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Lesson 20: How and Why

In this lesson, I will be doing several things:

In this first section, I will be telling you all the hows and whys of each exercise that I had you do. I'm hoping that with this information, you can find the general pattern of what I was trying to teach. And I'm under no illusions that you have already figured out that pattern even before I do this.

In the next section I will be answering some of the concerns/points raised in the class evaluations and explaining them. Hopefully you will be able to see some of the problems I had to face this class, and perhaps together we can figure out how to improve this for the next set of students (because I'm giving this again next March.)

So, on to the reasons:

Lesson 1: An Essay about yourself.

I assigned this to you because of several reasons. First was so that I knew who I was dealing with, and to give me some handle on the personalities of the students. I was able to spot several people who I thought would be problems and have problems with this class, and sure enough they all dropped out. It also showed me who did not want to do the work, and that work was critical to this class (as I think you all have learned).

I also wanted you to start evaluating yourself. Normally, in the course of a class of this nature given in the real world, I would be observing you and evaluating you based on my perceptions. Now, even though the cyberworld is a lot more powerful in some cases, it doesn't really lend itself to evaluation of that nature, so I needed to get you thinking about yourself. It's amazing just how many of us don't ever think about ourselves because we have been trained out of it. So this was necessary.

Lesson 2: Starting Meditation and new notebook

In lesson 2, I asked you to get a notebook and start writing in it. I asked you to answer some specific questions, and I also asked you to start meditating. I hope the reason I had you meditating is obvious at this point. As to the questions, there we have multiple reasons again.

I wanted you to start understanding that the Astral Plane is plastic and subject to your whims, and in that come up with a "safe" environment to start from. Having that beginning point before you start exploring is a very necessary step. The rest of the questions are simple definitions of that safe spot. It was a way for me to trick your mind into defining specific parameters without you knowing what I was doing. This was not to confuse or betray, but because we had not covered the concepts involved yet, and to do so would have taken up too much time. Plus it would have eliminated the need for later lessons. I really try not to "core dump" on my students.

If you have a clearly defined starting point, one that you are safe in, and I start telling you that you will start there and that you will come back to it anytime you need to, you have a real anchor point in Astral Space for when you get scared or attacked. That was another reason. Plus it makes it easier to explore if you know that your "home base" is always there. It gives you a reference point.

Lesson 3: Your own meditation and might have beens

Okay, in this lesson I was trying to customize it somewhat to your needs. I am not so arrogant to think that my meditations are going to work for everyone. I understand that they will only TRULY work for me, so I wanted to give you the tools necessary to make your own pattern of thought that would get you to the Astral Plane. You do that through meditation.

As to the thinking about outcomes that may have happened, well there we have another situation where we needed to get you thinking about you again. It's an interesting phenomenon; someone makes a Plan, and they don't think it through. Here's an example:

I used to play Role Playing games, one of which was Star Wars. At one point we found an alien race that could hide themselves and other matter from detection using the Force if there were enough of them together. To make a long story short, we decided to hide a planet from detection near the Empire's main ruling planet, so we could monitor their activities.

We planned every stage of everything. We found an appropriate planet, started teaching fighter jocks how to be farmers, began terraforming the planet, even came up with a plausible story about the planet vaporizing and had debris to scatter around the planet to give it credibility. Every stage we could do we did and went on multiple adventures to do all this. We got our asses handed to us by the Empire before we could ever get the plan finished because we didn't think it through.

These aliens used the Force to do their "hide-me" trick. What does the Emperor and Vader use all the time? The Force. Could they detect us by the disturbance in the Force around them? Easily. And quite a number of our primary characters didn't live because the players didn't fully think this through.

The point of this story? I wanted to start you in the habit of thinking things through. Hopefully it would stick once you realized that there are a lot of second, third and fourth order consequences from your actions, and that you can't predict everything that is going to happen. And this was setting the stage for a further exploration of Might-Have-Beens at a later time.

The journal I encouraged you to start so that you had a baseline record for comparison and something that you could look at and see your progress in. Something so that you can see qualities and attitudes that have changed in the time you have been in this class. That was one reason, but the primary reason is the stated one, that of having a record of symbols and dreams so on to start building your own English--->Subconscious translation dictionary.

