I do want to state up front that this is a trickier area of work than some others and I am not going to go into a huge amount of detail. I have found too often that people would rather learn about dreams or astral work than to address very real waking issues in their lives.
In my opinion it is more important to become conscious of how you are working with energy in this plane, and to learn to express through your physical body to some extent before you begin to work heavily in dreams. In reality I think the two things go hand in hand, however it is too easy to work on having dreams of being happy, or winning the lottery, or having that perfect relationship, without ever bringing it back into the physical realm.
Having said that I also don't want to underplay the power of the astral plane or dreams in general. They are very real states of existence; learning about them is an integral part of spiritual work. My opinion (and again this is my personal opinion and there are many, I am sure, who have differing - but equally valid - opinions) is that it is too easy to get caught up in them if you are not firmly grounded in this dimension.
Ignoring the dream state or undervaluing it is equally non-productive. So again the idea of balance comes up. We work on dichotomies in this reality, and here is yet another one <grin>. We work with balancing spirit and body, light and dark, dreams and waking.
Dream work is energy work like anything else; the dream state is however a slightly different environment than the one we may be used to dealing with. I am going to break down the dream state into three basic areas: dreams that are part of our bodies' natural need to process information not cleared during the day, symbolic internal work, and the astral plane.
Processing Information
Ever had the experience of doing some repetitious task during the day and then dreaming about it all night? I can remember when I was a child, I went berry picking one summer. I picked strawberries all day. When I closed my eyes on the bus on the way home all I saw was strawberries! When I went to sleep that night I spent the entire night continuing to pick strawberries in my dreams. I woke up feeling tired the next day and very sick of strawberries.
This experience is an example of one aspect of the first kind of dreaming that I want to cover. It is the kind where our bodies are trying to process things that we did during the day.
We take in information through our senses while we are awake. Usually we process this information somehow before we go to bed. When we do not have the time or take the time to process what we need to from our daily lives then we will often times carry that into our dreaming state. You can think of parts of your mind being similar to a computer.
Sometimes our dreams are nothing more than that part of the mind dumping large amounts of extraneous data. While this is important for our minds to do, I have found this to be a particularly tedious aspect of dreaming. Another example of having your mental "buffer" full, is when you lie in bed for hours trying to sleep but can't because you are going over some past or future stressful situation. Then if you do fall asleep you find yourself continuing that same train of thought.
Endlessly going over something that in reality you would really rather put to rest (so to speak). The answer to keeping this kind of dreaming to a minimum is to find some way to clear your mind before you go to bed. Meditation (are you surprised I mention this? ... I thought not) is a great way to do this. Meditating a little while before bed can clear that mental data so you can go on to do other things in your dream time. You can also accomplish this by taking a little time to relax before bed, perhaps letting your mind wander a bit, staring at the wall, letting your thoughts settle.
I have found that if I can't sleep, or if I keep replaying some unwanted event in my mind, that I can let it go if I get back up out of bed and give my mind time to process whatever it is. I do this by meditating, but as I said there are other ways to do it as well.
Not all the processing that happens during dream-time is tedious by any means. Dreams are a way that we process things and come up with ideas and answers that draw from the rich depths of our wisdom not always available to our conscious mind. This is very valuable indeed. The kind of processing that I think we are better off without is the kind of "mental noise" that happens when we to rush into sleep at the same pace we may have rushed through our day.
The next aspect of dreaming that I want to mention is what I think of as "symbolic internal work." This is the kind of dream that is filled with a lot of symbology. There is of course crossover in all these aspects of dreaming, but in this kind of dream state, you are working as spirit in a symbolic form. As spirit we actually work a great deal in symbols, since they carry a lot more information that spoken language.
These are the kinds of dreams that you can get a great deal of information from interpreting. We can tell ourselves things that we won't deal with in waking life, we give ourselves clues to the puzzles that sometimes confound us. An aspect of these kinds of dreams is to not take them too literally, see what the symbols mean to you, meditate on them. Writing these kinds of dreams down can really help make sense out of them. I know for myself that there are times I don't understand what I am being told in a dream until I put it on paper. Somehow the act of getting it out of my head and onto the paper makes things really obvious.
Many times the fruition of a ritual will come to me in the form of a symbolic dream. One of the differences between this dream form and others is that while sometimes there are specific astral working involved, usually it is a more internal process. It is deep internal spirit work. This does not make these dreams any less important than what we may think of as "astral" adventures, especially if you take into account that there are those that say that the entire universe is contained within. However it is good to be able to have a sense of the difference, if for no other reason than to be able to differentiate when that dream with cousin Mabel is really cousin Mabel communicating with you, or whether you are using cousin Mabel as a symbol of something else.
This can prevent the odd dynamic that can come from "confronting" someone because you had an unpleasant dream with them in it, when in reality they didn't have anything to do with it at all. You may laugh at this, but I have seen it happen.
