There’s a really well written article I just found on the website I go to once in a while called Astral Voyage.  The article is entitled “Astral Projection/Dreaming/Lucid Dreaming”.  I stumbled upon it when I was doing a google search for articles pertaining to differences and similarities of Lucid Dreams to Astral Projections.

http://www.astralvoyage.com/projection/difference.html

April 30, 2003
It’s my opinion that astral projection, dreaming and lucid dreaming are intertwined in the same locale. The difference between dreams, projection and lucid dreaming is what is at the controls (the conscious mind or the subconscious mind). Even if you get the vibrations and roll out of your physical body, you will end up “dreaming” very quickly if you don’t know what you’re doing. People say, “I failed because I fell into a dream.” Well, no you didn’t, you just gave up conscious control to the subconscious mind which makes the experience totally different! The subconscious mind has its own agenda and communication system.

Your conscious mind is concerned with the here and now. Your subconscious mind is concerned with processing life events, working out soul lessons, attempting to bring past and future events into your consciousness, and a bevy of other things. Subtle realm experiences, dream or otherwise, get “fantasy like” because again, a person has lost conscious control. The same exact thing happens in the astral if you don’t use clarity statements. People just don’t realize what the astral is like (during a conscious projection). Yes, it can be as lucid and clear as the waking state, but you can slip into the Alice in Wonderland effect (subconscious control) faster than you can shake a stick! In fact, control can be lost in less than a minute. I have rolled out of my body, gotten half way down my stairs, totally lost conscious control, and slipped into fantasy land immediately. Only through sheer will power, and constantly directing my focus towards my goal, am I able to maintain a lucid state. Published astral projection author, William Buhlman, also states that clarity statements are a must for maintaining lucidity and control.

The astral is a malleable place where form follows thought, but don’t just think it follows “conscious” thought. It also follows subconscious thought. Many an advanced projector, including the famous Robert Monroe, would marvel at how things would materialize (or that they would be transported to an event or place) quicker than they could form the desire consciously. That is how fast and strong the subconscious works!

An example of an astral dream is if you are working on a lesson. Many lessons cannot be worked out on the physical plane because you wouldn’t be able to handle the issue over and over (or even once), whereas you can handle fairly severe scenarios in the astral. For example, we assume all beings not recognizable, such as subtle plane entities, are “evil.” If you dream of a freaky looking entity then you’ll experience the fear emotion. Fear is generally the first reaction, and often the only reaction, to this experience. Time and time again I was afraid of what I didn’t recognize, until I learned to give it a chance, and even send it love. Only then did it morph into something I recognized and that is, the very same life energy that I was. I doubt I’d find it all too pleasant to find some scary looking being in my bedroom at night in the physical, but I can endure it over and over in the astral. It seems like a “crazy” dream, but it is your subconscious mind nudging you in the direction of total awareness and unconditional love.

Dreams can often come true. A common name for a psychic of this sort is a “sleeping psychic.” If we did nothing but remain in our bodies during sleep then this would not be possible. People have even met their friends and loved ones in “dreams” and both parties remembered the experience. In so called dreams, messages are given and futures told.

People write me in frustration that they can’t consciously project. Well, why not instead realize that you project every night and tackle it from a different viewpoint? Why not learn lucid dreaming (or lucid projection) and bypass the whole nonsense of “vibrations and rollout?”

Remember, you project every night you sleep. All we’re doing here is trying to get conscious control of the subtle state.

Anne

Explaining that whatever is at the controls determines the experience is a different way of saying what I talk about when I say that what differentiates the experience is YOU, not “where” or “what” you’re experiencing. If you’ve read my own articles here on UB, you’ll know that I try to internalize the experience instead of externalizing. Dreaming, Lucid Dreaming and Astral Projection aren’t something you do, they’re a state of mind you are. Anne tells that beautifully when she talks about either having the conscious or subconscious mind in control… and that’s really a “bang on” explanation for it.

The inclusion of ideas from Buhlman and Monroe are nice. It shows me Anne’s ability to perceive the bigger picture and the ability to pick out the ideas and thoughts that most resonate with her from any particular person/author… which is refreshing to see.

When she talks about “sending the entity love” I believe this is a simple metaphor (and a well used one by a lot of people, some people might call this “sending PUL”, although I don’t think it needs to be so meticulously defined) for accepting what you experience and don’t be afraid. “Sending Love” simply means to go out and experience things with no desire to harm and all the desire in your heart to help others through no gain to yourself.

She does talk about “remaining in our bodies”, and my experiences directly conflict with this idea, but I can definitely support the vast majority of what she talks about. It’s a great article. Hopefully you’ve read it through with as much gusto as I did. I believe it’s easy for people to confuse WHAT they’re experiencing due to that Conscious/Subconscious switch. A fully conscious experience (aka: ASTRAL AWARENESS) will feel entirely different from a fully subconscious experience (aka: DREAM AWARENESS). It’s this separation that causes the confusion in people and is what I believe to be the very source of much of the division between the non-physical community at this time.