Has anyone ever experienced seeing an orb with the naked eye?

I am very familiar with orbs in photographs but i havent been able to find any research on people seeing orbs with the naked eye.

About 2 months ago I woke up around 4 am and saw a clear/white/grey ball floating slowly around the room... I thought I was seeing things with tired eyes but when I focused and was definately AWAKE it floated right up within 4 inches of my face. It has this weird almost "fluttering" to it. I watched it for about 2 minutes then it floated off to the ceiling and went away.

Can anyone tell me about this? or has anyone experienced anything similar?

When the sensitivities are open (and that would be true in your altered state of consciousness during sleep) orbs are visible.  They are present in most meditation circles and any psychic/mediumship development groups.

I thought your account reminded me of an incident my mom told me about as a kid that happened, I believe, when she was pregnant with me. She described a hovering ball of light that came in through the kitchen window. She got scared and hid behind the kitchen door and it disappeared. Whether there was noise involved with it disappearing I can't remember and I am not sure what the weather conditions were at the time, but my mom referred to it as a "Kugelblitz"= Lightning ball. I am going to have to ask her about it again... So I looked it up and came up with some interesting info from Wikipedia... here's the link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_lightning. Pay close attention to the section about "Plasma Balls"... The way they talk about them, it sounds like the consist of electricity and certain elements.
That makes me wonder if anyone ever found out what ecto-plasma consists of. After all, spirits seem to leave electromagnetic traces at times, as well... so I guess it could have been some sort of apparition, too... I hear a lot of them happen during that time of morning when the spiritual "channels" are open...