Describing The Astral Plane., how do you precieve the astral plane? Anything I forgot to ask or shou Options

I will express some of my normal experiances.

please note i am not talking about dreams, but consiously entering this realm.

Describing the astral plane.
How do you perceive the astral plane?
For the nature of this discussion, I am seeking the place they go to most often or the least subtle of these planes, as in the end depending on tradition they refold on themselves from a different perspective the deeper you go.

My strongest senses are by far intuition and sight in the astral.

Intuition is stronger then normally in the material, but I occasionally involuntarily “flair” in the material and it is about the same then in intensity, but not in knowing what to do.

Sight is a bit clearer (I use glasses normally, not always in the material) but things seem to adjust in clarity depending on my focus, if not focused on it, it has general shape and color, if I focus it is as good as real for most things.

Sound is almost always off, I communicate only with “real entities” and not with illusions or constructs, this is done telepathically. (I am seeking to change this) however I will hear the sound of large amounts of water or wind.

Touch is not often, I feel usually on a subtle energy basis, but when I truly touch something it is striking, sometimes shaking me out of the state, but not often now.

Most of the places are rural, a few villages here and there, sparsely populated by anything.

Most of my odd encounters are with archetypal creatures. Meaning their type, their look, their feel is indicative of what they are, Size usually indicates aggressiveness, as opposed to power, but things appearing in their normal “conceptually normal” size can be allies or neutral. Things smaller then normal never tried anything negative to me, however there are tings that seem to be like a small version of other things, and are really large versions of what they are.

Typically I see signs of transport vehicles, carts, horses and so on, but I never see them in use or in the case of transport animals in the wild. I often see carts parked, or in need of repair, but this is funny, If I assist, I know that they move on after I leave, but have no recollection of the animal used to move them.

I typically transport to a place I know or see, or go through my place of power, or I float/hover …I occasionally walk, but this feels odd there. I never fly, but I often jump backwards quite powerfully, making it very odd when I do it in the material realm.

What I don’t do oddly is teleport to avoid danger, I am also thinking I don’t avoid it at all here, but I have tried to sneak past things, often successful, sometimes not.

Taste is a texture only thing, it is like feel but always a more sensitive version, on occasion I will get true taste but these I can number on one hand.

I occasionally start at my place of power, this is a construct and where I keep all my astral tools, and do everything. The door out, can take me anywhere I want, or occasionally need to go. I go there when I want to get more clarification, or if I am doing something I am feeling is dangerous. If dangerous I inspect all my tools, weapons and items of protection.

These items are the first things I committed to sigils, thus I don’t have to carry them, but I have them on demand. However if I do not inspect, I have been in situations where the items where in ill repair and not as effective. Or that the item was missing and I could not call it on demand, often I had to seek it out or construct a new one.

On occasion, I care what I am wearing, always going a tad out of place, totally acceptable for the occasion, totally functional, not of any office or profession.

Most of the architecture and implements seem to be 1500s and earlier, from many cultures, with the occasional very fantastic structure, or very modern.

My most cynical thought ever was an experience where I am walking through a pleasant forest with a nearby river. As I got out of the forest entering a plane, there was a crummy strip mall at a cross roads and connection to the river.

It was totally 80’s stucco, fluorescent lamps and the whole thing…all the signs where more tasteful to the eye, but it was just odd. I know the place is still there, I should investigate it further.

Cities, on most cases range from ancient to modern, and seem to have a uniform style, however in almost all cases they are surrounded by total lack of vegetation, deserts, oceans, stone…with one or two having grass plains.

They are usually relatively abandoned, by population standards, but look lived in, not dilapidated or such, only that not many people are there now.

It is usually afternoon or twilight, though night also occurs.

Astral objects are not normal, and always appear different, one moon, multiple moons, nearby planet with rings, nothing in the sky…

Some places are only internal (or I only know the inside) these are the odd places that can change drastically in a few feet, or change at some other will.

While this place is almost always beautiful, it also seems very empty. Even in a crowd like festivities it has a feeling of emptiness. However, there are entities there that make that feeling go away.

On very rear occasions, other then group guided meditations, have I seen what I would say truly felt like another human there, they are often flying in some direction I am not going. I never attempted to cross paths, though on once occasion I felt and later saw a small group of humans coming towards me, perhaps 3 or 4 humans, and 3 or 4 human looking entities. We where walking on the same rural road, I stopped going forward, and bowed my head, though always with my eyes to them. They stopped, and seemed to converse for a few seconds. There was no sound that I could hear except a slight breeze (normal in most cases). The only telepathic link that I got was that of slight challenge.

I flared (embodied power) a tad, involuntary, but always there when challenged. My stance stayed the same, if I remember it correctly it was that of annoyed preparedness. At about the time I resolved to teleport in their midst’s swinging a very stylized spear, I only bring out for mass situations, (but never truly used in combat) they moved about 20 feet off the road and allowed me to pass unmolested.

As for how I appear to myself, usually as my imagined self, on occasion a much friendlier shorter self, I am the witness of this, no real control, where my physical voice becomes the internal ever present dialog of this entity. In addition, for the most part he ignores it. This entity in control allows me to hear everything, he also is there in delicate situations almost showing me by example, the correct way to be with things that can destroy me. This controller situation only occasionally happens when I go through my door of my place of power or occasionally when I am sucked there in a dream state.

This brings me to my final note. I am always filled with purpose and drive when I go there. I am always seeking something. I am not blood thirsty, it is only a concept of what is the best solution for the situation so I can get to or closer to my goal. Often I do not know what the goal is till I see it or get there. And then it is as if I always knew, or other times it was as if getting there was all, how I deal with the situation at hand is my choice.

