QUOTE(☞Tomber☜ @ Jan 17 2011, 11:59 PM)
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Alright so I'm not sure where to go at this point with dreams, or if I can even "go" anywhere. Right now I'm at the point where every night I am able to wake up in my dreams, take control, talk... ect. Basically realize what is happening and function like I normally would. I worked to get to this point but now I realize I'm not sure at all where to take it. What are some realistic goals that someone should work with when it comes to dreams? I very much like being able to astral travel but I want to make it clear this is not the same thing at all. I would like to be able to astral travel after waking up in a dream but am not sure how.
Basically when I wake up in a dream I have maybe 10 seconds or so of realistic awareness that I struggle to maintain before I sort of forget and fade back into the dream. What can I do during that time? I keep practicing to lengthen the time but it helps if I'm focusing on something.
Wow, great work! I am only just getting semi-reliable lucidity during dreams at will, after some 6 or so years of working on it.
The kind of work you can do while the door to your subconscious is open is virtually limitless! After you can reliably become conscious during dreaming, the next step is to begin exerting control over the dream. Exerting that control keeps you conscious of it, but will wake you up a lot as well. It seems there is a kind of balance that has to be maintained, you don't want to stimulate your sensual mind so much that you wake up, but you want to walk the line between sensual and abstract so that you don't fall back into dreaming unconsciously.
There are things to look for in the Dream. Keys that represent connections to your subconscious mind. When we are unconsciously dreaming these keys are just curious symbols that reoccur in our dreams, but when we dream consciously those keys unlock doors that can take you out of the 'stream' that the dream actually is, and into other parts of your subconscious where you can understand those parts of your being through dialog and observation. And, presumably, you can make changes on those levels as well.
The keys don't usually look like keys, of course, and the doors don't look like doors. It's a world of personal expressions of archetypal symbols. Those archetypes are spirits of the mind, and a key can be a person, place, or thing, and a doorway can be the right turn of phrase or a color, etc. I think the best work you can do at the moment is learn to work in your Dream, remain conscious of it for longer periods at a time, and start looking for keys and doorways. You can get to the astral worlds from a dream, but honestly the more long term useful and impactful work will be done in the dream itself.
peace