Expanding Perceptions Through Dreams

Since the first time I picked up a Seth book by Jane Roberts, I felt as if I entered into a back and forth teaching relationship. My life seemed to move synchronistically with the books, sometimes my life pre-empting what I read and sometimes what I read seeming to influence or inform the way I lived my life. 

In the beginning I was quite shocked by the process, but now it feels so natural. I am currently reading ‘The Nature of Personal Reality,’ which I am taking my time over. It instinctively was a book that I was not going to whizz through, notes taken and then put down. I feel that I am really living this book. I work with it and it works with me.

It was no surprise that after a while of not having read it, I picked it up and started reading a section on dreams and our division of what we think to be conscious (i.e. waking) and unconscious (i.e. dreaming/sleep) reality. I saw how over nearly the past year I have been putting a great deal of what was written into effect seemingly very naturally.

In ‘Seth Speaks’ (Jane Roberts) it introduces us to considering our current sleep patterns, suggesting that through their adoption, we are not maximising our potential. It is suggested that we would be more efficient were we to sleep less and more frequently.  In this book it is gone into in more detail. 

The basic gist is that we would do better to use the whole twenty-four hour period as opposed to the half and half (more or less) current division. We would benefit our waking hours by having more naps and sleeping less in the night, a maximum of six hours. 

Currently we have a very long stretch of awake time whether we are productive or not. In my case I have found that around 3pm I am inexplicably tired. I used to fight this and would be able to, but now I try to lie down where I can. If it’s waiting to pick up my children then I close my eyes for 10 minutes in the back seat and it is re-energising. 

In part it gives my body a rest allowing it to regenerate, it gets me off the wheel of what I think I should be doing, usually a list of speeding up things, at times with little perspective, and it reconnects me with another part of myself that I find very comforting. I am then able to draw on images, senses and feelings that would not be available to me if I just kept running. 

The dreaming state also benefits from a greater closeness with our awake consciousness, which is then able to take a more active role in the dreaming world.

Our current sleeping patterns cut us off from a synthesis of the two states in which we could begin to see how each actually informs, inspires and creates the other. In ‘Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfillment’ (Jane Roberts), it is stated that our reality springs from the dream world, the origin of everything we experience, think and create is within the dream state. Our entire world sprang and does spring first from dreams.

Previously our focus, the point of our consciousness resided within the dream world and flicked in and out of what we consider physical reality. At some point, however, our point of consciousness became more fixed in physical reality and so concretely that we no longer begin to consider consciously moving it into the dream world. What happens if we do?

The first thing that happens for me is that I begin to feel and realise that everything is connected. As I become aware of my dreams I begin to see that my life does not stop and start between sleeping and waking. There is a continuum, a flow between the two. What I deal with in waking reality, I deal with too in my dreams and vice versa. 

When I type up my dreams, usually months after having them, I am able to read them in one and track the changes and see how they worked in tandem with my waking life. I see how elements of my life were working together, there was no real separation and it gives me the sense of how much guidance is available and that makes me feel very connected. It makes me feel that all is One and this is incredibly uplifting. 

As I practice awaking to this through working with my dreams I become more able to attune into this feeling in other instances in my life. It is the Law of Attraction. Once I am able to start resonating with this feeling, more is drawn to me that expands upon it.

The more I become familiar with the language of dreams and accept what would seem to be contradictory to the perceptions of waking reality, I get to open to the idea that there are more ways of “seeing” things. Later it occurs to me that perhaps I can bring these into my waking consciousness. 

One example is that of spatial awareness. In the dream state I can dream of a street for example. I can see the street as if I were at street level, as in the usual waking spatial perception, but simultaneously I will see it as a map and simultaneously from an aerial perspective, a bird’s eye view. In the dream this will be completely normal, I will be perceiving the street from all three perspectives all at the same time without differentiating them until I awaken and write it down. 

Within the dream the main action continues undisturbed, sometimes one perception is loosened or favoured over another. Perhaps there will come a day in which I can consciously pick the means of perceiving within the dream state, perhaps not! 

It is common in my dreams to be in one place that looks a certain way, I know it by a certain name and yet I know with a deep feeling sense that it is another place entirely. This is part of the language of dreams, they overlay in order to inform. Also, I feel, to loosen the concreteness we are overly used to adopting. This affects my waking life and it does so seamlessly. 

