me all of my life and now I wanted to visit them and I was hoping that these exercises would help me on my way.
I didn’t seem to get very far with the first technique, so I investigated other methods to create an OBE which involved visualization. I was always good at ‘seeing’ pictures in my mind so I hoped I might do better. With this technique, you kept yourself on the edge of sleep for as long as possible, and then when you felt the ‘vibrations’ (the shaking/rippling feeling which floods through the body when you are ready to ‘project’ out of it), you ‘imagined’ yourself sitting up, standing up, rolling out of your body and so on. Nothing happened. Does this sound crazy? Stay with me here…
Although I wasn’t having a lot of success with my training techniques, other strange things were happening to me at this time. Maybe this was related in some way? I felt sure that it was.
One day when I was drifting off to sleep I became ‘awake’ whilst I was asleep. I was shocked to see something at the end of the bed…it was me! I had achieved the opposite of my goal and lying in bed I was able to see my spiritual self ‘stood’ at the end of the bed, looking in my direction. To say I was ‘freaked out’ was an understatement and as I tried to pull myself up in bed, a kind of scream left my mouth. The scream sounded as if it were coming from miles away, a type of echo chamber of some sort. I heard my own voice shout back to me, and as I pulled myself upright the spiritual version of myself flew towards my body at amazing speed and plopped back into place as it had before. I lay on the bed with my heart beating rapidly. Was I excited or terrified? Probably a little of both, but this was just the beginning. Wow!
I gained a little confidence. It was time to try the ‘rolling out’ of my body technique. I combined it with the more bizarre ‘holding my arm up in the air’ method and several times I fell asleep, only to be woken up by my hand slapping down across my face. What did I expect?
Each time I found myself getting nearer and nearer to the ‘out-of-body experience’ and remembered that if I just ‘imagined’ myself rolling out of bed it would happen. I started to drift off to sleep and within moments was wide awake except my body was paralysed. I couldn’t move my physical body but before I could analyse this further I found myself rolling off the edge of the bed and onto the floor where I bounced up and down. I realized I had achieved some sort of success as I properly awoke to find myself still in bed. For a moment at least, my ‘spiritual body’ had actually left my physical body – or so it seemed. Yet I hadn’t travelled to any distant lands, only as far as the bedside cabinet. It was hardly the exciting astral travels I’d been planning.
I was getting desperate. When was I going to start ‘flying’ to the heavenly realms like others had told me about? It was all so much more difficult than I had thought. I decided to try a different technique and instead of lying down I would sit in an upright chair and meditate. I devotedly sat in this chair and meditated every day for months on end. I was rewarded with more strange experiences.
One day I felt my very ‘personality’ split into three parts. Each part was ‘me’ and yet separate. Each ‘me’ was able to communicate with the other parts and I saw a vision of three overlapping circles. I was in a deep trance when my little dog barked beside me. Someone had posted a leaflet through the door and I came back to reality with a start! Another spiritual journey had ended before it had begun.
Another time I got as far as the ‘vibrational’ stage again but this time I felt myself lift out of my body. I was aware of floating out of the room, and into the sitting room next door where my husband was watching television. But I had no ability to ‘see’ where I was going, only ‘feel’. I decided to float back to my body and try again but at that moment my husband called out to me to ‘put the kettle on’. Instantly I was back in my body and another adventure had ended prematurely. The body is capable of so much more than we realize. We can do so many things but it’s as if we have forgotten. Shopping, going to work, watching television…all these things and more occupy every waking thought. We don’t spend enough time exploring other realms, particularly