ASTRAL 101: INNER SANCTUARY

Hello seekers of truth!  Welcome to the third issue of Astral 101.  In last week’s post, we introduced Lucid Lessons as well as focused on the higherself and its purpose.  As there is much mystery surrounding the higherself concept, we will continue to focus on it in this post, as I did not cover the necessities yet.

With all of this new information about dimensions, lucid dreaming, higherselves and what-not, it may have occurred to you that Astral Projection and its surrounding ideologies are one big labyrinth. It will get frustrating at times, but even the simplest stories have morals of perseverance. “If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again” so goes the saying.  This is ascension were talking about, so stick with it!  Besides, when you actually begin astral projecting, you’ll be exploring an endless etheric maze anyway!  Life is a journey, not a destination.

Lucid Lesson

So now that opening the door to lucidity has been achieved, it is now time to understand how to maintain to the dream.  People have sent me emails or commented on my previous article that they became lucid, but after a short while things became fuzzy and eventually the dream collapsed.  Today will be a focus on how to maintain and prolong a lucid dream.  We will begin with our first of three quotes coming out of Robert Waggoner’s Book, Lucid Dreaming:

Lesson#2:  “To maintain your dream state, you must modulate your emotions”

Once a person realizes they’re dreaming, they will usually get a sort of surge of energy, and when certain things appear or happen,  people will get really excited or angry or down.  This will cause the dream to become unstable and possibly collapse.  What this essentially means is that when lucid, you will have to remain calm.  It doesn’t mean you can’t feel emotions, but you have to keep the mindset of “it’s just a dream”.  Too much emotion will cloud your perception and will ultimately alter the environment.

Lesson#3:  “Lucid Dreamers must learn to focus simultaneously on both their conscious awareness and the apparent dreaming activities.  Lucid Dreamers who become overly focused on the dreaming activities get swept back into non-lucid dreaming.  So too, lucid dreamers who become inattentive to the fact of their conscious awareness risk becoming lost to the dreaming.  To maintain lucidity, we must develop a proper balance of mindful, aware interacting to engage the dream consciously.”

That seems pretty self-explanatory.  If we become too focussed on the events in the dream and forget that we are aware it’s a dream, we get sucked out of lucid dreaming and will most likely forget the majority of the content of our lucid dream.  And now, the final quote: 

Lesson#4:  “After reading don Juan’s exhortation to Castaneda that he should try to stabilize the dream environment and, bit by bit, make it as sharply focused as the waking environment, this became my new goal.  Don Juan advised that the dreamer should concentrate on only three or four objects in the dream, saying, ‘When they begin to change shape you must move your sight away from them and pick something else, and then look at your hands again.  It takes a long time to perfect this technique.’”

Robert Waggoner as a young man was just beginning to discover lucid dreaming, as are we.  In his book, he quotes the first book he read on the subject by Carlos Castenada,Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan.  Don Juan was a native shaman who taught Castenada, an anthropology graduate student at UCLA, about psychotropic plants and lucid dreams.  The quote provided shows us that Lucid Dreaming isn’t something that can be perfected in a couple weeks.  All of this is a life long journey into the internal and external universe.  As it suggests, to keep a dream stabilized, we need to continually shift our focus because a dream is always transforming.  It can’t be held in one moment for very long, so we have to go with the flow.  Looking at our hands in a dream is sort of a safety measure that will calm us down as well as allow us to effortlessly shift our focus.  With this knowledge on how to stabilize the dream, we can begin to explore deeper into the unconscious mind and develop skills needed to astral project.  Once again, I ask anyone who has an experience with this new information to comment on this article.  Now, back to higherselves.

Moving Forward

By now I hope that at least some of you have contacted something that you feel is connected to you.  If you have not, that is completely normal and alright.  Everyone is on their own path and at their own pace.  Think of it this way; the people who have already succeeded in contacting their Higherself may take considerably long to grasp another concept in the future, whereas those who haven’t contacted theirs yet will grasp it immediately do to this time taken to thoroughly learn the lessons they need to move on. The idea was to pinpoint an inkling or feeling of this extension of ourselves.  This week’s goal is to perceive them and understand their demeanour, allowing you to properly integrate with them.

