getting to the point of being able to do astral projection and OBEs willingly is not for lazy people lol
I hear that people have trouble with it. Personally, not having learned it (it just happens to me), I can't really say how to get there except from what I read or hear. I also hear that some people don't remember dreams, which feels strange to me.
Perhaps the issue is that they are trying to use their waking mind with all sensory connections as some kind of fulcrum to force LD, AP, or OOBE's?
To me, it is not the waking mind, or the waking personality, it is moving your spotlight of awareness to your sleep mind. It switches over to the awareness that is capable of LD, AP, and OOBE's. So you literally become another mind that only does these things, and is not your waking mind.
I have tested it, and most of the time I can't remember where I live, or if I own a car, or remember what I ate for dinner when operating in that format. I also don't appear capable of making the same judgement calls I make when awake. It makes it very difficult to steer or focus on something you wanted to do, because you often forget what that was when you are there. The goals, what is important to me, etc. are all offline or different. The real magic becomes the ability to transfer what you wanted to accomplish to this other mind.
I realized many years ago how separated these are when I heard someone laughing loudly while I was sleeping, and as I woke up, I realized it was me laughing, and for quite a few minutes there were two separate versions of awareness, both in my witness observation spotlight at the same time. When I settled into my waking awareness, I couldn't remember what was so funny, but I did have this faint funny feeling like it was just below the surface laughing away.
I think there are other formats of awareness or perception that likely check all the boxes for many other things considered Psi phenomena. We don't control them, we become them, and then we are them.