See The Lights

I have always been curious about out-of-body experiences, or as some put it, OOBEs. Most people know this from hearing a story about someone in a hospital, dying, or they do die, and they float out of their body and see a bright light. For some reason, something drags them back into their bodies and they feel different after that. Some doctors have notes that there is a change in mass when someone has an OOBE and the person loses 6 ounces. No one can really explain this with any definitive conclusion.

But there are stories of another kind of OOBE. One that someone can create. I have read up on this and found that most of them occur when a person is going to bed, they relax to a state of 100% relaxation, and they claim they can lift their aura or soul out of their body. Or what they call their astral self. They claim it takes a lot of practice to be able to do it successfully, and it can take years. Skeptics claim this type of thing can happen in what is called the hypnagognic state. This is the stage between awake and alert. That is why these moments are remembered so vividly. I won't pretend to know who is right and who is wrong. All I can talk about is my own experience.

In August of 1994, I was at a crossroads in life. I had just graduated college, and I really had no clue how to proceed with my life. I was single, living with my parents, and I worked at a comicbook store. There were still pieces of my past that I hadn't come to terms with. One Sunday night, after some severe thunderstorms, I was reading until about 2am in the morning. I was just sitting in my bed, relaxing. Not asleep, but past the stage of tired where you are in a state of complete exhaustion. Now keep in mind, I had never read about any of the above stuff at all prior to this evening. As I was laying there, I felt myself lift up out of my body. I felt heavy and then light, and I heard what can only be described as a popping sound, like taking a cork out of a bottle. I remember floating in my room but not with vision like we see it. It was like I could see all over the room all at once. I began to drift, through what seemed like stars. I let myself do this for a while. I could soon see the planet earth. And it looked beautiful. Then I saw something that still horrifies me to this day. A creature was sitting on earth, laughing. It felt like all of the planet was engulfed in this evil. It said something and I have never remembered it, even to this day. I became terrified and tried to get back to my body, but I couldn't. It was like I was floating aimlessly, with no control whatsoever. It reached a point where I could see my body but I couldn't get back into it. I was starting to panic and I became afraid I would be lost forever. Then I started to see faces from my life. And one in particular shone the brightest. I focused on that face. The person was smiling at me and I found peace. This was one of those unresolved pieces of my past I was speaking of, and it involved forgiveness. I had to forgive myself for wrongs I had made in the past. All of this happened at that moment. I soon found myself rising up in my bed and I just stared at the dark walls for about five minutes, in shock.

Was it a dream? It felt way too real to be a dream, and I had control over it. Usually dreams are all over the place, and you can't focus. It is like the dream controls you. This did that, but I was able to bring myself to a place where the things I had tortured myself for years simply didn't matter any more. I still can't figure out what the creature was about. Maybe it represented my guilt, and how it was controlling my world. I recognized it was a part of me, and always would be. But for me to go forward, I had to move past the past, and see a bright shining light called the future.