Lumpy,
(and other newbies)
These two orientations posts will be a good start -- and perhaps they will explain to you why the stories of individual experience are not a big focus on this forum (as Ted says, they are spread out everywhere). In general, such personal accounts prove nothing objectively to anyone but the experiencer and perhaps to others who have had similar experiences. Consciousness is personal and subjective and to learn anything of significant value, you must experience consciousness directly. Reading about other people's experience provides you with only two choices: you can believe it or disbelieve it -- neither choice can produce any personal growth for you -- but it can produce expectations and beliefs that will hinder your own exploration and understanding. Bottom line: such individual stories and accounts of NPMR experiences may well be entertaining, and you may think that they would be helpful, but they are, in fact, less that useless.
You might try these two posts to start with (if you had followed Ted's advice, you would have run across these and much more. Note: in general anything you read on the MBT forum will probably mean more to you after you have read the books.
An Orientation to Non-physical experience:
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=2915&start=0 An Orientation to virtual realities:
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=3043&start=0 Tom