Answer: Dream sharing is a phenomenon where two people are having the same dream, at the same time, and both are aware of the presence of another dreamer in the dream.

It’s extremely rare to be able to enter someone else’s dream. When someone is dreaming, they are in a construct that is very internal to their own brain. In order for someone else to cut in on that, they would have to be able to get inside the original dreamer’s mind. I’d say that for the most part it’s nearly impossible to share a dream.

However, I’ve had three instances I can recall where I witnessed a dream that one of my friends was having, but I could not interact or affect the dream, and my friend was unaware of my presence. However, the next day I was able to tell him in exact detail what he dreamed. Was I in his dream or was I picking up on his thoughts psychically, or was I somehow able to tap into his dream remotely and see what was happening? I’m not sure. I think this is one for the scientists. All I know is that I saw the dream as it was happening and I was accurate in my report.

Now… there is another phenomenon that occurs which may be more likely what you’re experiencing. I’ve had a lot of experiences where friends and I shared a dream. Or so I thought. These were experiences where they were aware of me, I was aware of them, and we could interact with each other consciously during the experience, and share full recall the next morning. At first I thought we were dream sharing, but then I realized that every single time I experienced this phenomenon the content of the “dream” was paranormal in nature. In other words, we were being attacked by a low vibrational entity from the astral plane. We were not in a dream construct, we were more in an energetic construct that had form.

For example, in one experience I can recall, I was being chased by a horde of demonic creatures, let’s call them hell hounds just as a point of reference. I remember hiding under a staircase in an old castle. I heard footsteps coming down the stairs and my boyfriend at the time appeared before me and said, “I chased them off. Let’s get out of here.” As we ran, we had a conversation. The next morning he told me he had a “dream” that he found me cowering under the stairs after chasing off a horde of nasties. He and I both remember the conversation we had during the experience. Was it a dream or something else? I’m going with something else. Probably something astral.

So I believe you can witness someone else’s dream, and I believe you can consciously meet on the astral plane, but I don’t think you can enter someone else’s dream and affect it. It’s too much a part of their brain. You can remote view it, but I don’t think you can affect it.

So I would say if you believe you are in your friend’s dream, take a moment to analyze whether it’s a dream or an astral experience, especially if running from nasties is involved.

Instead, to help your friend, I suggest you counsel him on overcoming his past issues and help him remove his blocks. I don’t think you need to be in his dreams to do it.

Nothing in our conversation was scripted. You’re hearing the actual organic conversation we had. It’s not really interview style but it does lean in that direction. As such, we went all over the place with our topic as things came up. So in this podcast we talk about what I remember from before I was born, and we go into a discussion of astral projection, lucid dreaming, spirit guides, the future of our planet, and a lot more. We recorded this on his iphone so you’ll hear some shifting and some unusual audio sounds, but overall we felt the quality was good enough to share.

This is a free download. Just click on the link and the podcast should begin playing, or you can right click on it, save it, and play it using the media you prefer. It’s just over 27 minutes.

Podcast: What I Remember About the Ether by Erin Pavlina and Bron Johnson

Enjoy!

If you’re not familiar with lucid dreaming, it’s simply the act of becoming aware that  you are dreaming while you are still dreaming.  While lucid you can take control of your dream and change characters, setting, outcome, and lots more.  I’ve been lucid dreaming since I was a young teenager, and over time I’ve not only mastered having lucid dreams, I’ve mastered such things as picking up on a dream where I left off (even years later), communicating with spirit guides and other celestial beings consciously, and learning how to pre-program the dream I want to have.  Yes, these are advanced lucid dreaming skills, but anyone can master them if they put in the time.

If you want to learn the basics about lucid dreaming, read my articles on lucid dreaming in the Sleep and Dreams section of my blog.  Once you’ve got the gist of that, come back and read this article for tips and tricks on programming the dream you want to have.

