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Originally posted by TheJourney
Ok, so I had an interesting experience 'dreaming,' or perhaps in something in-between dreaming and astral projection. I don't know, but it just allowed me to have, perhaps, a realization about the nature of dreaming in general, and similarly about the nature of consciousness/personal-realities.
This morning, I went to take a nap. I maintained awareness as I was falling asleep. This time, I did not become aware of my brain's signals, as has happened a couple times recently, but rather felt intense energies in my body. These are common to feel if you can maintain awareness as you go to sleep...some sort of energies are obviously activated while you sleep.
Anyways, my original intention was to lucid dream. As I began to feel these energies, though, I began to want to use them to try to project out of my body. So, I filtered the energies through my body with my breath, and tried to intensify them. As I did this, I made some attempts to use the energy to project out of my body. I could feel myself pulling out of my body, but wasn't able to fully exit.
Eventually, images started to appear. This eventually turned into a whole environment, a 'dream environment,' that was not the actual, physical environment. Normally I would begin to explore this environment, and this is how you enter the dream. This time, however, I remained fixated on trying to astral project. The environment was there, but I stayed focused on my body's energies. After the environment was created, but I kept the focus on my body, I began to float upwards, and then float through the environment.
I do not fully know what this was. I don't believe I've ever exactly experienced it before. I never let go of the awareness of my body and its energies. Therefore, I was not in a mentally created dream-body. Yet, in my understanding astral projection is supposed to be in the 'real' environment, but this was not the actual environment that existed in physical reality, although it may have been in some ways related. I think there may have been 'people' there too, watching me as I floated.
As for what this helped me to realize about dreaming in general. I now recall that in my past experiences of consciously entering a dream, I maintain awareness as I fall asleep, and images begin to be created. Eventually, this turns into a complete, realistic looking environment. When this happens, I begin to explore that environment. In other words, I give up awareness of my body, in order to ENTER that dream. This demonstrates the nature of dreams. Dreams aren't just some 'thing.' They are a multi-sensory environment which we create, and willfully enter, giving up our true body-awareness. In the case of what happened today, the environment was apparently created, but I did not give up my body-awareness.edit on 23-9-2012 by TheJourney because: (no reason given)