The astral body condition and OOBE visitors

[Rodan]

I would like to discuss two different phenomena I've been encountering lately and I was hoping if anyone else encountered this.

Do any of you ever feel like your astral body 'feels' tired? I've noticed something strange during my early OOBE's a few months back when I began. I would be able to exit the body but suddenly I felt sluggish and my eyes were beginning to close while I was out of body and then I fell asleep. This would often happen even after having had 4 hours of sleep prior to the exit. Though I will admit, I had been sleep deprived in general back then. I'm also running into issues now where I can more regularly induce the pre-OOBE vibrations but i'm having difficult separating at times. I hear a loud shriek like a computer going haywire in my ear when I try to exit forcefully. Perhaps I need to learn to become more conscious while I sleep. My mind might still be sleepy and this could be causing my astral body to be drowsy.

I'm also curious if any of you've ever had visitors. I've been having this one young woman visit me semiregularly for several months now. Some might call her a spirit but I can feel her touching me at times, as if she's there with me right now. I have a feeling she might be another human being in an OOBE or perhaps in some dream state. This tends to happen right after waking up. She doesn't seem threatening like the shadow creatures I've encountered; she seems playful and friendly. This will make me sound crazy and paranoid, but I know for a fact she's even been on my computer as I've found browser tabs and windows open that I had not touched. I do not sleep walk either. Another interesting experience, earlier today after waking up, she seemed like she was trying to approach me closely and it almost felt like she entered me while I was in the middle of the exit vibrations.

[Jhanananda]

It's interesting that you say this. I've found that with the greater awareness that I have, the more my dreams tend to take on a more realistic operating routine, as if it's trying to mimic my real life. My dreams used to be filled with objects and scenarios from video-games or films. Now these types of dreams are becoming more rare. Often, I'll even find that if I end up having a ridiculous dream, like I'm a soldier trampling through a city with armaments, parts of my environment will phase into the dream itself. I found myself in one particular dream where I was running from a pack of zombies, then suddenly, my bed phased in and I found myself laying on it while the rest of the dream continued around myself and my bed. In other dreams, I'll find myself suddenly having my fridge and kitchen phased into the dreamscape, as if my astral body had been wandering around the home as I dreamed.

Please note that I copied this quote from your other thread, and brought it here due to the common topic.

A definition of lucid dreaming that I subscribe to is the dream is often so real that one cannot often tell whether one is dreaming.  I find this is also true for the OOBE. Also, it is common to find elements of our day-to-day life within a lucid dream, including our sleep surroundings.

Your dream of running from "zombies" is a classic example of the dreamers in a collective dream domain become threatened by a dreamer becoming lucid in their domain, so as one becomes more lucid in the dream world the more of these kinds of events will occur, until the lucid dreamer learns to move away from the lower astral to higher domains.

In the case of a lucid dream that seems to have content that is not relevant to one's real world experience in this life time could be explained as a recollection of  previous lifetime.  This becomes even more observable in a dream that contains content from another period of time.  In the 48 years of my contemplative life I have had many such "dreams" and I have come to realize that these "dreams" are actually recollections of previous lifetimes.

I would like to discuss two different phenomena I've been encountering lately and I was hoping if anyone else encountered this.

Do any of you ever feel like your astral body 'feels' tired? I've noticed something strange during my early OOBE's a few months back when I began. I would be able to exit the body but suddenly I felt sluggish and my eyes were beginning to close while I was out of body and then I fell asleep. This would often happen even after having had 4 hours of sleep prior to the exit. Though I will admit, I had been sleep deprived in general back then.

This sleepiness in the lucid dream is related to sleep paralysis which are in part a product of being fatigued as you reported, but also a product of early OOBE development.  When you begin to consistently meditate to greater depth, and become more skilled with the OOBE you will find fewer such experiences.

I'm also running into issues now where I can more regularly induce the pre-OOBE vibrations but i'm having difficult separating at times. I hear a loud shriek like a computer going haywire in my ear when I try to exit forcefully. Perhaps I need to learn to become more conscious while I sleep. My mind might still be sleepy and this could be causing my astral body to be drowsy.

The loud noise upon exit from the body in an OOBE is a common experience of the astral traveler; however, different noises are heard by different people. For instance I used to here the slamming of a screen door, which was a common loud noise heard in my home as a child. I believe it is the moment that the sensory domain is switching from the physical senses to our astral senses.

