Sounds very interesting, and I'm glad you had the takeaways from the experience that you did!
If you are interested in exploring dreams further, a couple of sources I can recommend:
1) Creative Dreaming by Patricia Garfield: This is meant as a practical manual to learning how to do lucid dreaming on purpose and for specific ends. I haven't read it since beginning more rigorous occult practices, and I'm not sure how it fits in there. At a minimum, though, it gives extremely specific and precise hands-on advice for how to write down your dreams in a way least likely to disrupt remembering them, techniques while falling asleep to make lucid dreams more likely, and ways to test along with what to do if you find yourself in a lucid dream.
2) Dreams, a Portal to the Source by Edward C. Whitmont and Sylvia Brenton Perera: Less on dreaming as a directed process and more on interpreting dreams, this book is solidly Jungian in outlook and methodology, and is built on a lot of practical, clinical experience, married with Jung's philosophy/theories. For me, this is the best book I've encountered for striking the balance in dream interpretation between "here's something concrete and specific you can likely take from certain dream elements" and "all dreams are so intensely personal that a generic 'book of dream symbolism' is worthless - pay attention to the context!"
Besides these, the main thing I have found interesting to consider as I've explored occult philosophy is the idea that dreams that feel so achingly real you are sure they were as real and meaningful as your waking life as well as fleeting flights of fancy are both, in some sense, the same, and both real. I think that the idea that astral phenomena can be stronger or weaker, but also your sensitivity can be stronger or weaker, and that these interactions might be complex, is a really fascinating one that I haven't totally unpacked.
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branchandroot
(no subject)
Date: 2022-09-09 05:00 am (UTC)If you are interested in exploring dreams further, a couple of sources I can recommend:
1) Creative Dreaming by Patricia Garfield: This is meant as a practical manual to learning how to do lucid dreaming on purpose and for specific ends. I haven't read it since beginning more rigorous occult practices, and I'm not sure how it fits in there. At a minimum, though, it gives extremely specific and precise hands-on advice for how to write down your dreams in a way least likely to disrupt remembering them, techniques while falling asleep to make lucid dreams more likely, and ways to test along with what to do if you find yourself in a lucid dream.
2) Dreams, a Portal to the Source by Edward C. Whitmont and Sylvia Brenton Perera: Less on dreaming as a directed process and more on interpreting dreams, this book is solidly Jungian in outlook and methodology, and is built on a lot of practical, clinical experience, married with Jung's philosophy/theories. For me, this is the best book I've encountered for striking the balance in dream interpretation between "here's something concrete and specific you can likely take from certain dream elements" and "all dreams are so intensely personal that a generic 'book of dream symbolism' is worthless - pay attention to the context!"
Besides these, the main thing I have found interesting to consider as I've explored occult philosophy is the idea that dreams that feel so achingly real you are sure they were as real and meaningful as your waking life as well as fleeting flights of fancy are both, in some sense, the same, and both real. I think that the idea that astral phenomena can be stronger or weaker, but also your sensitivity can be stronger or weaker, and that these interactions might be complex, is a really fascinating one that I haven't totally unpacked.
May your dreams bring you further insights,
Jeff