astral projection and spiritual guides

I’ve (26F) always been the kind of person to sleep heavily and dream vividly. In my youth, I had night terrors, would occasionally sleep-walk, and always dreamt in a way that felt more real than the waking world. I spent years with dreams as my coveted form of escape, and would sleep to flee my depression and stress.

As I got older, my dreams persisted. Weed, HEAVY dosages of (wrong) medications, you name it, nothing changed my access to the dream world.

When I moved away for college and (unknowingly) began my years of medication induced dissociation, I began collecting premonitions. At the time, they were no more than dreams, and the standard occasional déjà vu. What I was unable to realize at the time was that my medications were keeping a part of myself locked away. The only way I can begin to describe what that felt like, is this:

> imagine the movie inside out. imagine your inner selves at the control panel. then one day, one of your inner selves begins to imperceptibly fade away. that inner self is less outspoken, more insecure, and eventually, somehow, absent entirely. you realize, after some time, that they aren’t around but don’t know how to begin finding them and if you’ve gotten this far without them, it must be fine.

> then one day, you feel this visceral urge that tells you this medication is Not helping. things haven’t been good mentally for way too long for this to be the best it can get. you decide to taper off and almost immediately your inner selves, your emotions, your sensations are all louder. you can HEAR them again. after a couple weeks, that lost inner self comes stumbling back into the control room.

> when that self returns, despite the sunken appearance and hoarse voice, you realize that the self that was lost was your most important self. the one that believed in hope. the one that drove the moral compass. the one with passion and drive and SO MUCH TO SAY.

When that self came back to me, I grabbed my life by the throat and turned that shit into everything I needed. I moved myself and my partner out of the state and serendipitously to a place that inexplicably feels like home.

When we got here, the years of collected premonitions came to fruition in an avalanche. I stumbled across ten or so different places I’d dreamt about years prior. I could point over a hill and describe the other side without having ever physically been there before. I could finish sentences for people I’d dreamt about before ever meeting.

All that to say, my dreams are more vivid and sensational than ever before. It’s to the point where I have categories of dream types. The three types have variable overlap but are relatively distinguishable.

the first - Regular Dreams

—> run of the mill, everyone has em

second - Astral Projections

—> these are like if regular dreams went full immersion. we’re talking Inception style. i’m somewhere i’ve never been in real life. they are almost like living in another lifetime. in someone else’s life. i step into the life like it’s my own, while im there. when i wake up, i carry the memories of the dreams with me into my day. however, interestingly, i remember these types of dreams most vividly.

> i’ve stumbled across these places i’ve dreamt of before in real life and sometimes it’s on roadtrips down the coast, one was in the middle of rural Montana. It’s always bizarre and jarring to happen upon them. i’m thrown back into the dream like i am remembering my own life.

third - Visitations

—> my spiritual guides and deceased loved ones will make contact. these are like the astral projections on steroids. they are almost in the realm of lucid dreaming, as i feel cognizant in them. however, i do not have control of the situation or any intent to achieve that, which is why I don’t classify it as Lucid.

> in these dreams, i will hold my departed animals, i’ll see my departed loved ones and we will converse. These are such cherished dream states for me, but invariably feel controlled by my spiritual guide. I do not get to choose when these happen but i love when they do.

finally - Premonitions

—> these are the dreams i understand the least. they never make sense when i dream them, they always feel out of place, and i always wake up feeling heavy. i can sense when i arise that i had a premonition, but am rarely able to speak on it. while i carry their weight through my day, i can never access the memory of the dream upon waking. i can get hints or an essence, but never anything solid.

> when they actually happen, and they always do, it will immediately click that a premonition is occurring. sometimes these premonitions allow me to make a more educated decision in a moment where i have no additional fathomable logic, but somehow i have an energetic pull in the “right” direction.

Does anyone else have dreams like these? Premonitions? Visitations? Projections????

I’d love to hear more about the spiritual aspect of dreaming, rather than the neuroscience explanation.