Previously I've described how astral projection seems markedly different to me from other dream experiences. Now it seems to me that the difference is mostly a matter of emphasis, that they're largely the same thing, which is more like what some other people were saying. That isn't to suggest that astral experiences can have no 'paranormal' physical significance though.

In normal waking experience, a person's visual, audial, and tactile experience is mostly slaved to modeling their physical circumstances, as suggested by sense information. For myself, I have almost no separate "mind's eye", the cartoon representation of my surroundings dominates almost completely. I think however that the 'cartoon', even though it represents the physical surroundings and most people are in the habit of thinking of them as being equivalent, is the same as what we call astral. With astral projection, the main difference is a person is actively bending the model to suggest that their body is somewhere besides where their physical body is. And with a 'normal' lucid dream, it's still the same, except that a person is projecting an alternative cartoon environment, rather than trying to overlay the body representation on the immediate model of physical surroundings.

The reason the experiences seemed different to me, is what I was calling my 'astral' body was focused on my tactile experience, the map of 'myself' in my nerves so to speak. What I called my 'dream body' was focused more on a sense of buoyancy, such as one might manipulate while flying in dream. Close to that is a sense of being present in my head, which I is related to my spatial and audial maps. When dreaming I rarely project a 'body' in the dream, I just float around formless and observe stuff. For people who do project a body while dreaming, I think that if they were to stop projecting the rest of the dream environment, while activating the part of their mind that usually involuntarily processes sensate information while awake, and then overpowering it with their dream imagination, they would have an astral projection experience.

The key point here that makes it not "all in your head", is that your waking life sensate cartoon is not entirely passive. You also use it to move your body. By far, the easiest way to impact your environment is by using your body, because that's what it's developed to do. But you can also influence other things besides your body, though it takes a subtle and different kind of thinking. Some people can do that with an 'astral body' thought maybe using it to move things in their room for instance. I think however that the 'astral body' is sort of like Dumbo's magic feather, or an ill-fit physical representation of a more abstract subject. I think a person could influence things a lot more effectively if they gave up the idea of doing it with a body, astral or otherwise. And I think that we all already do this anyway, it's just mostly subconscious and involuntary. It's as if we leave most of the mechanisms of fate to far future relatives who have more awareness of such things. Our identity overlaps with theirs, so our subconscious desires do get expressed, just not in a way that we recognize or understand.

In my thought of this, the 'dream plane' is a sort of semi-collective mind's eye. It is private and individual in the sense that the forms you see there are generally seen that way by you alone. But the thoughts, so to speak, that inspire the forms are shared, even though your own thoughts are most immediate. For most people, most of the time, a dream character is more accurately thought of as a projection of oneself than anything else. But there's a shared element there too. With something like 'dream police' the foreign element may be significant enough to seem to trump the personal element, so that a person does not categorize it as a DC. But I think the interpretation is still highly personal. I don't think a clear line can be drawn between DC's and other beings or entities. The dichotomy of 'me' and 'not me' is inadequate. Likewise for dream guides, they're you, but also not you.

A final thought that seems important in this context: Like somebody else posted a year ago, if you pursue self-knowlegde without love, you get confusing crap back for results. That's probably the most personally helpful thing I've read here. And I think it applies to all of this stuff. Any lever that a person may use to try to use always makes you pay for it in the long run. That applies to ideas as well as to physiological or biochemical tricks. Part of love is patience and taking care of yourself.

My 'shadowofwind' handle is after a Black Sabbath song that came out a few weeks before I signed up on another site, then I reused it here. For whatever it's worth, it goes

Well it's night again, and the dark just killed the sun. If the light must end, you've got time to run away. There's a door to dreams, and it always let's you in. But with a silent scream, all your nightmares must begin. Still you chase what you can't see, like death, and pain, and sin, and the shadow of the wind. [Break] You'll remember me, I can make you disappear. Be where you want to be, just as long as it's not here. Well I'm back and I'm stronger, and the first one's always free. And it lasts much longer, you can bet your sanity. Nevermore the vict[or] cries, as I slip beneath the skin, like the shadow of the wind. [Break] If words had names like red and green and two for sympathy, like black and white and in between then you'd be Misery. Every day is an inquisition, who are you what are you why? I'm alive I belong I'll be back, it's a half truth still a whole lie. To the garden of good and evil you'll [go], but you know, the spider only spins - the shadow of the wind.

That's sort of an opposite way of trying to say the thing about love. The last part of that strongly rung true with me personally about three years ago, even though on it's literal face it hardly seems to make sense. From my experience and observation, if our goal is to understand 'astral' stuff, or even experience it without driving ourselves into a swamp that painfully imprisons us later, then this 'heart' thing is pretty important.