There are two ways programming a dream will work.  The first is by commandeering a non-programmed dream and bending it to your will, and the second is to go into the dream from the get go with the programmed content ready.  Let’s discuss each in turn.

Most of the time that a lucid dream occurs is during a dream that’s already in progress.  Often nightmares will trigger a lucid dream and an urgent desire to wake up, but you can also become lucid during any normal dream.  Sometimes when the dream has a really odd element to it, a lucid dream is triggered, such as dreaming you lost all your teeth, or seeing yourself in a mirror with two heads, or something equally fantastical.  When you become lucid you must try to remain calm because getting too excited will trigger your mind to wake you and then it’s bye bye lucidity.  Once you are lucid you can snap your fingers or blink your eyes or use whatever method you want to start changing the content of your dream.  If you’ve got pre-programmed content ready to go, it’s like uploading it to the dream matrix and you’re off.  More on pre-programming content in a minute.

The other way to get a programmed dream is from the first moment you start dreaming.  What often happens to me is that I’ll pre-program my dream and, when I get to the dream, some or most of the elements I wanted are there but not all of them, so I have to do a little rearranging.  No big.  I just get to work, get my pieces in place, and run the program.  Sometimes I stay completely lucid during the dream, continuing to direct my “actors” into following the script, and sometimes I allow myself to play along with whatever wants to happen, giving my “actors” some free reign in determining their next move.  Yeah, I’m like a God in my dream world.  Fun fun.

So how do you program the content?  Lay down while you’re tired but make sure you can stay awake for at least 10 minutes or so before drifting off.  Now literally think and daydream the dream you want to have.  Let it play out in your mind.  For example, if you want to play superhero (one of my favorites) then create your character.  What powers will you have?  Who are your villains?  Team mates?  What is the setting?  High rise building?  Sewer?  The more details you can imagine, the greater your chance of getting what you order.  Then run the scene over in your mind as many times as you can before falling asleep. 

If you don’t know all the details, or you don’t want to program an entire scene, you can simply select the components you want to have there.  Certain celebrity you want to “date” in your dream?  Imagine them in as much detail as you can before you fall asleep.  Try to put yourself in the scene as much as possible.  Imagine dialogue and action.  You’re the writer and director of your own movie, and if you don’t know something, your mind will fill in the details.  One night I couldn’t decide if I wanted to spend time with Johnny Depp or Keanu Reeves.  Voila, they both appeared in my dream.  One was a pirate-like villain and one was a King Arthurian knight.  It was fun playing with both. 

The more times you can let the scene play out in your mind before you fall asleep, the better.  It’s best to do this while you’re tired.  Keep thinking of the scene and characters as you fall asleep.  Don’t start thinking about your morning’s to do list or how you’re going to avoid that phone call from your in-law.  Just keep your conscious mind on the dream images you want to have. 

If you find yourself becoming lucid in a regular dream, just remember the dream you wanted to have and start shifting and changing the dreamscape.  If you find yourself in a reasonable facsimile of the programmed content, run with it.  Sometimes I’ll have a non-lucid dream related to programmed content, so even if things don’t go exactly as I’ve planned them, I still get most of what I wanted.

If you’re not convinced that lucid dreaming is the best thing since sliced bread, you may not have the imagination needed to make it worth your time to learn it.  But for those of you who are already lucid dreaming out there, try pre-programming some content and see how exciting THAT is!

Sweet and pleasant adventuring fellow oneironauts!

Answer:  Great question.  When you dream, you are entering your own mind’s subconscious construct.  Think of it like a matrix-like reality inside your head and you’re the programmer.  As such, all the people, places, and things you see in a dream are created by your own subconscious mind.  During normal, non-lucid dreams, you forget that you are dreaming.  You act in accordance with whatever is going on in the dream.  Yes, even though your own mind created the dream world, you go along with whatever is happening, even if you’re being chopped into little pieces by Freddy Krueger.

