The Astral Plane Dream

Stopping an Emotion is like trying to stop a wave. You can't! However, Emotions, like waves, can be understood and used.

In the last chapter, we talked about dreams that take place on the Etheric Plane. We told you that these dreams are a good starting point with the process of becoming dream proficient because of their singular motifs and very basic themes. However, even though an Etheric Plane dream is a good starting point for dream recall, you will find yourself tiring quickly of these dreams. You see! The main focus today tends to be on relationships. Conveniently, dreams on the Astral Plane pick up where Etheric Plane dreams end, with the main focus of an Astral Plane dream centering on emotions and relationships. Also, Astral Plane dreams are, often, more enjoyable, offering you many of the physical-like sensations that you are familiar with, but without many of the physical constraints that normally accompany them. One of these constraints is the ego.

The ego is the physical part of you that concerns itself with the daily routine of physical existence. It's that basic needs' part of you focusing on your physical survival: food, shelter, safety, the continuation of the species.

Notably, the Astral Dream Plane is the first dream plane where the ego does not exist. You may think that you do not possess your ego in an Etheric Plane dream. However, remember! The Etheric Plane is a dimension that deals with instinct. That instinctive part of you ties directly to your ego, and, consequently, when on the Etheric Plane, you will experience that ego to some degree. But, when you enter into a dream on the Astral Plane, your ego vanishes and the instinctive part of you disappears, freeing you of their influences. With the absence of the ego, you will feel freer, be without concern, and, for the most part, feel content. This increase in freedom makes an Astral Plane dream much more enjoyable than an Etheric Plane dream.

However, the increased freedom from the toils of physical existence, which an Astral Plane dream gives you, is not the most important aspect of an Astral Plane dream. More important, a dream on the Astral Plane gives you the opportunity to come to know that core- person that you really are, at least on an emotional level. Without your pretenses and your reactions not being constrained by that instinctive (basic needs) part of you, an Astral Plane dream will often reveal to you your true emotional motives behind your actions in situations. It will offer a peek at a part of yourself that, all to often, remains hidden from normal view when you are interacting in your physical body on the physical plane. For example, when an animal is hungry, it becomes determined to fill its belly. It can not react in any other way until that need is satisfied. However, that reaction of the animal fulfilling its present need may not be the way that the animal typically behaves or what drives it on a deeper level. That animal could normally be fun-loving and playful, once those instinctive needs are met. Your dream self is similar.

You see! The Astral Dream Plane is a place of emotions and feelings. It is here that you dream of being in-love, of fulfilling your desires and wishes, of having fun. On the other side of the coin, an Astral Plane dream is also a dimension to experience hatred, anger, frustration, and sadness. You will find all the emotions here -- good and bad -- and you can experience any one or more of them in various dreams and in various degrees.

Furthermore, because this is a dimension of relationships and emotional interactions with others, the emotions felt here will, inevitably, tie themselves to other people. You will quickly discover that your Astral Plane dreams are full of all sorts of personal encounters. Expect these dreams to be rich in emotional interactions and even the wielding of those emotions during those personal interactions. In an Astral Plane dream you experience your feelings and quite often you can not do that alone. You will pull other people into your Astral Plane dreams and share your emotions and feelings with them in a very dynamic way.

Do not confuse a dream that involves you working out creative differences or establishing new intellectual relationships with an Astral Plane dream; that kind of dream is a Mental Plane dream. In an Astral Plane dream, you experience the emotions and feelings going on between you and another and not particularly any kind of intellectual or creative movement. For example, if you hate someone, you enter into an Astral Plane dream and hate them. If you love them, you enter into an Astral Plane dream and love them. If you admire them, then you enter into an Astral Plane dream and admire them. These dreams are a pointer to the underlying emotional currents that drive you in relation to other people. You won't fall in love in an Astral Plane dream, you will just be in love. Falling in love or reaching some kind of emotional state regarding another person is usually preceded by dialogs and mental activity. These more movement oriented or intellectual oriented dreams are usually Mental Plane dreams. In an Astral Plane dream, you are already at a particular emotional state (not building up to one), and you are experiencing that state, for better or for worse.

