Nerefa

After years of regarding my dreams as nothing more than dreams, I started looking into astral projection and spiritual beliefs. I've been reading books, listening to other people's experiences, and running personal experiments (with the help of my significant other).

I'm now feeling more at home with it. I've reshaped my understanding of what it means to be real, which leads me to believe that AP is undeniable.

All our experiences (both dreams and waking) are filtered through our limited human perceptions, but consciousness isn't limited by perception.
How I came to terms with this:
- It's when you can feel the tension in a room after a fight takes place, even though you weren't there to witness it and may have no knowledge that it happened.
- When you don't hear a dog bark in your dream, but the sound somehow wakes you up.
- When in a dreamless state, you can be aware of changes in your surroundings, despite having no physical or mental perceptions of them.

I now believe that our consciousness isn't limited to our perceptions and neither is the universe. We can make the choice to find other ways to navigate the unperceivable aspects of reality, or ignore it.
So personally, I've chosen to be as aware as possible, even of the things I can't perceive.

This is where dreams and astral projection come in, providing a way to translate pure awareness into readable perceptions. Sometimes things can get lost in translation, but the more you practice and detach yourself from your own personal biases, the more you can perceive the things we wouldn't normally have access to.

Anyway, I know some people aren't into this sort of thing and respect that. I don't plan on putting much of this type of content on here.

Normally I get up to go to the bathroom, but on my way, I smashed into a sharp corner of my wall last night (not dreaming, this happened in waking life).
My face was bruished, bleeding, and my significant other woke up in a panic. I assured her it was fine, just kinda hurts, and thought to myself "I don't want this to ruin my WBTB."

It did not!

I went on to have a few hours of borefest lucid dreams. I made rice and some other foods in the dream, but had no pesto for it so was very disappointed. I spent the rest of the dream trying to find something else to eat.

But then I hopped on a plane, chatted with the pilot, and found out that someone sabotaged the plane to cause a crash.

There weren't many people on board, and they didn't act like normal civilians. The whole thing was a set up to identify and flush me out. They knew I'd use my abilities to escape the plane crash.

Everyone else already seemed to have a plan and escaped easily with parachutes as the plane started to tip over. This all happened in seconds. As the nose went down, the plane plummeted faster and the pressure pulled me back.

One woman was at the escape door as if she'd been waiting for me, irritated that I was taking my preciously sweet time to evacuate. She left as soon as I followed. There was only a split second of time left and I climbed out just in time.

As I free fell out of the plane, I transformed into my dragon and took to the skies, looking down at the mountains and a plume of smoke that billowed out of the crash.
I flew down to investigate and look for the people who had been on board. I found them, and they were fine. Then I woke up in morning.

This is a personal dream that I wouldn’t normally post, but I wanted to share one of these. This is a good example of a therapeutic lucid dream. It shows one of the ways you can benefit from lucid dreaming if you experience grief or other difficult emotions.

Warning: A lot of unpleasantness ahead.

—-

We went to my grandpa’s house since we happened to be there and I decided to real quick grab some more of my stuff like the office chair. We didn’t leave much there, but the office chair was the one big thing I left.

He wasn’t home. I deliberated skipping it, but figured it wouldn’t hurt to just go in and grab the chair so he wouldn’t have to worry about moving it.

I know how much I personally hate unannounced guests and I would never want someone doing this for me, but I keep thinking of how much he’s expressed difference from me in this way. It makes no sense to me, but he never cared about people just walking into his house. He used to refuse to put doors between rooms in his house, removing them any chance he got, and didn’t like locks—he’d never lock his house. He’d leave doors wide upon and get excited about the happy surprise if anyone like a neighbor just happened to walk in out of the blue. All the time he’d invite people to show up and do things for him when he wasn’t home, as if the very thought of (what I would consider) an intrusion delighted him.

So I went in and got the chair. It was already sitting by the door, affirming his intention to get rid of it.

