Earlier this evening I was napping in the recliner I do my meditations in and started dreaming. The dream was very vivid my and throughout it I was experiencing conscious-like thought. As dream events played out my mind would wander from time to time, and I somehow came across a thought sentence that included the word "dream" which triggered me to instantly realize I was dreaming. I quickly got excited at the prospect of fornicating with a dream character and was overcome by a feeling of warmth and excitement. I tried to calm down so I wouldn't wake up, but before I knew it, the dream world started to fade to black.
As everything faded to back, I felt a very odd feeling, like I was getting pulled somewhere and was now traveling back to my sleeping body. It was very dark but I thought I could see a mass of stars off in the distance. It felt like I was consciously outside of my body and I got scared as I remembered Erin's story of
her first astral projection experience. I may have even heard voices like she did, or perhaps just subconsciously triggered similar thoughts that made it seem like I was. All I know is that I wanted to get out of the darkness and back to the bright and colorful dream world.
A moment later I was back in the bright and very green landscape of the dream world, but this time I was somehow viewing a projection of an earlier part of the dream playing out in front of me. The scene was two college-aged females stripped down to their underwear, laid out on a picnic blanket, very innocently and curiously fooling around. Apparently I don't get full frontal nudity in my dreams, or to be a part of cool scenes like this. I again thought sexual thoughts, but quickly remembered that I can't do anything about them because, in the physical world, I am 20 days into a
30 day challenge to not masturbate, and even masturbating in the dream world would constitute cheating. My mind then began wandering again and I woke up a little while later without the hint of an erection.
I lied still after waking because I didn't want to forget anything. So, I decided to tell myself the story of the dream over and over again until I felt I remembered it enough to move. Midway through I started recalling another part of the dream. Where, inside the dream, I thought of something that triggered me to "remember" I had
some ability. I then found myself visualizing a zooming out effect and saw a Google Earth like 2D/3D map of part of the universe. It was extremely vivid and took up my whole "dream screen" or visual plane. I moved my mental mouse down and to the right and zoomed in to a different part of the universe. I found I could zoom in completely from space till the level of seeing houses and people up close. I'm not sure what part of the universe I was viewing, or where my dream self was while I was doing this, but it seemed like what I was viewing was very earth-like and made me feel far away from home.
What do you think? Was this just a subconscious projection of what the experience of lucid dreaming or astral projection might feel like? Was it just my weird way of experiencing either of these for the first time? Or was it a combination of all three, jumbled by the perspective of an inexperienced and easily frightened mind?