I'm also curious if any of you've ever had visitors. I've been having this one young woman visit me semiregularly for several months now. Some might call her a spirit but I can feel her touching me at times, as if she's there with me right now. I have a feeling she might be another human being in an OOBE or perhaps in some dream state. This tends to happen right after waking up. She doesn't seem threatening like the shadow creatures I've encountered; she seems playful and friendly. This will make me sound crazy and paranoid, but I know for a fact she's even been on my computer as I've found browser tabs and windows open that I had not touched. I do not sleep walk either. Another interesting experience, earlier today after waking up, she seemed like she was trying to approach me closely and it almost felt like she entered me while I was in the middle of the exit vibrations.

This sounds like classic succubus activity, which can be fairly harmless to out right terrorizing. As you said it could be a "friendly" disembodied spirit hovering around you for some reason.  It could be a woman who has a physical body in the present, who has a physical attraction to you, or someone who cared for you at one time in the past, but who is now dead.

As for the belief that disembodied spirits can control the physical world, I just do not see the evidence for that in my world experience. I am more inclined to see that the spirit world can only control the physical world by influencing someone with a physical body to do something for them on this domain, otherwise to believe this would necessitate violating the laws of physics, and since I have a background in the sciences, and physics, I am thus disinclined for such a belief system.  Such a belief necessitates selective reasoning.

[Rodan]

Please note that I copied this quote from your other thread, and brought it here due to the common topic.

A definition of lucid dreaming that I subscribe to is the dream is often so real that one cannot often tell whether one is dreaming.  I find this is also true for the OOBE. Also, it is common to find elements of our day-to-day life within a lucid dream, including our sleep surroundings.

Your dream of running from "zombies" is a classic example of the dreamers in a collective dream domain become threatened by a dreamer becoming lucid in their domain, so as one becomes more lucid in the dream world the more of these kinds of events will occur, until the lucid dreamer learns to move away from the lower astral to higher domains.

In the case of a lucid dream that seems to have content that is not relevant to one's real world experience in this life time could be explained as a recollection of  previous lifetime.  This becomes even more observable in a dream that contains content from another period of time.  In the 48 years of my contemplative life I have had many such "dreams" and I have come to realize that these "dreams" are actually recollections of previous lifetimes.

This is really interesting but I'll have to correct you. I have really only engaged spontaneous lucidity twice and only recently. Most of my dreams have been non-lucid.

I'm not so surprised that I can fall into peoples collective dreams, since I think dreams themselves are a shared world much like the real one. Maybe not shared territorially, but connected...

I hadn't thought of them being my past life as I'm not too familiar with reincarnation. Do you think I could be tapping into someone elses life in the past as well?

This sleepiness in the lucid dream is related to sleep paralysis which are in part a product of being fatigued as you reported, but also a product of early OOBE development.  When you begin to consistently meditate to greater depth, and become more skilled with the OOBE you will find fewer such experiences.

Back to the meditative grind it is then! Is there some form of development occuring wherein i'm building something? I forget where I read this from, but supposedly the astral body is an energy body that is developed through meditation and cultivation of prana/qi/heat. It's why I pair my meditative practices with tummo. It seems like the meditative absorption is pooling something similar to 'mana.' It seems like a useful analogy. Please correct me if I'm perceiving this incorrectly.

The loud noise upon exit from the body in an OOBE is a common experience of the astral traveler; however, different noises are heard by different people. For instance I used to here the slamming of a screen door, which was a common loud noise heard in my home as a child. I believe it is the moment that the sensory domain is switching from the physical senses to our astral senses.

This makes a lot of sense given that I use computers every day. I don't think there is even a day that goes by that I am not sitting at it.

This sounds like classic succubus activity, which can be fairly harmless to out right terrorizing. As you said it could be a "friendly" disembodied spirit hovering around you for some reason.  It could be a woman who has a physical body in the present, who has a physical attraction to you, or someone who cared for you at one time in the past, but who is now dead.

As for the belief that disembodied spirits can control the physical world, I just do not see the evidence for that in my world experience. I am more inclined to see that the spirit world can only control the physical world by influencing someone with a physical body to do something for them on this domain, otherwise to believe this would necessitate violating the laws of physics, and since I have a background in the sciences, and physics, I am thus disinclined for such a belief system.  Such a belief necessitates selective reasoning.

