Through this site -through working out my ideas here and bouncing some of them off the other people here- I'm starting to come to the notion that I am always at work.  I am always working on something.  That something is not what it may appear to be to an outside observer.  It is not the work project I'm doing, nor the house chores, nor the fixing of my car or the writing of a computer program.  No, it may only appear that those are the things I'm working on.  The real thing that I am working on on is my consciousness -the the lens through which I perceive my life experiences.  

I am going through some pretty challenging times in my personal life at the moment, and every day affords me ample opportunity to face fears and frustrations and to decide whether to face them in the same old ways or in new ways.  I've surprised myself many times now... sometimes on the positive side (as in, "wow, that went much better than I ever expected!"), and sometimes on the not so positive (as in, "really??  I still behave like that??").  Either way, I'm learning and growing a lot right now.  Through it, the biggest and toughest lesson I'm learning is to welcome the process of learning and growing.  

In that last sentence, I stalled on the word "welcome" for quite some time.  I had initially written "love", but honestly, learning and growing is very uncomfortable, and who loves being uncomfortable all the time?  Yet, I know that the change I so desperately want for myself and my life is on the other side of that discomfort.  The only way to free myself from the self-created, tortuous prison of my core beliefs about myself and the world around me is to push myself through those fears and discover them to be what they've always been: lies. 

In our dream life, in the subtle world, our fears can and do manifest as the objects, people, and/or situations we find in there.  A few times I have squarely faced down personified fears in my dreams and awakened the next day with a vary real increased sense of vitality and strength that stayed with me for days after the experience.  In other words, those subtle world experiences changed the lense through which I perceive my life experiences -i.e., my consciousness.

We all work on our consciounesses 24/7.  There's no escaping it.  So why don't we try to make the most of it?  Smile!

The Reality of Imagination

Science has proven that if a person sits down and imagines themselves in a heated argument, that the exact same centers of the brain are activated as when a person is actually in a heated argument. While the flow of neuron interactions may be different between real and imagined events as this article indicates,:

https://www.livescience.com/49244-imagination-reality-brain-flow-direction.html

...the same neurological networks within the brain are engaged. Indeed, anyone who has found themselves thinking of any kind of emotionally-charged interaction after the fact, can confirm that the exact same emotions that they experienced during the interaction will surface while simply thinking about it. On a similar note, all of the incredible, very real inventions that make our lives so good have been discovered by way of the imagination of the inventor. In both instances, imagination becomes reality. 

My experience has been that my consciousness does not differentiate between ‘real’ and ‘imagined’. Both seem to occur with equal reality to my mind. If I think about an upsetting event (real or imagined), I get upset. If I think about playing with my favorite pet, I get all warm and happy inside. So it kinda makes me wonder, when I leave my physical body at night and have experiences in the subtle world (i.e. dreaming), just how real are these experiences? However bizarre the circumstances, however strange the juxtaposition of events or things, my mind perceives and experiences them as being real. 

What does that mean for me in a practical sense? After giving this some thought, I think this question is best answered with a question: what do I want in life? Like most people, my answer involves the goal of happiness. So how do I get this happiness in my life?

The way I see it, the quality of my dreams - good or bad - just like the quality of my life in the physical world, depends wholly upon me. When my thoughts tend toward the positive, and I genuinely feel drawn to goodness, be it beauty, truth, benevolence, I will find myself attracted to people, things, and situations that reflect these qualities. On the other hand, if my thoughts are drawn to things such as addictions, hate, or anger, then I find myself being drawn to other people, things, and situations that reflect those qualities. I have been able to actually observe this in my life. 

For instance, I used to have a fascination for news stories about people who did crazy stuff while on drugs. I would be browsing the news and find a bizarre headline with a couple of weird pictures that I couldn’t resist clicking on, and I’d read the story and marvel at whatever the story had to offer. Then at night, I would quite often find myself (in my dreams) hanging out with people who were doing drugs. So I tried a thought-experiment - I stopped clicking on and reading stories of that nature. And you guessed it - I stopped having dreams about being around those kinds of folks. In fact, I found myself having a much broader variety of experiences that included some pretty amazing things! 

Suddenly my thoughts became far more important than they used to be. And I guess I finally, really accepted that I am “the captain of my own ship” when it comes to what kinds of thoughts I have. If I’m after happiness in the physical or subtle worlds, then I need to go to where I want to be - with my mind. Simple as that.

With peace and serenity in my daily life, my subtle world (or dream) life is very much more pleasant and the colors are more vivid.  When I'm irritated, worried, or super distracted in my waking life, my dreams are extremely chaotic and seem to have no rational connection to each other whatsoever and are often quite dark and gloomy.  This is all stuff we've talked about before.  However...

I've been having more success with meditation lately, and I find it to carry over into my daily living and now I see how it is affecting my dreams as well.  When I get meditation "right", I generally feel lighter during the day.  I mean that I don't feel so attached to all the things that happen around me and just tend to observe and appreciate things more -weather, nature, people, my health.  My mind is more focused and I don't let things pull my attention away from what I'm trying to accomplish.  

An interesting question arises: what is MORE real?  The things that are happening outside yourself, or the the things that are happening within?  The so-called "objective" or the so-called "subjective"?  We are human beings having a human life experience.  The things that are going on within us -thoughts, emotions, intuitions, desires, etc.- determine our destiny and life path much more than the physical things that surround us, don't they?  Two people can go through the exact same material experience; one of them it crushes and depresses him for the rest of his life; the other faces it, deals with it, learns, grows, and becomes a stronger person because of it.  What's the difference?  The inner nature of the individuals.  Isn't that inner nature, then, at least as real as the thing that happened to them?  

Maybe our response to things isn't a response, is what I'm trying to say.  Maybe we have anger, irritation, or lust as PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS, embedded in our consciousness first.  Maybe that is the reality.  It's not that someone cuts us off in traffic and then we get upset; it's that we are upset and then someone switched lanes in front of us.  When we're in the subtle world, where the matter is maleable in response to thoughts, those pre-existing conditions materialize as part (or whole) of our subtle world experience. 

I believe this is true.  And it's about time I begin taking more responsibility for establishing more wholesome and beneficial pre-existing conditions in my consciousness.

I'm aching for another subtle world experience like the one I described here that took place several months ago.  In that instance, I practiced affirmations about being out of body and having full awareness for 2 weeks before it happened.

So, now, I have my alarm set to every hour to remind me to do these affirmations.  "I am out of body now!!"  "Full awareness now!"  "Clarity Now!".  These are exercises recommended in William Buhlman's book Adventures Beyond the Body -a great reference and guide-book for anyone who wants to get serious about having experiences in the subtle world.  

It is absolutely possible to become 100% consciouss and aware in the dream state.  I'm speaking from that one experience I've had when I say, it's an experience that is just as real and alive as the waking state.  It blew my mind when I found myself there, fully aware.  I'm determined to have more experiences like that one.

I am a father of 2 little kids of ages 7 and 4. 

Just about every morning I ask my kids if they remember their dreams.  I do this not only because it's fun to tell these stories to one another, but also because I hope to instill in them some sort of feeling that there is something special about these experiences we call dreams.

I am finding that either they don't recall their dreams very well, they aren't very interested in this exercise, or I simply recall mine a lot better than they do.  But the good thing is that I see their little gears turning when I ask them the question and smiles and laughter ensue when they manage to pull the experiences out of their memory banks.    

Dreams are the entryway into the subtle world.  So if I am able to get these little ones to look at their dream experiences with wonder and interest, then I believe I've done something very good for them in this life.