Defining the Self

Many have been asking me about astral travel, OBEs, lucid dreaming, NDEs, etc. So, here is a starting point...

Tibetan Dream Yogas refer to three dream types. Samsaric Dreams (ordinary dreams), Dreams of Clarity (unconscious transpersonal dreams), and Clear Light Dreams (lucid dreams; dualistic nature of spirit/ego is transcended). Again I point to Rinpoche’s, “The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep”. I highly recommend this book. It contains excellent techniques to practice while in the lucid dream state for the attainment of higher states of enlightenment. Many of the exercises proposed by Rinpoche are designed to experience, understand and transcend the concept of journeying in a realm of no space/time. This is an important step in experiencing, in a fully conscious state, the new concepts of life in mankind’s coming transcendence into the Fourth Density.

Spiritual symbolism, transcendence of duality, experiencing living in a state of non-locality, a state with no space/time. A state where thought is the highest energy and anything is possible. It is a valuable tool, a perfect playground for preparation in journeying through the Higher States of Spiritual Enlightenment… Or maybe it is the Higher State. Maybe it actually is our Energy Field Personality, our Soul, disassociating with our Third Density bodies, finally getting away from the struggles of our daily lives for a few hours a night, letting our conscious mind remember what it is like on the other side.

When an initial concept of spiritual growth is understood, the same lucid dream takes on a brand new different meaning.

Sometime 1997
I stand on the beach, with small waves lapping on the sand. It is dark out and everything is tinged in a deep purple save for the sand which is a brilliant glowing blue. The sky overhead is a luminescent with a vast amount of stars and what look like the Milky Way Galaxy as crisp and clear as possible.

I become lucid and immediately want to try a new experience of practicing meditation while lucid in a dream. I sit down on the sand cross legged and close my eyes. Strange that immediately upon closing my eyes I become extremely aware of my mind as bi-local, or being in two places at one time; lying on my bed, and here, meditating on a beautiful beach at night in a dream. I push that thought away and begin clearing my mind of all thought.

I feel a presence. I open my eyes and stand. Someone/thing is standing above me. I cannot recall what it looked like. It didn’t speak but instead motioned me to follow. We walk down a path winding through the sand dunes and enter a cave. The interior is lit with an orange light illuminating without a source. To our right a ramp leads up towards an archway, above which is a sculpture of an eye etched from the rock wall of the cave itself. The eye was very reminiscent what you would see on the back of a dollar bill. I know I am to go through the archway, under what I thought of as my third eye. I walk the stone ramp, underneath the eye I pass. Suddenly I lose my footing and I’m sliding down a slippery ‘tunnel slide’ that has the texture and look of loose skin. It startles me, but doesn’t yet scare me.

When I come to a stop I find myself in a tiny room, the size of a small shower. On all six sides I am surrounded by the texture/feel of skin flowing like a thick curtain. Again, there is a subtle light illuminating the tiny area, but I haven’t thought of its source for I am beginning to panic. Everywhere I place my hand, my foot, everywhere I push it gives slightly like elastic. I am really scared now as there is no way out. The panic taking place overrides the knowledge that I am in a dream and I feel as if I am to suffocate and die in this place. It is unending. I run my course. The realization of the utter uselessness of ‘panic’ hits me. There is nothing to be gained in the fear. It has gotten me nowhere. And when the fear of enclosure dissipates, I am released. I slow down and slump to the ‘floor’. A feeling somewhat of resignation, a giving up, almost like a touch of guilt takes place but is quickly replaced by a feeling of complete peace. A feeling like that of a close friend is there, and will always be there. The walls, the ceiling, the floor… fall away. I am infused by a blissful euphoria, floating in no-time. There is nothing around. Fear seems to be a historic past. I remember asking myself how I could possibly be afraid of anything that is so… so wise, so teaching, so… How can a dream make me feel so childish, so full of the obscene/hurtful emotion of fear? I float there for an indeterminable amount of time. Slowly I open my eyes-
-to the ‘real world’.

I was still lucid when I had realized that this lesson was an event that occurred while I was sleeping. What I mean by that is I knew it was an experience to teach me something while floating in that blissful blackness. I had rested in that darkness, absolute black, and examined all this with an analytical mind just before I decided to open my eyes. This comforted me because I found it such a ridiculously easy lesson.

I was dreaming! I knew I was dreaming! There was no possible way for me to die or for me to be hurt… Yet I succumbed to a primal fear. I succumbed to it even though I knew, as a certainty, that there was no way anything could harm me. I have always believed in the notion that the dream state cannot manifest anything into our physical world. There are some people that claim an uncontrollable fear grabs hold of them when they experience, usually for the first time, altered states.

