Lesson 4, Dreams and AP

Here we are, two months into this course of study. I hope some of you are feeling more comfortable with all of this, the class, the lessons and the act of projecting. I want you to start thinking about that, because I will be asking for your feedback soon, and I expect to see it.

If you have not noticed by now, the lessons are being written in a particular way, 1/2 how to and 1/2 theory and explanations. Did you all notice that? Hope so, because we will be dealing with Lucid Dreams today, as well as talking about fantasy and fictions as places of travel.

Tally HO! Onward.....

Lucid Dreams

First I guess we should define a lucid dream. I know I have given this to you many times before, but let's go over it one more time for those who have missed it or forgotten it.

A "Lucid Dream" is a dream in which you wake up and can act in the dream as though it was the "real" world. HA! Caught you, didn't I? Gave a different definition to see who was paying attention, but really, this definition is exactly what a lucid dream is. It's one in which you remain in the dreaming state and your mind comes to full consciousness.

This is why lucid dreaming is so similar to projecting that many experts don't distinguish between them. This is also why writing down your dreams is important to being able to AP. Remembering a dream, and having a lucid dream will help you to AP with confidence and control. Considering that control is critical to the AP experience in and of itself, this can only help you in the long run.

The first thing that will help you remember your dreams and help you begin to have lucid dreams is telling yourself that you will remember them. Just that act, saying "I will remember my Dreams tonight" will start your mind thinking about doing as you are asking it to do. So, telling yourself to remember is the first step, what is the second step?

Writing your dreams down is the second step. Putting a notepad near your bed, so that it is the first thing you grab when you wake, reinforces this idea in your mind and subconscious. Since the subconscious mind operates on a symbolic level, the symbol of the notebook hammers home the fact that you want to remember your dream.

The third step in this process is to wake in the dream. Most people will do the first and second steps with little trouble, but this third step gives most people the problems they have. Waking in a dream is a hard thing to do. Most people, instead of waking in the dream, wake in reality. That's okay, it happens sometimes. This indicates that you realize that you are dreaming and you are taking steps to start to become conscious of the dream and interact with it.

Dr. DeGarcia suggests that instead of telling yourself that you should wake, that you should set up a set of triggers that when you see these triggers in your dreams, you will come to consciousness in the dream. A set of circumstances and visuals that you see in your dreams that will tell you that you are no longer awake and with your body. To quote Dr DeGarcia:

"YOU WANT TO CONDITION YOURSELF SUCH THAT, WHEN YOU SEE ODD THINGS OCCURRING IN DREAMS, YOU WILL USE THESE ODD CIRCUMSTANCES AS A TRIGGER TO TELL YOU THAT YOU ARE IN THE DREAM WORLD."

So, sitting down and coming up with a mental list of things that you know are odd in your dreams, and recurring themes, and using those as a springboard to wake in your dream and become aware of the life you lead when you are awake is necessary. For this, you need to have a journal so that you can look at it and find an object or event that occurs often in your dream is necessary. That's the first thing.

The second thing is to "program" yourself to be able to change your dream. This can be done with affirmations or positive reinforcement. Simply stating that you CAN wake in your dream, that you WILL wake in your dream and that you CAN go anyplace and do anything when you wake yourself as you are going into a trance can help this process along immensely. Writing this down 5 times each every day can do wonders on the psyche.

Changing the dream is a critical step. Once you see the new environment you wish as having replaced the environment you are in, this is a major step forward. It is not a trivial one, either.

Let me digress for a bit so you can see why I am saying that changing your dreams is not a trivial step. Let's talk about the Will.

On the Astral Plane, Will is everything. Your sense of worth, your drive to accomplish, your image of yourself is all a reflection of your Willpower. To change anything on the Astral Plane is a hard thing to do. The general rule of thumb you have to obey on the Astral Plane is this: (and I will give very few rules of the Planes, but this is one of them) The stronger of two wills, wins. This means that if someone comes up to you and shoots you with an arrow, sending it hurtling through your body and he sees you hurt and falling, no longer a threat, and you see him as having missed with the arrow completely, the one who knows the hardest that what they see is true, will have their 'vision' happen.

If that is you, you are fine. If it's him that has the stronger will, then you will be hurt.

However, leaving your body and knowing that you are out of your body seem to supercharge the Will. It's not that your will gets any stronger, it's that any little stray thought will manifest quickly and completely on any other plane than ours.