This emotional requirement does not mean that you can not experience Astral Plane dreams with people you do not know or people who are merely acquaintances. It just means that the people involved in the dream must share an emotional commonalty. For example, you could enter into a dream on the Astral Dream Plane and wish to blow off some steam (anger). You could then meet with someone (another dream inhabitant) that also desires an angry confrontation. The two of you could then meet in this dream, and wham! You awake to find out that you were yelling and screaming at someone you do not even know. Physically, of course, you are unable, for whatever reason, to expunge your anger at the real cause, which could be a friend or loved-one. So, instead, you seek out a neutral individual with which to experience this emotion and do that in an Astral Plane dream.

The point, we are getting at here, is that the force that binds two or more people to the same Astral dream is emotional -- some kind of emotion. That angry dream could just as easily be a love-affair. You could desire to feel in-love with another and, by chance, meet with someone whom you do not know and who desires the same. The two of you could then become involved in the same dream and feel what it is like to be in-love with each other, even though the two of you are strangers. The dream, in this instance, is allowing both of you to experience the emotion love. It is giving you, and the other person, an opportunity to express this energy and to feel and to play with this emotional state.

You see! Many emotional encounters on the Astral Dream Plane serve as a kind of testing ground to verify if you would like to manifest, physically, that particular emotion. Remember the probability pool? Well, it also reaches into the Astral Plane. Many of the dreams that you have, here, can be future test-versions of emotional events. However, the thing to keep in mind, with a probable-future Astral Plane dream, is that the people, places, and things, in the dream, are not what is probable. Actually, what is probable is the emotions themselves. In Retrospect, you will find the actual physical events dramatically different from the actual dream events but you will find that what you feel in both will be quite similar.

In the last chapter (the Etheric Dram Plane), we talked about remembering your dreams but not being able to consciously direct them. Well, here, in the the Astral Dream Plane, you will find that self awareness (your ability to consciously control a dream) is at least possible. Astral Plane dreams, unlike their Etheric counterparts, do not interfere with the probabilities that deal with your physical safety. Consequently, it is safe to alter and manipulate, consciously, these dreams. Furthermore, with the concerns of physical survival and instinct gone, you will not only gain more conscious-dream control but will enjoy that control. There's nothing like controlling your own destiny, and there is nothing more enjoyable than controlling your own dreams.

On the Astral Dream Plane, like the Etheric Dream Plane, you will possess a dream body, and this body is your Mach-2 dream body (refer to chapter 5 for a refresher on dream bodies / for something similar use hrc2-18.htm text). This body is much lighter and freer than its predecessor. This freedom has much to do with the fluidity of emotions and feelings that you experience on this plane. Your Mach-2 is a perfect emotional body, because it flexes and curves very easily, just as emotions do. Also, this body is capable of much greater responses to sensations. This greater sensitivity to responses ties in with the Astral Dream Plane and its increased energy and water-like nature. It stands to reason, a higher energy dimension requires a higher energy body!

You see! The magical element of water, by nature, has more energy than the magical element of earth (in physics a liquid possesses more energy than a solid). The Astral Plane is predominately made up of the energy of water, as compared to the Etheric Plane, which consists predominately of the magical element of earth. So, the Astral Plane's energy, and its experiences, will be much more intense than dream experiences on the Etheric Plane. You will most certainly discover this fact quickly in very short but intense emotional dreams.

In many respects, emotions are more intense than physical sensations, even pain. Furthermore, emotions can last for a longer duration of time, sometimes for years. So, it is not too surprising that Astral Plane dreams carry a marked increase in sensitivity. Pain and pleasure, felt in a dream, on this plane, carry with them an undeniable connection with some emotional state. That pain and pleasure can be very intense, and this intensity can be a good aid in showing you the parallel with its emotional counterpart on the Physical Plane. All to often you take for granted the amount of hardship that emotional situations generate. You look at only physical pain as being the ultimate cross to bear. However, emotional hardship can be just as (if not more) enduring and many of your dreams on the Astral Plane will reveal this fact to you.

With the advent of emotions cropping into Astral Plane dreams, decoding these dreams can be a bit more difficult than decoding a dream on the Etheric Plane. The addition of emotions adds a whole new dimension in symbolism. For example, seeing the book War and Peace, lying on a table, in an Astral Plane dream, most certainly points to some emotional conflict that you are undergoing, and not the desire to read a book. The book and the title are acting as an icon to represent some emotional event going on in your life. The best rule, in decoding an Astral Plane dream, is that any object, place, or thing, points to some emotional issue within yourself. Astral Dream Plane objects rarely stand for the actual object portrayed. Keep this fact in mind, when you awake and begin to recall a very emotionally fulfilling dream.

