I don't know if I'm astral projecting or lucid dreaming

[Aiden1990uk]

Hi all,

New member been lurking and reading for a while after having many, what I believe to be, astral projections. The most recent last night - which is why I want to note it down whilst the memory is still fresh...

So, I fall asleep on my sofa with the television still on. I enter the usual hypnagogic state seeing the usual crazy stuff that makes zero sense then comes the strange paralysis. It's at this point where if I fight it I can usually wake up(with great difficulty may I add) or I can choose to ride it out as I did last night and many other nights but sticking with last nights experience...

So I leave my body, I don't see my body and I'm floating or flying so to speak I make my way to the kitchen where the exit door is at the moment everything in my house looks normal. I get to the door for some reason I get the feeling I could fly straight through it but choose to unlock it, which I do but I don't see my hand turning the key or pushing the handle - I exit the door.

The next part is why I can't decide is this is astral projection or lucid dreaming.

Now because I know what's happening (this happens all the time) and because it's not scary (sometimes it can be terrifying, demonic etc) I decide to stop and have a really good look at my surroundings.

Remember I said I'd fallen asleep on the sofa with the TV on...so I'm sort of floating looking down a deserted street - which isn't my street but in the distance I can see what looks like a giant TV screen that you may see at festivals, on stage etc. I can't make anything out on the screen as it's so distant but the colours look insane so different to normal but I don't look at it long because if I concentrate too much on looking I can feel my self going back to reality.

So I spend I couple of minutes on this street sort of playing in this dream world. The main thing I notice is the low gravity so I can front flips, back flips jump maybe 5 metres at a time. All this is happening from a 1st l person point of view me looking out of my eyes but not seeing my body (hands, feet etc)

Then after too much concentrating on looking around rather than going with the flow I find myself back in this reality laid on the sofa.

So what happened last night? Lucid dream or astral projection?

Thanks for taking the time to read.

[inavalan]

obe, ld, ap describe the same awareness shift process. The nomenclature depends on your definitions, and doesn't really matter.

You can project onto your exclusive slice of an imagination realm: when you sleep-dream, day-dream, imagine, regress, lucid dream, obe, have most of astral projections, have some nde-s.

You can also project on to a common access realm: when you die, have most cases of nde-s, have some astral projections.

Your description points to the first case of projection, and I would call it an obe that converts into a lucid dream.

[wstein]

Its only a 'lucid dream' IF you are aware you are dreaming while still dreaming. Since you didn't indicate that you were aware of dreaming during the experience, IT IS NOT A LUCID DREAM.

As to whether it was astral travel or a dream of astral travel that is very hard to tell sometimes. The best indicator is if you know the 'rules' (laws of nature) in the location you are in. Any violation of those rules suggests a dream.

Similarly if you possess advanced dreaming skills, you can try them DURING the experience to see if they work. If they do, it suggests a dream. This is not a guarantee as some parts of reality (certain planes/realms/dimensions) are very malleable and can be easily changed by will/intent alone.