A year ago I realised that when listening to someone talking on the phone I was able to hear the words they were speaking, following the story they were imparting, but I was able to lift off and open up to the feeling states that were being touched upon. It was as though there were a series of currents, one was the words, the other the feelings, what was generating the words, the history behind it. I have become more able to tune into this perception. 

Whilst hearing the spoken word, I am able to access at times a feeling sense for the array of images, information at times that is really being imparted using the words more as openers, pointers to other realities rather than the thing in itself. Becoming more aware and familiar with the dreaming state has allowed me to become more relaxed, comfortable and open to this in waking.

I believe that dreams allow us to get a little bit nearer to the reality of our multidimensionality and they do this in a number of ways. One is the feeling, and now belief, that what happens in my dreams are really lived events.

I mentally refer to my dreams as real happenings. They provide me with alternate and various reference points. They are as real and as important as what happens to me in waking reality and they are not cut off from it. 

One night I found myself sitting next to someone at a dinner and it was someone I tended to find the comic side in. I remembered a dream I had a few months before in which someone was making fun of a person and I made the conscious choice not to do the same and got to connect them in a more beautiful way. 

As I began speaking at the dinner the feeling of the dream and the recollection of it came back. I then made a choice to follow what I had learnt in the dream rather than my usual attitude to this person. By doing so the conversation utterly shifted. He began expressing what he was seeking, what his perceptions were of the limits of the society of which he was a part, the values they had that he didn’t share. 

In short we were able to go beyond the surfaces and connect on a deeper level. I was able to share part of my experience with him without feeling threatened in myself either. Had I not had the initial dream I would not have had the information available to me to make the conscious choice to respond differently.

The more I am able to recall more dreams, the more I become aware that there are some that are far away, that I get a vague feeling sense of, some are very deep and I am aware that I am up to things that I cannot remember. I am being taught, I am teaching at times. I get to understand that the work I do within the dream state is no less relevant than the work I do in my waking state. 

But what about the great part that I do not remember, what happens then? The question that arises is who am I and where do I go? I am more comfortable with the idea that I am up to things that I cannot hold within my conscious mind. In the beginning this terrified me.

Part of the concept of Self was what I could hold onto, that I could mentally tabulate and thus ultimately control. To get to the point where I am willing to accept that I do not know what I am doing at times is very deep and can make me feel quite dizzy. 

But I am comfortable now with the idea that who I am is greater than where my consciousness as translated through my physical form rests. I get to connect with this in the dream state, I get closer to the multidimensional reality of my being, though what I tend to bring back is more a sense, a feeling state than any concrete memories.

I’m sure they inform me, but on a level that I cannot draw into my waking consciousness immediately on awakening. Perhaps those fuzzy remembrances are the roots  from which my daily reality will spring, the seeds to start birthing new experiences.

Another aspect of the multidimensionality in dreams is the relaxing of the perception of time. In dreams I can experience multiple events overlaying each other simultaneously. As I write I start to put a sequence to them, but I am becoming more aware that within the dream state they sometimes seem to be happening at once. 

We are told that all time is simultaneous, that it is neither linear nor sequential, yet we perceive it in the latter mode as part of our human experience and our need to survive in the world as we know it. 

In the dreams I can follow the main narrative so to speak and can also follow all the events, characters, histories that make it up. I can follow each thought whilst not getting in any way distracted from the main narrative. The amount of following I can do does not seem limited. 

The dream experiences then can serve as an analogy for the ability we have to try different things out, to experience probabilities before we call them into physical being and this ability is constantly unfolding from a single moment. It shows me in visual form how consciousness in exploring itself can go off and off spiralling in myriad forms whilst still maintaining its wholeness.

Working with my dreams helps to expand my beliefs, perceptions and thus experience within my waking reality. As I begin to accept the dream language and the world or worlds to which I enter into, I get to explore the possibility that those perceptions may be available to me here as well. 

I am experimenting more consciously, since reading the pages in ‘The Nature of Personal Reality,’ with a more relaxed sleep pattern. I am sleeping less, which works well for me (up till now, it’s only been a few days!) and trying to close my eyes for short pauses throughout my day where I can get it. 