People can be symbols too. Quite often a person on the Astral Plane is just that, another person; but, sometimes, a person in an Astral Plane dream can be a symbol for some emotion. For instance, you meeting with your boss in an Astral Plane dream could mean that both of you are sharing some common emotional experience. However, if your boss is a symbol, than he could stand for some emotional need -- like, for example, the desire for power in your life.

Now, let's show you a couple of typical Astral Plane dreams and explain them:

#1 You are in your new home. You look around and the sun is shining through a window. You see a glass of water on the table. You pick up the glass of water and drink it. The water feels very good as you drink it.

In the above dream, the sun represents your happiness; the sun is a bright and cheery object. The glass of water represents nourishment; water nourishes the body. This short dream is telling you that it feels good to be in your new home, and that that home is going to be a source of much needed emotional nourishment. Can you see how we derived this meaning?

We specifically choose this first example because it had no other people in it. We wanted to show you that not all of your emotional dreams will involve two or more people. At times the other person in an Astral Plane dream is yourself. In this example, you are feeling emotionally good because of the changes that you have recently made in your life. In this example, you are the one making your own happiness. You, in this dream, are a symbol for yourself. The fact of you being alone, in this pseudo dream, indicates that your feelings come from no one else but yourself. Consider this dream a very positive one.

Here's our second example Astral Plane dream, to keep you rolling. Later in this book we are going to cover dream interpretations more deeply.

#2 You are at the book store buying a book that you greatly desire. The name of the book is "The Dance of Life." You turn and see someone familiar in the other aisle. You feel warmth and love. You look down at the book, and you find that it is no longer a book but is now a dress. You put on the dress and immediately find yourself happily dancing across a dance floor.

Okay, in this second pseudo dream, the book represents your desire to feel loved and happy. You have not paid for the book, yet, so you are not physically at this state. The familiar person in the aisle is a symbol representing this emotional state as a friendship, of some kind, with another person, possibly even the person represented in the dream. The book changes into a dress, and, by putting on this dress, you feel what it is like to embark on this friendship. Your dancing represents how happy you could be as you glide on these new found feelings of love and warmth.

You may think that this example dream is a Mental Plane dream, because it seems to deal with the obtainment of a future friendship. However, the dream's core deals with the feeling of warmth and love that accompany that possible friendship. The objects and people in this dream represent a means so you can experience these feelings. The decision whether you manifest this new friendship, in your actual physical reality, rests with you, just as in the beginning of the dream you had not yet bought the book. In this dream, you are just testing out what it will feel like to embark on a friendship with another person.

Now that we have a couple of pseudo dreams under our belts, let's go over a few more Astral Dream Plane details before ending this chapter.

A dream on the Astral Plane tells you about your emotional life. It reveals to you your inner motives, wants, and desires. Naturally, a great number of any one kind of Astral Plane dream is an indication that you lack that emotion in your present physical life. For example, if you continually dream of being in-love, the Dream Universe is telling you that in physical reality you feel unloved and that you should alter that condition.

Also, at times, Astral Plane dreams serve to vent or to release tension. For example, on the Astral Plane, you can release much physical anger in an angry or violent dream. However, do not look too negatively on violent dreams. They can be your only stopgap that keeps you from exploding physically in a situation that could put you in danger or in an undesirable physical circumstance. Many Astral Plane dreams serve this venting purpose and, at the same time, keep you from manifesting aspects in your life that you do not want, need, or are ready for yet. As a rule, blowing off a powerful emotion in an Astral Plane dream, rather than physically, will put you in a better physical circumstance, than actually having that encounter physically.

Finally Astral Plane dreams help you to handle emotions. Emotions are one of the most powerful things that you possess. Emotions are like waves. Waves come and go as they please, seemingly unstoppable and, at times, leave destruction in their wake. The most important purpose that your Astral Plane dreams serve is to teach you about your powerful emotions. They help you to understand and respect them and the power that they possess. Then, one day, with much patience and practice, you can be the master of these emotions and come to know yourself and the Universe just a wee-bit better.

In the next chapter, we are going to discuss the Mental Dream Plane. It is on the Mental Dream Plane that you learn to resolve your differences with others. It is also the place where you can go to acquire knowledge, either specific or general. The Mental Plane also serves as doorway to your higher spiritual self, laying the foundations for your evolution and helping you to grow in an increasingly complex and technical world.