[KeettyGlots]

Hi all! I guess, I have to explain much of my life, so you could understand my problem better.

At first - I have some problems since birth - I have congenital nystagmus, that means also nearsightedness and bad vision all of my life. Anyway, I guess I'll never have a driving license. But still I have a masters degree in programming - that is weird, but I got it

In childhood I had a lot of nightmares. My parents later discovered that my bed is located on underwater streams, and in our country it is a common belief that it is not wise to sleep on such a location. Anyway, I do not know the real reason, why I had nightmares and also really vivid dreams, and also lucid dreams (although they are very short and always in the morning). Maybe my nervous system also is not very stable and nystagmus is just a symptom and not a real problem.

So as a kid, I made a lots of weird experiments in my dreams, like trying to bring things back from dream to the real life (weird experiences, I can tell more if someone is interested), talking to my dream actors about my real life problems, asking them, if they could help me fight my nightmares and so on. Flying in a dream was – and still is – a usual thing for me. As I read lots of science fiction, my dreams are usually about the sci-fi topics. Anyway, my night is like living some other life, and 8 hours of sleep is never enough for me And also I have noticed some slight vibrations (not electrical though, just like holding a drilling machine) when falling asleep or waking up – I guess, I’ve had them always after vivid dreams. When I wake form a vivid dream and look at my white ceiling, I usually see some kind of interference waves, some pattern or something like that, it fades out after 5-10 seconds, but still makes me wonder, because I have a full conscious awareness at that moment.

I am a shy and hermit-style person, I like being on my own in the real life. I have experienced much mocking and teasing as a kid from other children because of my bad vision, I am also physically weak, and that all made my life psychologically hard. I have already used to that, actually I feel that this helps me to understand other similar people better, and I find better social contact with people like me and also with elder people because I am tolerant and like to listen to people, although sometimes I am also very selfish, I have to admit that.

Only in my dreams I feel safe and contact a lot with everyone I see, and try to be aware of what is happening, and fight my inner demons, whatever they look like.

The only thing is – I haven’t seen any scary thing in my dreams! I just feel some unknown fear from some usual objects, which get some frightening meaning in my dreams – like AC wall sockets which pull me in like with a magnet, and TVs and other big electronic devices (well, except computers – they seem to be friendly even in a dream ). Anyway, I know only one or two times when I wake up and do not remember my dream – each of my dream is very special for me. I have invented my own ways to escape nightmares and to recognize dreams, I haven’t tried to specially train for that though. I have also creative dreams, where I sing some simple song, and the in a dream it transforms in a most beautiful music I‘ve ever heard, and I become part of this music, I feel so powerful and as a part of everything in the universe, and then I wake up and it seems like I got a positive charge for the entire day, and all the day I feel like I love everyone around me. I am really grateful to God or whoever gives me this feeling – it seems like some compensation for my bad vision. I even tried to create some similar music on a computer, but it is only a shadow of what I hear in dreams.

For many years I have ignored all this stuff about AP. Only 2 years ago I read about LDs and finally I had an evidence for my parents that I am not lying when I tell that I sometimes control my dreams. I have had sleep paralysis a lot, also some feeling that I am seeing through closed eyes (but I have not any evidence of that yet – maybe I am just sleeping with opened eyes).

Some time ago I found about AP, I got curious. Now I have read some literature, something of three Roberts (Monroe, Bruce, Peterson) and Frank Keple. And now I am getting afraid. The problem is that I feel stuck in my personal life. I feel a need some spiritual development because I cannot find ways to fight my fear of the life itself. I mean – I am afraid of living normal, social life as much as I am afraid of death (also because I guess I won’t be able to have a wife and kids and normal social life anyway). And somehow I know that I have to change my awareness of the world around me to stop being alone in the world and stop living just in my dreams. But the thing is – I know, if I change my level of awareness, I may completely lose the link with reality.

I haven’t had any real psychic experiences in my life, except some precognition dreams about some not so important things in my life (sometimes I am even angry – why I could foresee that there will be no lesson at school tomorrow but I cannot foresee that I’ll get robbed).
I do not know where to go further and if I have done right reading this stuff about AP. Some nights ago I had a dream where I had and OBE and used my cellphone to shoot a photo of my physical body it seemed funny in a dream, but when I woke up, I was scared. Last night I had a LD, and I felt so safe and excited, that I threw myself into the sky as a rocket, saw clouds and stars for a moment, then woke up and again felt slight vibrations and those dream afterefect patterns on the ceiling. But I remembered that one may cause AP if flying such a way in a LD. And that is one thing I would try to avoid for now.