I wondered if it was a woman I knew but I don't have many female friends and the few that I do have are not interested in this contemplative life style that they'd be able to project so easily and so persistently. I hope that I can begin to control my astral body soon so I can interact with her and find out what's going on. I'm not sure if she's a succubus though, I don't get sexual vibes from her. She is definitely intensely curious about me for whatever reason. The future will only tell why.

I agree with you that I'm engaging in selective reasoning. I have a science background as well but so many of my experiences made me question so much in the past year. I guess you can say, I have become too open-minded, but I still try to atleast approach things in an experimental manner. I like exploring and testing limits safely. People say astral entities cannot interact with the physical world, such as turning on lights and what not. But I'll go for it anyways even though I am still an infant in this world.

I wondered if astral entities could possess computers as well since there's a hypothesis that the astral body is electrical in nature, but I don't buy it. It sounds 'right' but it doesn't have any evidence for it beyond a few anecdotes of people being attracted towards power lines or Monroes experiments with a faraday cage. I think the astral is quite sensitive to thoughts and Monroe's experiment wherein he tries to project through a faraday cage may have seeded in his mind that he'd be stuck. The astral seems far too finicky and volatile to be dictated by electromagnetic theory.

[Jhanananda]

I hadn't thought of them being my past life as I'm not too familiar with reincarnation. Do you think I could be tapping into someone elses life in the past as well?

The variables in the immaterial domains are infinite, so there is no reason why one could not observe someone else's past life time, but we would have to ask why? It is more probably that a past lifetime experience is more likely to be one's one simply because of relevance.  There has to be an attraction.  Yes, there can be a strong attraction to a famous person's lifetime, so yes this can happen, but if we have the experience in a lucid dream or OOBE of a previous lifetime of someone with an obscure existence, then we have to ask why we would have that experience? The most reasonable answer that it is one's own previous lifetime, and often the recollection of that previous lifetime is relevant to one's behavior or experience in the present.

Back to the meditative grind it is then! Is there some form of development occuring wherein i'm building something? I forget where I read this from, but supposedly the astral body is an energy body that is developed through meditation and cultivation of prana/qi/heat. It's why I pair my meditative practices with tummo. It seems like the meditative absorption is pooling something similar to 'mana.' It seems like a useful analogy. Please correct me if I'm perceiving this incorrectly.

This seems like a basic philosophical question.  Perhaps deep meditation "builds" the astral body? But, I don't think that we are building a spirit body by developing deep meditation, but we are extending our awareness to deeper states of consciousness, and thus becoming aware of the immaterial spirit domain.

All religions have a concept of ritual practice, but few religions recognize deep meditation, and the OOBE, and I find no support for ritual practice in my contemplative experience.  What worked best for me was developing skill at depth in meditation, and in stilling the mind.  The rest of religious behavior seems to me designed to keep people donating to a pretentious and hypocritical priesthood who have always been in opposition of the genuine mystic.

I wondered if it was a woman I knew but I don't have many female friends and the few that I do have are not interested in this contemplative life style that they'd be able to project so easily and so persistently. I hope that I can begin to control my astral body soon so I can interact with her and find out what's going on. I'm not sure if she's a succubus though, I don't get sexual vibes from her. She is definitely intensely curious about me for whatever reason. The future will only tell why.

There is also the possibility of a spirit guide.  There is quite a bit of literature dedicated to the concept of a spirit guide. In the Abrahamic religions there is the concept of angels, and in the Indic religions there is a parallel concept called "deva." And, I have had many encounters with benevolent spirit beings that would fall into this class.  So, perhaps this being is a guide/angel/deva for you.  So, keeping an open mind, and observing this beings behavior is wise.  However, if at any time the being becomes violent, are aggressive, is when you can use your developing skill in the OOBE to move away from that being, if necessary. It also occurred to me that this being could be a dead friend or relative who has benevolent concern for you.

I agree with you that I'm engaging in selective reasoning. I have a science background as well but so many of my experiences made me question so much in the past year. I guess you can say, I have become too open-minded, but I still try to atleast approach things in an experimental manner. I like exploring and testing limits safely. People say astral entities cannot interact with the physical world, such as turning on lights and what not. But I'll go for it anyways even though I am still an infant in this world.

I support you in keeping an open mind, and moving forward and developing your own experiences in the immaterial domains.

