First lucid dream, almost astral

[Soulfire]

Congratulations!  []  It really can be such a big help when you start achieving your first real and undeniable successes.

There are varying opinions about this, but my experiences have led me to believe that dreams all occur in the astral.  DIfferent people use the word astral to mean different things, but I use it in the most general way: your consciousness (or at least subconscious in non-lucid dreams) is in an energy body somewhere in the spiritual planes and is seperated from your physical body.

Unless you are trying to get to the part of the astral that closely mirrors the physical world (often called the Real Time Zone), I would suggest you try just enjoying the experience and quit worrying if you are in the "astral" or not.  It's just an idea, but for me I find I am more successful if I don't worry about specific labels and just focus on the essence of what I want to experience or learn.  It might be worth a try as you get more opportunities to play?  

--Soulfire

[Ashy]

Actually i did mean the real time zone.  I have been refering to it simply as "going astral" without necessarily meaning the astral realm.

I have been to the real time zone consciously (meaning i can remember it) once before but only for a very short time.

Thanks for the advice, next time i will relax and enjoy the experience more. []

[Gandalf]

I agree, people get hung up on 'dreams', 'lucid dreams' and 'AP', but IMO they are all the same thing; they are all astral experiences, the only differnce is the level of your conscious awareness:

From dream level (almost none) to AP (full awareness). LD is somewhere inbetween. In effect however, everyone has an astral experience every night! However, they pass it off as 'just a dream'. If only they new what that was!
A dream is an astral experience where your immediate astral enviroment is generated by your subconscious and you act out a scenario. If you become lucid, you realise this and have an oppertunity to escape into the astral proper!

Regards,
Douglas

[clandestino]

I agree with Gandalf & soulfire's outlook on astral projection & dreams.

But its worth bearing in mind that other people see OBE's and dreams as completely seperate, whilst others believe that the experiences take place on different planes / dimensions.

just thought I'd throw that in the mix !
Mark

[Soulfire]

quote:Originally posted by clandestino

But its worth bearing in mind that other people see OBE's and dreams as completely seperate, whilst others believe that the experiences take place on different planes / dimensions.

Yes I know.  Part of the problem is in the limitations of language itself.  Different people use the same words and terms, but do not alway mean the same exact thing when they use them.  What I think of as the "Real Time Zone" (from Robert's book I think), other people call "the Astral" and somebody else might call it "zone such and such", etc.

I try to qualify most of my statements saying something to the effect of "My experiences have led me to believe..." because I know my beliefs are nothing more than that - and that they may not hold true for anyone else.  I have come to believe that our beliefs and perceptions about anything say as much about the position of our energetic focus point as observers as it does about the object we are observing.  

Standing and looking at a Pyramid from a certain perspective, it will look like just a triangle for instance. If you know something is a pyramid, and somebody describes it to you as a triangle, you can use that to figure out where they are likely to be standing in ralation to that pyramid.  I try to spend just as much time observing my perceptions and labels to learn "where I am standing" as I do perceiving the outside world.  When you start taking into account dimensional theory and other perceptual complexities, a lot of new possibilities open up.  For instance take the same pyramid and have it intersect a 2 dimensional plane.  How would it look to a person in that plane who could only "see" in 2 dimensions?  If you believe there are more than 3 dimensions, then you also probably understand that our 3 dimensional perspective is totally incapable of forming completely accurate perceptions of anything.

"My truth" is that none of our labels for anything comes anywhere NEAR to expressing the whole truth of what anything really is.  Everything IS...but the moment we add anything to the sentence after that, I believe we greatly limit our perception of its "truth"...

--Soulfire

[Ashy]

This morning i had my first lucid dream []

it was kool !!!
for the first part of the dream i wasnt lucid but when i realised i was dreaming i started repeating to myself "I will leave this dream and go astral"

It didnt take long to work and soon the dream faded away and my vision was replaced with something else (its hard to explain but I'll have a go):
it was blue sky with a fair bit of cumulus cloud (fluffy white clouds) and they were rushing towards me so that it appeared i was moving forward through a tunnel.
The centre of the tunnel (in the distance) was also the pupil of a large eye that was faintly imposed over the rest of the image.

I felt as though i could have gone astral if i had of continued to concentrate but then i opened my eyes for some reason.

It was an overall satisfying experience that has encouraged me heaps to keep trying even though i didnt go into the astral realm or beyond.

[8D]