Are Lucid Dreams the same as OBEs? – IAC
I wanted to share this article, not because I think it’s correct… but because I wanted to point something out that really frustrates me.
Everyone always looks at this question from the tired old perspective that there is this distinction and heavily drawn line between what happens while we’re awake and what happens while we’re asleep. There’s this very narrowly defined box that people have put this question into regarding the very nature of reality. One of the more accepted concepts and ideas floating around the new age community is that all is “one”. Everything is consciousness.
This is a great concept and I fully agree with it… many other people seem to agree with it as well, but then for some reason it simply ends at agreeing with it and nobody seems to want to go much further with it. Or they’re simply not capable or able to take it much further for one reason or another.
EVERYTHING IS CONSCIOUSNESS. It’s a statement that you can repeat to yourself a million times over and you’ll never really begin to understand it until you apply it to every experience your consciousness has had in regards to the very nature of reality and the nature of those experiences. Or more to the point, the nature of consciousness.
EVERYTHING IS CONSCIOUSNESS. What far reaching implications can that statement have upon the idea of what a dream is? … what a lucid dream is? … what an astral projection is? … even what this physical reality is? What kind of implications come from the concept that everything you take into yourself with your 5+ senses regardless of the reality you find yourself experiencing is one in the same thing: consciousness. If EVERYTHING IS CONSCIOUSNESS, why does this seem to stop people at this imaginary line drawn in the sand where one side says “physical” and the other side says “everything else”? Why do we simply refuse to ask the questions that are so begging to be asked?
If EVERYTHING IS CONSCIOUSNESS then how can there be any dividing lines in consciousness? Why do we keep insisting that this concept of everything is one is the correct and then completely ignore the implications of such an idea? Can’t there only be you, the awareness, experiencing? Dream… Lucid Dream… Astral Projection… Physical… all of these things have one common denominator: YOU, or more to the point your awareness/consciousness.
I guess what I’m getting at is that it would be really amazing to see the new age community stop for a second and start to consider the implications of what they teach and start to actually apply those concepts to the experiences we have as conscious beings. I mean, I’ve only started to do begin to analyze my experiences from this perspective and I’ve already opened so many doors to myself. Not just thinking there was more out there than I could see, but KNOWING there was more out there and that most people hadn’t even scratched the surface yet… hell, most people haven’t even begun to ask the important questions.
Well, yay, this is just soooo full of awesome!!! 😀 Yes, I’ve encountered the mental block you’re talking about… that lets others agree with the ‘one conciousness’ concept, yet it’s not really taken much further.
I dunno why this is. Personally, my mind has to know EVERYTHING and has to connect EVERYTHING if it’s to find any kind of contentment. I can’t just accept an idea and stop there. I have to find out all the information I can about it, then ponder other ideas that have yet to be published, and then find a way to test it, apply it, and experience it.
I’m on the same page as you… why should there be a separation between the ‘physical’, the ‘dream world’, and the ‘astral realm’, when it comes to the One Conciousness view?
I have realized, though, that it’s extremely difficult for most humans to reprogram their minds from falsehoods they’ve been fed all their lives. Difficult, but not impossible. 🙂