I wondered if astral entities could possess computers as well since there's a hypothesis that the astral body is electrical in nature,

I am taking this paragraph in two pieces because they involve different aspects of the OOBE.

Yes, I have had many OOBEs that involved technology, especially advanced technologies on other planets being used by beings there, such as space ships and flying saucers, etc.  I even piloted such a machine capable of traveling through space/time. And, I have met a number of people who claimed to have extensive experience in the OOBE and meeting space aliens in their OOBE experiences.

After decades of daily OOBEs I have traversed many domains, and I find the experience of technology lies in domains that are close to the physical domain.  Once we move above the material domains technology is simply not needed.  So, my conclusion is technology in the OOBE is simply a collective delusion.

... there's a hypothesis that the astral body is electrical in nature, but I don't buy it. It sounds 'right' but it doesn't have any evidence for it beyond a few anecdotes of people being attracted towards power lines or Monroes experiments with a faraday cage. I think the astral is quite sensitive to thoughts and Monroe's experiment wherein he tries to project through a faraday cage may have seeded in his mind that he'd be stuck. The astral seems far too finicky and volatile to be dictated by electromagnetic theory.

The hypothesis that the astral body is electrical is the basis of the flawed thinking that pervades the literature of the early 20th century.  Yes, the charisms that we experience in deep meditation have some characteristics that suggest an electrical charge. However, if this were true, then the astral/spirit body would then be limited to the laws of physics, which would mean the astral/spirit body would not be able to exceed the speed of light; however, in many OOBEs I have traversed vast distances instantly, such as traveling to the center of the galaxy, as well as traveling back and forward through space/time at will.

There is also an unfortunate implication that if the astral/spirit body is electrical, then we could incase someone who is dying in a lead casket, or a Faraday cage, to prevent them from leaving their body, which is absurd.

In the late 18th and early 19th century there was a fascination for taking a photograph of a spirit.  This lead to a French serial murderer who killed people with a camera present to see if he could capture their spirit as it left the body.  Of course he only succeeded in killing people.

[Rodan]

I am absent-minded and forgot to ask. Is there a reason the dreamers I encounter in collective dreams attack those who become lucid? How do they know? I've noticed this being a common experience with other people who notice dream characters getting increasingly hostile when they question the nature of the dream.

[Jhanananda]

I am absent-minded and forgot to ask. Is there a reason the dreamers I encounter in collective dreams attack those who become lucid? How do they know? I've noticed this being a common experience with other people who notice dream characters getting increasingly hostile when they question the nature of the dream.

This is a good question, but I don't have a clear explaination, but perhaps a few stories to fill in the details.

Around 1990 I left my body at night and stood in the middle of the organic garden in the backyard.  It was a full moon night, so the yard glowed with light.  I looked up to see the moon i its bright beauty, and reached out to it.  I flew from the garden through the intervening space to the moon.  I then orbited the moon, and became interested in the dark side of the moon, and flew down to the surface to examine the craters.  I stood on the edge of one crater and I saw it was like a pool of water that was full of humans with very sad looks on their faces.  Theyt were clearly in misery and it reminded me of the description of pergatory.

One of these suffering people reached out to me, so with compassion in my heart I reached to the hand of that person to lift them out of their missery. Instantly a very powerful being, an angel, came at me with great speed and power and pushed me back to earth, and back to my body. In that brief and powerful encounter I realized that angel was, a famous biblical character of great strength.  My memory often fails me now, so I cannot recall that person's name.  He was a Nazarite and had taken the Nazarite vows.  Anyway, while it may seem counter intuitive, I learned that this was indeed pergatory, and he was there to protect these people who were in between lifetimes, and were working out the consequeces of their greed and selfishness, and I was not to interfere with their necessary suffering.

Another OOBE experience occured for me sometime after 2000 when I had deepend my meditation practice to the point of accessing all 8 stages of samadhi. In this OOBE I was called to the deepest hell by a being of terrible history, who was burning in the fires of hell. I stood in front of that being and embraced them filled wit total love and campassion.  I am reminded of a recent Christian devotional song that accurrately describes the experience from the perspective of the suffering one.  The song describes that experience I had from the prespective of the other individual very well.

Another illuminating story came to mind. I recall having a conversation with someone I had known for a few decades about 12 years ago.  He was an atheist who rejected the idea of a spiritual dimension.  I happened to tell him I had been traveling out of body for decades, so I knew that there was a spiritual dimension. 