In the previous article, I stated that the identity of your higherself is an identity that your soul had prior to your body’s creation.  I want to make this a little bit more open ended, by saying that a higherself doesn’t necessarily have to be a past life, but can be a fragment of your soul’s personality overall.  It doesn’t have to come from anywhere else or doesn’t have to have lived before either.   Do you all remember Spirit Science episode 8 where Jordan talks about the pragmatic model of the human mind?  Well, the core self is of course our soul, we understand this.  But the second layer, known as the animal sub-self, can describe our higherself as well, as they are in essence one perception or way of seeing things.  In SS8, Monroe seens to give the animal sub-self a bad rap because it is difficult to control, is connected to our limbic system, and has filters.  A higherself operates on a level out of our control, because we have to learn from it.  The limbic system is responsible for our emotional life and our formation of memories.  This would make sense because a higherself is a fragment of our full perception and will also speak to us through emotions.  I believe both of these viewpoints about the higherself, but at the same time, I’ve noticed while I meditate and connect to my higherself I seem to “remember” things from ancient times.   These memories can also be a result of the animal sub-self theory as that is what the limbic system regulates and may be just another connection to the collective subconscious.  I’m still exploring this, but you are free to take whatever applies to you.  Regardless of which of these theories you believe, one thing will remain certain.  The higherself will guide you into enlightenment, so listen to the lessons it teaches you.

Another thing I still want to stress before we get rolling, DO NOT WORSHIP YOUR HIGHERSELF.  Although it has all of the answers that you will ever need, and although we are all apart of Source, we are not Source in entirety.  Your higherself is a part of you, but you are a part of something so much greater.  In my opinion, we cannot say that we are God, because there is so much we don’t have access to.  When we begin to think we are God, we may also think that we do not need source, and inevitably cut ourselves off from the rest of consciousness in a futile attempt to be self-righteous.  Modesty and being humble are essential in our journey to enlightenment, because when you think that there is no more room to grow, then you begin to decay.  I apologize, my rambling is done.

Defining and Perceiving the Higherself

Once you have begun contact, the next thing to do would be to get comfortable sensing their presence.  A meditation focussing on your higherself’s form or appearance would be beneficial.  There is no specific technique to do this, just try to create an image of your higherself in your mind from the energy it gives off.  You can even draw what you feel and that may help you as well.  Alternatively, you can provoke your mind to give you answers about its form.  This will be a series of questions you will ask yourself about what you feel from your advisor’s energy:

What animal does my higherself represent?

What would they look like as a human?

What is my higher self’s aura?

What is their personality like?

What is their elemental affinity?

What kind of things do they relate to?

What do they love?

What do they hate?

These things may be beneficial to draw as well, so you get a visual image in your mind going.  Try very hard to sift out what you want them to look like or be like, focus on what you feel.  Sometimes your higherself will be the exact opposite of what you like, because maybe you’ll need their point of view.  For example, when I found out that my higherself Okeanos manifested as a whale, I was very disappointed.  I was like, “Are you serious?  That’s so lame!”  After a while, I began to realize how majestic whales are, how mysterious they are, how beautiful they are.  Now, whales are my favourite animals and I’ve realized I resonate with them greatly.  This is all important because you have to be able to identify your higherself among anything, so you know what to trust.  Also, you’ll need to be able to have a clear image of them so that you can meditate on your integration, which is what we will be talking about next.

Integrating with your Higherself

When you have a clear image of what they look like, how they act, and overall who they are, then you will be ready to move on to integration.  This is a slow process, because it is basically developing a deep and close relationship with your higherself, becoming one with them.  So, here’s how you do it.

