Over the years, this has happened to me several times.  Enough times that it's no longer very frightening, just extremely interesting.  I wake up (pretty sure I'm awake) and don't have a clue where I am.  This confusion persists for 5 to 10 seconds until some bit of memory reminds me where I am.  Of course I sleep with no lights on at all and turn the blinds so that, even when there is moonlight, the room is still pretty dark and featureless.

Also, on one occation, I woke up crying, not having a clue as to why.  Actually there was one clue.  It didn't feel "happy", like tears of joy.  More like a loss of some sort.  In the literature on lucid dreams and OBEs I don't recall reading of any crying experiences.  These don't feel like lucid dreams, and I can't remember an OBE (other than the flying dreams I had as a 12 year old).

The third experience has a physical counterpart.  I've alluded to it in a previous post.  I wake up having kicked all the covers off the bed, not really sure what I'm so animated over.  In fact, once, recently, I woke up on all four on the floor next to the bed, having kicked a chair over, which serves as a valet and sits next to my bed.  That experience cost me the loss of my big toenail and quite a bit of foot pain.  I don't know what I'm going after, and I doubt that this is the best way to resolve this issue.  If I only knew what the issue is.  I want to address the issue but maybe some part of me doesn't, really doesn't.

Like Preston Dennett's motivation ("Out-Of-Body Exploring"), I've wanted more than anything to learn (or remember) the OOB experience since my mother's passing 31 months ago.  To see how she is doing, to answer many questions, and to explore from there.  My experiences above seem likely tied in with what feels to me like a "block".  After reading and listening to many books, tapes and CDs, I have a lot of information but not the particular experience I'm searching for.  Has anyone been equally well informed, "locked out", and then gotten their particular answer in an unexpected way or with a surprising message?

Thanks Alysia for that clear response.  "Positive and persistent" I not only understand but can also do, (particularly now that I live alone).

Spirituality needs, for clarity and meaning, a nomenclature of it's own, like music or mathematics.  So much of what I read is "inspirational rambling" which,  I'm certain, evokes a clear experience to the writer but which isn't very well defined to everyone else.  Granted, our language probably isn't as useful for describing a spiritual topic as it is for a business contract.  The linguistic palette is limited.  We need a language which is to spirituality what one of the Eskimo languages is to life in the North, with it's dozen words for snow.  I wonder how Goethe would have described an OBE.  My own view is that in time physics and spirituality (and perhaps other disciplines) will merge.  Spirituality will be the new physics (or physics will be the new spirituality).

On another topic, where does hypnosis fit as a "portal" to an alternate consciousness?  Does it only lead into an enclosed closet at the back of the house or can it lead out the back door to the vast landscape of the backyard?  (I hope that metaphor isn't too disturbing).