[ZenDers]

Hello, midix.

Sci-Fi can be a good stimulant for symbolism, some of my dreams have been Sci-Fi as well. In fact, Sci-Fi has so much of the concepts of OBE in it, just as fantasy novels do. The same things people always wanted to do - fly, teleport (instantaneous travel), see far-away places, see into the most miniature structures, find the stores of all knowledge. It doesn't matter if you represent these things to yourself as a jetpack, a teleporter, Spock's sensor console, an electron microscope and an ultra-sophisticated computer, or if you chose to ride a broomstick, levitate, wish yourself elsewhere, look through a magic lense and go to a library. All of these are your personal preferred symbols. Others more open to OBE literature or accounts of Eastern Yogis would expect things like Monroe describes, and so on.

So, don't discount a dream because it's Sci-Fi. Just look for the meaning.

I think the sucking AC sockets are a very clear symbol for entities or people that take your energy. Electricity and energy are synonymous for many people. You presented it to yourself from a purely functional point of view, you just reversed the role of the sockets which usually provide energy.

TVs could be a metaphor for any kind of gate. In children's books sometimes TVs are portals you can enter, there are many TV series that have at some time, for example in Halloween episodes, employed the little story of somebody being sucked into their TV and spinning an amusing or scary story out of it. Similarly the symbol of Holodeck in Star Trek, if you know it. Robert Bruce uses a technique where he pins a poster with a scene on his wall. Then, if he finds himself out of body and the poster is there he tries to go inside and this transports him to an astral reality related to the poster in appearance.

Similarly, a TV scene could really be a gate into some astral realm. Before you enter it it's like looking at a moving picture. I had something like this just this weekend - I exited a dream because I became lucid and could suddenly watch the dream scene from outside, it was a like looking through a big hole into the dream.

The fact that you are sucked into it might be your own fear. You just don't like any kind of influence from others - this could be teaching entities or not. But since you feel the influence and resist it by default this turns into a scary experience where the TV tries to suck you in, no matter if it originally was a good or bad influence. While developing your astral senses it might not be possible to discern yet which is the case.

One example of this is that many people become scared of their own astral double, or even feel it is evil, when in reality it is nothing but part of themselves. But in that moment it is something unknown, alien and through the fear of the unknown quickly a situation develops where people are afraid of what is just themselves. Happens almost to everyone once, but in my case for example I was lucky to find some clues that led me to find out it really was my own astral double.

Vibrations need not be scary or present at all. I have experienced several variations over the years, all spontaneous, from a very soft energetic tingle that separated from myself like electrically charged mist, to the roar like water rushing through thousands of channels, to being sucked up out of my face or up a tunnel. More often than not I got scared and aborted, other times I just drifted out and about and did not even notice that as an OBE. There's a lot of variety in the experience. It's certainly not always dramatic.

The dream character that helped you with the nightmares could have been a guide. The fact that he didn't talk to you might have just been because you had not yet the ability to decode or notice what Kurt Leland calls feel/think. While you can speak to dream characters you might not be able to guides or out-of-body beings for a while. Many times I had dreams where somebody else was present, I talked to them and they just did not answer at all. At other times I had dreams where somebody told me a whole lot and I could not recall a single word. This has over time now changed into me recalling short sentences, and maybe a bit more now. We have to learn how to talk and understand in nonphysical reality, it's a skill to be mastered and happens over time.

I like the part about the dream engineers. It's interesting that this resulted in an OBE experience - the fact that you were lucid enough to transcend the dream environment led straight to an etheric or astral OBE - to give you a chance to combine your lucidity with training for an OBE, or learning what it feels like to be in a particular body, to learn more about it.

The part about putting your hand into your head is interesting. Nightmares sometimes play the role of releasing negative emotions. You kind of bypassed this whole process by finding a trick to get out of the nightmare. This does not seem that helpful - the processing cannot take place. It would be more helpful if you more consciously worked with the emotion or what needs to be processed instead. So - conscious control is good, but you still might need to find more appropriate responses. Work on overcoming the fear when you are lucid.

I remember reading "The Dream Game" by Ann Faraday. She cites the Senoi, an Asian people who value lucid dreams very highly in their culture. They train specifically for challenging whatever is attacking them in their nightmares, overcoming it and asking it for a present. This seems like a helpful way to deal with such situations, if you can pull it off.

Phew, that took a long time to write!

Take care,
Oliver