So I understand sleep paralysis is a thing and yes I do experience it. In fact, what you described is something I've unfortunately experienced many times. However, the other things I am describing are not sleep paralysis, and often do get blamed on it unfortunately, so people tend to not believe that OBE's actually exist. Believe me, they do. You can learn to do this. If you try to experience the beginning stages before you pop out, you will realize there's something real happen and it will allow you to become more open minded and successfully leave your body. I've had OBE's, Lucid Dreams, Prophetic Dreams, and have seen apparitions all since childhood. My only real theory as to why this has happened to me is that I may produce more than the normal amount of DMT in my brain which allows this. After I heard about people's dmt experiences, I realized that they were experiencing something similar (but not exactly the same) as what I've been going though. And since the chemical that allows this is produced naturally by the human body, it's a logical assumption that maybe that's why I've had these experiences without the use of drugs.

The human race has a very long way to go to fully understand these things, and the nature of our reality. There are layers upon layers of existence but we are only aware of what our senses translate for us and that's not enough to have a wide enough view.

Many of my lucid dreams are accompanied by a guide who is teaching me. I've had dreams that have come true exactly as I've dreamt them. They were meaningless nonsense that seemed it's only purpose was to show me it's possible and it's real. I'm sitting on a massive diary of dreams that I suspect are prophetic and their time has not come yet, I can only wait and see. I've always had these types of dreams. This is not sleep paralysis. But I can see how people would confuse it with that.