Something In-Between Dreaming And Astral Projection? Body-Awareness In Dream?

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.

To be honest with you...I'm confused! :/

Perhaps you've had astral projection on the mind, and dreamt of astral projection whilst on a dream state?

I don't know?

I have similar experiences as well when I sleep. When I do it, it happens naturally, not sure if I'm astral projecting or not because everything becomes physical. I can talk to people and have full conversations, and even make friends. I can even hear, touch and feel anything. So I can see where your confusion lies. Besides I have reason to believe that these are actual worlds or alternate dimensions. Yes, some can be made by your subconscious, but don't exclude the ones that feel as if you are awake.

But one thing I have noticed, that is, you connect to these worlds by linking to the energies they give off. And its trial and error on where you will be. Once you enter into one. It becomes easy to identify what the energy feels like. This includes the nightmare ones as well. If you find yourself in a nightmare. Get out as fast as you can, and block the energy signal. I just recently reentered into one that I have experienced before a few nights ago, and it wasn't pretty.

I have been to many different worlds. Some of them are simply amazing. Others are down right frightening.

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)

u are doing well. keep practicing and remember all the different techniques and energies u come across. try now to familiarize urself with the weirding technique. inducing a strong and continuous ticklish weird feeling in the solar plexus region. get past the tickle and u will find the wave. the wave will encompass ur entire body and u will start feeling like ur hurtling at a million miles an hour internally. at the peak u should see a spark and hear one too and u should start feeling urself floating out of body in astral form.

The images you see as you fall asleep are Hypnogogic Imagery. These act as seeds for the dream, and if you can maintain awareness, you'll notice how the dream forms around them. The threshold between the hypnogogic state and a full fledged dream is the moment you acquire your dream body.

Sometime we fall right asleep, skipping the hypnogogic stage, and the dream defaults to the last thing you were aware of to use as a seed, namely being in bed. So the dream uses that memory of being in bed as the new dream seed. The resulting dream is a archetypal representation of your house or room, never perfect, often with people you associate with your house wandering around who aren't really there.