Transformation, Mind and Body?

[lightningbug]

I was wondering if you guys can help me out! When I was younger, lucid dreams came to me naturally. And so did transforming into other things. My favorite thing to transform into was a dragon. As a tiny little dragon I could fly like lightning. Dragons aren't afraid of anything, so no negs in a dream could bother me. It was the closest I've ever felt to being free :D

Now I have two problems : my lucidity went to crap, since now half of my dreams are about work. Guess that means I'm stressed out. And, turning into a dragon just isn't what it used to be.

Over the course of my college years, dreams slowly wittled away my ability to transform. Dream characters started to tell me that I wasn't a dragon, or that I can't fly. That it was wrong for me to transform, and I just had to be a normal human. And if I tried to transform and fly away, the dream characters came after, and it was like the whole dream was in on it. :x That gave me doubt. And for a while, I almost believed. That fantastical dreams were wrong because they had nothing to do with reality, or wait, maybe that was just my teachers telling me my artwork was wrong and meaningless :lol: The transforming became more and more difficult, requiring more mental effort. But the extra mental effort started to work against me

My friend gave me the suggestion to try transforming slowly as if it was a sci-fi movie. So first I would imagine my skin a different color. My skin color would change. But once I moved onto another aspect, my skin went back to my normal fleshy color. And peachy scales just didn't look right. It was frustrating and difficult to transform this way. I've gotten some freakish results. Once I tried to transform into an eastern dragon this way, imaging my body longer and more snake like. The result was just this hideous humanesqe snake! After that, I pretty much gave up trying to transform. And lucid dreams, just weren't all that anymore.

So I thought back to my best dragon dreams, and the transformation was effortless.

I'd bug the dream forum I go to, but somehow I'd just imagine they would tell me all I have to do is just imagine I'm a dragon. :D I don't know if they would understand that before when I was a child, I didn't have to 'imagine' anything.

And after my experiences last year, I think this transforming business is more than just changing your physical appearance :wink:

What are your experiences with transforming, dream or astral? And do you have any advice for a full body/mental transformation?

My goal this year is to get back into the joy of lucid dreaming. Thats my key word this year, the joy of it. Last year it would have been the stress of lucid dreaming. I'm gonna be using visuals to inspire me before I go to sleep, so I'm gonna draw myself transformed :lol:

[CFTraveler]

Some random thoughts.
First of all, it seems to me that to transform your shape and experience it you have to be able to perceive your energy body. It also seems to me that this would mandate that you have a very concrete view of your experience.
So as a child it would seem like a no-brainer, because children don't really think about what they look like in any set way.
But when we grow up, setting aside society's programming about what's 'real' and whatnot, we also get more complicated as to what we think spatiality and occupation is. Maybe your idea of what is 'you' is not so tied up with physical appearance, and changes as you change. In other words the real 'you' is not what you look like. Even though society tells you the opposite, you know better than that. So now the idea of transforming in the astral/dream environment isn't as clear, because 'you' are not just that person or that dragon or whatever.
Now 'you' are also the other dream characters that are telling you what you should do or be able to do. So these characters are more involved because you have matured and have more than one way of thinking about stuff= and tell yourself stuff all the time. So in dreams this 'disintegration' becomes objectified.
If I were you I'd catalogue which one says what and what part of your psyche they represent. Then go from there.
Another thing is that I have found that the more 'inner' work you do, the more the situations change- so now maybe 'transforming into a dragon', no matter how fun it is represents a 'going back' to a previous stage of your development- and maybe you're supposed to do 'the next thing'. Just a thought.
Of course, you ultimately are the one who knows what you're supposed to do- so I'd recommend asking yourself (as in your Higher Self) what you're supposed to do next- and wait for the dream that will answer this question.

[Korpo]

Maybe you have too much immediate problems to tackle, emotions to resolve, and real-world priorities to pursue. Maybe that's why the dream characters don't go along with your tries at escapism. Dreams are given every night, often as messages than can help your waking life, as means to release something or to heal, and so on. If you meet so much resistance, maybe you're going into another direction than what would be useful for you at the time. Maybe you get your dragon carefree persona back when you are indeed no longer as much dragged down by your concerns.

