Flying High
Crystals and Astral Travel
If you like to travel—or if you just need to get out of the house more—crystals could be your ticket to the astral plane.
Astral travel is a meditative exercise, a lot like lucid dreaming. During astral travel, your consciousness leaves your body and travels through space and time in the astral plane, a spiritual level of reality filled with thoughts and mental imagery.
Astral travel is accomplished mostly through creative visualization, bordering on wild flights of fancy and creative imagination. If you would like to try it, your crystals can help speed you on your way.
Any crystal that soothes, calms, or helps you slip into a meditative state can give you a boost into the astral plane. Stones that are associated with the skies and the heavens seem especially appropriate—try angelite, apophyllite, celestite, iolite, moonstone, selenite, and seraphinite. Crystals with meteoric origins, like moldavite and tektite, can also help carry you magically into other planes of existence and other worlds. You might even like to try holding mochi marbles, which are sometimes called shaman stones.
To begin your astral travels, find a quiet time when you can lie down on your bed. Close your door and unplug the phone, so you won’t be interrupted by family members, phone calls, or unexpected visitors.
Then select a destination. You might want to start small—choose the neighborhood where you grew up, or the home of a close friend, or a shopping center across town. If you’re feeling a little more daring, you might want to visit a tourist resort or a scenic area in a foreign land. (You are traveling, after all.)
Write your destination on an index card or a piece of paper, and place it, face up, on your bed or on your nightstand. Later, if you are surprised to find yourself looking at it from a spot near your bedroom ceiling, you’ll remember where you’re supposed to go.
If you worry about leaving your body behind, you can create a protective grid out of the crystals of your choice. You can even fashion a “landing strip” for your reentry out of clear quartz stones and quartz tips and points.
Lie down on your bed, flat on your back, with a crystal in each hand. Remember that dark stones like obsidian and hematite will usually be grounding, while light stones like clear quartz and selenite will often help you reach new heights of spirituality. You might also want to put a crystal on your psychic third eye, right in the middle of your forehead. If you have butterflies in your stomach, put a crystal on your solar plexus.
Close your eyes. Breathe deeply and relax completely, starting with your feet and progressing all the way to your head.
Picture yourself in your mind’s eye. Visualize yourself lying there, in as much detail as you can muster.
Then imagine your psychic self, floating two or three feet above your physical body, as comfortably as if you were resting on an air mattress on a lake or a pool.
Some people say they hear loud noises when they first leave their bodies, like a howling wind or the music of a cosmic orchestra. Don’t panic and dive back in to your physical form; just take a deep psychic breath, and the noise will quiet down.
From your position in midair, look down at your physical self, and then look around the room you are in. Look for the note you left to remind yourself of your destination, and practice moving in your psychic body. Use your arms and legs to propel yourself forward and back, just as if you were swimming or flying through the air.
Then imagine yourself floating comfortably through the ceiling or out your bedroom window.
Enjoy a bird’s-eye view of your home, your backyard, and your neighborhood, and then head for the destination you had in mind when you initiated your out-of-body experience. You might find yourself traveling through the air, or you might find yourself transported there instantly.
Feel free to look around and explore.
When you are ready to go home, imagine yourself back in your room, still floating a few feet above your physical body. If you set up a crystal shield or landing strip, admire your handiwork and get your bearings.
Then allow yourself to ease back into your body. Feel the crystals in your hands, and take a few deep breaths to reintegrate your body and soul and come back to full consciousness.
Record your experiences and your insights in your crystals journal.