Lesson 4: Dream Log, Rules of conduct

I would hope the reason for this is obvious. Having rules that you obey in dealing with other creatures only makes it fair. You have etiquette here on the physical plane, why not on their realms? It makes no sense to operate as though everyone on this plane could be a potential ally, while going around and through apathy making hundreds of enemies on the Astral Plane. Since potentially you would be spending a LOT of time on those other realms, the potential for injury to you is enormous.

As to the Dream log; most of it was my curiosity and more getting a handle on each of you and what you need. More of the evaluation process and finding out how much detail you were putting down.

Lesson 5: Structure of the Planes

Okay, the reason for this exercise was so that you started defining the Astral Plane for yourself. I didn't want you to get into a real confusion as to where you were at or going to, so you needed to define some of the general aspects for yourself. I had given three theories of the structure, and I wanted you to decide for yourself which you were comfortable working within and come up with reasons why, so I had a better handle on how to describe some of the things I would be describing to you. Plus, it's important for you to decide which makes more sense to you so that your explorations are a bit more logical.

And this is a place that may be created by imagination and tweaked by creativity, but it is subject to some logical laws and structure. It's one of those "art and science" things again.

As to the rest of it, I wanted you to give me feedback again. I know that I ask for it a lot, but this is my first really big teaching course. The others I bragged about so much were pretty simple compared to the scope of this class. This was the first time that I would be sharing everything I know on a subject, so I wanted to make sure that 1) I was not going too fast 2) that everything I was saying was understood 3) I could sculpt what I was teaching for you and that I knew what I needed to make this a good class.

Lesson 6: Personal evaluation and Checklist

More on the "why do you tick the way you tick?" Again I wanted you to look at yourself and decide where you wanted to work on things and have another benchmark of progress. It's interesting to go back and look at yourself in later times and go "wow, I have really done some growing in this last _________." I know I do it on a regular basis, and it's good to have some kind of yardstick to measure your progress against. This goes double for a checklist of problems or goals.

Lesson 7: Visualization and subsequent exercises

Okay, this should be obvious as well now. Visualization is everything on the Astral Plane, and it is also important for the meditations. This was simple "sculpting" for your personal preferences and practice. I know what I use will not work for everyone, so I was hoping to see some "markers" of progress (i.e. strong reactions to one or more of these visuals) and help you find what works for you. The Gods know I don't have a lock on TRUTH.

Lesson 8: Correlation of data

Well, this exercise was so that you would have another baseline in finding what works for you. This data would have been important had you discovered that one or more factors affected you in some way. It would have told you several things, like if the moon phase helped/hindered or if your wedding ring prevented you from projecting. I know many Pagans aren't into scientific data or method, but there are times when doing something esoteric that scientific process needs to be applied to find out what factors DO affect you, so they can either be encouraged or avoided.

I'll tell you now, I have never had any other factors other than my will affect whether or not I could project. Granted at times when I'm tired I'm likely to fall asleep, but I also have Sleep Apnea and have a problem breathing at night, so during meditations the tenancy is to go on over to sleep because of how tired my body is.

Lesson 9: DeGarcia and reviews

Okay, this should be self explanatory. The reason I had you write the reviews of the books in his bibliography is due to several things; 1 I don't have the lock on truth, 2 I don't have time to read everything he references, and I have not read most of them, 3 I wanted to see what some of those other books were about and if they were good, 4 You need to understand that there are other ways of doing things than I tell you about.

Lesson 10: Other creatures and their stories

Some of this was selfishness, I wanted a story about a group of entities that I didn't have to write. But that's the minor reason.

More to the point, I wanted to shake out the "Great White Christian Father" mindset that many of us grow up with, and also the mindset of "I'm better because I'm human" set of thoughts that are just as bad. Make no mistake, on the AP just about everything is intelligent. If we went to that plane and treated a spider there the way we treat most spiders here, we would probably be really hurt. Who's to say that this spider on the AP is not the Spider Totem and fully capable of giving you a lesson that you won't soon forget?

