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04/23/2020 Yesterday I was lucky enough to attend a brief zoom chat with some like minded folks in the field of consciousness expansion and exploration. I wanted to reflect on some of the things that were discussed and document my personal takeaways.
I attended the chat because one of the biggest reasons I am interested in Astral Travel is to connect with loved ones who have passed over, not just for myself but for others as well. As a medium I thought traversing the cosmos in my astral body would be much more cut and dry than trying to decipher these mental messages, but of course it's not that easy is it?
As it turns out when I encounter passed over folks in the astral, their messages aren't always easy to interpret. For example in a recent encounter with my father he hugged me and said the words to me "You're such a good brother, you let me not be an such an angry father." Now if I tried to take these words at face value they would be confusing as I am a literal brother to no one, being a female only child. But if I'm taking the entire experience into consideration and the emotions behind it, his words truly make sense to me. Since his passing our relationship has changed and the relationship of brotherly love would certainly apply. He was an angry father and since his passing I have witnessed the release of his anger. So how much of our interaction does my mind have an influence on? Did I facilitate an entire meeting in my mind because of my desire to continue my relationship with my father? Was he really there and were his words just my mind's only way to interpret the feelings he was trying to convey? Or were the words simply something I desperately wanted to hear him say manifested in my own self-conscious for the purpose of closure. Luigi and Jade did a great job beginning to answer these questions.
In the chat we touched on the multiple "consensus realities." Areas of the astral plane that are believed to exist to more people than ourselves, an agreed upon part of group consciousness if you will. Some of these planes are very susceptible to our own thoughts and receptive to our whims. In a lucid dream for example we can control our environment to large degrees in most instances. Choosing your own path, building your own world, willing things into "existence." But enter the astral planes and you find this is possible to varying degrees of difficulty depending on how "established" or perhaps "agreed upon" your reality is. The physical reality we normally inhabit seemingly the most "dense" and though it is technically "thought responsive" getting things done here is rather lumbering.
We begin to ask ourselves while viewing or "visiting" these other realities, how do I know if my consciousness is projecting this other "entity" I see before me? Is this my minds' interpretation of something? An extension of what I want to see? Across cultures there are shared sightings of deities and entities recognizable to most. Religious figures being popular sightings but people also often report meeting their deceased loved ones. Do people see these entities because they expect to? Do these entities exist and carry energy because so many people BELIEVE that they do, therefore they begin to exist energetically? Is it a little of both? Alternatively there have been accounts of people encountering similar entities that are not available to the public eye, nothing so popular as Buddha or Jesus. The natural conclusion is that these entities MUST be real if multiple people can confirm their existence yet they do not "exist" in our physical plane, even as folklore.
So the question becomes, how to we trust the information we receive is coming from the entity we believe to see before us? (Side note: If it helps your development does it matter where the information comes from? - a question for a different day.) As Luigi pointed out, part of the answer comes in knowing yourself. If you know yourself well enough you can begin to distinguish the difference between yourself and a separate entity. If you subscribe to the theory of group consciousness then technically we are all one and everything and everyone we encounter is in fact an extension of our self, but that's a whole other complicated issue.
In asking these questions we delve into something seemingly simple, yet one of the biggest questions humans face and yet may never answer. Who am I? In quieting our mind our objective is to observe our thoughts and to dismiss them as they come so that we can be open to messages or transmissions from higher self or divine beings. But how does one begin to distinguish the difference between self and outside intervention? If the goal of "enlightenment" is to release your attachment to "self" you must first journey to KNOW yourself. Get to understand your own thought processes, truly explore yourself, your light, your "darkness" or shadow self. Embrace all of who you are as a being and then you will have a clear litmus test to understand the difference between yourself and an outside influence. Simply put we are practicing awareness, starting with self.
So can I trust the interaction I had with my father? My gut tells me yes. I was perplexed by his statement but I felt the emotion of his hug and his sentiment touch my very core. One of the benefits of communication in the non-physical realm is utilizing all of your senses including direct emotional input. Upon reflection his words were a profound expression of our new relationship, one my mind could only interpret with the word "brother." So ultimately we need to judge each experience in the astral or while lucid dreaming on its own merit by our own understanding of the experience.
My personal goals moving forward will begin with embracing my full self. Each decision that led me to where I am, each "flaw," each pain, each thought, each emotion, each reaction. They all make up my essence and I am ALLOWED to be me in my full human experience. Then I will test the environments I encounter. I will ask myself what I can achieve and what I WANT to achieve, in this physical reality and the astral planes. When encountering an entity I will look for answers that could exist beyond myself. And as always I will keep exploring and uncovering new delights via my ever expanding view of what is possible.
For more insight about astral travel and consciousness expansion/ exploration check out my friend
Jade Shaw or follow Luigi on twitter