1. While in meditation, create and develop an inner sanctuary, a landscape in your mind that reflects who you are.  It can be a forest or a desert or an island, whatever you want.  This is essentially the same thing as the dreamscape, a personal sub-dimension in your mind, but on a conscious level.  The sanctuary will change with who you are, so don’t worry if it seems different at times.
2. Make sure you are in a silent room or in a place of nature that resonates with you.
3.  Sit comfortably, slowly close your eyes, and begin to focus on your breathing.  Don’t force your breath, just allow your body to breath naturally.  Repeat the process of hearing your heart and following the frequency to your higherself, wherever it may be.  When it has heard your call, and you feel its presence, place the image of it in your mind’s eye.  Allow nothing else but you and it in complete darkness.  Then, allow the landscape of your inner sanctuary to fill the darkness.  You can allow your mind to do this on its own, or you can construct it out of what you feel your inner sanctuary is.  Make sure your higherself is still standing in front of you.
4. When you feel the landscape is solid enough in your mind, let the rest just happen.  Your higherself’s form may change into something it wants to represent in the sanctuary.  If it leaves you, you should probably follow it.  Do whatever feels right in this space.  It may show you new things in the sanctuary.  It may lead you out of the sanctuary, but if you don’t feel you’re ready you don’t have to leave.  If you choose to leave, this will be the beginning of your conscious astral projection.

If some of you are still confused as to what I mean by inner sanctuary, I’ll give you an example.  Usually when I meditate, I create a landscape in which I am on a very high altitude of what seems to be a never-ending, red, column-style tower.  I look down to see a forest beside a large lake.  I jump off and for a good minute and a half I am in free-fall.  I plunge into the water and it is much deeper than it appears to be.  At this instance I am either swallowed by a whale or I see something in the depths that I am lead to.  When I am done underwater, I rise to the surface, swim to shore, and come to the edge of the forest.  There I see a wolf waiting amongst the trees.  I immediately follow it and it may lead me somewhere or I may battle with it.  Sometimes, I become the wolf, and I run through the forest to a very high cliff and howl at the moon.  The meditation usually ends there.

These experiences vary and as you can see I do not start with my higherself in front of me.  This is for those who are just beginning and are inviting their higherself into their inner sanctuary.  Now, onto leaving that sanctuary.

Astral Extension

Astral Extension is the name I use when referring to conscious astral projection.  In Astral Extension, you are still within your body, but you extend through your higherself into the astral plane.  It can be done through the meditation I just showed you, but there are other ways to do it.  Everyone can come up with their own ways if they feel it is right.  In the meditation I just showed you, the higherself can sometimes lead you out of your inner sanctuary through a door or a portal or whatever means used.  It is totally your decision whether you want to leave or not.  When you do , know that you are protected, but you aren’t invincible.  Be wary of beings or things you see and at first, just try to explore and experience.  When your higherself leads you out of the internal, it will usually connect itself to you either through an etheric string for extra guidance or by fusing it’s essence with yours, acting as one astral body for more protection.  The latter is the way I use, but some may not be able to fuse on that level.  The string makes you more vulnerable, but its not like once you begin doing this that things are going to pop out of nowhere and start trying to cut your string.  Cutting the string won’t necessarily do much; it just severs the direct communication between you and the higherself.  In the rare occasion that this happens, you should just go directly back to your inner sanctuary and open your eyes.  The distance you go will not take any time, just imagine yourself going back through the portal you came through and closing it.  It’s just like in a lucid dream.  Nothing can ever enter that inner sanctuary unless you invite it, so don’t worry.  Your higherself will also be fine as well, because they are just a fragment and can poof back to your location.

This week, you do not need to try this yet.  Only if you truly feel you are ready should you do this.  If you are having doubts, do not try it.  Next week, we will discuss the topic of Entities (negative and positive) you will meet in the Astral Realm so that you are aware of what they are capable of.  It is not to scare you, but to inform you.  Do not feel afraid, because something can only harm you if you let it.  I will teach you to get in the mindset of empowerment and the methods of how to protect yourself.  Until next time, practise what you’ve learned thus far, and you will have all the tools you need to move forward.  Thank you for reading; stay
tuned, and all will be revealed.

source  thespiritscience.net