In joint meditational path working/astral travel, others have described me as
1. Primal (pure instinct and savage) scared most of these people.
2. Having a huge gravity that seemed to pull them from what they where doing or wanting, and they willingly went as it became more important to them. Not to please me but as if it was, and they just figured it out.
3. Patient, but a sense of humoring them, while something more important needed doing.
4. Very hard and cold.

I welcome the observations of others and or comments on my own experiences. In the end I am seeking new perspectives.

In any kind of pathworking or projection that I've done, scenery typically initiates as something wild. Sometimes it's a jungle environment, sometimes more pine forest setting like the areas I grew up in. On rare occaisions its a beach of some sort. It is 'random' when I project simply to practice, which involves typically meeting some kind of entity either familiar or new, for some kind of instruction or discussion, often about some current issue on my mind or in my life.

I have learned that jungles mean that I will encounter something dealing with my primal self, or the utilization of primal forces, especially animalistic energies. Beaches mean conversations with ancestors; forests mean meeting with elementals; deserts mean facing my demons; on rare occaisions I've found myself underwater, and this has in the past always meant a meeting with a past self, or the examination of past lives in some way. I meet with my higher self in a cloudlike environment, as in up in the sky, twice so far but with consistent imagery. For me the landscape, the sensory involvement, is all completely symbolic, and I do my best to pay attention to everything.

When I do project for a particular purpose, I enter into a landscape on purpose, and in those cases I choose the landscape, but not the symbolism.

I see and hear in the astral, and have a sharper energy sense than I do in the material plane. They become something that I feel on an almost tactile level, flows of energy in the 'ground' which I interpret as the structure or foundation of the place i'm in, between objects which I interpret as the interconnectedness of particular symbols - which is to say, if I sense an energetic connection between two or more symbols, I know to look at them as one symbol with 'parts' as opposed to taking each symbol into it's own context.

I don't typically have a 'body' of my own when I project. I have a central presence and awareness but rather than having a sense of actually moving from one place to another in the astral I always have a sense of shifting perspective. The only times that I have a body proper are when I am meeting with an entity of some kind, and even then not always. There have been experiences where it seemed like the landscape itself was the entity, and I converse with the world I have projected into, and in those cases I never feel a sense of solid location, so much as a vast awareness of a place. The exception to that is when I do magickal work purposefully through astral projection, in which case I build up my body of light to it's current peak, or at least to the limits of my own ability to do so, and then project into a place with that body in order to do work. These days that's rare.

I almost never see houses, dwelling places of any kind, vehicles, or signs of any 'human'-esque presence. I see trails on occaision, but not in the sense of a parting in the landscape that indicates some kind of regular passage so much as a particular trail of attention - I just know where I'm supposed to go.

My intuition in the astral is about the same as it is in the material, though perhaps a bit more clear and a bit faster. Psychic faculties are much stronger for me there, and I try to operate in the material world, in that sense, as though I was always there. Sometimes that works out sometimes it doesn't. I always have a sense of knowing that i'm where I am for a purpose, and knowing how to go about seeing that purpose through, even if I just projected for 'practice'. Who knows what my subconscious mind or higher self intended, there's no way to confirm that I 'randomly' decided to do it in the first place I suppose.

I typically have very little impact on my astral landscapes. I don't leave footprints, don't rustle grass or sand, etc., and while I can feel wind, heat, etc., they don't affect me directly, i'm simply aware of their presence.

All this takes place in what is often called the 'zones girdling the earth'. I've done only a little projection into the spheres of the moon and mercury, only once to the sphere of the sun - at least, according to that philosophy. I will occaisionally try to push higher simply for the sake of exploration, but will more often than not only get a glimpse before 'falling' back down, and it is uniformly a sinking feeling of being too 'heavy' to support myself in the higher spheres.

I have before, but rarely do so purposefully, projected into somewhere 'here', which I think is usually called the etheric realm, i.e., the realm that is simply the representation of the material world. In those cases it's like walking through a photograph, or a film that's on pause. Well, more like a hologram, I suppose, than a film or photograph, but nothing moves. Even if I go to a place where people are awake and moving around, when I get there everyone is frozen in place, and getting the scene to 'roll forward' in time is very difficult for me. I do sometimes have the opportunity, when that happens, to interact with objects on the energetic level, as the same sensory rules apply to that kind of projection that seem to apply to the projections into the astral proper, but of course there are no physical changes - just energetic ones. It is easier, for instance, to project into the ethereal realm and realign the energy of a room than it is to actually go there and do the work from the material plane.

My interaction with energy on the astral is also different than on the material plane. I can touch and move them as though they were physical things; if you could imagine being able to hold a stream of water and move it as though it were solid, same goes for other elemental energies and non-elemental energies, they all have a substance that can be manipulated, though they do not all feel like liquids.

Also, for me the 'landscape' tends to shift a lot, it's rarely very solid unless i'm with an entity, there seems to be a kind of stabilizing effect when i'm around one of the inhabitants rather than on my own. Sometimes one landscape bleeds into another - jungles into deserts, deserts into forests, etc. And there are times when there is no landscape at all, just blank, not even black or dark, but simply lack of form all together, and within that there are presences with no form, and communication is direct knowledge, rather than hearing, seeing, touching, etc., such that it doesn't even feel like telepathy, although I suppose it could be interpreted as such. But, that is normally when I project to a place where I don't have the proper equipment, at least I think so far, to properly experience where I am at, and those trips don't last very long at all in perceptive time. Objectively they can last up to half an hour, or as little as a minute.

Another thing is that entities never seem to approach or go away - they always are just there one minute, gone the next, although I can always tell when there is supposed to be someone there. The exception is animals, I always hear them before they arrive, and they always leave into the landscape.

peace