The sleep I get in the day is not how I traditionally understand sleep. Through my breath I enter into deep relaxation and then at some time is as though I rejoin myself, I reawaken into consciousness and it is this reawakening that makes me realise that I slept. 

Long sleeps have a more comatose feel to them. I feel very closely, though not always remembered, that in these coming to's there were worlds, dimensions thinly veiled from the waking one that were accessed or accessible in the dreaming state. A couple of times I have awoken and been shocked at what I remember because I felt as if I had experienced an entire lifetime in the consciousness shift of sleep and perhaps I had… 

Travelling In Your Personal Energetic Spacecraft

I am still reading ‘The Three Waves of Volunteers and the New Earth’ by Dolores Cannon and finding it unendingly fascinating. 

The other day I read about a woman who when in trance spoke about travelling in a spaceship. She said that she was an energetic light being and the craft was actually her own energy. She needed a vehicle of her own energy in order to be able to travel through the other energies. 

It was suggested to her that were she to travel without this throughout the galaxies then her energy would get dispersed. I loved this image and it stayed with me. Perhaps this is what UFOs are, outward manifestations, capsules, of the energy of the beings within them.

I remembered a while back I was dealing with how to hold my own energy around those who were very down, stressed and dark in their energy. It is hard to be well when those closest to you are not.

It was suggested to me that I can be like a deep sea diver who carries their own oxygen with them. I can infuse my space with how and who I am and keep it in a bubble around me. It is from this bubble that I can draw my nourishment.I can recognise and empathise and help others, but I need not be fed from their air.

This is not exactly what was said, it is how I assimilated it. But I thought that the two things are very much related, at least in my mind. The energetic spacecraft to house you as zip through the galaxies and the air you have around you.

Recently I have become more and more aware of the space around me. Sometimes I now breathe in as if my point of inhalation is just under half a metre in front of me. I imagine not only that the air is coming to me via that distance, but also that the actual physical inhalation begins from that point. For some reason it is instantly calming, I feel heart centred and peaceful. 

I have had guided visualisations and meditations where I was told to imagine certain attributes and then to breathe them in. I believe that we can fill the space around us with whatever we wish. Just as we can charge water to reflect certain feeling states. See the experiments done on water by Dr. Masaru Emoto:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAvzsjcBtx8 so I believe that we can charge the air.

I can fill the air around me with peace, for example, and breathe that in. I direct it with my thoughts and intent, I feel it in my heart and then project it outwards. Throughout the day I can reconnect with that and consciously breathe it in and nourish myself with that.

As I go beyond my physical form I can also send this out to others. My auric field can expand and touch others as I pass with the feeling states I am working with.

First, however, I have to learn to hold my own energy. Otherwise I would be like the light being with no spacecraft getting dispersed all over the place, which happened to me on many occasions in my life! 

One visualisation that really worked is the blue egg. It is to imagine that there is a blue egg of light surrounding you and that nothing can penetrate through this. It took a while and a lot of imagination before it started to seem viable and real. I had to work on it for quite some time in quiet meditation before I was able to get an internal visual that felt credible, a feeling, for what the blue egg was like. 

But once I had it, I could summon it in social settings and know that no one’s energy was penetrating me, I could sit back and watch how things unfolded. A book which helped a lot was Ernesto’s Ortiz’s ‘The Akashic Records – Sacred Wisdom for Transformation’, he has a very good section on protection, on using the egg or circle shape around you and making it whatever colour you feel to be most suited to you. He also has a triple layer protection, i.e. three eggs, which I love and have often used. 

In imagining the egg, it is to visualise the light coming from within you and that you send this out a distance around you creating the egg shape, you can then thicken the walls. He has a very good website which is worth checking out, it has some very good free meditations, under Free Stuff, on it which I recommend, I found the one on grounding particularly useful. http://www.journey2theheart.com/index.shtml 

It all took some practice, however. From hearing about an egg shaped light bubble that could protect, to actually beginning to feel that it does, is quite a journey!

But once I became able to hold my own energy, which I have really noticed only recently then I can start playing with it. Sending it out, letting the light stream, without being fearful. It is good to know that when it gets too much I can draw it all in again. I can choose, this is important to remember. 

