What type of experience was this?

[heat]

So I woke up in the middle of the night after a dream and didn't move or open my eyes. I immediately thought of attempting an astral projection. So what I did was imagine myself in a scene somewhere in a forest as vividly as possible. I imagined that I could feel the leaves, ground and wind in my face. All of a sudden I felt this tingling electricity run through my body and my body felt as if it was starting to melt.

I heard a whooshing sound in my ear, and then saw a bright blue light come towards me. A few seconds later I ended up in an entirely different dream like scene, but I was fully lucid and aware of everything that happened, from when I woke up, to the sensations I felt. I stayed in this dream completely lucid and explored for what seemed like 15 minutes. Everything in this dream felt exactly as solid as the physical world. I actually searched for a spirit guide but nothing happened. So I was just wondering if anyone could help me and explain exactly what this was. Any reply will be much appreciated.

[ButterflyWoman]

Sounds like an out-of-body-experience to me. Astral projection/OBE can be and often is extremely similar to lucid dreaming. In fact, it can be difficult to tell the difference (and there are those who maintain that AP/OBE is actually just a form of lucid dreaming). Those who make distinctions between OBE/AP and lucid dreaming report a different quality between them, sometimes difficult to describe, and sometimes OBE/AP has events or experiences that turn out to be verifiable.

The reason this seems like OBE/AP to me rather than a lucid dream is the fact that you woke up from it so quickly. Normally, if you wake up in the middle of the night and go back into a dream, you go back to sleep (at least, this is my assumption; if you're someone who wakes up a lot during the night, all bets are off ;)).

[heat]

Thank you for your reply, ButterflyWoman. There are just so many terms out there now describing different experiences (OBE, Astral Projection, Mental projection, Etheric projection, Wild ect) I start to get confused about what really happened.

[CFTraveler]

If it helps any, the AD-Pedia should have more information on the subject.

[ButterflyWoman]

There ARE a lot of terms. I used to struggle with "what was this experience" and "what should I call this" and so on. Now I just experience it and don't worry about it too much. Not everything has to be catalogued and labelled. ;) :) (I'm not saying it's wrong to want to know more about various experiences and perceptions, only that categories and labels are only just so useful when it comes to esoteric stuff like this.)