He then pulled up just as we were leaving. He was pissed, but not because it bothered him that I walked into his house. He wasn’t truly bothered at all, but acted as such merely because it violated the boundaries he knew I had. My boundaries, which he found a way to weaponize in this moment. It was shallow anger laced with the “Gotcha” delight that almost overided it to a point where I couldn’t take it seriously.
“So we’re just walking into people’s houses now.” he said with a sneer, but he could barely take his own pseudo rage seriously and I could hear the laughter below out from behind it.
It was strange, though. Something wasn’t right.
He then turned to me and I saw glimpses of the nice grandpa I used to know as he held his arms out and hugged me. He said he was happy to see me, he loved me, and goodbye.
There was anger and spite still in him, directed at me at the same time.
I asked if he wanted some money to cover any potential bills.
I felt bad that I don’t have much now because we just moved, but I’d give him whatever I could.
He answered with two voices clearly speaking in unison. One said yes, that it would help. The other voice cheered with derision. “Ooh money, hehehe!” it chuckled, as if celebrating plundered goods despite me giving it freely. It made it sound like I was being robbed even though that’s not what this was. I owed him far more than I could give, and I wanted to help him more than anything.
I didn’t like how that voice made me feel gross helping him, so I ignored it. I gave him $100, silently promising I’d have more later, and hugged him again. I told him thank you, that I loved him. I knew it was stupid to cry, but did so anyway.
I hurriedly got back in the car after waving goodbye and could hear the deriding voice cheering and mocking me as it celebrated the money.
His other voice didn’t speak, but it was sad and watched us leave as if it wished it could leave, too.
I felt pulled in two different directions whenever I was around him lately, ever since we moved here.
I never used to feel this way.

As we pulled out of the driveway, I saw something sitting there. It was short and black, and it sat in a massive puddle of itself. Now that I looked at the house from outside, I could see it better. There was black grime everywhere. It was all over the property, having spread itself onto everything, a wet spiderweb of black goop. It was all over my grandpa too. His clothes, hair, and skin had little strings of weblike goop all over. It leaked out from inside his mouth and the corners of his eyes.
I thought about how, in waking life, there was always this strange invisible grime that follows him. It has a physical texture and smell, but I couldn’t see it. The only time I ever saw him without it was for a few years when he was practicing Buddhism. At that time, he was happier than I had ever seen him before.
He still keeps all the statues and pictures from his trip to Burma, but I avoid talking to him about Buddhism as it seems to anger him if it’s brought up.
Anyway in this dream I didn’t see it when I was in the house, but I could see the black grime clearly now from the car.

I looked down at myself, checking our car and things. We were clean. It wasn’t on us. I wasnt worried about it getting on us either, as I knew it didn’t want anything to do with us.

It had already tried over the course of the two years we lived there. That’s why it spited us, and wanted us gone.
I looked out the window at my grandpa, who watched us drive away.

“…I got manipulated, didn’t I?” I then turned and asked my partner.

“Yeah.” she said.

I nodded, not knowing why I asked other than to get her opinion, I guess.

For a moment, we couldn’t decide where to go, but ultimately we decided to go home to the new place.

The world was fragmented into chunks. Many people were gone, post apocalypse.

Some of the remaining people were hang gliders, which allowed them to survive traveling between fragments, but it was getting harder and harder to survive since more and more land was destroyed every day and a constant storm picked up.

Most of the remaining fragments were pieces of ocean that flowed into an abyss with raging currents because of the storm.

Hang gliding was a death sentence at this point, but so was staying in one spot. This was the end of the world. A lot of people were ready to go one last time.

One of the hang gliders and handed me a blank piece of paper and a pen. He had another piece of paper in his hand that he attached to the hang glider with something written on it as he prepared to take it for one last deadly spin.

I asked what that’s for.

“Freedom. You write down all of the things you forgive yourself for.” He said as he got ready.
He then took off.

I went my own way. I knew it was a dream, so every time I fell, I rewound time and did it again.