This brings us to the last aspect of dreaming that I want to mention. It is the one that I hear mentioned the most when we talk about dreams. This is called the astral plane. Now there is so much information about this single subject (much of it conflicting) that I hesitate to say much about it at all. But since I do have this propensity to chat <grin>. I will of course go on. The astral plane is a dimension of reality that is just one level up from where we spend our time when we are awake. It is slightly less dense vibrationally than this physical world but not greatly so.
It is a plane of existence associated with the Earth. It is one of the places that we go when we dream. When people speak of lucid dreaming this is usually the plane of which they are becoming aware. It is a very handy place to work as spirit. On the astral plane, there isn't the same kind of responsibility for your actions as there is here on the physical. That isn't to say that there isn't any responsibility, just that it is different. When you go shoot someone in a dream on the astral plane, you haven't actually done the same action as if you brought that action back into the "real" world. In some ways it is a lot more like animation, it's a bit like that Coyote in the Road Runner cartoons, who kept falling off cliffs and getting blown to bits and getting anvils dropped on him over and over again. As you may remember (and I realize that I may be dating myself here) he keeps popping right back up as if nothing happened and starting all over again. The astral in some ways is more analogous to the experiences in a good animation cartoon.
(I am in some ways oversimplifying here, since there are instances where an altercation on the astral can affect your energy. I don't want to go into this here, but suffice it to say that if you have a particularly unpleasant interaction on the astral, a bad dream, it is always a good idea to meditate and do a little cleansing healing work on your energy when you wake up. It takes some amount of time for something to translate from the astral to the physical so you can avoid a lot of annoyance by simply taking the time to clear your energy/aura chakras etc. when you get up in the morning.)
The astral is very handy for us as humans. We are working through time and space here on the earth. The astral plane handles time and space completely differently. Have you ever noticed how you can have something that feels like an entire lifetime happen in a dream that takes no more than the 10 minutes or so that it takes your snooze alarm to reset in the morning? Also, we can work on the past or the potential future on the astral. Many times people use the astral plane to heal old emotional wounds or try out a potential future and see if it is something that they really want to create in their lives.
This brings up an important point. The futures that you see in the astral are not set yet. You do not have to experience or bring into your life an event simply because you lived it on the astral plane. There is free will. There is a saying in the very origin of a particular yogic tradition that talks about events of an unpleasant nature always being avoidable provided they haven't happened yet. This applies very well here.
The same, however, is also true with things that you experience on the astral that you do want to happen. Just because you win the lottery on the astral does not mean that you will necessarily have that experience in your waking life. This is one reason why many magickal traditions tell you to take some physical action after you do a particular working. The purpose is to bring the energy into the physical. Otherwise you may get what you want but it will stay on the astral plane, which is all fine and good but doesn't really do much in the way of - say - paying rent.
When you have visited some experience on the astral first, or have met someone on the astral before meeting them in person, you may have the very real sense that you remember the experience from somewhere else. It's as if you had already been there and done that. Well guess what? You had.
Now you may be wondering how to tell whether something is an astral experience or not. For some people it is very obvious because they have had what is referred to as an Out of Body Experience (OOBE). This is an experience where the person has a conscious awareness of leaving their physical body. You may have also heard of it as "astral projection." The conscious act of taking the astral body out while the physical body is at rest. Most of us have an awareness of our physical body. What some of us do not know, however, is that we also have what's called an astral body. This is a less dense body that we use when we go out dreaming at night and want to work on the astral plane. We have more than this astral body as well, but I will not going into it here.
One of the coolest examples of what an astral body looks like I remember comes from Return of the Jedi (the last of the Star Wars trilogy). At the end of the movie was a shot of Yoda, Obi Wan Kenobi, and Anakin Skywalker (previously Darth Vader), all watching the festivities. These are all characters that have "died" at some point in the Trilogy. You see them in their original bodies (this is especially notable with Anakin Skywalker), which are transparent to some extent and have an electric blue glow around them. When I saw this in the movie, I remember noting that someone had done their homework.
The astral body often has a characteristic electric blue glow around it. It normally looks like us, but not always. Sometimes people can appear as other people in dreams and there are lots of people that alter their astral bodies to look "better, taller/shorter, thinner/heavier, younger/older, etc." than they may appear in "real" life. I mention this just in case you meet the man/woman of your dreams, in your dreams. They may appear slightly more "flawed" when you meet them in person...I of course would never do something like that myself <smile>.
Another way the astral can differ from other dream experiences is that very often it feels just like you are awake. Even if there are elements in the dream that are out of the ordinary (that unicorn in the corner, say) you still feel like it is exactly like your waking life. One of the reasons for doing lucid dreaming is to have a way to bring your awareness to the fact you are "dreaming" without coming back to your body.
