Dream or OBE?

[gravy]

it sounds a lot like a lucid dream.

[Adun]

nop... not the same thing..
i have lucid dreams at least twice a week, they can be very vivid, but never as vivid as reality... but this one, it was as real as what i'm living right now...

[Veccolo]

LDs can be as real as RL and even more real. I know that - I had some. Don't underestimate your brain's ability to simulate stuff

[Adun]

if that's so, first time i experience it after lots of lds...

[Frank]

When the physical body is asleep, the mind's focus of awareness shifts from the physical into the non-physical. This happens with everyone. Here you are in an environment where thought equals action. Which means any release of emotion will instantly be played out all around you. So if you release a little fear (very common) you will instantly find yourself in a mildly fearful circumstance; the actual details of which naturally vary from person to person. So someone who is scared of spiders will, chances are, see some kind of spider. And that kind of thing.

A person with little regard for non-physical affairs will normally shut down their sense of conscious awareness while the mind's focus of awareness is anywhere other than in the physical. Which is why most people hardly remember their dreams except when it's to do with something particularly extreme, such as winning the lottery or being chased by a pack of giant lions, or whatever. In such cases, what usually happens is: as a person's sense of conscious awareness begins to come alive, then their protective sense of awareness immediately comes into play to yank them back to physical double quick. So all you remember is one moment you were being chased by a pack of lions and then next moment you woke up.

Some people, either through obe training or naturally, can manage to awaken their sense of conscious awareness *to a degree* whilst their physical body is asleep. This brings about the classic lucid-dream scenario. Where a person's sense of conscious awareness is alive to the extent where they can recognise they are dreaming, but they can do little else as their sense of conscious awareness is only partially there. In this situation you tend to have some powers of recognition with short-term memory ability and very limited powers of reason.

The next stage is what the original poster experienced. A lucid dream but with their sense of conscious awareness almost fully on stream. You feel you have complete awareness but there's just this essential something missing that you could perhaps fathom out, if only you weren't so confused.

The original poster asks the question, "Is it possible I was having an obe but not fully conscious?" Yes, that is exactly what you were having.

Essentially, the only basic difference between a dream, a lucid dream, or full-blown obe is a person's degree of conscious awareness. So a dream is basically an obe but with next to no conscious awareness.

The key to getting out of the dream scenario is to stop the release of emotion which is fuelling it. When I was doing this, what I'd do is ignore the dreamscape and concentrate on just one particular aspect, just a really simple aspect, and ask myself questions about it. This would bring into play my longer-term memory and increase my powers of reason. Then, once I'd got a high degree of awareness, I'd concentrate on becoming totally still, i.e. I'd stop thinking about anything. This would cut the fuel to the dream which would cause it to quickly dissipate. Then I'd be ready to do some Astral exploration.

Another aspect of the original post I feel worth mentioning is where the poster says about how the experience was "so real". So real in fact that it was as real as sitting in the physical typing a message on a keyboard.

That's how it is when you get proficient at exploring non-physical realms. Often people come on and ask, "how do you know obe is real and that you are not dreaming?" You know, simply because when you can do it right, you are as awake and alive as when you are in the physical. You can meet other people too who know exactly where they are, and you can talk to them and tell jokes and stuff, exactly like you can when in the physical. There is no difference within you. You are the same You, the only aspect that changes is your environment.

HTH

Yours,
Frank

[Lighthouse]

Thank you Frank,

Welcome Back!  This helps to answer a question I've had about a dream I had a while back.  

I'm a public speaker and a while ago gave a speech about how the context of my "negative" expreiences was what I needed in order to heal my thoughts.  I also said in the speech that when someone "attacks" us, it is because they identify the same "weakness" in the "victim" that they perceive to be their own weakness.  In an effort to elevate their own feelings of self worth, the person will attack the "victim."

Anyway, during the speech I felt a release as my eyeballs started leaking and the next night I had this AMAZING dream:

In the dream, I was giving the same speech and was sitting at a HUGE round table with tons of other sitting around it.  To my right was the guy who called me FAT on the bus every day in junior high school.  As I was getting to the part where I imitated the way he tormented me, he started becoming visibly nervous.  I started rubbing his leg and arm to let him know this was okay and I was okay, he'll know why when I'm done.  I finished the speech by saying that he gave me one of the greatest gifts anyone had ever given me because he did such a great job at making me feel so badly about myself that I HAD to see what I needed to heal in my own thinking through that experience.

When it was over, I thanked him and gave him the most healing hug I have ever experienced.  It felt so real and I was high off of it for months afterwards.

Thank you for your insight... now I know it was real and he too was healed on some level.

Kerri

[Gandalf]

I think the idea that 'dreams', 'lucid dreams' and obe/astral experiences are all in fact the same thing (but with the difference being your own sense of conscious awareness), is one of the most crucial facts to grasp about this whole thing, but which nobody seems to remember!

The reason that it is so crucial to progress is that it is the one thing that so many people get hung up on, like 'oh I was only dreaming', or 'it wasnt a proper obe, it was only a lucid dream'...aarrggh!

Then they get despondant and all progress stops.
If instead you realise that they are actually ALL astral experiences and it is YOU which causes the difference then it is possible to see things in a more positive light.

For example, now the whole process of astral exploration does not seem quite so daunting and unrealistic, as we all have astral experiences every night (dreams), we just have so little awareness... now all you have to do is try to raise it..
now you have something to work on.

This realisations makes things just that little more possible, and gives incentive.... you CAN do it. And don't get hung up on trying to catagorise it into something it isnt...

Regards,
Douglas

[Frank]

In addition to what Douglas has said, another extremely important aspect people ought to realise is when you are within the lower Astral (where people generally do their dreaming) you are within an environment where thought-equals-action.

On the physical, we get used to thinking and feeling and having our physical surroundings remain as is. So, for example, a person can sit in a chair and get a little angry about something for, say, 10 minutes and then they cool off. During which time their physical surroundings simply remain the same. This does not necessarily apply while within the Astral environment.

Within the Astral environment thought equals action.  

When I first started, finding this out took me almost 5 years of trial and error. But back then their was no Internet, well, come to think of it, there were no personal computers!

Always remember: thought equals action. So anything you think will automatically manifest all around you - and often in glorious 3D Technicolour. But this is not necessarily always a "bad" thing. Because once you get over the initial stumbling blocks and learn how to remain emotionally neutral, the phenomenon of thought-equals-action is precisely how you navigate from once place to the other; or how you get to meet people, and so forth.

Another crucial aspect is what Douglas (Gandalf) has just pointed out. People don't have to somehow "try" and obe. Everyone does it naturally while their physical body is asleep. In fact, the Mind is in a constant state of obe if you think about it. Problem is, people think that the Mind is somehow resident within the physical brain... it isn't... but conventional science has yet to catch-up on that one.

Yours,
Frank

[Adun]

great post frank, i'm no longer confused hehe[]

[Adun]

This night i had the most vivid dream(or something more..) ever, seriously, it was as real as what i'm experiencing now...
I knew i was dreaming but during it i tought a lot of times "Am i really dreaming? This is so real..". The dream happened in the room i was sleeping in, but it was diferent in some things, there was some ppl with me and, i remembered lookingd at the sky sometimes and it was weird, each time diferent, the first time i looked it was "normal" but with some red lights, the other time it was green with green clouds =I really doubt it was a "normal" dream, it was 100% real, more real than that it's impossible... is it possible that i was having an obe but not fully conscious?