Hi Gailfan:
I'm feeling a bit puddin' headed this morning, but so loaded up with caffiene I can't sleep.... so I'm gonna try to type instead.
Seems to me you did awfully well.
To be honest, I don't think 'alpha' is a bio-feedback 'official' tag for the state the 'alpha static' puts you into, or that you'll drop into without it after you learn to recognize what it is. The state you describe sounds, as lantern observed, more like a theta state (official signed sealed and deeeelivered label by the scienceguys). I'm not certain I'm right about this. I do know there's a difference in the alpha state I experience when I use the Silva methods, and the (what I believe is) theta state I am in when I experience the sorts of things that rhyme with what you describe.... usually arrived at through deep meditation with intent, or a particular other intention that requires me entering through that sort of state.
I don't know whether any of this is making any sense.
As for the third eye, I don't know how everyone uses it or how they open it, how they can know when it's opened. I can feel it. I can tell it to open and feel the puckering sensation I described to you.... and for me it has to be open to do the kinds of healing work I do.
You might just keep 'telling it to open' and listening to the feelings in your forehead for a while and see whether it begins to be something you can detect. But I don't use alpha or theta to open it.... there's another kind of thing I do that's difficult to describe.... sort of putting the mind into an out of phase place, either for an instant, or for as long as I want....fully alert, enhanced consciousness, deep listening, projecting.... but not remotely similar to alpha or theta.... I use that for dowsing and pain-killing work.... and I've found most people who are into such things don't understand what I'm talkikng about when I describe it. I ain't got a clue what that one is all about.
Anyway, just throwing in my ramblings because I love this thread you've started and life's too durned short to be sleeping anyway.
Glad for you, glad for your 'alpha', glad for your post about all this..... genereallly, just glad, I is.
Jack