Now, when you are lucid in a dream (which means you are aware that you are dreaming) you are still in your own mind’s dream construct.  So all the people, places, and things you see there were created by your subconscious mind.  The difference between a normal, non-lucid dream and the lucid dream is that once you are lucid you are able to alter your dreamscape to suit your whims and desires.  Thus, you can snap your fingers and now Freddy Krueger isn’t chopping you into little pieces, instead he’s sitting in an armchair with a cup of tea and a Dickens novel.  But everything in the lucid dream is still a subset of your own mind.  If you can imagine it, you can create it.

Can you fly?  Yes, you can fly like Superman or put wings on your back and fly the way you think you would fly if you had wings.  But we can’t really know if what we’re experiencing is how it would feel in reality.

So to use your examples, if you lucidly created a Japanese teacher to come teach you Japanese, you would get what sounds like Japanese to you, but which would probably not be real Japanese since your subconscious and conscious minds don’t know Japanese.  If you flew to another country you would see what you think would be there.  There might be enough similarity in what you think is there and what is actually there to convince you that you really saw that country, but it would be coincidence.

For the vast majority of people, everything experienced in a dream, lucid or not, is going to contain a subset of what the dreamer already knows or believes. There’s nothing new under the sun. 

All hope is not lost, however.  Lucid dreaming does open a doorway.  It alters your energetic frequency.   If  you’ve developed your psychic abilities enough and you know how to change your frequency to detect other energetic beings, you could use your lucid dream landscape to hold a meeting of sorts between you and these other beings.  These other beings could then give you information you didn’t previously know, which is the same thing that happens when a psychic is awake and using her conscious mind to tune in to beings outside her mind’s construct.  Does that make sense?  If a psychic person can tune in to an outside mind while she is awake and have a conversation with that being, you can do the same thing in a lucid dream.  You just have to escape the dream construct to do it.   You have to make sure you keep your frequency high and don’t fall back into a non-lucid state.

One of the reasons deceased spirits come to us in our dreams is because energetically we’re meeting them halfway.  It’s much easier for them to get into our dreams than our waking life.  When you’re in the dream state you already expect weird and unusual things to happen.  You accept them easily while you’re dreaming.  So deceased spirits or guides can use that as an opportunity to try to reach you with messages.  Initiating the conversation yourself works too.  You can “call” to them and hopefully they will come.  No guarantees.  But you’d have to be lucid at the very minimum in order to make this call, otherwise you’re just making the call inside your own subconscious mind.

In summary, your dreams are a product of your own mind.  Everything in your dream came from your imagination.  But if you’re lucid, and can raise your vibration, and break out of the dreamscape, you can communicate and have interactions with real energetic beings that are not a product of your own mind.  Or you can learn to do that while awake, which is sometimes easier.

Obtaining consciousness inside your dreams is an excellent first step to being able to go outside your own mind and into a higher frequency.

I’ve had some crazy dreams in the past.  For example, one time I dreamed I was Eddie Murphy’s penis.  Yep, you read that right, I hope you didn’t spit your coffee onto your monitor.  I seriously had a dream that I was Eddie Murphy’s penis (oh the search engine traffic I’m going to collect with that lovely phrase!).  I peaked my head out of his underwear and had a look around.  That was it, then I mercifully woke up.  Another crazy dream was when I dreamed I was a sentient hamburger (with all the fixings no less!).  Yep, I was sitting on a lazy Susan-type device while someone was setting up lighting for a photo shoot.  I just sat there, feeling every part of my layers (meat, lettuce, special sauce, etc.) and just waiting for someone to take photos of me.

Until recently the dream that took the cake for crazy was that one night I went to sleep and dreamed I had insomnia!  I literally dreamed I couldn’t fall asleep.  When I woke from that dream I was flummoxed, but when I went back to sleep the dream picked up where it left off!  In fact, I kept dreaming I couldn’t sleep and then I’d wake up and realize I must have been sleeping.  Finally at around 5am I realized I wasn’t going to get any real sleep, so the next time I fell asleep I dreamed that I took a walk around the neighborhood until sunrise.  When I finally got up for real that day I felt like I hadn’t slept all night.  Try analyzing that one!

