Navigating Through the Astral Planes

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The Next Step in Lucid Dreaming: Navigating Through the Astral Planes

November 27, 2015 Spirit Science 




By now, we’ve covered the art of lucid dreaming extensively. At some point, those who find themselves having success with this technique may find themselves wondering ‘what’s next?’

Lucid dreaming is just one of many powerful methods of traveling spiritually, such as out of body experiences, astral projection, and near-death experiences.
Once you have mastered a practice such as lucid dreaming, the next step is further exploration of psychic and spiritual worlds.
If you are interested in moving your practice to the next level, here are some ways that you can open up the limitless possibilities that spiritual travel offers.
This includes altering the lucid dreaming environment altogether by exploring other dimensions and changing the lucid dream state.

Use ‘Charged Symbols’

Current religious trends are dominated by the interpretations of scripture as they make sense in the modern world. That is, most ‘reasonable’ people will agree with those interpretations. However, when a scripture is dumbed down into a single interpretation, you often lose the literal meaning. 
In this way, texts which are rich and beautiful become a bit barren as church councils standardize broad ideas including salvation, faith, and group unity. The irony here is that Protestant ideology which once opposed the rigid nature of Catholicism have become rigid themselves in the definition of their faith. The popularity of fundamentalist fringes of these religions exists in stark contrast as a backlash to this sterilized interpretations.

We’re not talking about controversial political ideas that are often found outdated in scripture, but more that the literal translations of the scripture often include esoteric symbols which could have many possible interpretations. In this way, the mystical aspect of scriptures are in many case suppressed so that they can make sense to the common believer.
The fact is, a religious (or spiritual) life is one of ambiguity with constantly changing meanings and interpretations. In this way it is the deep symbolism of religious texts and iconography that is the source of fundamentalist revivals.
After all, what is the point of a spiritual existence if your texts are mere ‘history’ and the symbolism is closed to you? In fundamentalism, doorways to the sacred are once again opened.
You might be wondering where this is going, as most of us are not fundamentalists. The fanaticism associated with many fundamentalist sects is not something with which most people can relate. However, the symbolism in these religious faiths can be ‘charged’ when encountered by an individual.
This means that they can hold a very personal power as individuals use them for prayer and meditation. During spiritual travel, these beloved symbols can have an enormous value when attention is focused upon them.
In your spiritual practice, with which images and symbols do you relate best and hold dear? It could be a Western religious icon such as the ‘Mother of God’ or an Eastern symbol such as ‘Buddha.’
Whatever it is that you love in your spiritual practice can help you in your lucid dream state, or other forms of spiritual travel. While in the out of body state, contemplate your own personal ‘charged symbol’ to see what power it can offer you.
This symbol will oftentimes act as a vehicle to extraordinary and highly mysterious states of being. In this way, your symbol is the key to a door which opens to a sacred reality.

Tibetan Dream Yoga

Milarepa, a disciple of Tibetan guru Marpa, passed down the concept of dream yoga. This is a practice with a number of steps by which the individual may gradually improve their ability to control the dream state.
First, one must become lucid or ‘wake up’ in the dream state.
Second, one must triumph over fear of the dream contents so there is the realization that nothing in the dream can cause harm. For example, the dreamer may find themselves immersed in water from which there is no escape, but can realize that they will not drown.
Third, one should meditate upon the fact that waking life and dream life are similar in that both aspects of life are illusory and subject to continual change. According to the Buddhist worldview, objects that exist in life or in dreams are empty of meaning and insubstantial. In this way one’s dream can now be contemplated as maya.
Fourth, the dreamer now can change the properties of objects in their dream. For example, one can make heavy objects light, big objects small, and many objects into one. At this point, one should be able to turn something into its opposite, for example fire can be changed into water.
Past this stage, the lucid dreamer can go one to the knowledge that their dream body is similarly malleable as these objects. In this way, a realization that one is not one’s dream body should occur. When the dreamer enters the stage where they can easily change objects as in the paragraph above, they should also be able to alter their own bodies, even to the point of making it disappear.
Lastly, once all of the above can be achieved, one can visualize deities. Deities serve as a link the void, that which cannot be comprehended. In this way, the deities can serve as a doorway into the mystical void for the dreamer, as they concentrate on these symbolic images without distraction.

