My experience last night

It seems as though my experiences are getting farther and farther apart even though i put myself in the right mindset every night. But as of the past week or so i have slowly been showing more signs of lucid dreaming. It's slow because I never write anything down, I try to hone my skill entirely silent. After I wake up I sit there and consciously recall the events and remember as much as possible multiple times throughout the day, this is how I've always done it and I want to be consistent with it so I don't have to change much often. I feel like this method is slow in the beginning but strong once you're good at it. So last night seemed way more lucid than astral but it had astral tendencies. I became aware I was dreaming when I was looking at my pregnant male friend(you know how dreams never make sense) and I said, "It's so funny that you're pregnant"...i paused for a second and recalled the whole human reproductive system and then shouted, "wait, MEN CAN'T GET PREGNANT" (this is where it seems like your other bodies are immature until you train them, its like i had the mindset of a 6 year old and I have to feed my existing knowledge into it slowly until it comes up to par) and as he said, "I know." is when I became fully aware I was dreaming. At that moment I said, "I'm outta my body." and blasted off towards the sky like superman which woke me up, or so I thought. I had woken up into another state of conscientiousness but I was still physically sleeping and had no idea. So I was like aw what the hell why does this always happen(and knowing that after you wake up is the best time to try again, I did) so what happened next was kinda of confusing and wasn't astral, but it wanted to be. My physical body is sleeping, and I'm awake in a dream, now sleeping and feeling the sensations of astral projection through those states. So I left my dream body and shot up towards the ceiling and was like yes! this is awesome(best astral experience btw even if it wasn't really astral, it was more me having a vivid lucid dream of what I would like to happen) and I didn't leave my house, because i wanted to learn first. Thing is, what made it a dream and not astral is it wasn't my house. You know how in dreams you'll be like, this is my house and this is my mom and that's what they are WHILE dreaming, but when you wake up they look nothing alike. Your mom was 30 years younger and the house was red with a different layout. So I continue dreaming and in my dream my mom wakes me up to go somewhere and I wake up for a second but continue (seemingly) projecting and I want to wake up but I can't because I'm kinda stuck(no big deal though) I think the reason it was so hard to wake up is because I was (seemingly) multiple levels down. I was (seemingly)projecting from a dream within a dream, so it took a lot more time and effort to wake up. It's like how in inception the farther down you go, the slower time is. it was like for each level i was down time was cut in half so it took a multiplier of current level down to real time to actually wake up.

edit: sorry for the wall of text, hope someone enjoys reading this.

[Astral Explorer]

First off what you are describing is projecting, you can project through a dream and a lot of dreams are projections. I have tested this thoroughly and while I cannot say all dreams are projections, I am sure some of them are. Simply put the reason why your house did not look like your house is because you were inside of the RTZ and it is often distorted. When you came back to your body you returned from your astral body into your etheric body. Once you attempted to project you reversed back into your astral body. Your etheric body is very closely linked to your physical body which is why it seemed like you were awake. Your consciousness was inside of your etheric body which was laying inside of your physical body. Keep in mind during a projection when you go from your physical body to your astral body the second you are inside of your astral body you are no longer seeing the physical dimension you are seeing the RTZ (Real Time Zone). So basically from the time you had the false awakening and returned to your etheric body you were seeing the RTZ, not the astral planes.

it must be possible to see physical things though because my tv is usually off but this time it was on and there were these two glowing bars in my dream and i couldn't figure out what they were. after i completely woke up i realized it was the task bar on the screen. but it did rotate and distort in an odd way, they turned more into glow sticks or neon lights. why is it called the rtz and what is there that isn't in the other places? If I could make myself lucid dream every night i could project a lot more often. whenever im lucid if i just start flying i project and i can feel the separation and always go to a place thats more distorted(lucid dreaming is very real to me so i can definitely tell the difference when i project from it)

[Xanth]

Personally, I go further and say that *ALL* dreams are projections.

A dream, a lucid dream and an astral projection are all projections of varying levels of conscious awareness.

[Astral Explorer]

Yes you can see physical things in the RTZ. In many ways the RTZ is a mirror to the physical space it is overlapping, it just often has minor to major distortions. For example I had a dream in the RTZ where my window was open even though it was closed and my blinds were blowing horizontally like there was a huge gust of wind blowing in and I heard something that sounded like a helicopter right above my house. I got up looked out the window and saw nothing walked back and laid down on my bed and then woke up to see my window was closed and there was no noise.

Xanth I think that all dreams are OOBE's but I define Astral Projection as you are projecting into the astral planes. An OOBE is when you leave your body and remain in the RTZ. People spend some dreams inside of the RTZ so with that said I believe all dreams are OOBE's, some are projections. Just my belief though.