Flying dreams are very often astral experiences. I can remember vividly a dream where I was flying. I found myself being conscious that I was on the astral (by using a technique I will mention later) and looked down at my body. I was amazed at the vibrancy of the blue that surrounded my astral body, it made quite an impression. Sometimes when you come back to your body after an astral experience you can hear a strange "whooshing" sound and almost a "pop" as you come back in. This can happen especially when you come back rather abruptly.
One thing to remember about bringing information back from the astral is that you can't always count on each fact verbatim. There are a couple of different reasons for this. One is that we bring the information back into our bodies through our own personal filters. This will color the information. If we see something on the astral that we have no concept for, we may choose the next best fitting concept to make it make sense to the body. This is a good argument for doing cleansing and clearing work on our energy in general so that we can bring back spiritual information with less baggage attached.
The other thing that can affect what we remember is that sometimes in order for us to bring something back into the body we sort of "alter" it or attach a "lie" to it, so that we can remember it. This may make more sense if you think about how very volatile those insights you sometimes get are. If you don't write them down they tend to fly right out of your head. There are those that say that this is a planet of many illusions and that spiritual truth has a hard time hanging around. Well if that is the case, as it may be, then it makes sense that we have to alter things just a bit to bring them into this physical reality. So that dream you had with Cousin Mabel (remember her?) becomes back to the body as a dream with a unicorn with Cousin Mabel's voice. Our job is to decipher what the truth is from the lie (a handy definition of clairvoyance by the way) so that we can have the information that we wanted access to from our astral experience.
So there are a few things to think about when you deal with dreaming. I will close with some ideas about how you can start to get more in touch with your dreams and astral experiences. As with everything, I suggest that you spend daily time meditating and grounding to get in touch with yourself and your own energy so that you can enjoy what you are creating both here and in the dream time.
As with all energy work, I want to emphasize grounding as a way to be safe, be in charge of your energy and become more conscious of what you are doing. Start with grounding before you go to bed (if you don't know what I mean by grounding please see the end of this article for a quick review, or read my previous articles for a more in depth explanation). While you are in bed also ground yourself.
Don't let the fact you are lying down throw you, because grounding can be done in any position. Being grounded while you are out of the body is one of the surest ways to stay safe when you are out interacting with the different energies and beings you run into during a given night.
First of all make a conscious agreement with yourself that if you run into anything that is unbeneficial while you are out traveling that you will immediately return to your body and wake up, even if it is briefly. If for any reason you find yourself dealing with something unpleasant, remember your grounding. Turn and face what it is and ask for whatever gift it has for you, then tell it to go. This may seem simple but try it sometime and see what happens, you may be surprised.
As you are grounded and falling asleep make a conscious decision and agreement with yourself about what you are going to be doing while you are out of your body. Something like, "I am going to do healing work on (fill in the blank) tonight while I am out of my body." You can work on whatever you want. You can get ideas for new things, solutions for existing problems, heal physical pains. Make an agreement with yourself each night. It may take time but if you stick with it things will come to you.
Having a journal by your bed is a great way to start to get more in touch with your dreams and astral experiences. It is important to write the stuff down when you first wake up though, because the images will fly right out of your head.
One last thing I want to leave you with is one way that I have used to become more conscious in my astral experiences. I believe it came from a metaphysical book I read years ago. The idea is to start to tell yourself that you will look at your hands in your dream, and when you do you will remember that you are dreaming. This is a very simple thing and very hard as well. It will take time, but keep saying that to yourself and over time it will sink it. At some point you will be in a dream and look at your hands and -voilà- you will become conscious that you are not in your body. What you do from there is up to you. Blessed be.
Grounding Review
Close your eyes and turn within.
Take three nice deep breaths, breathe down into your belly and soften it as you breathe. Notice how you feel, how your body feels.
Be aware of your first chakra. This is simply an energy center (vortex) that is located in the general area near the base of the spine. For women the cen- ter is usually near the area between the ovaries (note: the chakra positioning doesn't change if you have had to have your ovaries removed for any reason). For men the location is slightly lower in the body because the chakra placement is associated with the testicles.
Be aware of this area, and allow a cord of energy to flow downward from your body.
Through the chair you are sitting in.
Through the floor and down through the building you are in.
Through the foundation and into the deep earth beneath. Allow your grounding to flow down into the earth past all the rocks and layers of the planet, past the water, deep into the earth into the heart of the Mother. Until it reaches the center of the earth.
Allow your grounding cord to connect securely into the center of the planet.
Be aware of your grounding cord being securely connected also to your first chakra. Allow this connection, breathe and release energy and tension down your grounding.
Erika Ginnis works as a psychic and practitioner in Seattle. She offers, counseling, classes, reading and healing through her practice "Inspiration is the In-Breath of Spirit" She can be reached at (206)669-5881 or through her web page http://www.inbreath.com
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