So my dilemma is – I do not feel psychologically stable enough to try AP, but I feel that I will not be able to find some most wanted answers in my life. Who knows, maybe I’ll not find them even in AP.

And now I am afraid of my lucid dreams. What if I accidentally turn one of them into AP – I mean, I feel so safe and excited in a LD. It is like, I am controlling dream, but I am not controlling myself. If I get into all this stuff I might attract more problems to my life than I am ready for. And who knows – maybe our supermind or subconscious knows better how to deal with our astral body (maybe it needs to do some astral work at night or something like that ) and it is a bad idea to let our consciousness interfere just because we can do that?
Anyway, for now I’ll quit reading all this stuff about AP (if only it is not too late) and hope that my supermind will give me some answer.

Thanks for reading this, and I’ll be grateful for any comments.

[ZenDers]

Hello, midix.

Wow, what a long post, but it was a most interesting read indeed.

I think the reason why you were having the nightmares as a kid was that you were already developing the astral body. Initially this involves experiences in the lower astral, which could explain all the nightmares. As you gain conscious control and lucidity these experiences should lessen. You might experience nightmares if your daily life warrants them, but no longer as a phase of your development.

I had a phase like this years ago, where I always saw monster faces when falling asleep, turning around and looking at me. Or had certain nightmares. Since then I've been mostly nightmare-free, and some of the nightmares I had actually seemed like misunderstood symbolism.

There isn't really a difference between a lucid dream and AP, except that you did not see the exit. As long as your level of lucidity is rather high it's the same, and no need to be afraid of it. If you experience a high level of lucidity I think you should trust your own feeling of safety. It might even be assurance from unseen guides that you can explore this freely, they can do that.

The other experiences probably turned out scary because you scared yourself, and that immediately reflects in your environment. Given how you hard life has been on you in general I might expect you have some phobias anyway, and this might reflect in new and unusual situations as being scared a bit by default.

If you want to stabilise yourself for spiritual growth some kind of meditation and grounding practices would be helpful. This way you do not have to fear that you develop faster than you can handle. This can also help you with emotional problems, the meditative energy work I did certainly helped with my phobias, for example. I used to be scared of all kinds of things, which has lessened a lot, and I attribute it partly to meditation and energy work.

There's nothing wrong with having conscious experiences at night. This way you can use your dreams as a powerful tool for working with your emotions and they can also help you understand what's going on in your life. Asking dream characters for help was a really good idea you had right away, but you could also simply state aloud what you want help with and see what happens.

I'm sure many people here would be interested if you were to share your experiences, I certainly would be. Are you recording them? Would certainly be worth the effort. You could also try "programming your dreams" (like writing up a question) before going to bed and then record all you experiences from that night and see if it answers your question.

Oh, and welcome to the site!

Oliver

[KeettyGlots]

Thanks for your support, Oliver.

I guess, if I could prove myself that AP is not scary or that I have some elements of outer astral world in my dreams, then I would be more peaceful. That may be a reason why I am keeping in memory some dream experience which somehow does not fit things that other people tell about dreams or that somehow jump out of my usual sci-fi dreams. Especially I try to not forget dreams that I had before I started reading sci-fi books and before I had heard anything about OBEs and APs, because those early dreams might be induced by some outer force and not just my fantasy.

There are some nights I remember best.

The first - I guess that was my first sleep paralysis experience, I was about 5 years old. In a dream I saw my room, it was dark - as it should be at night - but there was something wrong - some dark shadowy things were climbing the wall near the window. I tried to scream, I saw my parents sleeping in the bed and I thought - why they do not hear me and do not wake me up? I do not remember, how it all ended, most probably I just fell asleep again.

Then my most often nightmares - I was at home, but somehow wall AC sockets started flying out and tried to attach to me and suck energy of me (now it reminds me an episode in R.Monroe book where he tells about some fish-like creatures that attacked him) - not scary, but very unpleasant feeling, or TV set in the guest room turned itself on and tried to pull me somewhere, and I was fighting in a dream to keep where I am, I was holding at every piece of furniture I could, just to avoid being pulled into the guest room. Even now when I see many TV sets in one room in my dreams, I try to change the dream scene. I really have no idea - am I scared of electricity so much or what?