The questions to ask them were simply so that you could think of something to ask them when you finally met them. It's pretty embarrassing to finally meet a Leprechaun and when he asks if you have any questions, you can't think of anything. They laugh too long when that happens.

Lesson 11: Other Resources and Dreams

Once again, giving you an idea of the wealth of information out there and available to you on the subjects I was teaching. I WANT you to use other references to add to your knowledge simply because I can be wrong. Look at the results of that lesson where I state that Dreams are B&W and Lucid Dreams are Color. It turns out that all of you told me that your dreams were ALL color and almost never B&W. So I turned out to be wrong in that. So, I must now revise my thinking on this subject and work on a different division of those types of dreams. But that's what this class has been all about.

Lesson 12: Review of DeGarcia's Bibliography

I think I explained this one in the actual text of the assignment.

Lesson 13: Defining spirituality

Okay, in many ways this is where I start screwing up. The Lessons were late and last minute and so on. In many cases they were scattered as well. I cry "RL problems" and ask you to forgive me on that.

When Projecting for any length of time, most of the classic definitions of religion and "how the universe works" start really getting shaken up. Meeting Gods and finding out that they are just like us is a blow to most people. It can be a time when your religion and spirituality is strengthened, but more often it leaves people going "what the heck do I believe now?"

This was my subtle suggestion to find out for yourself what you believe. Many people believe what others tell them to believe, and that's a shame because my associations and feelings won't be the same as yours and never will be. So you will have to define things for yourself.

Lesson 15: Reading One and Stranger in a Strange Land

The reason I mentioned these books is because both of them were seminal in changing my perspectives on the Universe and my spirituality. I was hoping to give you something good to start your own definition on. Also I hoped that you could better understand the material I was giving you if you could understand the sources I was drawing upon.

Lesson 17: Fixing problems and Fivetrees

Well, the problem fixing is so that you have some goals to work toward and now have a practical application of OOBE in your life.

As to the Fivetrees site, I had hoped to give some more variety of material. Most of the Guardians that I know work on the Astral Plane all the time and we know what to look for and how to do things. So, it was an attempt to let you know that we are out there, show you that my experiences are NOT isolated to me, and to allow those who feel they have a calling to this to continue on in this vein and have some good reference works.

Lesson 19: Turn in material for Lesson 20

Well, since this lesson is the compilation of this assignment, I would hope that it's obvious. This is also another method of me seeing how good a teacher I am and where I need to work with you all before the exam.

Okay, part 2 of this lesson, the feedback and evaluations.

Most of you expressed a concern about the length of the class and/or a concern about the time between the lessons themselves. Too long between them, you say, allows you to forget the questions you wanted to ask when you first read the lesson.

I can get behind and understand this criticism. However, in my own defense, let me explain how this job came about for me.

I was minding my own business last year, when an e-mail hits my Inbox. It had an announcement about how the Online Mystical School was now taking applications for students in some of the courses they offered. So I went to their site and signed up for two courses. As a student and offered my services if necessary as an instructor in High Magick. Not in OOBE. I didn't think I was qualified.

A lot of email traffic between Umbria and myself ensued at that point. I thought I had signed up to teach the OOBE and High Magick Courses offered, Umbria thought I had signed up for the OBOD High Magick course only. See where some of the confusion came in? Well, it was the last week of February, and I asked Umbria where the applications of the students were and when I had to have the first OOBE lesson in.

At which point, I get a letter back going "YOU signed up to teach that class??? Oh my goodness, you gotta get on the stick. I IMMEDIATELY need a course outline, syllabus and any lessons you already have!" or something like that. I have the actual emails around here someplace.

See, they were just going to take it in shifts as to who was teaching it, whomever is free giving advice and posting a few lines on "read this book" and so on. Then it got dumped in my lap (willingly I admit).

So, here I am, and I have to come up with an entire class outline, course schedule (which was already set as one year, two weeks between classes) and start writing as fast as I could. So, perhaps you can see how it got a lot away from me? The first post is pretty scattered in the panic that I was in to get SOMETHING out, and I didn't have time to logically lay out the lessons as to A, then B then C. I basically wrote down everything I could think of relating to OOBE and sent that in, at which point I was committed (and probably should have been).

