How does conscious awareness work?

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Hat

I've been attempting to practice astral projection for months, and I've had some success. I've had dreams that seemed to be more than dreams and strange sensations and experiences that I haven't been able to explain. It's all incredibly interesting, but I've been having some issues with consciousness that are making it hard for me to feel satisfied. When i'm projecting, or am experiencing a lucid dream, It always feels like there's something missing, like there's a fog over my mind. It still feels like I'm me, but there are subtle differences in the way my emotions are processed. I seem to be more emotionally stable, but my thoughts are less clear and more disjointed, and I lose the ability to contextualize events from my waking life. If I'm astral projecting and it still feels like a dream, how do I know it's a legitimate experience?

Enough has happened that I've become reasonably certain that these are more than dreams, but I'm having a hard time figuring out to what extent.

I've read some accounts from people who've said that they had exactly the same level of consciousness projecting that they do in their waking life. How does that happen? When it does happen, is it consistent? Consciousness seems to be a fickle thing, but I don't have enough information to verify or deny this.

Astralzombie

QuoteEnough has happened that I've become reasonably certain that these are more than dreams, but I'm having a hard time figuring out to what extent.
The way I came to terms with this was to accept that all the experiences were dreams and then accepted that we have no idea of what a dream really is.  This realization has really increased the amount of experiences that would classically be labeled as an Obe for me because I almost always recognize that I'm dreaming and can then take control. 
It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.
Mark Twain

Hat

Interesting, I hadn't thought about it that way.

EscapeVelocity

#3
Excellent question Hat. You describe the early NP 'personality', with some of it's characteristics and limitations very well.

Only recently have I read about and come to realize that we are actually developing a second personality in the NP. It develops slowly and step by step. Once you realize that, you begin to understand some of the limitations you feel when in the NP.

I used to think I was just astrally 'dumb' in some ways.

Some experiences, when you go into them with a specific intent, and you accomplish that goal, it all seems to have gone in a pretty straight-forward fashion. But when you encounter some types of unexpected situations or changes in the original scenario, it's as if our intelligence drops off remarkably. We wake up thinking, Why didn't it occur to me to do this? Or that?

Maybe it has something to do with developing entirely new sets of senses and processing abilities as we investigate new realms.

Don't let it frustrate you, it's just one more fascinating area we are exploring.

Great topic for discussion! Maybe Szaxx might weigh in.
Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.
                                                          -O. Wilde