Some years later once I saw a dream about a family party, I was sitting at a table and felt boring. Then I saw a green exercise-book. I took it and tried to open it to read what is inside. Then I heard my grandma waking me up. She was in the other room. Dream scene somehow became flat and I was out of it, but I still was sitting and holding that green exercise-book. I did not want to let it go. I saw the dream scene somewhere far in my room on the wall, the table with dishes, but I was sitting in my room in my bed and completely lucid. I heard my grandma call me again, so I thought – uhh, maybe it is not good to steal this exercise book from my dream, I felt sorry and finally I opened my hand and saw how that exercise-book jumped back into the dream scene on the wall. And then I woke up finally, but for my surprise I was not sitting but lying on my back. In all aspects room seemed the same as I saw it in the dream or whatever it was, the same lighting, shadows and so on. Then I made a conclusion: “I cannot take something from my dreams because then I’ll not be able to wake up” If I had felt those scary vibrations everyone is talking about, I guess, I could think that I had an OBE, but I did not feel anything like that, no vibrations, no noises.

One night I went to bed, closed my eyes, then opened eyes – and it was morning already! I felt I slept well, but really did not feel how time passed by, like I was completely turned off. If this is how all “normal” people sleep, I wish, I had more nights like that

Then the talking to one of my “dream characters”. I became lucid in a dream, after a usual nightmare about magnet-like pulling TVs and flying AC sockets. I saw myself sitting in some park or garden and there was some unknown man, he seemed friendly. I asked “Why do I have such nightmares, is there any way to make things better?” The men did not answer, he just smiled, then he did something with his hands – I do not remember, what exactly – and dream changed to something normal. And the best thing is – I had no more such a fear in my next nightmares, and I guess, that I started to have more lucid dreams since that night. Even if I was not completely aware of my situation, somehow I was able to escape dreams by flying away or wishing myself away, without even realizing, that it is a dream. Whoever was that dream person – my imagination or not, but I am grateful.

Much later, I was about 15 then. Usual dream, and suddenly a bit of lucidity. The dream scene starting to fade away, but there was another scene over it – a big wall with some computer-like devices. I had a feeling that this equipment has something to do with dreams. There were some people working (dream engineers ), one turned at me, he seemed friendly, but a bit surprised, like I should not see that place. He did something on the device, and then I felt that I am lying on the back, but I was not in my bedroom but in some other room of my house. Then something pulled me backwards through walls, one moment I had a feeling that my leg is stuck somewhere, I looked and saw that it is a power cord of my desk lamp in a room next to the bedroom. I reached to free my leg but it was unnecessary, I slipped backwards into my bedroom through the wall and woke up surprised. I had a feeling that I didn’t even have to open my eyes – I was staring at the same wall where I just went through in my dream. Again – no vibrations or feeling that it was more real than my usual dreams, so again I am not sure if it has something to do with OBE.
One night I saw someone in my dream that somehow did not fit in. I asked: “What is your name?” He said “Yar”, smiled at me, went into some room and when I followed, the room was empty.

For some years I had a method how to change a scene during a nightmare – I pushed my dream hand into my head, and usually dream scene changed or I woke up. But one night after doing this, I heard a voice: “Don’t do that”, the dream changed to sleep paralysis, and then I had even worse nightmares. Anyway, after that night I did not use this method to escape nightmares.

And some recent ones. Three years ago I was sleeping in some campus. Before falling asleep, I heard a voice: “This direction is good, that direction is bad” and at the same time I had some picture in front of my eyes with some rotating object – at first rotation to one side, then to the other. The problem – when I woke up, I forgot, which direction was good and which was bad

English is not my native, so usually I see dreams in Latvian. But one week, after watching some movies in English, before waking up some voice said to me in English: “This lesson shouldn’t you forget: the more you wish, the less you get”. I was a bit surprised, I am not even sure that this is grammatically correct, but it sounds really philosophical

I guess, that’s almost all of my best weirdest dreams. Except the latest one, where I tried to prove to myself that I can (or cannot) get some objective information from my dreams. I already have posted it in some other forum, so I’ll just give a link here:

http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/welco ... 571.0.html
(I have two long posts in that topic).

Even if it scares me a bit, but somehow I feel better if I can tell about my experience here. I have really no people around me that I could talk to about it. And anyway, I have no proof nor for myself, nor for anyone else, that my dreams are more than just dreams, and I am not even sure if I want to prove that – this could shake me a lot (although maybe that is what I need now – a good shake to start believing myself ).

[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

[KeettyGlots]

Thanks again.