Mantra

Those who have mastered the above two forms of advanced spiritual travel may find that the use of mantra can allows them to reach even further. The practice of mantra during spiritual travel can effectively move one’s soul to different inner spaces, with the chant acting as the propulsion.
If you are in a lucid dreaming state and chanting a mantra, it is often via your own inner voice. However, the mantric sounds often express themselves as outwardly ‘loud’ as if sung by a chorus rather than simply you. This effect helps the dreamer to feel as if they are not in it alone, as if the vehicle is a bus rather than a single passenger vehicle.
The use of mantra in a lucid dream can modify the perception into different textures, densities and emotions with varying background sensations. Visually, the dreamer typically perceives a complex field of ever-changing 3-D patterns and colors.
Now that we’ve defined what a mantra can do for your lucid dreaming experience, we can explore which chants might work for you. For those with a solid yoga practice, the Sanskrit mantras found within many yogic interpretations can be effective, since they are already understood to come from higher planes of spirituality.
This will draw the dreamer to a familiar point of mystical origin. Above, we explored the naming of deities, and these names can work as a mantra as well.
Names of spiritual guides living or non-living are powerful mantras as the dreamer often has an intimate relationship with them.
Those of Christian origin might find that certain Psalms or even the Lord’s Prayer help them to reach higher realms of lucid dreaming. In short, anything with a positive spiritual association to the dreamer can be chanted as a mantra.
This method does require a great amount of concentration for the user, which is why it is for those who are advanced. It is however, one of the best ways to transmit the soul to specific destinations of the psychic and mystical universe.

Experiment With Matter

One might wake up in a dream and wonder what to do with their lucid state. We’ve already alluded to this great way to advance your spiritual travel, that is, playing with the matter around you.
When you realize that you are in the lucid state, it is accompanied with the knowledge that the ‘matter’ around you is not physical as in the waking state.
You may find yourself experimenting with pushing your hands through walls, or even your whole body, effectively merging yourself with that object. In this way, one might even experience the vibration of atoms which would typically make up the object we know as ‘wall.’ If you are fearful, start small with a hand or arm. However, entering fully is a powerful way to realize that the dream body is transitory in nature, and a large step toward freeing one’s self from dream-state limitations.

Play With Gravity

One of the great joys, and often elaborated, powers of lucid dreaming is defying gravity or ‘flying.’ This is perhaps the first step a lucid dreamer can take to break out of imposed limitations.
Flying and the feeling of defying gravity is one of the joys of spiritual travel. One of the ways of breaking out of a
More powerful than flying, however, might be jumping off a cliff or tall building in a dream. This is a substantial step that one can take to realize the powers of lucid dreaming because it requires one to overcome what is typically a great fear.
Once the dreamer realizes that they can fly or fall from buildings without trouble, a whole world of possibilities of gravitational states opens up.

Skip

We don’t mean skipping as in hop-scotch. We are using this term as a description to shifting through different environments, like flipping through television channels with a remote. This is a very dynamic meditation for a lucid dreamer, and requires great power of thought. Our thoughts, of course, have much greater influence in the lucid state than they do in reality.
If one is interested in ‘skipping’ through a lucid state, it can help to visualize a remote control (as in the television analogy above), radio tuning dial, or whatever is most relational to the individual’s own personal meaning. To change states, associate this symbolic act with the expectation of moving.
Whatever symbolic act is chosen, when it is performed one might experience some intermediary static as transition occurs. Then the traveler finds themselves in the new environment. One might literally ‘flip through channels’ until the desired environment is reached.
The final step is being able to find the desired environment without constantly changing ‘channels.’
Discipline, patience, and practice is required, but it is well worth the effort. Being able to do this can be a powerful way to move one’s self out of an uninteresting dream environment and into a radically different one of the user’s imagination.

Conclusion

Now that we’ve gone over some ways to improve your practice of spiritual travel, the next step is up to you. It can take some work, but it could turn out to be the most interesting aspect of life that exists to us in this state of being.
The possibilities are limitless. Perhaps you might like to share which of these works for you, or perhaps you have some novel way to realize all possibilities of the dream state that we have not covered here!


Thanks to: http://thespiritscience.net