I tried for a while to hold it open constantly and living in a city I was running for cover to my house after half an hour of being outdoors. It is neither necessary nor very useful to do this I was told and I agree! 

Yesterday when I was walking down the street, I allowed myself to spread further than my physical form, so that I could place my awareness in my auric field. As I walked, I imagined that I could see the light in every person I walked past. 

We all come from divine Source, we are all divine Source, we are all Light. I feel that our work is to expand our closeness and remembrance of who we are and where we come from, to incorporate it more and more in this moment. 

We have forgotten. We can remember. Between those points are infinite journeys. 

Everyone I looked at, I imagined a small kernel of light shining within them and held it in focus. Without even realising it, some I imagined had a kernel of light, others an orb, others a tiny grain, but whatever the size or how covered it was, it was there.

I felt myself glowing with light and recognised the light in them. I then started to imagine that each person was streaming light as if from the top of their heads’ leaving trails of light behind them. It was beautiful. I asked that they recognise this too. 

I did not get depleted doing this as I was firmly within myself, but I felt more connected, more able to recognise the beauty in those around me. I got to free myself from usual perceptions, usual judgements, looking people up and down wondering what they thought of me, what I think of them. That became irrelevant. 

At times when I got a bit jittery I just re-enfolded myself and brought my focus back to the small area around me, to the floor even. It was play, but it took me to another vision, another perception of the strangers walking by. 

It is wonderful, because I can set out and not know what the day will bring, what will my perception be on this journey? I hadn’t planned it, but it naturally unfolded and I’m glad to have had that experience. 

The Passenger

There is no division between the spiritual and the mundane. Every event of our lives can become charged with meaning, it can be a portal to a realm of experiences and understanding both new and unfolding. It is wonderful when this happens and I feel it happening more and more. So much of my day is made up of tiny events that hold great realities.

I’ve had this song ‘The Passenger’ in my head for what seems like months. The urge to hear it has been building and today I had to download it. More and more I do things because I feel it is right, I feel a calling to do it and because I have listened to that calling enough without asking what the point is and always experienced something special through it, I just do it now without thinking.  I downloaded it and went downstairs ostensibly to tidy up, but really it was to hear it in a quiet space which was mine. It is where I meditate and the energy and feeling there relaxes me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLhN__oEHaw

The second I heard it I began to dance. I haven’t danced for years and with such abandon. Even when I used to dance it was always as if I held up a mirror to myself and was trying to look on from the outside in and so I was always self-conscious in a limiting way. But today was different, I felt free in my form and really enjoying the movement I was capable of. 

A few months ago I read one of the Seth books, ‘Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfillment, Vol. 1,’ one of my favourite books to date! In it Seth describes man’s process of becoming physical and how the air itself was denser and so many things started coming together. 

For weeks I have become aware of the wind on my body, really feeling the air as I walk, becoming aware of my physical frame parting the air, being caressed by it, the texture of it, the temperature variation. Now as I danced I felt the air, I was able to sense the air as I moved and it was wonderful. I loved my body, what it could do, it was literally filling the space, rotating within and around it, splicing through the air.

I danced and so much came to me, I understood how I was able to fill my space now and not let others into my energy field any more, I felt big and wonderful. This is alien for me, yet it was natural. I could see the energy in my mind’s eye, I had shivers through me the whole time, I knew I was doing more than just dancing.

So often the small things, the little urges we are most likely to pass over, especially when the little voice in our head tells us that it’s silly, those are the things that can bring us the greatest gifts. So many experiences converged in me hearing and dancing to that song. I was so happy to be in physical form, I have fought against this and struggled within this since small and I felt that in my dance I was reaching acceptance, but more than acceptance, joy. 

Only here at this time can I be as I am at this instant and it is a thrill. I felt energy coming through me and I knew I was releasing energy in my movements. I called for healing and allowed the light to gather within me and spin off what I no longer need, it could be released through my hands. Everything was joined. 

When I heard the lyrics about the stars I was transported to the night sky with my crystals charging them the other night. Again I had followed my intuition. I had put them out to charge in the full moon and instead of leaving them haphazardly I put them in a grid. I did it without thinking, just through sensing where they needed to go and they were beautiful. As I danced I was there, feeling the closeness of the sky and the stars and all that they may mean and be to me.

