Recognizing Simulations (Astral Plane)
AC 253: March 7, 2006 (Boston)Yesterday, I was reading a discussion on the Saltcube Forum about why people sometimes feel that they’ve been kicked out of a dream into waking reality just as they become lucid. Matt, the moderator, said that I may have some insight into the subject.
At the time, I did not. But, without realizing, it, I took the question with me into my dreams and found an answer. Someone else had posted a question on the forum a while back about types of dreams, and that got some attention in my dream as well.
What I’ve written out here is a combination of information retrieved in other dreams and the new material uncovered in the present one.
There are several types of dreams. The first is a compensation for whatever’s going on in the life of the dreamer. It occurs simply as a result of entering the Dream Zone, where thought creates experience more or less instantly.
In this type of dream, one encounters symbolic manifestations of one’s emotional reactions to the previous day. Such dreams serve a purgative purpose. They’re also helpful as catalogs of one’s reactions to what’s going on in waking life.
A second type of dream develops when someone is trying to work through a problem of some sort, often related to other people --coworkers, family, friends, love life, and so on. Because these problems are typical for much of humanity, large areas of the Dream Zone are devoted to them.
The solutions to the problem are running constantly, like movies in a multiplex cinema. You go to the area that reflects your need and the “movie” plays back the solution as energy/information, which you translate into your own personal symbol system.
A third type of dream involves a more advanced, interactive form of problem solving. This type takes place in the form of classes, workshops, seminars, and so on. Here, the focus is usually on developing skills, for example, problem-solving skills, rather than getting a solution to a specific problem.
A fourth type of dream involves more personalized guidance. In these dreams, the kind of Guide that I call a Personal Trainer appears. This trainer may be different every time (whoever’s on duty), or the same for an extended period (a specialized assignment). The Personal Trainer will work with you on developing and understanding the dream imagery.
Typically, Personal Trainers are available when you’re having trouble creating some reality you want to experience in waking life. They help you see the ways in which your intentions, expectations, and actions may be inconsistent with each other, thereby making it difficult for the reality you want to create to manifest itself. By clearing out the kinks in your reality creation process, you may be able to manifest your intentions more directly and easily in physical reality.
A fifth type of dream is a more advanced stage of the previous one. You could call it a tutorial. A Personal Trainer sets up a special dream environment to help you learn something, either by solving a problem or completing a task. I call these dream environments simulations.
From outside, a simulation looks like a small bubble dome, separated off from the rest of the Dream Zone. The purpose of these domes is to eliminate distraction and to control the Dream Zone tendency for thought to create experience instantly.
A simulation is a controlled environment, like a biodome. The only thoughts that will be supported there are those pertaining to the problem or task. Thought control on the part of the Personal Trainer may be involved. But it’s benign, allowing for a form of accelerated learning until we have more control of our own thoughts.
Participation in simulations is always voluntary. But your waking self may not remember that you gave your consent, resulting in a feeling of resistance, fear of coercion, imprisonment, and so on.
Basically, an intense desire on your part to learn and grow as a lucid dreamer or OBEr is considered by Personal Trainers to be permission to expose you to the thought-control learning technology of simulations.
There’s nothing to be afraid of. In a sense, simulations are like nonphysical biofeedback mechanisms designed to help you become a better lucid dreamer or OBEr.
Without the controlled environment of a simulation, Dreamers could get distracted from the problem or task that the simulation was created to help them with. Associative thought processes could take over, leading into other dreams or creating random images that make it harder to focus on the purpose of the simulation.
Certain reactions to becoming lucid in a simulation can break its integrity, resulting in instant termination, and often awakening the Dreamer. For example, if you become lucid and think, “I’m dreaming, therefore I can create/do anything I want,” that intention may violate the purpose of the simulation.
The inconsistency of your frame of mind with the one required for the simulation causes what seems like a forcible ejection. You may get a whiff of the Personal Trainer’s frustration over having “lost you,” contributing to the feeling that you did something wrong and got kicked out.