Here's an example of this from my own life:

Once upon a time there was a stone. It was a fused piece of sand from a desert someplace that had been struck by lightening. Some lapidary someplace had taken it and sliced a "window" on one side of it, so you could see the inside of the stone. It looked really cool.

One day, a friend of mine saw it, and looked into it. Three hours later we were getting a little scared about her since she had not come back from the journey that the stone had taken her on. I went after her.

Turns out there was another world that could be reached by the doorway of the stone, and that window. She had APed there and was running around having fun. She was invisible and laughing and talking, but none of the inhabitants could do anything to her. One of the denizens of that plane (called the Bird-world) came back through that portal to here.

To make a long story short, she saw a lot of sights here, and they did not believe her when she got back home (I say her and she, but they had no sexes, their world was based on sexless creation). She appealed to me to help her prove my world to the rest of the inhabitants.

I sent a small wisp of energy into that portal, not directing it in any way, only enough to fuel a "hope" spell, and not very well at that. What came back was an entire world changed. There were now male and female beings on this world, all my doing. I had completely changed their entire civilization in less than an hour their time.

Many many things happened there, to me, to them, and to us. I learned from them and they learned from me. Never again would I despise the Christian God, since I was now a God along that level to these people.

This is a short example, and I don't expect you to take my word for it. However it has been my experience that willpower is the fuel for everything on the Astral Plane and other planes. "As you believe, so it is."

But it's not just a question of belief, or faith, or hoping, or anything else that leaves "wiggle room". It's knowing. A complete utter knowledge that what you want to happen is actually happening. There can be no room for doubt.

Here's another example:

(As an aside, if you see holes in some of my stories, you may safely assume that I left them there on purpose.)

Once I had to violently confront another being and fight her to get her to release something that was mine. She had stolen it from me. Her will was trained as she had been a priestess in life. I sent my allies toward her one at a time, hoping that she would be overwhelmed and worn down by all of us. However, this tactic did not work. One by one she blasted my allies into critical injuries.

My turn came, and I saw a vision of me hitting her multiple times before she had a chance to react. I can only assume that she was doing the same thing to me. She wound up with multiple fatal injuries to her body in various locations, but I had doubted that this was even happening only for a split second. I wound up with a major injury on my left thigh where some of her magick had gotten through my shields and hit me.

To make a long story short, I managed to defeat her, get back what she had taken, heal all of my allies (although one nearly died) and reduce her to unconsciousness (permanently). When I got back here, I was feeling really ragged out. And my left thigh had phantom pain for several days later.

(Please forgive me, but I did not keep a journal of any of this. However, most of the occurrences are locked into my brain. However, some of the details may be skewed or otherwise messed up. See the importance of using a journal?)

All of this occurred in the Astral Plane.

But that split-second of disbelief, of not knowing that what I wanted to happen was actually happening cost me. I was more tired than I should have been, and I was injured. When I knew that I was the one that controlled all of the environment and the battle, I was fine, but when I doubted it, I got hurt. So in a sense you can say that I hurt myself.

"If you think you can, you can. And if you think you can't, you're right." --Mary Kay Ash

We will eventually speak on beings on other planes and how to interact with them, but that is not this lesson.

Where was I? Oh, yes, Lucid Dreams. So, looking at the importance of the Will in AP and Dream Traveling, one can see that it is important to remember your waking life while you are dreaming.

Until that time, you are believing and thinking that you do not have any control over your environment at all, which you won't have. Waking in your dream will show you that it is all fantasy and that you can control the shape the dream takes around you.

One thing I must stress is that dreams are personal. The symbolism of a dream is made up of the symbols in your own unconscious mind, since the subconscious uses a language of symbols. So, some of the inane things you see in your dream at night may mean something significant to your subconscious that your conscious mind may not be able to grasp.

For instance, seeing a fish in an AP or a Lucid Dream situation does not necessarily mean what the "dream books" tell you that it means. Each symbol is personal. The "dog" in many of those interpretation books means a faithful guardian. But if a dog bit you when you were little and it traumatized you to the point where you won't have a dog as a pet, then the interpretation of a faithful guardian will probably not be a dog. It may wind up being your stuffed animals. A dog, for you, would represent a danger of some sort, possibly one that could not be reasoned with.

