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!

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. 

Every so often a dream makes such an impression on me that I take the feeling along with me through the rest of the day; sometimes even a few days, if it was really impressive.

A few weeks ago I remember becoming fairly conscious in the middle of a dream where this "bad guy" alien was shooting up the downtown of a major city with his laser guns and blowing stuff up (I think I had watched a Star Wars movie that night).  Everyone was running scared away from him.  My first reaction was also to get scared and run in the opposite direction, but due to my semi-conscious state, I stopped myself and reminded myself, "Wait, wait... I'm in a dream!"  Then I realized I didn't like the dream because all of the people in the city were scared.  I became indignant with the alien, thinking aloud, "Why are you scaring people? There is no need for them to fear! We're just in a dream!"  And I became determined to stop him, no matter -and not knowing- what might happen.  So I ran towards him and held him in my grip and didn't loosen it one little bit.  As I was running towards him, however, every step filled me with more uncertainty about the outcome, but at the same time more determination to see it through.  I awoke and spend the rest of the day with a greater degree of fearlessness and of compassion towards others than I had felt for quite some time.  

In a more recent dream I was hiking up mountain at night along a winding road.  It was difficult and cold and a few cars passed by me without noticing me at all.  I wondered if I should keep going, but didn't stop.  I don't remember what happened at the top, but I clearly remember coming back down.  I became light-footed and began almost gliding down the mountain side.  Then I heard a whisper saying to me, "That's right.  Don't be afraid. Run along the path before you!" And I began to run faster and faster, and my vision became tunnel-like and there was a veritable light at the end of the tunnel.  It was daytime down at the bottom of the mountain,  This feeling of faith and/or trust in focusing on what is before me and advancing enthusiasticlly and without fear still feels very real to me.  

With examples like these two, I feel like saying that sometimes I learn and grow more from dreams than from real life.  Certainly episodes require less time in the subtle world than in the physical, so that might account for it.  But nonetheless, they are real experiences and the lessons drawn from them are just as valid as those drawn from waking life experiences.