# Sleep and Dreams > Beyond Dreaming >  >  Dangers in the astral? and what causes them? (my own experiences)

## squirrelly

I wanted to ask for input on what has happened during my painful experiences since i dont have a lot of experience with AP and im very confused.

A few months ago:
I was in an hotel room travelling and I thought it would be interesting to AP here since there werent any distractions. I got out of my body successfully and looked around at the hotel room. It looked the same as in real life. i turned to look back at my body, but saw a drawer in bed instead. as i was reaching out to interact with it, I heard a voice yell something directly behind me (gula, golo, something like that) and felt a pain in my stomach. I got snapped back into my body and had stomach pain for ~3 days. At this point I decided i wasnt ready for AP yet and that maybe I had to learn more.

from age 7-17:
When I was a kid, I had nightly sleep paralysis which got less frequent as i aged. I dont get sleep paralysis any more. These episodes would consist of me getting paralyzed while trying to fall asleep, a shadow figure entering my room, brandishing its long fingers at me, and impaling me with them between my ribs. I did feel real and intense pain from this. Sometimes the figure would change or the situation would change, but that was the typical sleep paralysis episode i would have for years. My first OBE was during one of these episodes: I got so mad at the shadow figure that i felt myself leaving my body to try to attack it. Of course nobody believed this was anything more than a nightmare, though now it is a bit more commonly understood. I wanted to revisit this since i think its blocking me in AP and lucid dreaming.

I read somewhere that this is from entering the 'lower astral' and they are drawn to negative thoughts, but I was so young and not evil so it is difficult for me to accept this explanation. Please let me know your input, or experiences. and I'm open to providing more detail, I just wanted to keep this a bit short.

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