I have seen a lot of those "universal symbol" books that tell you what everything means in the dream world. To date, I have not seen one that is more than 40% accurate on any interpretation of a symbol. This is pretty common across the board for those who use them. However, if you believe that the book is accurate, then it will become so. You will program your subconscious to accept a dog as a guardian rather than as a monster.

It's that programming of the subconscious that the Dream and AP journals are for. They get your mind into the state it needs to be in to do what it needs to do. It is bypassing your conscious mind, and all the thoughts of "I can't, I won't, it's too hard" and making the changes where it will matter, in the subconscious which only accepts what is put in.

If I were to liken your mind to a computer, I would say that the Superconscious is the processor of the computer, the one that speaks a structured language that it understands, the conscious mind is the interface of the keyboard, the mouse and the desktop and icons on the computer, and the Subconscious is the disk drive.

You can put anything on the disk drive, and the drive will accept it and try to execute it when the time comes. The Processor will reject it if the program is not in a language it understands, and you can't always make changes to the program in the desktop environment. You can't always change the Subconscious mind consciously, and the Subconscious mind will attempt to run anything that it has, no matter how odd or impractical. The Superconscious makes the decisions on what makes sense and what is nonsensical. So we sometimes have to bypass the conscious mind and make the changes directly to the Subconscious through the medium of dreams and subliminal tapes and such.

Now, since we are talking about dreams and dream work, I will discuss why all dreams should NOT be Lucid Dreams.

Dreams are the Subconscious mind's way of processing the information that has come in to it during the day. It is a way for the SC to take all the events and store them in a pattern of association that it can recognize and use. This is why some associations make no sense, because the SC related it in such a way that it can understand that our logical portions of our mind may not see the connection.

Dreams are also a way for the SC to review important events. Everything you see, hear, smell, think, do and feel are processed and stored in the SC. Some events and information jump up as important and tell you that they are important, while others need to be viewed in context of other events to understand that they have an impact on the situations.

The SC does this while you are asleep. It views all those events during the day and begins comparing events to similar events and it looks for patterns that can indicate an event coming up.

The SC also works on problems while you sleep. How many of you have held a problem in your head while you were drifting off and when you woke up had the answer to that problem? I know I have had that happen to me on more than one occasion. This is the Subconscious at work, thinking through the problem with all the resources it has and coming up with likely matches to the current problem.

When you AP or Lucid Dream, these activities are put off by the SC until you are back in your body, then it works on these activities. So, if every dream is a Lucid Dream and it turns into an AP session, it has no time to do these critical functions.

I'm going to offer you another piece of advice here. "If it affects you, it must be true." Lucid Dreams seem like the "poor man's OOBE" but they work and are just as true as separating from your body. These dreams are affecting your psyche and your mind, and as such are just as important to your OOBE activity as projecting. There is no difference.

Let us now discuss Fantasy/Fiction realms.

These are worlds that you can get to with AP that never existed except in someone else's imagination. The books you read, the movies you see, the stories you hear, are all examples of this kind of world.

I'll use the Star Wars universe as our example and the "universe" that I'll cite different specific illustrations in.

Here is an entire universe that was created in the mind of George Lucas. Others may have contributed to the overall shape, once the bare bones were fleshed out by him, but no one else is responsible for the creation of this universe except George Lucas.

Once he dreamed up this world, it existed. Remember how I was saying "be careful what you think" a little earlier? This is that caution manifested. George thought this world up, and for him it existed and others could then interact with that world. But once he made his movies and wrote those stories, that world moved so much closer to ours that we get a sometimes spontaneous crossover between our world and theirs.

For example, there is now an entire role playing game designed around the Star Wars universe. As a result of that, we can now interact in those places that before were only in the movies, create entire story lines, and start to develop another universe there. The characters we create in those games become real. Since we are the animating agent, we are the ones who give these people life.

This sounds like a power of the Gods, and it is. Here we can make an entire universe from nothing more than a few stray neurons rubbing together. We can trash entire civilizations and races, build some up to the point of almost godhood themselves, teach them what is going on in reality and show these people that we care and are all powerful.

It's that Will thing again. As you believe it, so shall it be. If you feel the world around you and know that you are there, then that fiction becomes real. Someone else's fiction becomes real because they believe in it, and it becomes more accessible to us the more people believe in that same fiction.

So, how real is the Star Wars Universe? Well, something like 20 million people watched the last movie to come out, and of those who watched it, I would guess something like 3-4 Million truly believe it. Compare that to the current population of the Earth now, all of whom are convinced THIS world is real, and you can see that it's not real enough to worry about the Millennium Falcon coming out of hyper space anytime soon.