Meanwhile, you’re thinking that it was a personal triumph to have become lucid. It’s hard to reconcile that feeling of triumph with the sense of getting kicked out. Then it starts looking like you’re being punished for trying to advance your development, leading to theories that some force or intelligence doesn’t want you to become lucid.
You’re partially right. The Personal Trainer (or the simulation) doesn’t want you to become lucid in that particular way--by which I mean, having all sorts of bright ideas about what to do next.
The same thing often applies to OBEs when you get out, find yourself in your bedroom, come up with ideas about what to do next, and then unexpectedly wake up. If you’re in an OBE simulation, you may be waking up because your laundry list of things to do doesn’t gibe with the purpose of the simulation.
Ejected is a probably a better expression for the sense of having been kicked out of a simulation. There’s nothing here to take personally. Lucidity or being out of body may have been one of the requirements of the simulation. But thinking about now being able to do anything you want may not be.
Friends of mine have often reported dreams that sounded to me like simulations. In some of them, a genuine, heart-felt connection with a Guide would often lead to lucidity, then degenerate into a sexually charged dream because of the “I can do anything I want” desire. At some point, in the resulting sexual dream, my friends have realized that they were no longer with a Guide, only a dream character.
I haven’t had this experience. But I imagine that it must be the nonphysical equivalent of thinking you’re going to bed with a real person and then realizing you’re with an inflatable doll.
Sometimes a Personal Trainer will terminate a simulation because you’ve started making assumptions about what you’re experiencing that are leading you farther and farther away from the solution to the problem or completion of the task it posed for you. These environments are set up to encourage (but not coerce) you into thinking or developing in certain ways.
There’s a point beyond which the Trainer can’t influence or guide your thoughts without taking complete control. That’s when the simulation will be terminated.
Ideally, you’ll have no awareness of the Trainer’s shaping influence. But we humans are extremely sensitive to interference with our free will. So it’s understandable that we might come away from simulation-based experiences feeling that we’re being controlled, manipulated, or influenced by other intelligences in possibly harmful ways. Such feelings may be part of the residue that we bring back with us after experiencing--and possibly being ejected from--a simulation.
Simulations are often made to order for specific people and purposes. This kind of simulation dissolves back into the basic ground of consciousness/reality in the Dream Zone after you’ve solved the problem or completed the task.
If you’re ejected, or unable to solve the problem or complete the task, the simulation setup may remain active in the Dream Zone after you’ve awakened. You may then return to this simulation on other occasions. This may be one reason for recurring dreams.
A sixth type of dream occurs when you’re in a training program. Such dreams take you deeper into the portion of the Dream Zone where simulations occur. (I call this portion of the Dream Zone the Simulation Zone.)
As I saw it in this adventure, this portion of the Simulation Zone appears to be a matrix of bubble domes. Within the matrix, they’re connected (lined up) by function, and often linked sequentially into a graded series of lessons. But each one is separate (distinct) from the others.
The overall matrix represents stages in a training program--in this case, a training program for lucid dreamers, OBErs, and astral projectors. The simulations in this matrix are graded in focus and degree of challenge. For example, one area (row) of the matrix deals with practicing various OBE skills, one at a time and in different combinations, including use of nonphysical vision, means of travel, and so on.
Many OBEs that seem to take place in the real world but contain anomalous dream elements are actually simulations in this training program--for example, OBEs in a slightly rearranged version of one’s bedroom, including a few bizarre things that shouldn’t be there. Because simulations repeat themselves until you’ve solved the problem or completed the task it was created to help you with, if you keep ending up in this kind of OBE environment, you’re probably in a simulation.
The good news is that if you’re frustrated with not being able to go beyond your bedroom, there might be a simple solution to the problem. Assume you’re in a simulation. When you’ve figured out the task or problem behind it, you’ll be able to move on to the next stage in the training program--which often means encountering another simulation in the series.
I suspect that the major blocks in the rearranged bedroom simulation are these. First, you’ve assumed that you’re out of body, which is only partially correct--you may be in a simulation, which runs by a different set of rules. Second, you can’t figure out why the dream elements are there.