I felt my niece close. She died a few years back of cancer and for some reason she was so close now. I realised the three year anniversary of her death had just passed as had her birthday and I hadn’t remembered. But I felt her here now. I knew she had come to do what she needed to do and tough though her life was and unbearably painful to watch how she left, I felt her joyous and full in this instant. I felt I could dance with her. 

Now when I write, it brings tears to my eyes, but it was all feeling and it felt so real that when I was experiencing it, there was no sadness. There was no time even, all the events like the contours of an ordinance survey map that lay against each other began to merge with each other.  I was amazed at the lyrics I was listening to. This is it! I am the passenger and I’m thrilled to be here, I’m thrilled to be here with you, it’s one big dance, a wonderful uplift of energy. 

Excerpted lyrics for the full version: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/iggypop/thepassenger.html

First Verse

I am the Passenger and I ride and I ride

I ride through the city’s backsides

I see the stars come out of the sky

Yeah, the bright and hollow sky

You know it looks so good tonight.

Fourth Verse

Oh, the passenger

How, how he rides

Oh, the passenger

 He rides and he rides

He looks through his window

What does he see?

He sees the sign and hollow sky

He sees the stars come out tonight

He sees the city’s ripped backsides

He sees the winding ocan drive

And everything was made for you and me

All of it was made for you and me

‘Cause it just belongs to you and me

So let’s take a ride and see what’s mine

…

Fifth Verse

Oh the passenger

He rides and he rides

He sees things from under glass

He looks through his window side

He sees the things that he knows are his

He sees the bright and hollow sky

He sees the city sleep at night

He sees the stars out tonight

And all of it is yours and mine

And all of it is yours and mine

So let’s ride and ride and ride and ride

…

All It Takes Is An Idea

Anything is possible. I have come to see that the only thing that limits us is how far we can imagine what the possible may be in our lives and in ourselves. 

We can and do change all the time. We can work actively to this effect. The scariest state of being, I find, is the one I have heard reiterated many a time: ‘This is who I am. I am as I am and I cannot (or will not) change.’

Sometimes this is coupled with the addendum that the person is too old to change. Does this imply that only children get to change? That once we have reached our mid-20s we become so literally petrified that we can no longer alter the pattern of our being. It is frustrating and very sad to hear these words spoken in the conveying of this belief. 

In my experience I have found that all change begins with an idea, the opening of the mind, ‘perhaps this may be so’. It does not yet have to reside within my experience, it is just the beginning of thinking that it may be possible. It could be a myriad of things, to beginning to think that life may be more magical than we collectively portray it, to thinking that maybe there is another way of acting in a given situation that is available to you.

But it all begins with the may-be. It is a wonderful moment, it seems as though the mind takes a new intake of breath and breathes out into a new space. Ah, there may be more. This may be possible. I could be this.

As this step begins to come together we come up against all the fear based reasoning that emphatically tells you it is not so. The world is not magic. Grow up. Be realistic i.e. cynical. Knuckle down and do the job. Stop seeking, you will only get hurt. 

This is the ego’s role to protect you from the ‘you will only get hurt’ part of the equation. That and ‘the people will think you ridiculous’ or ‘you will become so isolated and alien, no one will be with you. You will not fit in.’ 

As the idea is new there will not be much lived experience to back this up. And so it is natural to go back and forth playing with the idea, taking a step into it and then retreating again.

It is important to remember that we are as filters to the great amount of physical data around us, and our filter, the size and its angle, is determined by the beliefs we hold. Not only does it filter the information that comes through to us, it also draws through the filter experiences that correlate with the belief systems held. 

If I believe that the world is a dark and dangerous place where everyone is out to get me that is what I am going to encounter. I will read and watch the news and I will have this confirmed multiple times a day. I will go for a walk and I will see people scowling, I will worry that they will steal my bag, they will seem shady, I will feel vulnerable, something may even happen. 

What is for sure is that I will not see the people smiling, walking with abandon, radiating their joy. To give a more concrete example, one Friday afternoon I went to a shopping centre looked at the people around me and I saw how happy they were to have finished work early that day. They had the whole weekend ahead of them and I could put myself in their shoes and sense how they were feeling. There was a sense of excitement. The days were opening up in front of them, their own time, they could make plans and have fun.