But recently my dreams have gone to another level entirely.  It started when I dreamed an entire episode of the tv show Supernatural.  I watched a complete brand new episode of the show in my dream.  The plot was so interesting I thought it would be a great idea for an actual episode.  I wanted to submit it to Eric Kripke (show creator) but my cousin, who is in the industry, told me there was no way he’d be interested.  I’m a huge fan of the show, for obvious reasons, and I often program dreams that include the Winchester boys and I out solving a mystery or hunting down something scary.  But now… now… it’s all different!

A few months ago I had my Supernatural episode dream but this time it came with commercial breaks and scenes to next week’s episode!  What the hell?  Now I’ve got sponsors in my dream?  I don’t believe I’m getting paid to watch commercials in my dream!  And yet it continues.  Apparently I signed some astral contract and now I get fresh episodes of Supernatural in my dreams plus commercials.  So far the scenes to next week’s episode haven’t actually come to pass.  If they did I think I might commit myself or pitch a series idea to Eric Kripke or the CW.  Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy dreaming entire episodes, but maybe I need to install an astral Tivo so I can fast forward through the commercials.   If anyone reading this knows Eric Kripke can you please tell him I’ve got a season’s worth of new episodes in my head?

Another weird thing going on in my dreams is that I’m doing intuitive reading sessions for strangers.  Full readings.  My guides give me a name and I tune in and do a reading.  Sometimes I see the sitter there and sometimes I don’t.  These aren’t quickie, one question readings either, they’re a full 30 minutes (or it feels that way in the dream).  A lot of information comes through.  And not just one client either, but sometimes as many as three clients in one dream session.  When I wake up I wonder, and hope, that somewhere there is a real person who received the info through their dream, considering the effort that was put into it. 

There are nights when I just want to sleep and not be so, oh what’s the word, involved in my dreaming.  I think I need to program a dream trip to Hawaii so I can lounge on the beach and sip a drink with one of those cute umbrellas (because it’s not tropical without an umbrella or some fruit hanging off the rim) just so I can relax a little.  You think you’re overworked?  Try doing hours of work in your dreams too!

Now lest you think I’m kavetching or whining about my lucid dreaming abilities, I do really love my nightlife and look forward to it every day.  I am just trying to fathom what’s going to happen next.  Should I be worried or excited?  Where will the next level take me?

There are three conditions that come up.  In the first, you dream that you are in an astral state.  In the second, you have a lucid dream that you are astral.  And in the third condition, you are actually astral.  Let’s go over all three in detail so you can see the difference.

Dreaming that you are in an astral state
Because there came a point where I was astral projecting many times per week (back in my teens) I became very used to the sensations involved in astral projection.  So, often, I would dream that I was having an astral projection.  In this case, I did not wake up in my bed, initiate the astral separation, and go on about my merry astral way.  No, instead I was having a dream that I was astral projecting.  How do I know it was a dream?  Because I was in the dream state, the dream plane, and I never woke to initiate the astral separation which for me involved tingling, a high pitched buzzing sound, and separating out of my body in my bedroom.  In the dreaming-you-are-astral state, you are simply having a dream about being out of body.  You won’t be that aware of it either, like any regular non-lucid dream.  You’ll wake up and say, “Oh what an interesting dream I was having” and that’s about it.

Lucid dreaming about being in an astral state
In this next scenario you become totally conscious during some regular dream and think, “Oh cool, I’m totally lucid, I’m going to go astral” and you go from the dream plane into what you think is your astral vehicle.  However, you will find you are still on the dream plane, able to affect dream characters, sure, but still in your own mind.  You are not astral when you have a lucid dream that you are astral.  You’re just having a cool lucid dream experience and you’re still inside the dream construct.  It’s fun, it’s cool, it’s a good place to practice techniques, but you are not astral.