This separation between fictions and our world is good, because we have enough problems with keeping our mind on what is going on here to worry about what is going on in another universe. However, some of us have problems there too.

For instance, by creating a persona there in those fictions, or by creating that fiction in the first place with your thoughts, you are now responsible for them, so long as you are associated with that fiction. If you don't allow them to move on and to begin to develop on their own, then you are that world's god and you are directly responsible for everything that happens there.

Even a few stray words can have profound impacts on one of these fictions, because of your thoughts. Here's another example.

I chanced to find a world that was pretty medieval at one point. I thought it was barbaric and completely unredeemable. I was about to move on when a companion who was traveling with me (people with you happens quite a lot, and I'll talk about that later) mentioned that this world would make a wonderful setting for a set of stories.

I decided to stay and look around.

Looking around I discovered that it was somewhat more barbaric than I thought it was. There were petty cruelties that were inflicted by the ruling class on those of "lower" social status, and outright torture to get something desired from relatives.

In the case I witnessed, the sister to the local prince wished to marry her sweetheart and the prince did not want her to. He had a stone block suspended at the ceiling (about 3000 lbs or so) with restraints hanging from the underside of this stone block. He chained her there, and counterbalanced the stone with another that was almost as heavy, but not quite, about 2 lbs difference or so. So that while she was there, hanging by her wrists and ankles, any movement at all made the stone drop toward the floor. She was naked and the dungeon was cold. To make matters worse, he chained her lover directly below her. The prince left them there all night. HIs goal was to make her choose between killing her lover and herself, or remaining absolutely still while cramps and such set in. He hoped to force her to realize that she did not love her lover, but that she was selfish in nature and wanted to live more than she wanted him.

When I found out about this, I froze the stone in place so that it did not move at all, warmed the chamber so that they did not freeze or suffer hypothermia, and gave them blankets so that they were warmish. They were not comfortable, but I saved them both from almost certain death or grave injury.

Through the next few weeks, I helped them escape this hideous place and made them vanish to another portion of the world. They were safe.

A child I know demanded a bedtime story around this time, and since I had been thinking about Caliah and Pon (pronounced Ca leigh ah and P ah n) quite a lot at that time, I made up a story about them raising horses and the fire that occurred at one point where about half their stock was killed. I made it a story about triumph over tragedy and this child was satisfied.

Imagine my horror when I went back to visit them and found out they really had a fire that wiped out half their herd. Here I am, wanting to entertain someone I knew, and I was responsible for the deaths of over 30 fine animals who had a long life before them, as well as the financial loss suffered by my friends. And I did it. That I did not intend for it to happen was immaterial, it did and I was responsible for it.

This is an example of how a "fiction" can get away from you sometimes. There are multiple examples I can give you on this one from my experiences, but let me take a shot in the dark on this and see if you have similar experiences.

Have you ever been reading a book, a really good book, and some plot twist in the book jumped out at you and said "HERE I AM!!!!" completely spoiling the book you were reading? That is an example of what I am talking about. These places have a life to them, the people in there are real, and the more you identify with a character in a book, the more you will start knowing what they do. You will know more about their background, their actions, what they are thinking and so on, whether or not the author tells you what is going on in their head. You now have a connection of the heart, through the Astral Plane.

Well, it is possible to go there while you are projecting. You can do this one of three ways.

1) You can go there in spirit form. You will be a dispassionate observer, invisible to everyone, able to interact to a limited extent there. It will be like you were in the best Virtual Reality environment/movie you have ever heard of in your life.

2) You can create a body there, and interact through that. Mind you, when you are not in this body that you create there, it will continue to function on its own. But by doing this kind of action, you will be interfering directly with whatever story there is.

3) You can "possess" a person who is already there. To all intents and purposes, this is like the classic possession of bad SciFi and Horror here. You will take over their body and feel what they feel, hear what they hear, know what they know. This can happen in one of two ways:
a) "The Rider within" which put simply, you take no actions and are not the one in primary control of the body. You are a passenger and an observer, nothing more.
b) "The Exorcist" is where you completely take control of the body and do everything you wish to do in it. The "owner" of that body has no control over it, and in most cases won't even remember the times you are active in their bodies. Be careful. You could wind up making someone that is innocent take the blame for a lot of things you do, so it is usually best if you only observe the environment.