He said, "Well if you can travel out of body, then come and visit me tonight."

So, I said, "I will."

That night I left my body when I had put it to sleep for the night, and I traveled to that person.  Oddly I noticed the closer I got to him the more obstickles I encountered until I was confronted by very evil spirits. I understood at that time that he was very affraid of me visiting, so the closer I got to him, the more defensive he became, so I left him alone and traveled elswhere that night.

So, to further explain your question based upon my OOBE experiences, I have been having OOBEs most of my life, so I have had many experiences of being chased by crowds of angry people.  Most of these experriences occurred for me in my early days before and at the beginning of my contemplative life. And, my explaination is most people are unconscious in their sleep state and participate in collective dream content, and for some reason these people can detect someone who has become lucid, and that for some reason frightenes them, so they become violent.

These encounters simply should serve as inspiration for the early OOBE person to leave the lower astral plane and head to higher domains until one is fully enlightened, then one will go where one is called like and angel of compassion.

[Rodan]

Thank you for sharing your experiences Jhanananda. The way the moon is depicted in your OOBE is very dream like, was it a higher astral plane? I wonder what the symbolic significance of those in purgatory being stuck in the moon is. Is there a reason the lower plane is fraught with concerns? I still want to explore the lower astral once I get my bearings around my astral body as I enjoy the thought of  'deep-sea' diving in a sense; I will be cautious though.

That atheist acquaintances of yours, I wonder if those evil spirits were aspects of his subconscious as well? I've read a little bit about islamic mysticism and they postulate many of the shadow entities and evil beings people encounter while in an OOBE are often aspects of their ego.

I have another question regarding the dream world as well. If you dream about a person is it common for them to be the actual person's subconscious or is it the case they'll always be a dream character? I know you mentioned that people engage in collective dreaming but I have a reverse sleep schedule compared to most so I'm awake when my friends and acquaintances are asleep. I'm curious if the dreams I have others are really parts of them or just figments of my imagination. I ask this because I've had many precognitive dreams since I began meditating regularly and I often have them about specific people; There are cases where I will dream about someone and then immediately hear from them (these people being those who I have not heard from in awhile). It almost feels like I'm accessing them in a way. To get even creepier, I've had dreams of people I know wherein it was almost as if I were viewing their surroundings through their eyes. I was able to confirm what it was they were doing at the time.

[Alexander]

Very interesting posts friends, thank you for sharing.

Re: the moon, it reminds me of a reference Gurdjieff made when I studied his work years ago. Gurdjieff said something very similar: that the moon, especially the dark side of it if I remember rightly, was a kind of "purgatory" domain. I believe he also mentioned something about warding over the denizens there by angels. It is interesting Jeff experienced something so similar.

Re: spirits, it reminds me of how the Greek fathers in the Philokalia referred to the spiritual work undergone by a monk overcoming the Seven Deadly Sins, passions, and fetters. There is also the famous work The Ladder of Divine Ascent which has a similar idea. I feel the term can take on many meanings, whether that be one's own personal "demons," the negative thoughts or habits we develop and must overcome, or these lower entities. It is interesting to unpack and view based on different levels of understanding.

Warm regards to all in their spiritual work =) Om namah shivaya

[Rodan]

Wow I didn't think I'd find anyone else who was familiar with Gurdjieff, I briefly found out about him when I was looking into developing awareness. He's also a music composer as well, I love his work.

The breath awareness is helping me as much as the vipassana noting is now. So intense daily vipassana noting always lead to near lucid awareness but not quite, however, it lead to me attaining more realistic dreams, as if I were living out my normal routine; nothing crazy like flying or playing as a character in a game.

Once I switched to breath awareness throughout the day as Jhanananda suggested, the dreams began to get unrealistic again but not wholly, they were still rooted in some realism. My precog dreams didn't go away either. Then last night I finally got a dream more rooted in reality than before.

[Jhanananda]

Thank you for sharing your experiences Jhanananda. The way the moon is depicted in your OOBE is very dream like, was it a higher astral plane? I wonder what the symbolic significance of those in purgatory being stuck in the moon is. Is there a reason the lower plane is fraught with concerns? I still want to explore the lower astral once I get my bearings around my astral body as I enjoy the thought of  'deep-sea' diving in a sense; I will be cautious though.