You’re actually astral projecting
In all of my true astral projection experiences, I woke up in bed first.  I was completely aware that I was in bed, and if someone said, “Hey, Erin, you awake?” I would know with certainty that I was.  It is in this state that the astral separation is initiated.  If you’re astral projecting, the first place you will see is your bedroom, or the place where you are sleeping.  You won’t be in a dream construct.

Chances are good that if you’re dreaming that you’re astral projecting, you’ve done some astral projecting in real life so you know what to bring into your dream construct.  But if you’re having a dream that you’re just flying, that’s not it.  When you are actually astral projecting you feel as conscious and aware as you do when you are awake.  There are no dream characters or constructs.  You can’t just snap your fingers and change the landscape.  It’s like being in this plane in between life and death.  There’s a strange, unearthly quiet about it (if you’re lucky!) and you feel more like a ghost than anything.  But your entire consciousness is in your astral body or vehicle.

Lucid dreaming is an excellent place to practice waking your mind up while keeping your body asleep, so if you’re wanting to learn astral projection then lucid dreaming is a good place to start.  As human beings we don’t ever need to experience astral projection to have a good and normal proper life.  However, the benefits of having a true astral experience are wonderful.  It gives you a sense of certainty that your soul can exist without your body.  That means a lot to a lot of people, I know. 

So experiment, but learn to discern the difference between your states of consciousness.  I’ve had lots of dreams that I was astral only to wake up and realize it was just a dream.  Those don’t count.

No June Hiatus
Also due to high demand, I ended up not taking a hiatus in June though I did scale back on my schedule a bit.  If you were waiting until July to book your reading, you’ll want to book now as I am beginning to book for July.

I Can Do It Conference
Thank you to everyone who has booked a reading during the I Can Do It conference.  My schedule is now full so I won’t be able to read for you during the conference if you haven’t already booked.  If you aren’t familiar with the I Can Do It conference it’s a wonderful conference where you get to hear many of the best authors in spirituality, quantum physics, and personal development.  It’s an uplifting conference and I highly recommend it.  My husband, Steve Pavlina, will be doing a presentation on Sunday, June 29, 2008 at the conference, where he will be discussing the principles from his upcoming book, Personal Development for Smart People.  It’s going to be wonderful.  Don’t miss!  He’ll be giving the same presentation in Tampa, Florida later this year in October.  If you see Steve or me at the conference, please come up and say hello.  Don’t be shy.  We like meeting our readers in person.  We’re going to try to get to as many sessions as we can but Hay House has Steve booked almost the entire conference so we’ll see.

Audio Program
I know you’ve been waiting patiently for my audio program.  We decided the first program is going to be on Lucid Dreaming.  After that I’ll probably do one on Psychic Development.  Thanks for your patience!  Once the kids are back in school full time I’ll be up to full speed again.

Answering Email
I’m getting more and more email these days.  I still read everything but I can’t always respond to lengthy requests for help.  Please visit our forums if you have a question.  The forum members are amazing individuals who are kind, non-judgmental, caring, and extremely helpful and wise.  If you want my personal take on your situation, book a consultation or a reading and we can go in depth on your particular situation.

Spirit Channeling Session
A short while ago you all submitted questions for the channeling session I am planning to do.  I thought I’d be able to finish that by the end of June but it doesn’t look good.  I will have more time after the conference and I’ll get to it then. 

Thank You for Sharing
Thank you for reading my blog and sharing it with your friends, coworkers, and family.  I appreciate those of you who take the time to Stumble the site and email articles to your friends.  Your efforts help to increase my traffic.  Click on the “Share This” link at the end of the articles that inspire you so they can inspire others as well.

Peace and love to you all!