Astral Travel

Have you ever arrived somewhere you are sure you have never been before and then found there was something very familiar about that place?  Perhaps you then even remember that you dreamed you visited it before.  That has certainly happened to me.  It is a phenomenon generally known as déjà vu.

Most people will try to explain déjà vu away and say there is nothing "magical" about it.  One explanation commonly given is that there is a glitch in the way memories are stored in the brain.  The immediate memory of something experienced only a few seconds ago, or even a few fractions of a second ago, somehow becomes confused and associated with much older memories.

This may, in fact, be a genuine explanation of déjà vu in many cases.  But it is not always the real explanation.

The reality, I strongly believe, is that when we sleep it is possible for our mind and spirit to disassociate itself from our body and travel to places we may never have visited physically.  This is called "astral travel".

Many people use the term "astral travel" to mean only this kind of experience - travelling in your "dream body" to a physically real place.  I certainly believe this is possible, but to me it is only a small and perhaps even unimportant aspect of astral travel.  To me, astral travel is the same as what is often called "lucid dreaming".  In other words, being aware while I am dreaming that this is a dream, and then taking control of where I go and what happens in that dream.

My last blog article referred to the importance of play.  What if you could play in any way you wished?  In a lucid dream you can!  There are no limitations.  None at all.  You really can do whatever you want!

What if you could, for example, decide to launch yourself into the air, flying over the countryside, and then landing wherever you wished?  Not in a machine of any kind, but simply launching your body into the air without any mechanical aids?  Would that be fun?  It certainly is for me!  Maybe you would find it fun too!  This is something you can easily do in a dream state if you realize you are dreaming and are in control of the dream.

But lucid dreaming is not just about flying to places real and imaginary.  It is, in my view, all about play.  The best form of play.  A chance to experiment without having to worry about the consequences.

The reality is that all of us are playing that way in our dreams anyway.  It is just we are not aware we are playing and therefore cannot get full enjoyment from the play.  Scientists have discovered that all mammals dream, and it seems they use their dreams to test ways of reacting.  If you are a pet owner you have probably observed this.  For example, you may have seen your cat making involuntary movements that are apparently caused by chasing a mouse even though she is not actually awake and running and there is no mouse.  Or your dog chasing a cat.  Scientists have observed and measured these involuntary movements and confirmed what we as pet owners suspected was happening.  Nature has given us all a dream world to allow us to play and to test what strategies may work and what strategies will not.  We can test these strategies in absolute safety.  If the result is that we are almost certainly going to be killed or injured, that happens in the safety of the dream, leaving us alive and healthy to try a different strategy.

You are already playing in your dreams.  So why not take things one stage further and become aware of that play?  Learn to dream lucidly and start enjoying limitless play in the safe environment of your personal dream world.

More Things in Heaven and Earth

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."  So said Hamlet to Horatio in Shakespeare's play.  This is so true, even today!

Many people I meet refuse to believe in anything they cannot see, hear, taste, smell or touch.  They trust their five senses but nothing else.  And they believe this is the true scientific approach.  They are completely wrong!

Maybe a century ago a scientist would have refused to believe in something he or she could not test with one of the five senses, but that is certainly not true today.

For example, I am currently studying cosmology.  I am doing this study for no other reason than I am constantly looking to improve myself, and that includes continuing education in many different fields.  Something I encourage you to do too.  When I began my study I had no idea it would impact at all on my thinking about personal development or the articles I write in this blog - but it has just done so now.

I have just learned about "Dark Matter" and "Dark Energy".  Did you know that Dark Matter and Dark Energy cannot be seen, heard, tasted, smelled, or touched?  And did you know that between them they constitute 96% of the universe?  Things that we can detect in one way or another with our senses only constitute 4% of the universe.  This is the mainstream scientific view, not a half-baked idea of a few radical dreamers.  There are some scientists who dispute the existence of Dark Matter or Dark Energy, but they are very much in the minority - and the only way they can dispute this is by arguing that the laws of physics, including particularly the law of gravity, do not apply throughout the universe.  Most scientists prefer to accept the idea of matter and energy we cannot detect with any of our "normal" senses.

For more information on Dark Matter and Dark Energy, check out this web page, which is not some "New Age" site, but a website of a highly respected international astronomy project, endorsed by scientists in the University of British Columbia, Edinburgh University, Leiden University and Oxford University:

"Dark Matter"

If you can accept that there are things out there which cannot be detected, this opens up wonderful possibilities.  Possibilities Shakespeare suggested in 1599.

Reflect on this for a moment.

Take the Law of Attraction for example.  Is there something out there ready and willing to give us what we desire?  I believe there is, and have always believed so before I heard that it is only possible to detect 4% of what is actually out there.

Take Extra Sensory Perception as another example.  If 96% of the universe is made of stuff we cannot detect with any of our five senses, then if we can detect it at all it must be with a sixth sense, or a perception that goes beyond the five senses - Extra Sensory Perception (ESP).

Take ghosts, elementals, spirits - call them what you will.  Or Astral bodies.  4% of the world we live in is composed of what we call "matter".  Although this matter is comprised mainly of nothing (the gaps between the particles in our atoms are relatively enormous), we can see, hear, smell, taste and touch this matter.  We cannot walk through walls, even though both they and we are mainly comprised of nothing but space, as the small particles that make up "matter" strongly repel each other and give us the illusion of solidity.  But that is not true of the dark side, the other 96%.  It is here, all around us, but it is invisible and flows through us as though we were a liquid or gas rather than a "solid" object.  Who is to say there are not life forms composed of Dark Matter and Dark Energy?  Who is to say we do not have a Dark Matter / Dark Energy "body" ourselves which passes through walls and doors and travels through an Astral Plane at the speed of light as we sleep?

The next time you are tempted to scorn the idea of the existence of anything incorporeal, anything mystical, anything beyond our current understanding, think again.  Remember what Shakespeare had Hamlet say and realize there is more truth in this than most of us probably ever believed.