You might just accept them as real, which could lead to flunking the simulation. But you might also attempt to reject or ignore them, because they’re not supposed to be there. If you then make plans to accomplish something on your OBE to-do list, the simulation may terminate and repeat itself in future OBE exploration periods.
Be careful about feeling frustrated or disappointed over not being able to tell whether you were experiencing a dream or OBE after it’s over. You’ll become more determined to get out and do something on your to-do list, and you won’t be able to advance in the training program.
A lot of these issues could be resolved by recognizing that you’re in a training program, that this program involves dream-based simulations of OBEs, and learning what the dream environment that you’re in was intended to teach you, instead of trying to do other things (resulting in short OBEs, ejection from the simulations, or termination by the Trainer).
This requires letting go of what you think that goals or next step of your OBE or lucid dream training should be. It can also include asking for more direct participation from the Trainer who is guiding you.
You may need to develop a different frame of mind for understanding your experiences, such as letting go of the feeling that you’ve got to figure it all out yourself. Help is always available--you can always ask for a Guide.
It’s not a good idea to look for proof that you’re actually out of body or that you can go out of body or that OBEs exist. Looking for proof tends to generate either/or thinking--one or the other or both.
As it happens, an OB simulation is neither a conventional dream, nor a clear-cut OBE. So, if you’re looking for proof, you’ll end up rejecting it or not perceiving its true nature.
A useful assumption is that everything you perceive in altered states has validity, but not always in the ways that you expect. For example, dream images can appear as error messages in an OBE simulation.
Whenever you make an incorrect assumption about the environment you’re in and what you’re supposed to do there, a dream image will appear to let you know that you’re getting off track. So, if you think you’re in an OBE in your apartment, but you’re really in an OB simulation, you may see something that shouldn’t be there. That something is a dream-image error message letting you know that you’re not perceiving the true nature or function of the environment you’re in.
This process of generating dream-image error messages will continue, becoming ever more ridiculous, until you either become lucid enough to understand where you are, or get ejected from the simulation. Such ejections can take forms other than a sudden awakening back into physical reality. You can also just end up with so many dream images obscuring the function of the simulation that you drop into a lower level of lucidity and enter another regular dream.
If you’re disappointed in the level of correspondence of your OBEs to physical reality, you may be missing the point. Most of the early simulations in the training program have to do with learning how to determine the true function of the environment you’re in (i.e., recognizing it as a simulation).
This requires leaving behind the tendency we’ve developed in waking reality to perceive everything we experience as real without questioning it. So, the little anomalies you encounter in simulations are meant to get you to question the reality you’re perceiving and turn on the inner senses necessary to perceive the true function of this reality. Once you’ve done this, you may be able to move on to the next bubble dome simulation in the training program.
Of course, determining the true function of any of these simulations means figuring out and solving the problem it was meant to pose for you. The “reality-test/true function” problem is only one of many.
While in a simulation, you can always ask what it’s for or how to move through it. Either a Personal Trainer will appear to explain its function, or the environment itself will speak out its purpose. The clarity of the message you get will depend on your astral communication skills, how well you’re able to use your inner senses, and your ability to translate inner sense data into words.
I usually recognize a simulation by the following characteristics. The environment seems to be a single room, often with no outlet or connection to other rooms. The decor is usually stripped down or minimal (symbolizing that the environment was created to minimize distractions). What decor there is will often be thematically related to the purpose of the simulation.
I often have a sense of not being able to leave this room while I’m in it. Or I end up coming back to it again and again, usually on the same night.
If it’s a room that’s familiar to me from waking life, such as my bedroom, something about it will be different: it will be on the wrong floor of the building, or rotated directionally from its true position, or there will be items in it that don’t belong there or that have been moved from their usual position. Sometimes I show up as a different self, which is often a clue to the purpose of the simulation.
If I ask what it’s for, it will tell me, usually in a voice with no visible source. Such experiences remind me of the voice that would speak to Captain Kirk when he entered his sleeping quarters in the old Star Trek television series.