So, how does this pertain to AP? Good Question. If your mind is what is controlling all of these environments, then your Subconscious mind is the device you are using as the tool for that control. Your Subconscious has the Will residing in it. The Superconscious usually has to have something proven to it before it can settle down and start believing something, but the Subconscious will accept things on faith, because it has a better connection to the Astral Plane and the IS than we normally do when we are walking around. Your intuition and your inspiration comes from the Subconscious. So learning to meditate and harnessing your Subconscious mind is an important first step in all of this. After all, if a knife is not sharp, it won't cut. Same thing for the Subconscious mind.

Stray thoughts, actions put in the back of your mind, a character or a body left on auto pilot can be bad or good, depending on the situation. However, you must do something with those creations in these fictions. You can't just let them go and have nothing more to do with them. If you do, they will get further and further out of control, until they are nothing more than a shell or a vegetable. So use this method responsibly.

Having said that, let me talk a bit more on conscious meditation. The meditation I spoke on a while last lesson where you are meditating while doing some other kind of activity.

I know that this kind of meditation seems like bootstrap levitation, but it does work. Once again it's not the believing that makes this work, it's the knowing that is important.

What I am going to tell you about is a technique that I use. It's where I "throw my mind out of gear" and keep doing whatever I'm doing. It uses a type of remote viewing and a doppelgänger effect.

Remember when I was talking about creating a body? That's the doppelgänger effect in action. Basically you believe a body around you in whatever environment you find yourself in, and voila, you have one. Interacting this way can teach you a lot, but at times you want to come home to your body here and continue to live, while visiting this specific world off and on for a while.

With a body there, you can snap back there anytime you choose to. However, while your soul is not there, that body is on auto pilot. It will act on it's own, and do things on it's own. How do you solve this?

Consciousness in not limited to only one time/place. This is some advanced theory which I will touch briefly on here, and explain in greater detail later. If your soul is an infinite being, and you divide an infinite being in half, what do you get? Two infinite beings. You can leave, consciously, a portion of yourself in the other body, to allow you to come back to it and to keep it acting in a moral fashion. There are times when you do this however, that you will feel a tug at the back of your head telling you that something is going on in that other world. This technique not only works for fictions, but also for might-have-beens and also other planes of existence. Anyplace you can AP to, other than this plane, you can do this in.

So, the trick is to not think about it too much. Just like if you think about shields too much and keep having to rebuild them, they keep falling, if you create those shields and don't think about them again except to know they are there and keeping you safe, this is the same technique. Knowing is the trick, not thinking.

It's the same with this kind of meditation or "sending". You send your will into another place, tell it to do things, and let it do it. If you think about that sending, you dismiss it again.

Okay, so what do you do with the body after you are done with it? You de-create it when you are finished. You take the body apart like you made it, and let it's parts go back into the æthers you took it from. Nothing more. However, you can simply morph your appearance on another realm into that of the people you wish to look like. To do this, you simply envision yourself as the form you wish to be. It can be anything from a person, to an animal. Just remember that you will be limited to the new form's mode of transport while you look like it. Who would not question a tree walking if one was seen?

Okay, I've given you all a lot to think about, so I will finish up here. There is a WHOLE lot more, and some of it will be covered in later lessons, but if you have questions that just can't wait, please post them.

Stars light your path.

Daven

Assignment: Share one entry from your Dream journal. Tell us what you think/know about it. What does this dream mean to you? What did this dream try to tell you? Is it a true dream, lucid dream or an AP episode? Mention anything else you think pertains to this dream and we will discuss them on the board.

Write down the "Rules of Conduct" you will follow when you are in another reality. Think of what you believe is courteous, and write these down as a guideline to how you will act when projecting. They will be posted and after they are up, you can steal from each other to come up with a "General Code of Conduct" for out of body excursions. Basically, how will you act on other worlds?

Look over your dream/AP journal and start a log of symbolism for yourself. This is a list of recurring symbols that are in your dreams and what they mean to you. You may have to meditate on these symbols to figure out their meaning. You do not have to share this section, but you will need it so that you can interpret your dreams at a later time.

Please also make sure that you mail your assignments to OOBE@webwitch.cjb.net as that address is the clearinghouse for your assignments. DO NOT post them directly to the message board. I'll get them when you send them to the above address. Make sure to put your User ID in the subject field as well.

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