Yesterday I tried a grounding meditation as described in a following link
http://www.project-meditation.org/mt/gr ... ation.html
, but I have one problem with visualizations. It is similar as in dreams, for example I see that I am driving a car (at least in a dream I can do it ) and suddenly I am thrown out, it is someone else driving that car and I just see him. Usually this annoys me, like - hey, this was my idea about the car, and now I see someone else driving it.

So similarly when I try to do that grounding meditation and draw "gold and silver cord rising up out of solar plexus through the roof, then the sky, the clouds and past the sun" in the blackness behind my closed eyes, at some moment I lose control and then I see the scene from outside - me sitting in the blackness, my feet have roots in the ground, and the chord that stretches through galaxies to the light (also it is hard to imagine "mass of white light", the most I can get is something milky, and not exactly as a sunlight or something like that). The problem, that although I know, that that "me" in my visualization is myself, I somehow feel detached, so I guess, I might get no effect of such grounding visualizing. Maybe I should try some other approach, I guess something music related would be the best, but I haven't read about mediations where music is the key, usually music is used just to relax. Are there any instructions about some way that I could use music or sounds as a grounding meditation?

The other problem is some weird experience while I am awake. One day I tried to remember, how I feel in lucid dreams, how vivid are details and that everything seems so interesting, like I am seeing all the world for the first time in my life. So I decided for some seconds imagine that my real world around me is something new to me. I tried to look at everything as first time in my life. That was a bit hard, my mind could not keep the concentration on all the details, but I kinda liked the feeling - all the world seemed more interesting to me, I felt that I like all and everyone.

I thought - what makes my lucid experiences more interesting to me than the real world, and I thought that maybe that is some point of reference. In a LD I know that I am in a place, where my imagination took me, and at the same time I know that my "point of reference", my home is my physical reality, so I try to see and feel as much as I can like a tourist in some foreign country before going back home.

Today - I don't know, if it is just a coincidence or something related to my yesterday trying of grounding meditation - I had a bit of shock.
I was going home by bus, listened to radio, there was some "spacey" music, I thought - that is nice, sounds a bit like in my dreams. And then I felt something weird for maybe just a glimpse, like a flash, only it was very acute, I almost got nausea. It was a feeling like a child which has lost in a foreign country. I knew that I am driving home, I was fully conscious, but at the same time it felt like I did not know what and where is "home", like I have had an amnesia and have to remember something that I do not even know. After a bit of shock it came to me - it was like my subconscious has imagined that the physical reality is just some other place where I am a tourist, and tried to find the "point of reference", "home" somewhere out of the physical reality.
Have you felt something like that?
Maybe I should visit my psychiatrist
Anyway, I guess, I definitely need some grounding into this physical world or else maybe one day my subconscious will blow me away .

[VemyhemiHef]

It seems to me you're very suggestible.
Instead of grounding meditations I suggest you do some physical immersion work.
For example, find a beautiful natural place such as a park.

Find a comfy place such as a lawn. Sit on it, without shoes, if possible. Make sure there are no ants or that you're not allergic to anything. Try for a nice sunny day.
Sit where you are, and touch the grass with your feet, and your hands. Close your eyes and feel the texture on your hands. Feel the texture of the grass, the dew (if any) on it. Feel the earth under it. Feel your weight on the earth. Feel how the gravity of the body of the earth hugs your butt and makes you feel connected and secure.
Next, smell the clean fresh air. Feel the air in front, back, all around you.
Feel the way the sun feels on your skin. Feel the energy you are absorbing through your skin.
Try to combine the feeling of energy & power of the earth below you and the energy and power of the sunlight on your skin.
Take a deep breath, feel the energy of the air inside your body.

You get the picture.
If you feel too energized, find a tree, and admire it's beauty. Just look at every detail and bask in the glory of it's beauty.

By now you're probably done.

That's a way to ground that does not involve visualization. Just being.

[diegogo]

One thing I find very grounding is to actually try to feel what it would be like to BE a tree, with deep, deep roots and tall branches. It's not visualisation, because trees haven't got eyes, so whose to know what (if anything) they see, but they probably have some kind of tactile sense. And even if they don't, I just like to imagine what it might feel like to have roots and branches, and to be very, very still and move (grow) very, very slowly.

Hugging trees (oh, yes, I admit it, I'm a tree hugger!) is very grounding, as well, but if you're in a public place and you don't want people watching you, you can close your eyes and lean your back up against a tree, and feel its presence and energy that way.

Some people feel it's a good idea to ask the tree first, but I've never met a tree that objected.

[KeettyGlots]

Thanks, I 'll try those tree-hugging and grass-touching style methods, it sounds fun and natural (in every meaning of the word ).