The first two months were a study of me reading like a fiend, getting books out of the library, so I could talk intelligently about them, frantically posting lessons, coming up with assignments, trying to organize my thoughts, have a real life too, deal with moving and only having computer access at work and so on. Sorry about that.

The course schedule was already locked in and that's the framework I had to work in. In some ways it was good that I didn't have to decide that or it would have been worse. So, a lot of the "it didn't have teeth" and "no reward earlier on" statements are directly attributable to this crush I was under. I didn't say anything before because I didn't want to undermine your confidence in me. I actually (to my great surprise) managed to handle it all, and get a little ahead of the game.

Then the message board died and we switched to an email format. I prefer doing it in an email personally, but that's me. The checking in was because we had 11 students drop out of the class within the first two months, probably due to this lack of organization on my part, and the fact that I actually wanted people to work, rather than spoon-feed them the answers. The message board actually detracted from the sense of Classroom that could have been built in an email format in my opinion.

But, I was taking over for someone else (at least at first) and I had their preferences to work within. There would have been no way to work a chat night into my schedule and I told Umbria that directly when we talked about it. At that time I ONLY had Internet access from work, which was only about 1/3 of my time. None at all on the Weekends. The library computers are packed on Saturdays and Sundays and the only way I could have gotten a computer there would have been to physically punch them off it. So, we could have had the chats during the weekdays, and while that might have worked for me, I doubt you all would have been able to do that.

I always tried to respond individually to the questions/points raised, either in the lesson or in the responses. However, with the Message Board it made it more complex than necessary, and I got the strong impression that no one was looking at those boards, only me. However, that's neither here nor there. One thing that Umbria DID want to do, that I supported was the Secrecy of assignments.

This was why she had you emailing your assignments to her and then she posted them, and I responded to them, so you couldn't pull answers/ideas from each other. I have that capability and I think I will exploit it to the max in the next round of classes.

Yes, you were Guinea pigs in many regards. Congratulations for surviving a LOT of mess ups and fumbling teachers. LOL I appreciate that you all think I'm a really good teacher (and my underdeveloped ego thanks you) but I know that I messed up in MANY places. Hopefully I can do better next time.

To respond directly to ILikeToThink now, I would LOVE it if the other students would also join in and share their experiences as well. I had asked for that several times (I thought) in some of the assignments, but apparently I was misunderstood.

I also think an Email list for the Graduates is a REALLY good idea, but right now there are 4 of you. I know that any count will only show three, but I have one other student who came in really late (like two months ago) and caught up with all of you. I have all her assignments, but she's not on the email list. I'll be speaking to someone about getting her on this list and credit for passing the course.

I would also like to suggest that instead of making another list, why don't we all get on one list together? Like the list that Tamia is part of (and me too now). That way we could share our experiences with others.

Now, I'm also in a quandary. ILikeToThink, you are right, there is absolutely no reason to have an exam, except that I said back in the beginning that I would. So, I guess that I need to ask if you all want a test? I'm somewhat satisfied with what I have been reading out of you all recently and I have only a few qualms about passing all of you. The qualms I do have are more centered on the practice rather than the theory, which is what I would be asking you all about anyhow. So, if you want an exam, tell me and I'll make them, but effectively this course is over and I can give out the certificates now.

To go with that, the reviews, do you want to have them? I put them in there because I couldn't think of anything to do for the last three lessons except a review and test, so if you don't want to have them, let me know. I will still be doing the look inside Illusions by Richard Bach. Most of my theory came from this book, and a lot of the way I look at the world now, so I think it's important. However, if you want to skip the next two lessons (the reviews) I will gladly skip them.

I am leaning toward having an exam. About 5 essay questions on the theory, allowing you all to explain what you feel is applicable to the Astral Plane and how you are seeing/interacting with it, and how deep your understanding is at this point. You may never understand all that I have made available and what is in books, I know that there are segments that I still don't get, but I'm working on it. So at this point, it's "Go out, have fun, get dirty and create...."

Daven

 

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