13 Schedule and Rituals

Travel Far


by Darryl E Berry Jr

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STANDARD PRACTICE SCHEDULEOne of the greatest helps to basics progress and OBE success is having a regular schedule of practice. By simply practicing at the same time every day you develop a very potent momentum that begins to carry you along toward success. At a particular time every day or night you can become attuned to and magnetized for entering meditation, a heightened state of concentration, or the out-of-body state. It’s like how after years of waking up at a certain time we start to wake up a minute or two before the alarm sounds, and no longer need the alarm.

Determine what times and what days are the things you must do, and around those times schedule your practices so that you can practice regularly without interference. Once established only your will to do or lack thereof can interfere with successful maintenance of your schedule. If you make a checklist for practices, you can include time(s) of practice on the checklist by each exercise.


A ritual is simply a series of actions that you habitually perform in the same way. Just like having a regular practice schedule, having a regular sequence of techniques that you use in your practices can greatly help your progress. You can develop the same mental, energetic, and physical habit that having a regular schedule develops. For instance, you could always start your practice with the 4-2 rhythmic breathing meditation. Thus, this meditation will begin to signal an entry into altered states. Ritual can also include finding a sequence of exercise you like and always using that same sequence. Another ritual could be to always start your practice session sitting, and after the same number of minutes of sitting practice lie down to continue your practice session. And rituals can become more and more elaborate, such as lighting incense at a certain point in your session. Rituals can also include things you do around the practice session, such as playing a piece of music. I suggest developing a ritual, as simple or as elaborate as you like, but develop something that becomes a staple of your OBE practices.


And remember to keep it in perspective. Developing a schedule and ritual is not a matter of superstition but a matter of psychological habit, which can accelerate success, much like physical repetitions and drills in sports. But to help make sure you don’t grow dependent upon your schedules and rituals, and to help develop a freer flowing ability to enter heightened (focused beta) and altered (alpha, theta, and delta) states, I suggest letting schedule and ritual go when you start to have regular success. When you can OBE regularly at your regularly scheduled time, with your habitual ritualistic elements, try practicing earlier or later. Try practicing at the total opposite time of day. Try leaving off something of your ritual – skip the incense for a try, for instance. Start with something small, until you’ve completely shed the schedule and ritual. Then you’ll be able to OBE any time, any place, and under any circumstance. And varying times and places of practice can yield nonphysical observations that you may not have come across otherwise, for instance perhaps practicing at a different time allows you to nonphysically observe a local environmental phenomenon that happens only at that time.