They fear they might get trapped in this astral existence never to find a way back out. As we all have noticed when dreaming as a child that object that you found in your dream does not remain in your hand once you wake up. Well, that same principle is true with your mind! Of course it is! The difference of this lucid dream is that I had not yet fully experienced it. I didn’t know that to be True, I could only believe it was true because I had yet to experience it. And it is the experiencing, the knowing, that changes you. The lucid dream makes what you are doing or feeling in the dream world so real, it is as if the emotional trauma or bliss you experience – that your soul goes through, reacts, feels and identifies- is a reaction to the event as if it were a real experience!

I awoke from it harboring the same feelings I experienced when I was in it. And you know what, it didn’t harm me. It was a fear based solely on the illusion that our waking selves are drowned in, every waking hour, minute, second. It is a fear that there is nothing else, nothing beyond the material. A fear that other realities could truly exist outside the shell of our bodies.

What was the lesson though? What exactly did it mean? What was my subconscious not only telling me, but making me experience that was so important? I will tell you; it was a lesson of the damaging effects that fear produces, especially in another state of consciousness. It is a dampening wall preventing us from exploring what we as spiritual beings truly are. It is a lesson contained in a symbolic lucid dream of an experience of rebirth. If I let fear into my experiences I will get nowhere. If I am to experience altered states that are beyond the ‘normal’ life of everyday while traveling this ‘otherworldly path’ to Knowing, then I cannot fear any type of ‘otherworldly’ occurrence that might manifest, or disconcerting situations I might find. It was so simple, and yet I felt I had failed the first test.

That was my first taste as to how ridiculous that statement actually is and was. I cannot emphasize this enough for this is a misnomer that has taken root into our worldview, into our societies. The experience of life here on Earth is never a test. There is no passing grade or failing grade. It is only experience and what you take away from it. It is only what you make of your time here. There are slower and faster ways to spiritually evolve, but it is not a grade. I did not fail the test by panicking. This was just an experience my Higher Self knew I must go through to teach my conscious mind how to accept and not fear what normally would be termed ‘unnatural phenomena’.

This lesson was extremely important for it taught me to let go of control. It seems contrary that you would not want to control a dream consciously while in a lucid state. For most people this is why they want to Lucid Dream. When someone first starts having lucid dreams I think consciously controlling aspects of the dream is great practice in learning how the dream world operates. But there is so much more possible when you let the dream guide you and see where you end up.

This is especially true while meditating in a Lucid Dream. It is not only true, it is a must in an effort to let go of your ego side for proper meditation practices. Whatever you experience by letting your dream, or subconscious, guide you has already been examined through the subconscious mind (your Higher Self), it is just that your present state of mind/evolution has yet to experience it in this life. This can be explained further with the readings of Robert Monroe’s books. In short, it is a letting go of the ‘ego’ side of your polarity and letting your subconscious direct your experience, while you remain fully lucid to connect with the experience without manipulation, without trying to take control. This idea of living without the ego’s selfish ways of manipulation will be further discussed throughout this book. It is a paradigm for conscious living as it is the pinnacle of accelerated spiritual growth.

Years later, when fear had virtually been eliminated from these altered states induced from meditating while lucid dream, I suddenly realized that these spiritual lessons and visions are always more than they seem. The lesson or vision I experienced on that night would take on a wholly different meaning depending on the stage of spiritual development I was/am currently at. Perfectly valid and containing exact meaning to a new enlightenment, my way of looking at the above experience drastically changed.

It was a birthing phase. I was going through a birthing process, born into a new and vastly different life far stranger than anything I had previously lived through. At the time, I was not at the proper place in my life to view it as that, but such is the workings of the Higher Self. The dream vision is the perfect state of symbology with an uncanny ability to transform its meaning without changing itself, but from the experiencer changing. It is a multi-layered experience with no differences in its substance. It is in waiting, waiting for the perceiver to alter how the experience is viewed and what is personally taken away from it. It just depends on where the spirit stands.

Ken Wilber explains these types of happenings as a ‘transfinite’ mechanism inherent in the universe. The universe does not exist as a ‘Whole’, rather it is made of whole/parts, or holons, that are never fully a whole, and never fully a part, but exist as both – never-ending. These multiple meanings – whereas new meanings can only be manifested and understood by a catalyst of experience – can be viewed as whole as in my thought that the experience was a lesson in fear. As I furthered my experiences through the years, I was able to look back upon the dream and realize that it is only a part of a never-ending answer. Lessons learned are a whole and a part, existing through all moments – forever changing as an addition to the original experience, as new catalysts are added, experienced and understood by the perceiver.