Dreams

 Dreams and sleep became part of my path 50 years ago. In the beginning, in my mid-twenties, my dreams tormented me, terrified me. At the time I didn't realize that they were just a reflection of how life in general was wearing me down, breaking me down. I didn't look at my life like that. I had this unfounded optimism, this lust for life that ignored the signposts along the road (metaphorically) and my own dark history. Not that all of my history was dark or that I had committed crimes, but I was not a happy guy. I struggled to find my place and was still struggling. People caused me pain and I didn't understand why.

At that time in my life, dreams and sleep weren't especially significant for me. They were an unavoidable part of life and sleep was always good, dreams were sometimes good, sometimes nightmares. I became philosophical about the bad dreams and learned to take them in stride. Oh, another bad dream, so what?

I didn't think that dreams had any BIG significance. Not until I was around 50. At that point I had a dream that was MORE real than my ordinary waking life. I woke up in the middle of the night and I was surrounded by energy, much more energy than I had every been in the middle of. I could feel it extended maybe 10 feet around me. It was profound and beautiful. I knew myself well enough to know that experiences like this need to be surrendered to, to not think about it, not have thoughts at all if possible. I also knew myself well enough to know I wasn't really capable of that and after maybe 20 seconds of being in this beautiful vortex, I started thinking to myself and the experience vanished. 

That was the first point where I started to seriously think that the dreamworld and the astral plane were related. And that "maybe" I might find myself in the astral plane. Now I think I always go to the astral plane and what kind of experience I have is still not understood. I can't explain why some dreams are weird, or why some are recurrent fears. I suppose because of my history and preoccupations. But some of my dreams are visions. Experiences of life in the Astral Universe. There is no doubt that is what those are. Not as often as I'd like but sometimes they are a mixture of weird and profound.

Like just the other night I was in a house and I looked down at my shirt and it was as if someone had poured a bowl full of macaroni pasta with sauce all over my shirt. Even in my pocket. So I had to do something about that. I went looking for help. And I came to a rainbow river. Not the usual way you think of a river but intermittent bands of random color. And somebody said "go ahead, you can just go into the water." And I said "oh, I don't like cold water" and he said "no, it's not cold, put a toe in" and I did and it was warm. So I immersed my whole body in and washed my shirt. Then the scene changed and I'm trying to get somewhere in California and I ask someone. He tells me "oh, you'll have trouble getting there, it's quite built up since the last time you were there" and I think now that these "other" people are mostly just humoring me "oh haha, he thinks he's in California". So I try anyways and I think I'm in San Francisco but the hill I'm driving on suddenly changes to a rainbow hill with no highway, the same kind of rainbow that the river was. Now I'm thinking "hey, what's going on here?" and I wake up.

I was in a dreamy state during the dream, but that's not always the case. Sometimes it's just as physical as waking life, even more so. Once I was in this large elevator and there were 20 other people in there. And I could feel all of them, they all were very conscious. And I could feel each of them feeling each of the others. I've had that experience before but only with one other person at a time. You just rarely run into a gang of them like that. I don't anyways. Not here on earth.

In another dream I woke up and it was a starry night and I was outside with several people. And I immediately understood everything as far as where I was and what it was about. I knew that my body was asleep and that I was in some kind of heavenly place. There was this deep peace that permeated everything and a woman was my guide and she was showing me around. I quickly fell in love with her and told her I wanted to be with her forever. She told me that my being there on this occasion wasn't about that kind of thing, and the dream ended.

The point I am making here is that dreams can be a place to learn to become a more astral version of yourself. You can practice living in that reality there. The first step is believing it's possible. I never did until that energy experience. After that I thought "well, it must be possible" and after that, I had more experiences.