Since you are lucid enough to try to achieve a goal in a dream, why don't you question the dream characters and enlist them in helping you understand the messages, and maybe, when the message has been given, they might even support you in some rewarding dragon experience.

Oliver

[Beekeeper]

Just to add to the excellent insights in the above posts, to increase the frequency of your lucidity you're going to have to become more present and less preoccupied in your waking life. So, it's back to stilling thoughts as often as possible during your day just to be present within your body. Also you will probably need to exercise good old reality checks. It might also be helpful to be mindful of the ways in which you have become inflexible in your outlook or how you allow emotions to impact you and possibly deplete you of energy and focus.

[lightningbug]

thanks for the replies! I wanted to make some clarifications

the dreams with the characters telling me what I can or cannot do actually happened about three years ago. Dreams weren't all that fun after that (after I was told I shouldnt turn into a dragon anymore). And my lucidity vanished, going a good year without a single lucid dream. And after that it was once in a blue moon.

getting back my lucidity was in itself stressful. stressful because I wasn't used to having to do reality checks, or taking the time to write down dreams that seemed boring and meaningless. or just not having a lucid dream stressed me out because I had a whole list of things I wanted to do in dreams. not to mention, when I was learning about lucid dreaming techniques - I was jobless. Which made me an insomniac, which meant some nights I literally didn't sleep at all.

learning a bit about tibetan dream yoga, and astral projection, helped open a new door of what lucid dreaming can mean

talking to dream characters and finding out what part of my pscyhe do they represent, thats been on top of my list for about a year now!

I haven't been able to do it because my lucid dreams are so randomn. by the time I have a lucid dream, I don't remember what it was I wanted to do. At one point I pretty much gave up having goals, which only upset me further because I want to astral project. And the best time for me is at night *not enough quiet or personal space at home*

If you were to ask me if lucid dreaming was easy or stressful. I would say stressful. But approaching lucid dreaming as stressful, just made it so much more stressful even my normal dreams stopped being vivid. So, I want to approach it differently. With joy. In all its steps, waking and sleeping.

so yeah, I know I know, turning into a dragon is not all that important. its like candy. :D I was just trying to get my appetite back

[Korpo]

Sounds like you are creating several problems for yourself here. As you recognise, having so many expectations, wants and wishes creates, tension, strain and pressure and actually removes you from your goals and takes the fun out of it. Chasing the "holy grail" of astral projection doesn't make it better... ;)

See, you act as if you don't appreciate your dreams, ruining their vividness, recall and therefore possibilities for lucidity. I personally don't like the single-mindedness involved with certain disciplines anymore - including dream yoga, or most approaches to astral projection. Like having goals for dreams, or wanting to react in certain ways to dreams, or declaring certain types of dreams and experiences more desirable, or requiring one's experience to match someone else's template.

Each and every of this installs more mental filtering that shuts you out from more and more experiences. Your belief system regulates what experiences you can have - the more beliefs you have of the kind "This is good", "This is desirable", "This is bad", "This is not possible" the less experiences you will have, because they get filtered according these criteria. By adopting these beliefs you literally discard parts of your experiences! In my opinion the belief that astral projection is a special and more true than anything else is very, very limiting and impacts the spontaneous experiences you can have negatively. In fact, I was "suffering" from this, and am now reclaiming my dream life.

The less experiences you have the less likely the chance you remember the extraordinary ones, as more and more gets shut out. You need to recall dreams to have lucid dreams. You need to appreciate dreams to recall them. (Practising something like dream yoga can indeed be a signal to your belief system that you value dreams, but can still create other filters - purely IMO, though.)

Now, if you were for example to realign yourself with a simple belief like "I have my dreams for a reason, I want to explore them as they come to me for my highest good." and act accordingly (keeping a dream journal, trying to interpret as much of your dreams as possible) that could turn this whole situation back to normal. Take every dream as meaningful, and it might just open the floodgates. It might be worth a try.

Take care,
Oliver

[lightningbug]

thanks, that makes a lot of sense actually and is probably what happened

thinking back to my childhood, I was a very passive dreamer, just happy to explore the dream. I didnt have any other goal

no dream too small huh? :D