In my experience when one leaves the ground plane and flies one is on a "higher plane".  And, when one leaves the earth adn flies into space that is an even higher plane.

I don't know why people go to the dark side of the moon when they go to purgatory.  Or, it could be just how I experienced it, but other mystics have reported this as well.

While it is par for the course for a mystic to traverse the lower planes, I really would not recommend anyone go out of their way to explore the lower planes because there are many horrific experiences to be had in the lower planes.  One would want to be a very mature mystic before having these experiences.  I don't often have an itinerary these days when I go out of body.  I just go and find I am drawn somewhere.

That atheist acquaintances of yours, I wonder if those evil spirits were aspects of his subconscious as well? I've read a little bit about islamic mysticism and they postulate many of the shadow entities and evil beings people encounter while in an OOBE are often aspects of their ego.

Yes, the evil spirits were the deons that he carries with him, and we could say the demons are just the shadows of the unconscious mind.

I have another question regarding the dream world as well. If you dream about a person is it common for them to be the actual person's subconscious or is it the case they'll always be a dream character? I know you mentioned that people engage in collective dreaming but I have a reverse sleep schedule compared to most so I'm awake when my friends and acquaintances are asleep. I'm curious if the dreams I have others are really parts of them or just figments of my imagination. I ask this because I've had many precognitive dreams since I began meditating regularly and I often have them about specific people; There are cases where I will dream about someone and then immediately hear from them (these people being those who I have not heard from in awhile). It almost feels like I'm accessing them in a way. To get even creepier, I've had dreams of people I know wherein it was almost as if I were viewing their surroundings through their eyes. I was able to confirm what it was they were doing at the time.

There are a number of things to get here.  First the immaterial domains are not just dimensional, they are also temporal, so when we are in an OOBE we can travel in space as easily as we can travel in time.  And, yes, when we are in an OOBE and we encounter someone, the this is the real person, and this is as true as when people dream. And, we can indeed see and feel through someone else's body and mind.

[Jhanananda]

Thanks, Alexander, for your contribution.  it is always good to hear from you and to get your perspective.

[Rodan]

Made great progress in dream recall with breath awareness. Normally I am unable to ever recall any of my dreams 3-4 hours after having initially slept. It's only about 5-6 hours of sleep wherein I can recall them to some detail.

Today after 4 hours of sleep I was able to squeeze out two dreams from my memory before falling back to sleep. Usually it's practically impossible and my memory is totally blank.

[Jhanananda]

In 1973 I began practicing meditation in search of depth in meditation. A few months later I started practicing dream recall through journaling my dreams, and my practice was intended to develop lucid dreaming, and it worked after a few months aided by developing deep meditation and a still mind.  So, you are doing very well.  Just keep it up, because you are clearly having success.

[Rodan]

In 1973 I began practicing meditation in search of depth in meditation. A few months later I started practicing dream recall through journaling my dreams, and my practice was intended to develop lucid dreaming, and it worked after a few months aided by developing deep meditation and a still mind.  So, you are doing very well.  Just keep it up, because you are clearly having success.

Thank you Jhanananda, I greatly appreciate the encouragement. I've managed to push the onset of recall for the first dreams to 3 hours the other night an improvement of 1 hour. This will help me start to undertake the night practices that tibetan buddhists perform for dream yoga. as they wake up a few times in the middle of the night to perform various breathing exercises and concentration on the throat chakra. Do you wake up in the middle of the night or do you simply continue sleeping in a conscious state when you enter an LD/OOBE state. Even If I don't wake up a few times in the night, I think having the dreams manifest in my memory far earlier in the night would facilitate lucid dreaming as it would lead to an increase in the number of recalled dreams, not to mention this is a sign of my consciousness seeping into my sleep, greatly increasing the chance to become lucid.

[Jhanananda]

Good to hear from you again, Rodan. I find whenever I remember to meditate during the sleep cycle, I always have a profound experience.  Otherwise, I fouond once one has arrived at lucid dreaming meditation techniques are of no use, because one has gone beyond them.  So, when I sleep at night I leave the body and don't come back to it until it is time to rise in the morning.  At that point I meditate.  And, when I say I meditate I don't mean that I am doing a cognitive meditation technique.  I just observe the breath until the mind stills, then I allow the stages of samadhi to unfold naturaly.