It made me feel happy for them and it uplifted me. I only saw this because I was receptive to that feeling, I resonated with it and could therefore pick it up. I have suffered from depression in my life and I know that when you feel bad, that is all you see and experience.

Had I gone into the shops with a different attitude, I would have seen the person who pushed another without apologising, I would have gotten stuck behind someone who was blocking my way, the cashier would have said something that annoyed me. I would have seen the faces of people who were also miserable and either I would have felt a sense of comradeship or resented them just for the hell of it.

Had I noticed the happy ones, it would only have been to translate them into my model and I would have railed against their stupidity, at not realising the seriousness of life and how little there really was to be happy about it.

So when we first get an idea that opens up our current beliefs, we have a bulk of lived experience that is either at odds with our opening or just does not tally with it. This is where the may-be is so important. I do not know that it is not so, it may not seem so, but then again it may-be so. 

It has helped me to open to the idea that if I continue working on changing my beliefs, my experience within the world will eventually change to match me. This may take some time, but once you see it coming into effect in your own lives’ it is unbelievably motivating and thrilling. 

There is no one “true” version of reality, there are multiple versions and I can get to take a part in choosing the versions that I participate in. And the wonderful thing is that it all begins with a thought.

There are no limits to what I can begin to imagine if I let myself. The concept of guides was so distant to me when I was first told about them. I was told that I could meet them, that they were with me helping me and that I could connect with them. But how do you even begin? 

I started with visualisations and it began but distantly symbolic. I could make some connections, but it was still very strange. But over time as an idea builds up and up, experience starts to correlate. The next thing I know is that I can actively call upon my guides for help and feel that they are working with me. 

I do not see them, but I know on a very deep level what is happening. If I let my mind flow and do not block it by what I think should fit, I start to get mental pictures of what is going on.

It was the same with white light. People mentioned to me the power of calling in white light, using it as a protection, to cleanse space, but I couldn’t even begin to imagine it. What exactly was white light? How could something you call in the mind’s eye for what you don’t even have a picture of, do anything in the here and now? 

But the idea stuck. Somehow my mind began to play with it. I imagined what it looked like. I imagined what it felt like. In meditations and visualisations it came through. Then I had to start living it. I had to actively call upon it, though it felt inane at the time. 

But the more I did it, the more real it became, it started to have its own internal logic, its own script, its own world of experiences that I could relate to when I thought of it. Now when I think of white light around me and breathing it in and clearing my space, it takes no more than a second to summon.

It doesn’t have to be so esoteric either. I’ve had times with my children where I’ve reacted after a long day and we’re all tired and then felt bad. Immediately afterwards I knew that they were tired or hungry and instead of hammering away at the point, gently cajoling them into bed would have been kinder, more loving and more in harmony with who I wish to be. 

But I was not capable of it for a time. I would see it only after the fact. But I desired to react differently, I held to this intention. I could paint the picture of myself in a more loving, a kinder mode, I really got a sense for who I could be. It was as though I started to flesh out the idea with more thoughts in my creation of the picture. 

Then one day something happened, my son called to me after he should have been asleep and I was already half way down the stairs. My usual reaction after having been called in so many times already would have been not to go. I would have felt quietly and internally irritated at how this was stopping me doing other things that I wanted to do. 

But then my picture caught up with me. I realised that here was an opportunity to live the picture I was painting. I saw the scene as I wished it to be like in a film and all I had to do was step into it. So I went into his room and held him in love. I realised that he needed me right now. I listened to what he said and I transmitted to him how much I loved him. I held him and kissed him and spoke to him till he was nearly asleep. 

I had literally been able to walk into the picture of who I wanted to be, what I wanted to be capable of. I had walked into an alternate reality. I go in and out of this now, but as long as I have a picture to guide me, to show me how to keep opening up the potential within me, the more I use my intent to steer me towards its realisation, the happier I feel. 

There is no point where it is all reached, it is an ongoing journey where ideas spawn new ideas and the process keeps unfolding.

I was petrified for years and I do not want to be that again, I doubt whether it is any longer possible! But it is not hard to make a start, all you have to do is not close the doors, just stay open to a possibility.