Before I get into the meat of this topic let me just say that I never considered posting in a forum like this based on any wild dreams I have had. This one was different, it was a nightmare, I can't help but feel compelled to share this with other people who enjoy reading about this. So here goes:

I was sitting in the kitchen with my wife and children on a dark cloudy day, I noticed that the black clouds were moving very rapid and seemingly like liquid against a green sky. When we went outside to observe this odd weather we found the clouds were all being gathered into two of the most gargantuan, colossal pillars against what was now a perfect blue sky. The pillars were moving like geysers but staying in one lateral position. We started watching as all manner of vehicles would slide hundreds of feet up some invisible gravity distortion these pillars were causing, only to come sliding back down extremely fast hitting the ground in an explosion. Quickly it seemed to be raining down cars of screaming people making rapid popcorn-like explosions that were being drowned out by the sounds of what must have been thousands of people screaming from their cars. Watching these people slide up this distortion field, stall out slowly, and come screaming horribly down to a fiery explosive death was almost too much to watch but I couldn’t look away. Finally we watched one truck come down very close to us and hit our neighbor’s house in a huge explosion that I remember feeling the heat from before jolting awake.

This was difficult to write, I hope it was entertaining to read. This has left me disturbed all day and posting here seemed an appropriate outlet. Pardon my punctuation.

Hi guys,

Spooky, you mentioned about stepping out of one's own self-created reality to re-enter a world shared by others.  This nightmare could very well actually be an observance of something real but Scylla's mind created this nightmare experience as his own interpretation of what he observed. 

Or, it could just be an experience he created out of his own emotions about something he's dealing with in physical reality.  Even though it seemed so real, it doesn't mean it's based on any real reality, but could just be based on real emotions. 

Scylla, your nightmare definitely seems to have a lot of interpreter overlay in it, so whatever reality or real stuff this was based off of, the information perceived is transformed into the stuff in your dreams for whatever reason.  Maybe what you're mind is trying to deal with or resolve isn't quite prepared or aware of enough yet to have a good solid grasp on how to feel about it yet. 

I think I worded that pretty weird...what I mean is, I think the real-ness feeling in any dream or nightmare doesn't necessarily mean the contents of the dream or the dream reality is real.  I think it mostly means the core of what you're dealing with and feeling IS what's real, and the dream itself is just a reflection of that.  These kinds of experiences can seem very completely physically real but not necessarily have any "shared reality" realness to it, as far as the contents of it are concerned.

I thought of saying this because of your response, Spooky, when you said it is a good idea to re-enter shared reality.  Personally, I think any reality is all shared reality, meaning that we all have equal access to it but we choose where we want to be focused.  And sometimes our focus is so completely intent on our own feelings or emotions that we actually create our experience from them.  Like this nightmare seems to be completely created out of some real feelings about something, but instead of dreaming of that his mind created all the interpreter overlay in this nightmare, which may be easier to think about than the real reason he has those emotions.  If that's the case, then I would hate to find out what it is you're mind is really concerned about Scylla!

Even with some of my OBEs, the "physical contents" of what I experience are not real at all, even though they seem completely real to me.  However, it's the message that comes through that IS what's real. 

And sometimes the interpreter overlay is a simple result of misunderstanding or misinterpreting information.  So if that's the case, then even a scary nightmare such as this doesn't really mean anything too concerning other than the fact that information was interpreted this way by the dreamer...just because. 

Vicky, I cut out a sentence from your thoughtful post:

"Personally, I think any reality is all shared reality, meaning that we all have equal access to it but we choose where we want to be focused."

Maybe "finally" it's all a shared reality, but as you pointed out, normally we're focused on something specific; I'd say to have access to all of reality (or realities) we had to simultaneously focus on all of those realities (putting aside any capacity limits of our minds, this seems still difficult, as we had to have a clue of those realities in order to be able to focus on them), or we had to have no focus at all to be able to have access to everything. A Zen-person maybe would say "focusing on the non-focus".

What Bruce wrote about his retrievals, what I found in my own phasing-trips, and what I've read in other books, there seem to exist personal, private worlds- more or less, as when a retrieval is performed, it is necessarily so that the retriever is able to make a sort of contact to the retrievee, this shows that the retriever is able to intrude into the retrievee's thought-environment. It's an open question if there are personal worlds which are closed off from any access from the outside.

One aspect of what you said is, the interpreter overlay actually can be understood as the builder of personal worlds which in the end have almost nothing to do with the initial trigger brought up by "the perceiver", in Bruces terminology. In those cases, "the interpreter" is our personal creativity; and it can be so very difficult then to realize if we not maybe are living in a self-made up thoughtform world. Although, from what I've read, with some experience one can discern self-created persons from real persons easily, as really "objectively" other persons can surprise one, appear as actually different from oneself, while persons of the own thought-world are more or less boring, as their behaviour is drawn from the own mind; they tell you only what you already know, believe, wondered about etc. but nothing new.

Well, just some thoughts  .

Spooky

Interesting Vicky,

Sometimes my physical life does feel like its not my number 1 place. I've awakened from dreams when I was really sure that I had been home while under the sleep. I would think if you meditated for many hours a day you might well feel like some other reality is more homey.

I also get that feeling when something really terrible happens in real life here, as if I am then dreaming only I"m kinda stuck and have to figure it all out rather than magically wake up.

Hi Vicky,

you wrote:
"Hi Spooky,
Why do you suggest we'd have to simultaneously focus on all realities in order to access to all of them?
Do you mean the same kind of conscious intent that we use here in the physical?"

When we have access to only a part of the whole at a time, we just have pieces, and we will not know how to put these pieces together to actually be aware of the whole, it will remain episodic, fragmented. We would long for another piece of the puzzle, hoping the next one will be enough to present the whole picture to us, but it will never suffice. This deep longing for understanding can be stilled only by experiencing the whole (and that means at the same time "being the whole").

That sounds so abstract and theoretical, but it isn't  .

Spooky